Upgrade your resume with these 5 Free Online Learning Resources Building Your Future Now

Upgrade your resume with these 5 Free Online Learning Resources Building Your Future Now Alison This is an absolutely free online course site. It has a lot of specific and general interest courses to help you round out your resume. Although it is a good place to start and maybe take a few courses, Udemy (which has both free and paid courses) is recommended. Udemy Udemy has a healthy mix of free and paid courses. There are plenty of online courses on a range of subjects created by experts in their fields. Although the paid courses sometimes delve deeper in a subject and have more learning tools, but don’t discount the free courses. They are packed with amazing information and are also created by experts in their fields as well. The paid courses start at at $14.99 and they go up from there depending on the complexity of the subject and detail to learning materials and resources. The paid courses start at at $14.99 and they go up from there depending on the complexity of the subject and detail to learning materials and resources. Facebook Blueprint This is a free learning resource that Facebook offers. Although a lot of it are things that you might know if you use Facebook heavily for personal and business use, this course is still great to take because there is a bunch of useful information on Facebook marketing. The course is divided into modules and when you finish all of them you get a certificate which is in the form of a pdf. Having this certificate course is an excellent for your resumeâ€"even if you are not focused on social media or marketing, it reflects well because you are taking the initiative to learning a subject that is an important part of our daily lives. Hubspot Academy This is perhaps one of the best marketing resources when it comes to content marketing online. Don’t be fooled in believing this course is only for sales people and marketers. This is a course that will give you the nuts and bolts of marketing while giving you a deeper understanding of how to brand yourself! It is a certificate course which is good for a year. After that you must take it again in order to keep your skills up-to-day. The course is divided into modules with a mix of videos and text. After most of them you take a quick test before heading to the next module. This is a free course and all you need to do is sign up! You Tube Although you won’t get any certificates, You Tube offers you a wealth of amazing videos in the form or tutorials, documentaries and recorded classes to further your knowledge in any field or subject. There is an overwhelming amount of videos so be sure to do a little research in the experts you want to check out before spending your time watching the wrong videos. For the most part, some people on You Tube post videos with improper or the wrong info so it’s important to do your due diligence. One of the easiest things to do is subscribe to companies, institutions, experts, and educators to get connected to content that can help you immediately. There is an overwhelming amount of videos so be sure to do a little research in the experts you want to check out before spending your time watching the wrong videos. For the most part, some people on You Tube post videos with improper or the wrong info so it’s important to do your due diligence. One of the easiest things to do is subscribe to companies, institutions, experts, and educators to get connected to content that can help you immediately. Image: Raw Pixel

Facebook Reactions What They Say About Your Social Media Marketing

Facebook Reactions What They Say About Your Social Media Marketing Back in February of this year, Facebook introduced a more differentiated way to interact with individual posts. As a result, there’s now of choice of 6 Facebook Reactions and accompanying emojis: Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, Angry. For the 1.7 billion Facebook users globally, the experience is much improved.   The new reactions can deliver a much wider choice and more accurate range of responses than the standard ‘like’. Think about someone posting a long rant about a traffic incident, or announcing a diagnosis of cancer.   Would you ‘like’ it? Now you have the choice of ‘angry’ or ‘sad’ too. And what about a post you really, really like â€" such as a birth announcement (‘love’), pictures from an exotic holiday location (‘wow’)  or the best joke you’ve heard all month (‘haha’)? It’s clear that Facebook users can now respond more expressively to all kinds of posts.  Facebook for business But how do the greater range of reactions impact the use of Facebook for business? Well, put simply, if you use Facebook as a social media tool for business, these new reactions can provide you with a wealth of valuable marketing information you didn’t previously have. At a glance, you’re now able to differentiate between what your potential and actual customers ‘like’ and what they really ‘love.’    And that enables you to tailor your products or services more accurately to demand. What’s more, your customers’ ability to express a negative emotion (‘sad’, ‘angry’) can be used as feedback to fine-tune your posts and improve your social media engagement. And whereas previously, the only way for a customer to react negatively would have been to leave a comment, there’s a quicker way to express displeasure now.  So you may also feel the benefit of fewer negative comments being left.  Analysing reactions and responses You don’t have to be an IT expert or have specialist tools at your disposal to be able to analyse the emotional responses to your Facebook content; it can simply be done via Facebook’s Page Insights. For each individual post, take a look at how many reactions, clicks, shares and comments were received. This will give you an overview of how a particular post is viewed, interpreted and responded to by those who viewed it. Use the information gleaned to inform your customer communications, tweak your content marketing or improve your product strategy. You can also analyse the same data over a longer period of time, say a week or a month,.  And,  look at groups of posts. In this way, you can get a better idea of what type of posts are successful and unsuccessful, allowing you to tailor your content (as well as your products and services) to your audience. Using the new information Using Facebook for your business is all about creating more immediate engagement with your clientele. It should go without saying that any tool that provides you with differentiated data relating to your potential and actual customers’ preferences for your brand, product or service is of huge commercial value. Take ‘like’ for instance. Now that there are 5 other emotions to choose from, could ‘like’ rather than ‘love’ mean that your content is a little bit bland? ‘Wow’ is a great reaction.   But it’s probably unrealistic to expect it to crop up too frequently. Laughter is very shareable but do be careful because ‘Haha’ can be a double-edged sword.  Are they laughing with you or at you? Finally, ‘Sad’ and ‘Angry’ reactions should never come as a surprise. As a brand, you can take advantage of your audience’s choice of responses to particular types of content â€" articles, images, updates and more. The information will not only help you to improve your specific Facebook content to make it more appealing to your followers, but this should form part of a much wider marketing strategy to define your brand. Article provided by Mike James, an independent content writer working together with Best VPN. Images. Main.  Facebook.

Three Tools for Making Your Presentations and Visuals Pop! - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Three Tools for Making Your Presentations and Visuals Pop! - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Three Tools for Amazing Visuals When you’re tasked with creating a slide show or visuals for team members/clients, relying on tools like Powerpoint and Word will rarely impress. While these tools were considered innovative in past decades, they offer nothing fresh to brand you as more inventive than your peers and competition. With increased online resources, it’s easier than ever for even the tech-challenged to create stunning presentations, infographics and posters. Your peers and clients will perceive you and your information as having more value, based on the quality of packaging. Now you can quickly produce professional-quality materials in minutes! Three Tools for Amazing Visuals There are innumerable tools and resources online to help you generate stunning graphics. Below are a few of my personal favorites. Prezi If you’re tired of creating and viewing traditional, slide-based Powerpoint and Keynote presentations, Prezi is a great alternative. Rather than creating linear slideshows, you have the ability to create an overarching image and “zoom in” to parts of the image where you can create more images and text. As an example, if you were creating a presentation on anatomy, instead of a boring slideshow, you could start with an opening graphic of a human body and the title of your presentation. From there, you can zoom in to different parts of the body where you have labels, additional images and text. You can even zoom in further within the smaller text and images for additional sub points! Prezi works more along the lines of how humans process information. Additionally, people are just plain impressed by Prezis! Canva With Canva, you can design posters, flyers, infographics, and much more! Canva’s most impressive feature is its highly-polished template gallery paired with the ability for users to quickly customize projects to make them appear 100% unique. The site is extremely user-friendly with a very small learning curve. Even if you have an in-house graphic designer or department  for design, this service is great for those smaller projects you wouldn’t normally use them for. Your materials will have your clients and peers swearing  your project was professionally constructed! Piktochart Piktochart is extremely similar to Canva, allowing you to create flyers, reports, infographics, presentations, etc. using templates. However, this service has a particularly impressive template gallery for infographics specifically. If you want to simplify the information you’re presenting while creating a stunning visual, creating an infographic on Piktochart is a great strategy. Becoming known for creating amazingly polished visuals while everyone else creates simple charts on Microsoft Word, will definitely help build a strong personal brand. I use all of the above services regularly to create eye-catching visuals. What are your favorites?

Speak Like a Professional 7 Tips for Better Business Speech

Speak Like a Professional 7 Tips for Better Business Speech Two women present their funding requests to the same management team. Let’s listen in: Diana: So, you know, this project is insanely good, we can sell it soon and customers will really like it. I only need like $50,000 to get to launch. Can I go forward? Suzanne: With a $50,000 investment this product will launch in 6 months. We project 15% market share in the first year, generating topline sales of $500,000 at a 25% margin. Will you confirm the investment? Notice the difference? Business professionals have their own way of speaking: tone of voice, words, and the way they present information. To succeed in this environment, you must match this style. Lois Frankel devotes an entire chapter of her book ‘Nice Girls Still Don’t Get the Corner Office’ to 20 ways women undermine themselves simply by the way they communicate. I’ll focus on just 7 simple changes to your speaking style that will help you sound like a credible, reliable professional. Speak Like a Professional Use short, clear, declarative sentences Short sentences focus your message and make it easier for your audience to follow. Avoid fillers (um, actually, like, to make a long story short…).   They add nothing, distract your audience, and sound insecure. Speak in the active tense Own your actions. Professionals make things happen. Passive tense (‘a decision was made’) implies that things happen to you. Active tense (‘I decided’) shows responsibility and confidence. Stay calm under pressure If someone asks a tough question, think before answering. If you don’t know the answer, commit to finding out and replying after the meeting. Speak naturally Let your voice rise and fall with your content. Use a steady, calm tone. Avoid ‘uptalk’ -the (more female) habit of raising your pitch or tone at the end of a sentence. It turns a statement into a question. Say what you mean Avoid jargon, slang, and euphemisms. If you recommend selling something, talk about selling it, not ‘monetizing an asset.’ Focus on what matters to your audience When asking for funding, state how much you need and what you will do with it. Make clear what they will get for their investment. If asking for a job, concisely state what the role is and why you are the best choice. Be specific ‘We’ll have insanely great sales’ is not a forecast! Tell them how much, when, and where: ‘We will sell 2 million units in the US by the end of 2017’ is a forecast they can understand. Give specific dates and deliverables. Start Now Professional speaking is different than social conversation. Everyone works at it. Record yourself practicing a presentation, or record your side of a telephone call with a colleague. You might be amazed; many of us no longer hear our verbal ‘tics.’  Listen for what you do well, and for how you can improve. Enlist a friend to help. For example, if you use a filler word, ask them to note down the number of times you say it in a meeting. Then work on reducing that by 10% each month. With time, you will eliminate it.   Igor Avidon, CEO of Avidon Marketing Group, also recommends reviewing your written communication. Most people write similarly to how they speak. Review your most recent email exchanges and see if you can spot issues like passive language or jargon overuse. This can help you pinpoint your most pressing improvement opportunities. Communication is at the heart of success in the office. Keep working on your speaking style. People may not know exactly what’s different, but they will know that you sound more believable. As to our two project managers, who do you think received funding? Yes, Suzanne. The management team gave her the money; they told Diana to try again when she had facts. If you want recognition and respect as a professional, start by sounding like one! . Main image credit.

Job Coaching and Resume Writing

Job Coaching and Resume WritingJob coaching and resume writing are the two most important things you need to know when looking for employment. If you're trying to get a promotion, it is essential that you create the perfect resume. If you hire someone for this reason, you will find that the pay off.One of the first steps that you should take when creating your resume is to gather information about the company. In order to learn more about their job requirements, and what they look for in a candidate, talk to your recruiter. This person will also be able to tell you how to write a professional resume. Their information will also give you an idea of what to include in the introduction section.Next, it is time to define your career objectives. Many companies require candidates to complete a 'career objective statement'. You can use this as a guide when crafting your resume. A career objective should cover the skills and abilities needed to succeed at your new job and provide information on the type of work environment you desire. You may also want to include the skills required for the job you are applying for.The next step is to prepare a job description for your resume. As with the job objective, this is the heart of your resume. It needs to provide enough information to describe the job to potential employers. It should go over the positions you want to apply for, how you would perform each position, and if you have any training or experience in that position. You should be sure to include every aspect of the job, but make sure it is accurate so your recruiter can match you up with the most appropriate positions.After you have created a job description and included the required information for the career objective, you will need to prepare a cover letter for yourself. In this letter, you will outline what you are looking for ina job. This letter should be made to look like a resume, yet there are some important differences. Your recruiter will help you to const ruct a professional letter.Next, you should use your resume to help you reach out to your interviewers. If you follow job coaching and resume writing techniques, you will make a good impression on the interviewer. You may also make yourself known to other employees by giving them your resume as a gift during the holidays.Your final step is to keep your resume current. Many companies will need to look at your resume from time to time. You should always send your resume to the company every two years. Do not wait until you have been looking for a job for a while to send your resume. This will give your recruiter time to become familiar with your resume.Job coaching and resume writing are not an easy task. The rewards far outweigh the problems, especially if you are looking for a promotion. Creating a resume that displays your best qualities is the best way to get noticed and make the best impression on your interviewer's.

Here we go... - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Here we go... - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog After a trip to Munich last week and Milan this week, I am now ready for my biggest international speaking tour so far. Over the next 2 months Ill be speaking at events in Reykjavik, Nashville, Beirut, Hong Kong, Sydney, Prague and Ottawa. Woohoo :) Thanks for visiting my blog. If you're new here, you should check out this list of my 10 most popular articles. And if you want more great tips and ideas you should check out our newsletter about happiness at work. It's great and it's free :-)Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related

Want To Be An Efficient Entrepreneur You Need To Get In Front of Your Problems!

Want To Be An Efficient Entrepreneur You Need To Get In Front of Your Problems! Nobody ever said the path of entrepreneurship was easy. If it were, everyone would have their own thriving enterprise. Yet the good news is that while not every startup is successful (we all know the statistics), virtually any startup can be. While there’s no single causal factor that leads to inevitable success, many entrepreneurs cling to the old adage that time is money.    In fact, if we expand on this ever so slightly it’s probably safe to say time well spent is productivity which is money. But while many entrepreneurs are pretty vigilant when it comes to managing their employees’ productivity, they’re not so hot when it comes to managing their own. Not that entrepreneurs are inherently lazy. Quite the opposite! Indeed, therein lies the problem. Most entrepreneurs are so involved, so dedicated and so passionate that they feel the need to micromanage every aspect of their operation. Not only can this lead to entrepreneurial burnout, it can lead to a crippling inefficiency as CEOs spend so much time knee deep in the minutiae of their business that they soon find themselves buried under an avalanche of problems Putting out fires The problem with micromanaging is that it inevitably inhibits strategic management. Entrepreneurs are so concerned with the daily operational tasks they should be entrusting to their staff, they can only deal with threats to the business in a reactive way. Thus, their time is spent putting out fires with saps their time efficiency even more. In order to be a truly efficient entrepreneurs, you need to get in front of your problems. Outsource where you can The trouble with a reactive approach to your problems is that it necessitates a “break-fix” mode of thought, especially when it comes to things like their IT and technical infrastructure, which means that your operation is always on the back foot. Not only is this not time efficient, it’s also not terribly cost effective. While it’s understandable that entrepreneurs are concerned with overheads they should still consider outsourcing to a company who specializes in IT consulting for businesses. This enables you to put an infrastructure in place to solve tomorrow’s problems today. Always be marketing, always be retaining Don’t wait for a dip in sales before investing in your next big marketing push. While it’s fair to say that your marketing should be upscaled as you grow more efficient in meeting increased demand you should always be doing what you can to recruit new customers while ensuring that existing customers stay loyal. Make use of essential marketing materials and implement a rewards scheme to engender customer loyalty. Thus, you’re far less likely to be reacting with panic to a dearth of business. Spend more time in your office Nobody wants to be the kind of boss who cloisters themselves away in their ivory tower. Nonetheless, in order for your business to grow sustainably, you need to focus on the strategic elements of entrepreneurship and you simply can’t do this on the shop floor. Dedicate time out of your week to pore over your performance metrics in order to spot upward and downward trends and plan accordingly. If you leave issues alone, they become problems. And by the time they’ve become problems, it’s likely already too late.