photo by webgeek

Recently a friend from my old work sent me an out of the blue email. It was a standard message, friendly banter, disparaging remarks about my sexuality and some sort of quip about how amazing it was that out of 1 billion sperm, I was the fastest.

All joking aside, one point that struck me as interesting was that the company had decided to ban Facebook. Again.

It’s obvious that senior managers perceive Facebook and social networking during work time as unacceptable and a roadblock to productivity, however the back and forth clearly indicates that they’re not sure about the implications of banning sites such as Facebook altogether.

The Power of Expectation

Generation Y workers have an intimate relationship with technology. These stats from Wikipedia state:

• 97% own a computer
• 97% have downloaded music
• 94% own a cell phone
• 76% use instant messaging and social networking sites
• 75% of college students have a Facebook profile and most of them check it daily

Simply put, the younger working generation is used to instant gratification, they expect to be able to access social media and probably have an addiction to doing so. With social networking, affordable web hosting and the ability to easily host blogs, people have come to depend on their connectivism.

What are the implications of taking this away?

Companies such as Google, with their gaming rooms, lounges and relaxed policies realise that the more free an employee feels, the more productive they will be.

Generation Y aside, taking away workers rights will only serve to undermine their motivation. Senior managers and supposed leaders need to realise that people will perceive taking away access to resources they’ve previously had (or believe they have to right to access) as a betrayal of trust.

Two steps forward, one step back?

If you’ve worked for a large corporate, you’re probably been to some sort of ‘Company Values’ training. The purpose being to instil the company values into you, so that you act in the best interests of the company; customers are the lifeblood of our business, increase your circle of influence, compete on value not price – and all that sort of wank.

These training sessions are not cheap, if a company is willing to spend so much money in order to get people invested, why throw it all away by fostering resentment towards the majority of their staff?

An alternative strategy?

That’s all good and well, but there is that niggly little fact that perhaps using Facebook does actually also lower productivity. With all the games, applications and video’s it’s no surprise. However the question needs to be asked: is there a way that staff could get their social networking fix without a massive drop in productivity?
Why not implement an in-house or bespoke social media package, there are many open source options available and if it enabled staff to feel free or empowered while still having some control over what can be accessed it has to at least be worth a shot.

photo by mumblyjoe

Think Big

My goal is to understand my true goal: My life purpose.

I will not permit myself to be concerned with trivialities. I shall not take liberties, nor burden my loved ones with unfair expectation.

I will free myself from concern for material wealth, social status and power - thereby allowing myself to conquer it.

I will seek resistance in all things, embrace novelty and challenge, endeavouring to continually learn and grow.

I will study the past in order to know the future.

I will not permit myself to be dulled by mediocrity. In this I shall not compromise.

photo by papercuts

Have you ever been in a group discussion, disagreed with what someone is saying and felt a burning desire to ’show them the light’? If so - and assuming you acted upon it - how did they respond?

I’m willing to guess not well. People are naturally distrustful of words, they are defensive and stubborn. Beliefs are shaped by experience and can harden into conviction. While your goal might be to influence someone to your school of thought, by arguing you may inadvertently be hardening their resistance.

On the surface, people may appear to agree with you, or at least listen to what you say. The reality is they are probably humouring you or waiting for their turn to speak. Argument is not an effective tool for influence and can have the negative effect of leaving you frustrated.

Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience.
Unknown

If arguing doesn’t work, then how do you change someone’s mind?

First of all, be careful not to totally discount argument. Circumstances may arise when arguing can be beneficial, you may even consider intentionally losing an argument as a means of influence.

When you let someone else win an argument, often you both end up winners.
Richard Carlson

People need to come to their own conclusions

The single most effective method for influencing someone’s behavior is to lead them down a path in which they make their own decision. If they believe they came up with the idea themselves, the more successful you have been.

(more…)

Photo by Hamed Saber

What is Nofollow?

By default, Wordpress - and most major blogging platforms - have a rel=”nofollow” attribute in the comments section. What this means is that if you post a comment and include your website, that the link will now count towards raising your search engine rankings.

By using a plugin that enables Dofollow, users are able to post a comment, with a link to their site that will count towards increase their search engine rankings.

Why use Nofollow?

The Nofollow tags exist mainly to stop spammers from posting useless comments. Also in terms of basic SEO, outbound links take some of your PageRank juice from the page, so aspiring web-domination rankers won’t want people to have control over their page’s outbound links.

While the majority of blogs still use the Nofollow attribute there has been an increasing trend towards using Dofollow. Communities such as Bumpzee are starting to spring up as bloggers are beginning to see the value in offering Dofollow.

Why Dofollow

Why then, would a blogger want to have the Nofollow attribute removed? Simple, to encourage participation and reward contribution.

Most bloggers are constantly on the looking for ways to raise their profile, increase traffic and rankings. The major source of this is quality inbound links.

Dofollow is a great way of giving something back to the community, but even if your motives are not altruistic Dofollow is a viable strategy for building your brand.

For me personally, I believe success on the internet is about adding as much value as possible for the minimum user cost. My goals for Nubtub are to write quality content that either helps people or challenges their current perspective, to increase traffic and community participation. In order to achieve these results I results I realise I need to offer as much incentive to readers as possible, that is where dofollow comes in.

What are your thoughts, Nofollow or Dofollow?

And if you answered Dofollow, is it because you want to give something back or as a tactic to grow your blog?

UPDATE - Aly from SEOAly and Pet Insurance pointed me to an even better dofollow plugin that allows you to customize and specifiy a lot of options, such as the user must comment x times before the link turns dofollow. The default was 10 but I’ve set mine to 3 :p - Thanks Aly

photo by Shayan

Yes that’s right, I have quit my job.

When I first moved to New Zealand at the age of 22 I was more concerned about having a good time then my career or working. 5 years later, a couple of rungs up the corporate ladder and living and working in the UK I still have that nagging feeling in my gut that something just isn’t right.

During this time I’ve worked for a couple of different Fortune 500 companies and have observed some disturbing trends, as well as having gained some valuable insights into the true nature of big business and the effect it has on people.

In his book, Daniel Goleman talks about an emerging phenomenon of people in the 40’s and 50’s suddenly reassessing their lives, deciding what’s truly important and reordering their priorities.

New studies show, for example, a sharp rise in people’s altruism at midlife, a key sign of new priorities. Psychoanalysts now see this increased caring as the flowering in middle age of emotional development that begins in childhood.

Source.

The key phrase there is: ‘the flowering in middle age of emotional development that begins in childhood’.

My questions is; if this begins in early childhood and only starts to flower in middle age, in terms of emotional and spiritual development (don’t freak out, I’m not a hippy) what happens in our 20’s and 30’s? (more…)

On July the 17th .me domain name extensions became available to the public. .Me is the national top level domain for Montenegro. Since then there has been a frenzy for people looking to bag an excellent investment.

Most people however, don’t really care what country the .me represents so much as the fact that it has a great ring to it. Marketers have quickly identified the branding potential and have snapped up cheap purchases knowing there will later be a market for it.

Aaron Wall blogged about it which is how I found out about the .me extensions being available. It’s not even a month but I wish I had known a bit earlier.

If you’re in the market don’t despair though, most names are still available. I was looking through big american sports teams and many were not yet registered. The only downside is that they are more expensive then your standard .com or .org to register.

The two purchases I ended up going for were jobresume.me and freeresume.me for a project I’m going to start. Others that I considered were bodylangage.me and sc2.me. If you’re in the market for a new domain or fancy trying your creative skills to find a gem that hasn’t been taken yet then get cracking! :p

If anyone makes any purchases or finds any good ideas but don’t quite want to take a punt of them please post them in the comments.

A friend introduced me into a site called Deezer, it is an uber music streaming site that remembers your music and makes suggestions based upon them.

If you don’t want to create an account you don’t have too. You can also embed songs to your blog!

Not bad at all.

SEO Brisbane

Photo by Marcodede

Sharm El Shiek is an Egyptian city that exists purely because of tourism.

With the average wage for most Egyptian men (there are almost no Egyptian women in Sharm) being around a measly 60 - 100 USD per month, they inevitably turn to taking advantage of the tourists in order to make a living.

And they do it well. (more…)

Trying to get a blog off the ground is hard work. After the initial period of excitement died off I found it harder to continue writing and thinking about ways to generate inbound links.

A month had passed since my last post and I began working on other projects, letting Nubtub slide lower down the list of priorities.

Until I finally received a positive comment on a post I was particularly proud of.

I suddenly found myself re-energised and inspired to continue writing. This is a pretty simple concept which is applicable to many areas of life and not just work, but it begs the question:

How can I use this knowledge to my advantage?

(more…)

photo by said&done

When I was 17 I used to work in a supermarket on the checkouts. Occasionally an item wouldn’t scan properly and it would need to be rescanned.

I decided any customers that I liked, that greeted me warmly or were a hot girl, would not get their items rescanned. That I would pretend not to notice, effectively giving the item to them for free.

Warning bells

With so many beeps going off in front and behind you I quickly learned that the way not to get caught was to pretend not to notice miss-scanned items. The store security looking out for dodgy behavior from checkout operators couldn’t distinguish the beeps (or lack of) and would rely on reading the people and looking for nervous behavior.

I recall one girl in particular; she had a warm smile and was pleasantly engaging. I liked her immediately. For some reason an unusually high number of items were not scanning correctly.

And she noticed.

When she noticed, she looked me directly in the eyes; I could read the question on her face but waited to see if she would say anything.

She knew I was doing it on purpose.

I knew that she knew.

Neither of us said a word.

I’m no different from everyone else; there are people everywhere in positions with some responsibility making whimsical decisions simply based on how they feel about you.

Do you take the time to smile and say hello? You may get some free groceries.