What’s Love Got To Do With It?

Customer Loyalty, we all want it. Don’t we?
Some people say it’s dead – they say that customers are fickle, that they don’t want loyalty, that they just want the lowest price and the fastest way to get it. Some say that customers have changed and that the pursuit of loyalty is foolish, since it’s the customers that are not interested in it. I don’t agree. Loyalty is not DEAD, it’s just sleeping.
I agree that customers have changed (because our needs have changed). We’re more demanding than ever before, we have more choices than ever before, we’re more educated than most of the companies we do business with (about their products and their competitive position). And here’s the truth: we don’t give our loyalty to companies that don’t give their loyalty to us.
Companies have in the last ten years made it more difficult, more confusing, and more frustrating to deal with them than ever before. They give all the “special offers” to the new customers; they’ve removed human beings from answering phones and answering questions. They make us pump our own gas, check on our packages, book our own airline tickets and figure out when they’ve made mistakes on our accounts. They cut their training budgets and have trimmed their service staffs to the bone. They pay big bonuses at the top, but at the bottom of the corporate pyramid, where the customers lie (if they make the pyramid at all) they charge us fees for the privilege of using their services!
Is it no wonder we’ve become rather selective to whom we pledge our loyalty?
No, customer loyalty is not dead, but it is ailing. It is given only to those companies that earn it and keep earning it by delivering value and positive experiences on a consistent basis.
Companies that want to Thrive…not just survive in this century better figure out fast that keeping more of their customers, and keeping them happy is a critical economic necessity.
Good and loyal customers are critical to profitability. Estimates are that it costs 6 – 30 times more to get new customers than it does to maintain the ones you have. If you keep losing customers and have to keep replacing them, it makes sense that you are spending money on sales and marketing that could be going elsewhere.
It’s your LOYAL customers that give you referrals and sing your praises in your advertising and testimonials. Referral business is like “free” new customers. So the money you would have paid to GET the new customer drops back down to your bottom line.
I find it is sadly true that most companies don’t have a strategic plan for keeping customers, keeping them happy OR keeping them coming back time and time again with their money and their friends. Even though Customer Loyalty was determined to be a #1 concern of CEO’s (according to the Conference Board) how many companies do more than pay lip service to the importance of customer service and loyalty in their organization? Your guess is as good as mine. Based on the service I receive as a customer, well, I can understand why more customers aren’t loyal, can you?
What can YOU do to change that? What can you do to turn the tide on this disturbing trend and develop long lasting, loyal customer relationships?
And what’s LOVE got to do with it?
Everything. Business is based on relationships and relationships are based on qualities such as trust, respect, appreciation, understanding, generosity, clear open and honest communication and heavy doses of kindness, compassion and affection. Sometimes known as LOVE.
Studies show that the main reason customers will leave a company they are doing business with is that they perceive the company does not care about them or their needs. And conversely, studies show that when asked why they stay loyal to a particular company for a long time, customers respond, “Because they cared about me.” This perception and feeling of caring is the emotional bridge between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. And, it’s often the bridge between lackluster profits and thriving good health on the bottom line.
It’s about emotion. Loyalty is an emotional attachment to a company based on the customer’s subjective perception that the company is delivering the value they desire or need, when and how they need it. It’s based on their needs, and it’s based on their experience of doing business with us. As a customer myself, I know that the companies I chose to give my loyalty to are those that make me feel good about the whole experience of doing business with them.
When we FEEL good about doing business with a company we form emotional ties, not just financial ties with them. Let’s face it, customers are emotionally attached to their money – if we want them to give some of it to us – we need to get them emotionally attached to US.
Emotions have been “undiscussable” in business for a long time. “Feelings” is the “F” word of the business world. How many times have we heard that we are to keep our feelings out of it, keep our emotions away from our business decisions, and park our personal problems at the door? Sound familiar? Well, I’ve learned that you cannot expect your staff to bring their passion to work but not their feelings. It just doesn’t work that way. It’s time we developed an emotional literacy in business.
Employees and Customers are people. People have feelings. And as people, their decisions are effected by their feelings, whether they can identify the feelings or not. Any salesperson can tell you that while people make decisions that look logical, they are more often than not, based on emotion.
As people we are perceptive, conscious, sensitive, alive and feeling beings! It’s an essential part of our nature. When we recognize that in business, we’ll work harder at building the emotional equity with a customer that determines whether or not they become a loyal customer or a lost customer.
It is the perception, the feeling of being cared about that keeps the customers coming back. And it’s what we do to build and support and create that feeling that creates a positive experience for the customer.
Every customer has two sets of needs. The business needs are logical, rational, and practical. The personal needs are emotional, illogical and sometimes even irrational, but carry a lot of weight. The fulfillment of the customer’s business needs is usually what gets them in the door in the first place-you are selling what they need. But it’s the fulfillment of the customer’s personal needs that will keep them coming back. Once the business needs are met, they often take a back seat to the customer’s experiential needs.
It’s the quality of the emotional experience you have with a company that will determine whether or not you want to keep recreating that experience. We come back to companies that have what we want and create a positive experience for us. We leave companies that don’t have what we want or create a negative experience for us. Experience is emotional.
When a customer walks away from the whole experience (your greeting, interacting with your Web site, the dealing with people in your office…) of doing business with you with positive emotions like happiness, joy, delight, caring, security, welcome and appreciation-they will most likely want to come back (if you recreate the positive emotions consistently).
If they walk away from the experience with negative emotions like frustration, anger, disgust, fear, incompetence, indifference, if they leave with a lack of confidence, if they leave feeling stupid-and if that’s what’s delivered consistently-they usually don’t stay around unless they haven’t YET found some other place to go.
It’s the quality of the emotional experiences that customers have with you that will determine whether or not they will continue to do business with you over time.
What’s LOVE got to do with it? Maybe more than we thought!
Tim Sanders, Chief Solutions Officer, Yahoo writing in “Love is the Killer App,” says “What do I mean by “love?” The best general definition that I’ve read comes from philosopher Milton Mayeroff’s brilliant book, On Caring. Love, he writes, ‘is the selfless promotion of the growth of the other.’ When you help others grow to become the best people that they can be, you are being loving, and as a result, you grow.”
What a great description for what we want to happen in our business relationships! I want to do business with a company that believes in the selfless promotion of the growth of ME and my business! I want to give my money to companies that want to help me be the best ME I can be-whether I’m buying cosmetics or computers or telephone service or food. I want to do business with someone who has my best interests in mind.
In lieu of that – I’ll do my own research, haul my own lumber and pump my own gas – but if I’m doing the service work-then I want the lowest price possible! I’m not loyal to companies that don’t care enough about me to make my experience with them easy, stress and hassle free, and pleasant. How about you?
What’s love got to do with it? A whole lot more than we ever thought. Let’s start doing a better job of creating experiences that the customer perceives as positive, caring, and yes, maybe even loving.

Pakistani Pop Music

Pakistan is blessed with talent and when we talk about Pakistani Music, you can never stop picking up one of the best Pakistani pop song uptill now because there are number of such hit songs nobody can judge the best one in past decades such as “Dil Dil Pakistan” , “Huwa Huwa”, “Mehndi ki Raat”, “Na Kaho”, “Dil Haray”, “Ankhain Milanay Walay”, “Wakt”, “Neeli Neeli Ankhain”, “Jaisay Chao Jeo”, “Garuj Burus”, “No More”, “Ankhoun ki Sagar”, “Na Tu Aigi”, “Addat” left the audience agape and many more. Our artists’ are popular all over the world. Many new talented artists in Pakistan are still working hard to bring quality Pakistani music.
We can easily judge Alamgir as the pioneer of music industry who’s first big hit was “DEKHA NA THA KABHI HUM NAY YEH SUMMA”, and remains the song he is still most identified with, though later songs such as “Yeh Shaam Aur Tera Naam” and “Mein Ne Tumhare Gagar Se Kabhi Pani” continued to add to his composition. Alamgir, it must be said, laid the groundwork that countless others used to break into the music industry. He not only sang well, he was a performer in the true sense of the word. There is no denying Alamgir’s contribution to the evolution of the pop music genre in Pakistan.
NAZIA HASSAN was the first one to cross the forbidden Pakistan-India border to sing in an Indian film called “Qurbani” which was “APP JAISA KOI”. And later this song became a youth anthem in both India and Pakistan. And next NAZIA, ZOHAIB and BIDDU (an Indian composer) teamed up to release “DISCO DEEWANE” which became the biggest pop selling album till then in Pakistan. The Hasan siblings released one more album, “Boom Boom”, in 1984. This second collaboration with Biddu, the undisputed king of Indian filmi disco music, was also a huge success. Their success marked a turning point in the pop history.
And later Vital Sign ventured on to Pakistani television screens with their guitars and a catchy, patriotic song named “Dil Dil Pakistan” in 1986. Their album released in 1987 with gems like “Yeh Shaam” and funky “Goray Rung Ka Zamana”.
Then came Jupitars with their evergreen hit songs “Yaroun Yehi Dosti Hai”, continued with Hassan Jehangir’s “Hawa Hawa” in 1990, “Sanwali Saloni” by Vital Signs in 1991, “Sar Kiye Yeh Pahar” in 1992 by the Strings, Sajjad Ali’s “Didi” ripoff “Babia” in 1993, Najam Shiraz’s “In Se Nain” in 1995, Junoon’s “Saeein” in 1996 or Awaz’s “Mr. Fraudiye” in 1997. Junoon came into the race with their World Cup Hit song “Jazaba-e-Junoon Tou Himat na Har”. This is only to be expected in a growing industry.
Perhaps the biggest unexpected success of an experimental song, however, was Sajjad Ali’s street-wise 1995 hit “Chief Saab”. Full of Karachi slang and tough imagery, “Chief Saab”, perhaps more than anything else signified the coming age of pop music. It showed that one did not necessarily have to remain within pre-determined saccharine-sweet boundaries to be popular, and that people liked hearing of issues other than puppy love. Partly, as a result of this expansion of the pop market, established musicians from non-pop genres such as qawwali maestro Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan were also drawn towards experimenting within it. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan gave numerous hit one after another and he gave the music for Hollywood movies and as well as for many Bollywood movies too.
The pop band that most successfully seized upon this idea was, of course, Junoon, which used its success with the haunting “Saeein” to recast itself as a completely different sort of band. Here we saw pop again intersecting with folk and vice versa.
In 1994, FM radio brought about another mini-revolution in Pakistani music. From Landhi in Karachi to Krishan Nagar in Lahore, names like female vocalist Hadiqa Kiyani and young Shehzad Roy suddenly became household names. Even iconoclastic recluse virtuosos like guitarist Amir Zaki (whose almost purely instrumental album “Signature” did well in the market) were receiving the kind of airplay the big bands of the ’80s could only have dreamed of.
Pop industry had big turnaround when private channels came into the scene, Like IM which became the medium to introduce young talents in the pop industry names like Fuzon, Aaroh, noori, Aks, Ahmad Jehanzaib, Mizraab, Karavan, Ali Zafar, Jal which not only rock the Pakistani pop music but also made their names worldwide. The new arrivals made their presence felt through remarkable individual songs, even though full albums for now seemed beyond most new acts. Ahmad Jehanzaib’s Ek Bar Kaho, Fuzon’s Ankhon Ke Saagar and Schehzad Mughal’s Bas Yunheen were each excellent. The first two were carried by soulful, ardent vocals and the last shone through affecting lyrics. Hot on their heels, honourable mentions must also go to Aks stunningly understated Neela Aasman, noori’s jangle-pop perfection Tum Hans Diyae, Junoon’s excellent Garaj Baras, Sajjad Ali with Teri Yaad, Aamir Zaki’s insightful and incisive People Are People, EP’s piledriving Hum Ko Aazma, Najam’s infinitely catchy !
Jaisay Chaho Jiyo and Aao Wahan Chalain, Ali Zafar’s startling Chanoo ki Ankh, Jal’s splendid addat and yes even Ali Haider’s insipid but still memorably melodic Chandi Ratain. Abrar’s Preeto was the novelty hit of the year. The Pepsi Battle of the Bands did a great job in throwing up a wealth of talent. EP, Aaroh, Brain Massala, Messiah, Schahzad Hameed and others all have Pepsi to thank. The Pepsi Battle of the Bands got all these fledgling bands great exposure.
Recently, a team of talented Pakistani musicians and artists took the long road to Mumbai, via Dubai, possibly to make history, for this was the first time in recent memory that Pakistanis had gone to India to create the background score for a Bollywood film. The film in question is Pooja Bhatt’s Paap, and former Vital Sign Shehzad ‘Shahi’ Hasan, cinematographer Faisal Rafi, singer Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and studio session player and keyboardist Faiz Ali Naqvi, were the foursome representing the world of Pakistani music in India.
Strings enjoyed considerable success with Dhaani. Probably the most hyped album of the year, with lead single Chaaye Chaaye being the standout favourite. String gave the soundtrack for Spiderman 2 which was a remarkable effort.
Junaid Jamshed’s Dil Ki Baat was understated but assured and notwithstanding JJ’s quite public and tortured ruminations over religion and music, the album showed that JJ is still competent at middle of the road pop and that Shoaib Mansoor still has the magic touch. Shahzad Roy’s Rab Jane was hobbled by his illness and yet catches the fire while Karavan’s Gardish seems to have suddenly picked up and was sold like hot-cakes. Schahzad Mughal’s Jhoom Lay was one of the most pleasant of surprises of the year.
So this proves that our music industry has dared to move forward with hope rather than skepticism.

Killer App for e-commerce

Businesses, in time, can find their business systems cluttered with dirty or inaccurate product data. Bad data can slow the progress of the company like sludge can kill horsepower in an engine. Dirty data slows the sales process and slows the order process because sales channels may be working off old product data. This leads to lost sales and a high rate of order mistakes and invoice errors which must be fixed at a high cost to the company.

Product Information, or the data describing and specifying a company’s products can be found in several systems at many companies with no easy way to aggregate or collect this product data. This data is not easy to manage and is made up of multi-media like images, audio and video, pictures, text, and integers all in various file formats. When product data is in different formats, different systems and in disparate applications it is very hard to work with. Product data is in the erp system, may be in a graphics tool like InDesign or Quark and can be salted across the company’s locations in isolated folders on desktops and laptops. This data, costly to create, is also costly to use and will add little to the corporate marketing intellectual property.

Distributors or wholesalers, and manufacturers’s representatives have a heavy product information management task. A distributor can carry dozens of lines and must gather product data from dozens of sources. Gathering supplier data, managing and transforming product data and then distributing accurate product data to sales channels, web catalogs and print catalogs is a costly and time eating chore. Often, supplier data is dirty when it finally arrives at the distributor and by the time supplier product data is cleansed and distributed some of it is obsolete. The product data is obsolete because a product price may have changed or an image was transformed or a short description was rewritten during the extended time needed to manage and distribute the product data.

The best way to streamline product data management may be to install product information (PIM) software. A good PIM solution can acquire product data from all systems, including your suppliers and disparate internal systems and safely secure it in one place. Product data acquisition can be pain free and is fast. Product data is put in one place that can be found by marketing teams so they can do work. Marketing teams can now manage and transform product data into sales driving web catalogs and print catalogs and sales material. This one place is accessible to all marketing teams, localized to different locations around the world, so all marketers can add value. Price changes are easy to edit, data transformations like building taxonomies and re-classifying products is simple to do. Sizzle and sales teeth can be applied to long and short product descriptions and sales materials gain a professional look and feel.

The work includes transforming multi-media files like flash and jpegs, and to design templates for catalogs. Graphics applications like InDesign can talk to the PIM and workflow can be built to include outsourced designers into the marketing process. Sales materials like catalogs and sales flyers will be polished to a fine selling edge and can be saved for re-use across sales teams both direct and in-direct. You can cut 70% of the time and cost from catalog creation and the days of creating a catalog which is obsolete before it is off the press due to the large print run and the time to get it set up are over. You can print in smaller batches and boost sales from key customers and key prospects by customizing the look of your catalogs for specific buyers.

Your buyers will buy easier from you because your web sites will be dynamic and your sites will publish accurate and easy to use e-catalogs. Your customers will love this because they are demanding accurate and timely data to make purchase decisions and if your web site is not doing this they will click away fast. Your web sites can be designed to target key customers to sell key products and this will increase sales because your product data will be more relevant to key word searches.

Sales data can be punched out to your PIM solution and product sales reports can be analyzed. All catalog pages on-line and off-line are measured and reported in the PIM solution. This can give the business leverage and negotiation ammunition because you know exactly how much product is sold and you know how much space is used. This is just like a grocery store, you will know better how to position the fast and slow movers and how to offer incentives and up sells and cross sells.

Your orders will be more accurate because your sales teams work from accurate timely product data. This makes the business stickier, and will retain customers longer because you have your product information act together.

When a company adds speed to product information logistics and builds accuracy and freshness to product data sales will grow. This is logical and this must happen. This is logical because if sales teams, both direct and in-direct, are showing customers accurate product data and if marketing channels, web sites, sales flyers, sales bulletins and direct mail pieces are fueled with accurate and professional product information, order errors will go down and sales orders will go up.

For a Free detail report on how to find, select and and deploy the perfect PIM solution visit pim-data.com and register for your Free PIM solution guide.

What Is Facebook Advertising

People hear a lot new about Facebook each day from its new games, new chat environment, new profile layout and a lot more. All almost all of the 800 million plus people who use this social networking site spend their time using these new stuffs at Facebook. One thing about Facebook though that is not so new is Facebook advertising. And although almost all of its users are participating in this scheme, just a little percent of Facebook fanatics are really into it. Why, you might ask. This is because most of Facebook members cannot grasp the power of Facebook advertising.
So what is Facebook advertising that made it so promising to other users?
If you have an understanding what advertising is, the answer to this question is so obvious. With 800+ million of people at Facebook today who are actively using the site each day, this means that you are open to a large number of potential clients all over the world. If you have a thriving business and you want to advertise it to boost its revenues, Facebook is the right place to tell people about it.
But this is not all about just telling people what you got. This is about telling the right people you can do business with them and how you can be of help. As an entrepreneur, you know that the best way to boost your business income is to advertise it. But it will be a waste of time and resources to advertise blindly. There is a process that marketers do that is called customer profiling.
However, there can be a great difference between a hardcore business person and an enthusiastic market person. They can be one and the same but most of the time they are two separate people in a business institution. But if you are just a simple small business owner, you are not yet hardcore entrepreneur and you might be far from being an effective marketer. That is why customer profiling and reaching them out might be a dilemma for you.
But this is not the case if you use facebook advertising. Facebook can easily identify the demographics you need from your clients. Facebook can use its profile to search for your ideal clients and post your business ads there. Say for example you are a wedding planner and your potential clients would be female around 20 to 34 years of age around your area who are engage. Facebook can easily recognize this demographic with their age, gender and relationship status profile.
With Facebook advertisement, all you need to do is to input your business basics, your potential customer profile and the lot and you are good to go. The only thing left to do now for your business or service offered is to know where to start.
Where to start Facebook advertising best?
Facebook can guide you how to advertise your business or services using their platform. But since you are here, you can just do the following at Facebook. All it takes are these five simple steps:
1. Define what is your business or service. This is the only way for you to know way you are going to promote. Aside from this important thing, you also need to identify if you are going to promote an application online, your own website or a Page at Facebook. This way, you can create your fanpage or application or website or all of them. When at Facebook, you can then choose how to advertise; whether you are going to have a new ad about your page, site or app. At the site, this will only involve clicking. You can also post something your page at Facebook and have people like your page or your post on your page.
2. After covering all the basic information about what you are promoting and how you plan to do it at Facebook, you can then start profiling your target market. You can think about the type of work they are into, educational attainment, language used and location. You can also target your market by identifying age, gender or relationship status. You can even look up into their interest and likes. If you have a sports store, you can target Facebook members around your area who likes sports like basketball, soccer, badminton and a lot more. These can be identified in their likes and interests in their profile. And because Facebook members are connection of friends and friend of friends with same interest, your target market can easily be reached.
3. You can now visualize your own ads and create something that will call the attention and capture the interest of your target market. As your ad will be displayed in the profile page of your target market, you need to catch their attention with an interesting question or remarks or ad headings or titles.
4. Make sure you can afford this. Fortunately, Facebook allows you to manage your advertising budget. You can choose cost-per-click or cost-per-impression. You can even set how much you can only afford for the day.
5. Facebook Ads Manager will help you monitor your ads performance. Learn about this and use the information to improve and review your advertising schemes at Facebook.
And lastly, learn more tips and advice how to utilize Facebook advertising. Your Facebook Ads manager will show you details on how your ads are providing you clients and if you cannot grasp it yet to maximize your profit, you can always see Facebook tips and advices about this. Facebook have a lot of tips and advises for you. You can also search about these stuffs online like forums and blogs.

Apple iWork ’08 Review

The $79 iWork ’08 appears to be a good deal for anyone needing an affordable office suite for the Mac. Apple has finally added a spreadsheet application. At first glance, Numbers is an elegant no-brainer for anyone migrating from Microsoft Excel. In the past, many Mac aficionados bought Microsoft Excel because iWork lacked a spreadsheet application. However, with the addition of Numbers and the release of Microsoft’s Office for Mac 2008 delayed until January, Mac users may stick to Apple’s less expensive option. We’re also happy that Mac hasn’t changed its file formats as Microsoft did with Office 2007.

We like the sparse interfaces throughout the iWork package. Its features aren’t as deep or rich as in Microsoft Office 2007, but iWork also hasn’t changed radically from its last incarnation, unlike Office. iWork also covers much more than just the basic productivity tasks offered by online tools like Google Docs & Spreadsheets or the Zoho suite, so it should be adequate for the vast majority of home and small-business users.

System requirements, thankfully, are gentle to users of older Macs. You’ll need an Intel, PowerPC G5 or G4 machine with a 500MHz or better processor in addition to 512MB of RAM minimum, running OS X10.4.10.

Pages

Apple tore a page out of Microsoft Office’s book by creating a Contextual Format Bar that displays different features according to your task at hand. Select text, and the bar shows font options. Click on a picture, and the bar displays image-editing features. Unlike the contextual formatting Ribbon interface within Microsoft Word 2007, however, Pages offers no live previews of font and image changes as you hover over them.

Pages ’08 also adds Change Tracking, similar to the Track Changes feature adopted many years ago by Microsoft Word. We’re glad that Pages gets this treatment for displaying document revisions rather than the often confusing revision and commenting history offered by the online Google Docs.

Pages includes the usual must-have features for writers such as footnotes, bookmarks, and tables of content, in addition to integration with charts and functions from the new Numbers app. In addition, Pages now detects when you type a list and formats bulleted points automatically. We just hope that this won’t drive us batty (as it does sometimes in Microsoft Word).

There are plenty of page templates for letters, resumes, reports, and the like to get started if a blank slate poses too much pressure. Page Layout mode lets you create relatively complex designs without software such as Adobe InDesign, great if you’re throwing together reports for work. It lets you layer images on top of images too. The Instant Alpha feature, also found in Keynote, lets you cut out backgrounds in images without dealing with alpha channels, a la Photoshop. And we prefer Pages’ color wheel, crayons, and spectrum to Word’s color options.

Keynote

Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 may be richer, but Apple Keynote ’08 adds some smart features that PowerPoint lacks. It’s also a breeze to figure out from the get-go. Action Builds let you create basic point-A-to-B motion animation, without needing to deal with motion tweens as in complex apps such as Adobe Flash. Smart Builds enable animation, such as rotating photographs, using images you can grab from the iLife media browser. And new voiceover recordings enable you, say, to narrate podcasts with pictures. There are new between-slide transitions and slide show themes too.

Numbers

Our early look at the new Numbers reveals ease of use novelties that competitive tools don’t provide. Microsoft Excel 2007 still appears to be more robust, particularly for number crunchers such as scientists, accountants, or engineers. Yet the majority of users who rely upon spreadsheets as one-size-fits-all tools for household and light office work should be pleased to have a new option for Macs.

Numbers comes with plenty of templates, including travel planners, business expenses, and school science lab reports. Of course, it can also save and export Excel-readable files. This application pleases the eye and can make attractive spreadsheets. We dragged around text boxes, images, and tables using alignment guides without a hitch. You can add 3D bar, pie, and other charts and even integrate maps into a spreadsheet.

The controls for working with tables were extremely user-friendly in our early tests. Slider bars allow you to adjust the numeric values within cells, handy if you’re looking to add a range of values. Resizing columns and rows appears to be less of a hassle than with Excel. You can drag data from a file of contacts or into a Numbers table that will automatically partition information into the appropriate columns. And sorting a table smartly leaves the headers alone. Formulas appear to be the same as those in Microsoft Excel, but Numbers also has easy-to-find natural language shortcuts for common calculations, such as sums and averages.

The Interactive Print View offers more controls than in Microsoft Excel, which easily leads to unwieldy spreadsheet printouts. Numbers shows where a stray column might take up an unnecessary extra page. You can eliminate the overlap with a slider bar that instantly scales the tables, charts, and images on a page.

Awesome Advice For Reducing Stress And Staying Calm

Does stress bother you on a regular basis? If so, you’re in good company. Millions of people are dealing with stress, and those who have ditched that proverbial back-clinging monkey have shared their expertise in the article below. Read about how you can get rid of the stress in your life.

To help you manage your stress you should make time for relaxation and enjoyment. If you regularly make time for relaxation and enjoyment, you’ll be in a better position to handle the inevitable stress that will come your way. So take time to relax and you’ll feel better, which will lessen the amount of stressful situations.

A great way to help reduce your stress is to practice yoga. Yoga is the practice of bringing together your mind, body and soul. By practicing yoga, you will relax your mind and body, helping you to unwind and feel better about yourself and the world. All of this can be accomplished with a simple thirty minute yoga session.

Go for a routine checkup to the eye doctor if you feel like your vision is causing you to feel strained during the day. Purchasing a pair of glasses or contacts can help a great deal in reducing the pressure and stress that you feel when at work or reading at school.

To help manage stress, use a day planner or an app on your smartphone, to keep track of your obligations and to prevent yourself from over-scheduling your days. You can also include time for relaxing or down-time in your schedule, to ensure you get to take breaks from your responsibilities.

If you are having a disagreement with someone, try having a long talk with them to work things out. This can be very relieving and take a weight off your shoulders that you may be carrying around all day. Resolving disputes with others can go a long way in alleviating stress.

Try seeking out humor to relieve your stress. Whether it’s reading jokes on the internet, watching a funny movie, or going to see a comedian, getting a dose of humor in your life can really help reduce the amount of stress. It’s been shown that if you laugh often, you won’t be as stressed out.

When you have a lot on your mind that is leading to you always feeling stressed, take the time to appreciate the small things in life. Take a step back when you are in a stressful situation to decide what is really important and then work towards accomplishing that, little by little.

Leave your job at the door when you get home. It is important to create boundaries, and stick to them. Make conscious decisions to achieve this goal, such as not checking email or accepting phone calls after a certain hour of the day. Make your home your sanctuary, and enjoy the reduced stress.

Once you figure out how to get that monkey off your back, it’s time to knock him off and refuse to let him back on. This article can help you by providing some great stress-specific tips, but it’s up to you at the end of the day to follow through on what you’ve learned and to get rid of that stress.

It Is Never Too Late To Learn How To Develop As A Person

Developing and honing your skills, learning new things and setting goals for yourself, all take a bit of knowledge into the actual process of personal development. You could become overwhelmed if you aren’t ready for the journey ahead, so you want to be sure that you have all the information you need to start. With this article’s various tips, you could get a much better feel for the process and what personal development really means.

Find out what you want to do with your life. If that seems too far fetched for you, try figuring out what you want to do within the next 5 years. Make goals for yourself and set out to achieve them. Live your life to meet the goals you have set for yourself.

You should always be ready to stand up for your values. You might feel that your values are being challenged everyday, and sometimes it can seem difficult to be honest and caring. However, you need to stay strong and defend your values. This is the only way to prevent yourself from succumbing to something that you will later regret.

If you have begun your journey of personal development, you will undoubtedly find people who are not trying to help you in your quest but rather harm you. Do not let their opinions and input get in the way of you making progress with your goals and with the new habits you are forming.

Sometimes people establish goals and then don’t stick to their plan, so they fail. The key point is to stick to it and don’t ever give up. Whatever your goal is, just hang in there and day by day you will inch closer to realizing your dream. You will be so happy once you achieve your goal.

Take that first step. Regardless of the goal we have in mind, we all have to start somewhere. Toss those empty cardboard boxes out of your storage area and you’ll free up space to start organizing the rest. Lose one pound and you’ll likely follow it with more. The point is to just get started.

If you are not especially comfortable with technology, make it a point to explore and learn about one tech device, gadget, or service every week. You may be surprised at the world of functional and accessible tools available. It could be a new software program, an unfamiliar internet browser, or a handy app that could help you to stay organized and focused.

Don’t compare yourself to other people. This practice only leads to self-doubt and despair. Remember that they are not living your life; you are. Instead of focusing on what other people are doing that you aren’t, or what other people have that you don’t, work on improving your own life a step at a time.

Personal development is a tough process that goes through various changes and can be stressful without the right methods and techniques in mind. If you are using the tips provided, however, you can get a better hold over your current needs, skills and knowledge. This is what you need to help you to better create a route to a successful and more powerful you.

Big Companies & Excellent Players At FB

Facebook advertising has open many doors of opportunities for all types businesses. Even big businesses that already had their own share of fans even before the launching of Facebook still pay attention to this very influential social networking site. In fact, studies show that it is these companies that are making the best use of Facebook advertising. There are factors behind the success of big companies playing consistently in the social network, but perhaps the most important factor is their ability to make the most out of Facebook interactive features. This is evident in many companies who were able to produce new designs for their upcoming products by starting a design contest among their fans. Others give away freebies and are able to attractmore and more Facebook fans. Although some of these fans may not stick around, but through “sponsored stories” in Facebook they may be able to gain the contacts of their fans. This works when any of their fans clicks the like button on their fan page. His action will then be displayed in the news feed of his contacts, and this has the potential to compel them to do the same.
Here are some of the excellent players at Facebook advertising and what makes their fan pages unique and stand out from the crowd, and hopefully it will give some inspiration to all businesses suffering a mental block.
One top player would be Best Buy where the company uses a simple set up to let visitors browse product categories and buy online. It also encourages users to share products and contents with the contacts in heir list. Another would be BMW with their fanpage featuring a call-to-action which is very difficult for any user to dismiss. As for Body Shop, it gives users useful information on how they may obtain discounts. It’s different with Cadillac because they go for heavy and high-quality content. Their fan page is full of both videos and photos, and they have an engaging landing page. Disney’s fanpage was able to create a landing page in Facebook that features their latest films while Dunkin’ Donuts has a user-oriented page, with games and competitions.
Other key players – and big winners at Facebook advertising include Fox News. Their fanpage is simple, yet giving to clear distinct calls to actions. Either you click that like button or begin using their apps. It’s the same with Heinz. The company has especially come up with a fan page for its ketchup, probably their most popular product. The page shows the product development and allows direction interaction with users. Honda has similar moves to accommodate their wide range of cars – it has created a fan page for its various models! Much like Honda, Nokia redirects their fans to specific fan pages, but not based on products but based on location. As for Intel, the company combines technology with creativity to push global competition, and for their part, the McDonald’s page features rich media, through which they advertise their new products. Sony, like MacDonald and Cadillac, depends heavily on rich media, especially on video to promote its brand culture and products.
But the list of prominent Facebook advertisers doesn’t end there. We have Pepsi which makes use of its pages to interact with users, provide them information, and run their ads. Then there’s Tiffany & Co. that has proven that even luxury brands can engage on Facebook. Its Facebook landing page can capture users’ data by inviting them to join a mailing list, which can be seen beside a showcase of all their products in the current season. For their part, Starbucks has kept it simple by driving their fans to their Card app, which can help them keep informed of their infidel loyalty accounts.
Another reason that makes big players excel at Facebook advertising lies in their ability to create engaging, innovative, and creative advertising online. They create unique tabs in their business pages, which are also the landing points for their Facebook visitors, instead of the regular Facebook Wall. While it is true that Facebook has a static form that requires some modification, but through Facebook Markup Language (FBML), it’s neither difficult nor expensive, to create some good looking landing pages that has the potential of drawing the millions of Facebook users. This is why it is so surprising that many companies, especially the small ones put so little effort into Facebook in coming up with a more creative fan page, especially with all the attention the market is giving to this platform.

Keep Stress To A Minimum With These Handy Tips

Stress is a part of everyday life. You can’t escape stress, so what you must do is to learn how to deal with it. The way you deal with stress will affect how you feel and how you go through life. Here are some great ways to handle stress in your life.

Aromatherapy is a great way to reduce stress levels and create a relaxing atmosphere for you. Relaxation is different than resting. Aromatherapy consists of many different options, including smelling different herbs and burning different incenses. Certain herbs and incenses can help relax you and provide a rather euphoric and concentrated thought process.

Find the time to do something that you love. This is an instant method to easily reduce your stress level. Doing something you love will lift your spirits and give you something to look forward to. Do whatever you can to make enough time to do this activity.

Go out for a walk. Walking will force you to breath more deeply and improve your circulation. If you’re able, walking outside is most enjoyable. However walking inside will work as well. Whichever you choose, just get up and move! It will help calm you and alleviate some stress.

If you are a religious person than you should be in constant prayer as studies show this reduces stress. If you are not religious than you can try out non-religious meditation. This is the concept of meditating or clearing your mind but without doing it for any specific purposes. The results are clear!

Be sure you get enough sleep every night. Whether or not you are getting enough sleep will determine how stressed out you get and how you handle stress. It is important for adults to get the recommended amount of sleep, at least 8 hours, every night to help deal with stress.

A nice hot bath is a great way to alleviate stress. Maybe light some aromatherapy candles on the side, or perhaps make it a lovely scented bubble bath. Whatever you do, make your bath comfortable according to your guidelines, and be prepared to sincerely rest and get rid of unwanted stress.

In every person’s life, there needs to be some kind of balance. Living a balanced life is important for stress reduction. Doing too much of one thing, such as work is an easy way to become stressed. Instead of focusing on only one thing, allocate your time and energy to multiple areas.

To help manage stress, use a day planner or an app on your smartphone, to keep track of your obligations and to prevent yourself from over-scheduling your days. You can also include time for relaxing or down-time in your schedule, to ensure you get to take breaks from your responsibilities.

Handling stress well is one of the best things you can do for your mental health. Use these techniques to better deal with stress and you’ll find you are able to do things you couldn’t before. Learning to deal with stress will help you relax but better than that, coping skills will improve the quality of your entire life.

Nintendo’s 3DS… A Ridiculously Fun Handheld Right Out Of The Box

When you purchase most gaming devices today, you’re usually spending an extra $40-60 on an additional software title to go along with it. Generally this has just become the norm when you want to buy a new console or handheld and most companies wholeheartedly support that kind of business model because they make more money from you right out of the gate. The 3DS on the other hand, has tons of things you can play and interact with from the moment you take your handheld out of the box and power it on.

After you go through the necessities like setting up the date/time settings and designing your Mii, you have a whole menu of choices available to you. The 3DS comes with a built in camera so even an amateur shutterbug can take fun 3D pictures and save them to the bundled SD card. It also has a fully functioning music player that acts as a kind of DJ station and also gives you creative options for your music or audio clips like pitch bending and speed control, letting you listen to your music just the way you want to.

Another unique item bundled with your 3DS is the set of 6 AR cards you’ll find in a cardboard sleeve. AR stands for Augmented Reality and these cards give you the chance to play with your environment, letting you set up iconic Nintendo characters as AR statues in different poses right on your tabletop. One of the AR cards in particular (a “?” box) gives you a rather extensive list of games to play for just a little card. By focusing the AR games camera on the card, it lets you choose from several mini games to play. You can use the camera/gyroscope for a fishing game, test your skill with the archery game, or play “AR Shot” and use a pool cue to knock a ball into a target hole. When you finish the first games, you can get access to even more neat AR features like a non-timed version of fishing, a globe, and more challenging versions of the archery and shot games.

The last straight out of box feature is a fun game called Face Raiders that takes advantage of the gyroscope and camera features. You can take a picture of your face (or import faces from pictures on your SD card) and it will create a 3D model of the face that will fly around you for you to shoot down. You use the camera/gyroscope combo to aim around you in a complete 360 degree AR environment and shoot at the faces as they fly in and out of the area around you in various levels of difficulty. While other gaming devices want to milk you for what you’re worth at the time of purchase or nickel and dime you with app downloads or micro transactions, the 3DS makes for a breath of fresh air for both gamers on a budget and those of us who are just plain tired of not getting much for what we pay.