In the world of social media there are few mediums that go untouched, but there are those that are significantly more prominent than the others.

Facebook and Twitter being the reigning kings and others trailing behind with users unsure of what to do. However, Pinterest is proving to be an extremely useful tool for businesses to engage in.

So why should you be be interested in Pinterest?

Read more @ 10 Best Pinterest Practices | Jeffbullas’s Blog.

There are many advantaged to enrolling in an online distance learning course. You can gain a range of qualifications and life skills to help you establish and further your career.

What type of individual will really benefit from an online distance learning course? What circumstances might lead people to prefer online education to the classroom?

via Who Can Benefit from Online Distance Learning Courses? | Business 2 Community.

Question from a client:

We’re an organisation of about 1000 people and we don’t have any e-learning. How far behind are we?

This question led me to think about a much larger question – the state of e-learning in Australian organisations in 2012. Now, before you read on, please be advised the following is my opinion, based on five years of consulting in Australia across about 80 clients. My experience is not exhaustive and my opinion will have inherent biases. But, here it is:

via The State of E-Learning in Australia in 2012.

The Success of Small business these days is rightly measured upon how they look at their business and what steps they take to make it a high pitch volume sales all through the day. However, one of the most particular reason why lot of small business are succeeding, its because of the fact that they are concentrating lot on social media these days.

Following are some data to prove our fact that how today’s business are concentrating more on social media than anything else which is not just essential but also a proven technique as a marketing strategy. While even though Facebook rank above all Social Networks in the country, but still people prefer Twitter and Linkedin over Facebook for quick and continuous growth when it comes to marketing perspective.

Although its silent trend as of now, but the unique point to note here is that, people and business are quickly changing to social media for almost everything including for chatting, Messaging and not even for business promotion as well. While, most brands in the country have Facebook fan page, however, most of them even have multiple profiles as well so that there could be an ease in their product reach to multiple customers and consumers. But as per the stats which we acquired shows that Twitter actually gets 3% more engagement in competition to Facebook.

Although everyone know that not all business are active on Twitter, but still it seems like their client community is active, which is turn promoting the business. So what are the strategies you follow which promoting your business and getting more customers and consumers? Do Share some of your views on whether Social Media is really essential and is proved to be future marketing growth with us in the commenting section.

See their great infographic here: How Social Media Prove Effective Growth for Small Business | All Infographics.

EmailExcellence.com has begun posting business email samples to support companies and individuals wrestling with email writing challenges. Over the next several months, it plans to continue building an entire catalog of writing tools, email examples, and what it calls “eLearning nuggets”–brief clips of interactive content, each focused on a particular writing situation or challenge.

Most surprising: Its all free. And unlike many websites posting free content, Email Excellence doesnt require visitors to register or otherwise surrender personal information.

The company behind Email Excellence is Salient, Inc., and Salient founder Roy Speed says his companys ambition is to fill a costly gap in business today: the need for email writing standards. “In many professions and small businesses,” he says, “email has come to dominate critical functions, like sales and customer service. Yet no ones quite sure whether theyre doing it well or doing it poorly.”

Individual business people, in other words, have nothing to measure themselves against–no models that might point the way to simple improvements, no documented standards, no established best practices.Email Excellence aims to fill this void.As for large corporations, Speed says, “For 20 years now, weve watched emails evolution in amazement. In large companies, its grown from an electronic novelty to a core business process. But unlike most business processes, this one consumes at least one third of each workday.”

One third of each workday becomes one third of each year. So for professionals earning $75,000 a year, an employer will typically invest well over a third of that sum in their email activity alone. Yet few companies have email writing standards. Nor have they developed methods for measuring, improving, or rewarding email productivity.

As Speed says, “It all starts with having standards.” Salient already helps companies define writing standards across the pharmaceutical industry, where Salient programs are required training for more than a dozen companies and more than 130,000 employees. Versions of its Email Excellence training have been well received by employees in pharmaceutical and biotech companies–despite the programs being mandatory in those companies.

Brian Werneberg is a senior clinical scientist who recently experienced the training: “The most valuable thing in the program,” he says, “is its reader-centric philosophy–plus the concrete tools for implementing that philosophy.” Salient believes that millions of employees yearn for intelligent discussion of email and practical guidance with the medium. ”

After all,” Speed says, “professionals of all kinds now spend an enormous proportion of their entire worklives in their Inboxes… They naturally think about this stuff.”

The catalog of “Free Writing Tools” posted at EmailExcellence.com is already rich. It addresses a variety of email challenges–like emails requesting action, or messages that simply deliver information, or how to handle your email signature. For each challenge, Email Excellence provides befores-&-afters, with commentary on what works and what doesnt, and practical guidelines. The result: Email messages that are both professional and reader-friendly.

One of the most useful tools provided here: downloadable email job-aids. Any manager seeking models to distribute to staff can access each of these job-aids with a single click; the manager can then use them to convey to employees the desired standards of clarity and professionalism.

In addition to its email writing samples, EmailExcellence.com offers free previews of its five-part eLearning program and two different blogs: Email Writing, which discusses writing issues and offers free eLearning nuggets, and Email Leadership, which discusses email as a business process now much in need of management attention.

For more information, contact Salient, Inc., at  203.748.9078, or send email to infoatemailexcellencedotcom.

via Email Excellence Posts Free Writing Tools – MarketWatch.

It was my own manager who first suggested to me to write a blog. Company cutbacks had added project management duties to my position. By following this advice, I soon discovered why daily blogging is such a good idea.

Having a blog has helped me in project management immensely. Blogging helped me keep track of all aspects of the project, allowing me to take on more projects. It was not unheard of to have a dozen or more projects on my desk at the same time. I wrote a blog entry for every one of them every workday, and answered the associated comments.

via 10 Reasons Why Project Managers Should Write a Blog.