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Thursday, June 28, 2012

Exclusive Warren Buffett – A Few Lessons for Investors and Managers

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Employee Engagement: What Is It Anyway?


(Editor’s Note: This is the first in a two part series on employee engagement.)

Now that the job market is improving somewhat, organizations have started to think more about retention, and the concept of “employee engagement” is being bandied about in offices across North America and Europe.  But what exactly is employee engagement, how do you know if you have it, and why should anyone care?

Let’s begin with a simple definition. Employee engagement is a person’s degree of attachment to their company, role, and co-workers.  When employees are engaged, managers don’t have to force them to perform or monitor every task.  Rather, they are intrinsically motivated to do what’s in the best interest of the organization and can be trusted to do terrific work.

Employee engagement is not the same thing as employee satisfaction.  The latter term was invented during the industrial age, when factory owners needed to ensure that masses of angry workers didn’t mutiny.  Satisfied employees don’t treat the organization as part of their family like engaged employees do, but they also aren’t gunning for its demise.

To some extent, it’s easy to tell if an employee puts in that intangible but emotionally charged extra effort on the job.  But for those who like metrics, the good news is that there are many reliable ways to measure employee engagement.  Gallup, for one, has based its survey model on more than 30 years of in-depth behavioral economic research with 17 million employees.

The company’s researchers identified 12 core elements, which they called the Q12, that predict employee and team performance and also link to essential business outcomes.  The questions include:

Do you know what is expected of you at work? Do you have the materials and equipment you need to do your work right? At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day? In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work?Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person? Is there someone at work who encourages your development? At work, do your opinions seem to count? Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important? Are your associates (fellow employees) committed to doing quality work? Do you have a best friend at work? In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress? In the last year, have you had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

It’s easy to create a similar questionnaire to track engagement in your organization. You can ask these questions monthly, quarterly, or annually and have employees rate how much they agree or disagree on a scale of 1 to 5.

It has been well demonstrated that the advantages of an engaged workforce include increased productivity, retention, and customer satisfaction.

Engaged firms have higher profits too.  According to the Towers Perrin Global Workforce Study, high-engagement firms grow their earnings-per-share (EPS) at a faster rate (28 percent) while low-engagement firms experienced an average EPS growth rate decline of 11.2 percent.  Likewise, HR consulting firm Hewitt Associates found that highly engaged firms had a shareholder return that was 19 percent higher than average.

Even the organizational psychologists are singing the praises of employee engagement.  A study in the Journal of Applied Psychology claimed that resulting impact on revenue ranged from $960,000 to $1,440,000 per year per business unit when comparing those companies in the top quartile on employee engagement versus those companies in the bottom quartile.

On the flip side of employee engagement is employee disengagement, and this presents an even bigger issue.  Before continuing with the discussion of disengagement, let’s characterize three types of employees:

Actively engaged: These employees are always looking for ways to improve and work more efficiently.  They go above and beyond the call of duty to exceed expectations so that the company is more successful.

Not actively engaged: These employees show up to work and do their jobs, and leave as soon as the clock strikes 5PM.  They may be happy enough with their work, but have no desire to excel or help take the organization to new heights.

Actively disengaged:  These employees are holding a grudge against the organization and look to undermine it at every turn.  They are the most dangerous because their negative attitude is contagious and can result in very real performance and morale problems.

In the U.S., the estimated cost of disengagement in the workplace, which includes the actively disengaged and the not actively engaged, is over $350 billion in lost productivity, accidents, theft and turnover each year.  Gallup recently found that approximately 71 percent of American workers are not actively engaged or actively disengaged.

When you consider these numbers, it’s no surprise that the majority of employees would be happy to leave their current organizations if a better opportunity presented itself.  And this is going to be expensive.  According to Ross Blake in his article Employee Retention: What Employee Turnover Really Costs Your Company, talent replacement costs an organization between 30 and 50 percent of the annual salary of entry-level employees, 150 percent of middle-level employees and up to 400 percent for specialized, high level employees.

Hopefully you’re now convinced of the need to address employee engagement with a fresh eye.  Later this month, we’ll explore some ways managers can improve team member engagement.

(Photo credit: Business Engaged via Shutterstock)

Alexandra Levit is a career and workplace expert at the Intuit Quickbase Blog, a daily source for advice on how to be exceptional at your job. You can follow her on Twitter at @alevit.


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Building Blocks: Session title animation for TEDGlobal 2012 Session 3

Mission statement: Ideas are born in different shapes, colors and ways to build our shape-shifting world.

Director’s statement: “The idea is to build an abstract paper world made of boxes. Out of each box an idea is born and spreads across the world. A side lifts up and voilĂ ! Out comes the ‘idea.’” — Mandy Smith

CREDITS:
Director/ Art Director / Animator – Mandy Smith http://www.mandysmithwork.com/
DOP – Leon Hendrickx http://www.leonhendrickx.com/
Editor – Michael Moore http://cargocollective.com/mrmichaelmoore
Sound by Michael Kneebone at toolboxaudio.com
Agency: WE ARE Pi
Planner: Alex Bennett-Grant
Producer: Jamie Nami Kim
Creative Directors: Hobson-Chant

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BBC Column: What makes us laugh?

This is my BBC Future column from a couple of weeks ago. You can find the original here

A simple question with a surprisingly complex answer – understanding laughter means understanding fundamental issues of human nature.

Why do we laugh? Well it’s funny you should ask, but this question was suggested by reader Andrew Martin, and it is a very interesting one to investigate. For what at first seems like a simple question turns out to require a surprisingly complex answer – one that takes us on a journey into the very heart of trying to understand human nature.

Most people would guess that we laugh because something is funny. But if you watch when people actually laugh, you’ll find this isn’t the case. Laughter expert Robert Provine spent hours recording real conversations at shopping malls, classrooms, offices and cocktail parties, and he found that most laughter did not follow what looked like jokes. People laughed at the end of normal sentences, in response to unfunny comments or questions such as “Look, it’s Andre,” or “Are you sure?”. Even attempts at humour that provoked laughter didn’t sound that funny. Provine reports that the lines that got the biggest laughs were ones such as “You don’t have to drink, just buy us drinks,” and “Do you date within your species?”. I guess you had to be there.

Brain triggers
So if we want to understand laughter, perhaps we need to go deeper, and look at what is going on in the brain. The areas that control laughing lie deep in the subcortex, and in terms of evolutionary development these parts of the brain are ancient, responsible for primal behaviours such as breathing and controlling basic reflexes. This means laughter control mechanisms are located a long way away from brain regions that developed later and control higher functions such as language or even memory.

Perhaps this explains why it is so hard to suppress a laugh, even if we know it is inappropriate. Once a laugh is kindled deep within our brains these ‘higher function’ brain regions have trouble intervening. And the reverse is true, of course, it is difficult to laugh on demand. If you consciously make yourself laugh it will not sound like the real thing – at least initially.

There is another fundamental aspect to laughing. All humans laugh, and laughter always involves a similar pattern of whooping noises. Deaf people who have never heard a sound still make laughing noises. The laughing noises produced by humans share many of the acoustic properties of speech, further evidence laughter is hijacking the brain and body apparatus that we use for breathing and talking.

But this does not fully answer the original question. Even if we identified the precise brain areas associated with laughing, even if we were able to make someone laugh by stimulating part of their brain (which can be done), we still don’t know what makes people laugh. Yes, we know about the effect, but what about the cause, that is, the reason why we laugh in the first place?

Shared joke
To answer this, perhaps we need to look outwards, to look at the social factors at play when people laugh. I’ve already mentioned Provine’s study of laughter in its natural context. Provine showed that laughter is used to punctuate speech, it doesn’t just interrupt at random. This suggests that it plays a communicative role – it isn’t just some independent process that happens to us while we are talking to someone. He also found that the speaker typically laughs more than the audience, and that laughter was most common in situations of emotional warmth and so-called ‘in-groupness’. Again, all strongly suggesting that laughter has an important social role. And it is not always used for positive reasons. For all the good feeling that goes with laughing with someone, there is also a dark side, when someone is laughed at to belittle or show disdain.

Perhaps the most important social feature of laughter is how contagious it is. Just listening to someone laugh is funny. To test this, try keeping a straight face while watching this video of a man tickling a gorilla. You can even catch laughter from yourself. Start with a forced laugh and if you keep it up you will soon find yourself laughing for real.

What these observations show is that laughter is both fundamentally social, and rooted deep within our brains, part and parcel of ancient brain structures. We laugh because we feel like it, because our brains make us, and because we want to fit in socially. All these things are true. But biologists distinguish at least four fundamental types of answer you can give to explain behaviour: “why did it evolve?”; “how did it evolve?”; “How does it develop across the lifespan?” and  “how does it work?”.

This column has given some answers to the first question (laughter evolved for social interaction) and the last question (laughter is controlled by evolutionary ancient brain centres that control breathing and speech), but even with the beginnings of answers to these two questions, the other two are far from being answered. Each time we get closer to an answer for a fundamental question, it deepens our appreciation of the challenge remaining to answer the others.

Thank you to Andrew Martin for suggesting the topic. If you have your own suggestions please send them to tom@mindhacks.com


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The #1 Reason Why Most Blogs and Businesses Fail (And The 3 Questions You Need to Answer to Save Yours)


You’ve got a blog, you’re working hard cranking out posts consistently, you have a developed social media strategy, a solid game plan, and you’re doing all the right things.

Or so you think.

Maybe around month 6, or month 12, or month 18 you just hit a wall. Things aren’t progressing as quickly as they should or your stuff doesn’t seem to be catching on. Facebook “likes” are roughly the same week after week, you aren’t getting many new twitter followers, and you start wondering if what you’re doing matters after all the work you’ve put in. You’ve been contemplating making a paid product but your intuition is telling you that it’d probably flop at this point and be a waste of time.

You’re stuck.

But you’re not ready to throw in the towel and call it quits yet – you’re taking some time off to re-analyze, re-focus, and re-vamp your strategy. Through my own failures and the advice of many others, I’ve learned that there is 1 major reason why many blogs and businesses fail. 

The reason they fail is because we’re all told to start a blog or business about something we’re passionate about. Except we’re never told that what we’re passionate about isn’t what matters. It’s what our audience and clients are passionate about.

So in case you’ve hit that wall, things aren’t going well, and you’re losing hope that you’ll ever make a living from what you’re doing, here are the 3 questions you need to answer to save your blog and business.

“You must offer what your potential clients want to buy, not what you want to sell or think they should want to buy.  You must be able to look at your services from your client’s perspective – their urgent needs and compelling desires.” - Michael Port in Book Yourself Solid

Many people blog about whatever interests them.  They pick their passion and just start writing about it.

Think about that for a moment.

Most of you probably say, “Well yeah, duh…I talk about what I like talking about,” and keep reading without thinking any further.

But ask yourself this: Is there proven interest in what I’m writing about? Is writing about your passion (your best interests) really the best thing to do, or is writing about your audience’s wants (their best interests) the best thing to write about? There’s a reason why blogs about daily life or just generic musings about life generally don’t grow large quickly, while blogs about blogging grow quickly.

Why?

The sad truth? No one cares very much about what I personally write about daily life.  I don’t solve anything.  But people who read blogs about blogging are looking for a solution to a problem.

How to get more traffic.How to get more subscribers.How to create a product.How to make more money on the side.

And what you think your audience wants is rarely what your audience actually wants. If you can’t immediately, intuitively say “my blog solves xxx problem” you’re in a bad position.

How to fix it: Sit down and write down the top 3 problems you think  your audience has.

Now sit down and use the following 2 methods to figure out what your audience actually wants:

Look what’s popular around you. Products/services/niches that have proven demand are usually found all over the internet. What comes to mind? Weight loss, blogging, making money online. These topics are ubiquitous so you know they are in demand.Ask using 3 tactics. Assuming you already have your blog going for a period of several months, employ the following 3 tactics to get more information about your audience:Provide two parts to your opt-in email response.  If you have some sort of offer you give for subscribing (an ebook, free course, etc.) use part 1 to say “here’s your free course” and use part 2 of the email to start a conversation. In the second part of your email write: “Wait, before you go, respond to this email and tell me your biggest problem or struggle right now.” The second part was a blogging tactic I learned from a friend, and immediately after I applied it began receiving dozens of personal “I need help with xxx” type responses. Free market research.Directly reach out to new readers. Have comments from people you haven’t seen around before? Send them an email saying thanks for stopping by and asking if they need help with any current struggles.Free Consultation via skype. Directly reach out to your list and offer them the opportunity to have a 15 minute skype conversation with you.  It’s a great way to connect with readers more and also figure out their struggles.

So what are your audience’s problems? If you’re a blogger those may be: getting more traffic, getting more engagement (return visitors), and developing a product that sells well. If you write about health and fitness your audience’s top problems may be fat loss & muscle gain. If you write small biz information, your audience’s main problems might be figuring out how to find good business ideas to turn into a business, finding more clients, and getting the word out about your services. If your niche isn’t so clear cut – self help for example – you should still talk to your audience because self help is a huge category and your audience definitely will have trends regarding their problems.

Remember that the problem is not always what you think it is. You need to empirically research your audience’s needs, and not guess.

The truth is that if you’re not fixing a specific problem or set of problems, it’s going to be much harder for your audience to figure out what’s going on with your blog. And it will be much harder for you to get paid for the work you do.

So…what problem do you solve for your audience?

The answer should immediately and intuitively come to mind — if it doesn’t, you have thinking to do.

“What is the number one result you help your clients achieve or get?”

So let’s say you’ve got your blog/business. If you can’t immediately say “my blog answers x problem” you are in for a rough trip. The purpose and function of your blog (and the problem it solves) should be instantly present in your mind. If you’re stuck thinking, “Well, it might be A, or it might be B, it’s kind of a hybrid, I’m not quite sure yet,” then you’re going down the wrong track.

The biggest result you give your clients (your audience) should also be clear as day.

I help blogs get more traffic.I help people lose fat.I help cubicle slaves get clients for their own biz so they can quit their day job.

Clear as day, straightforward and easy to share at a cocktail party in 3 seconds.

If you can’t specifically say what benefit people get come from coming to your blog, from reading and digesting your content, you’re in trouble.

How to fix it: Your audience’s problem should be obvious, and so should the solution you provide.

In fact, these are the two most important factors in developing a successful business.  If you don’t solve a problem, and you can’t specifically say what benefit your clients/audience will achieve, why would people stick around?

Sure you can get people that stick around for fun, or because they enjoy your writing, or because you talk about lofty aspirations, but the majority of people are searching for a solution to a specific problem or ailment.

Provide specific results for a specific problem and your blog will thrive.

“Do potential clients within your target market see your services and products as opportunities that will give them a significant return on their investment? Clients should get a return of at least 20 times their investment. “ -Michael Port

When people compare online products to offline ones, they sometimes comment on how a $50 ebook is a huge ripoff. Or how a $120 affiliate marketing course is such a scam.

But are they really? What if you pay $120 for an affiliate marketing course, and then spend 6 months setting up a couple mini sites?

Let’s say after 6 months of work, 1 site brings in $300/month. After a year of income ($3600) your $120 was just returned 30x. That’s a good financial investment.

Or, what if you spend $100 on a class on getting more clients?

Within a month you have your first client paying you $100 an hour, once a week, every week. The next month you add on another client. The third month you add on a third client. With the addition of your third client, you’re making $300 a week, or $1200 a month.

And it all started with a $100 product or mini course.

That’s a good financial investment.  But your audience needs to know that. So you honestly need to ask yourself how much of a return will your audience get from what you give, and how tangible it is.

The sad truth is that the less tangible your return is (e.g. “happiness” “peace of mind” etc.) the harder it will be for your audience to find a reason to pay you product-wise.

Happiness is obviously important, but in terms of having people pay you, it’s much more intangible and thus hard to quantify and guarantee, and so is the return for your audience. The easiest way to turn something intangible into something with a clear reward is…. You guessed it, make it tangible, or make the intangible benefits a side-benefit.

So instead of offering “peace of mind” “feeling like your time is worthwhile” or the like, you might say, “find your passion and turn it into a business that pays you.”

The physical return you can guarantee? Money.

Other returns? Happiness, meaningful work, peace of mind.

You need to be totally clear about what result your audience / clients get, and even if you’re dealing with a somewhat intangible niche you can make it physical and the returns very real and easy to quantify.

How to fix it: If your service or product isn’t a worthwhile investment, people won’t come back.

People will be very hesitant to fork out money for your product or service offered unless they are sure that the investment they put in will return many times over.

And they will have a hard time forking over money for a product or service where they can’t quit measure what they’ll get out of it.

The problem with intangible rewards like “happiness” or “peace of mind” is that it’s hard to estimate the return on them because they are intangibles.

The solution is to use those as side-benefits, and instead make the main benefits more tangible.

You need to mention that your “get more clients” course is both a smart financial return (“$1000 in 6 months guarantee”) and a smart emotional return (“quit your day job to do work you love”).

So…can you prove that your product or service or blog content is a good investment for people? How?

Having immediate, clear answers to these 3 questions will already set you ahead of most bloggers that aimlessly shoot for dreams of financial independence.

And if/when that day comes where you’re about to throw in the towel: make a cup of tea, sit down, and ask yourself these two questions:

What problem does my audience have?What specific result or solution can I provide to fix that problem?

Turn your only focus into helping your audience and clients achieve what they want, and you’ll find a much clearer, less messy road to success.

(Photo credit: Desperate Businessperson via Shutterstock)

Helping lost 20 Somethings get Un-Lost, Destroy Ordinary, Live a Meaningful Life and build a biz to fund their freedom.


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10 Reasons Why You Need A Blog


I know, I know–you’re already running a business, writing a book, raising children, and trying to have a life.

I get it.

But you’re here, which means that you’re into things like productivity, getting things done, and creating space in your life for the good things.

But it’s probably not enough. 

Most likely, you’re able to maintain your 200+ emails-per-day workload, multiple projects at a time, and still have enough sanity to get home in time for dinner.

So why am I advocating adding another thing to your daily task list? Why am I telling you why you need a blog?

Because blogging isn’t going anywhere. 

More importantly, it’s not something that should be seen as adding to what you’re doing. On the contrary, blogging (if done well), can be the most productive thing you do all day, and can even take the place of many of your daily “to-do”s. You might need to step out of your comfort zone, but trust me–it’s worth it.

Here’s a list of some of those things blogging can help with:

If you’re a business owner, it’s a great way to connect with customers. Forget Twitter, networking events, and call centers. Blogging is a personal, down-to-earth method of keeping your customers informed and in-the-know about not only your latest product offerings, but your internal culture as well.Finding new clients. In the same vein, don’t discount the marketing advantages of blogging. If you do it right, you could be on to something. Many businesses chalk up a large percentage of their revenue from blogging and blogging-related activities, and you can have a piece of that pie.Getting more done. Just because you’re writing every day on a blog doesn’t mean other things won’t get done. Blogging is an activity that can literally happen anywhere. Wake up early, go to bed late, whatever–blogging doesn’t usually take long, and you can press pause whenever you like. The “Getting Things Done” mentality happens as you start writing that first sentence–you’ll find yourself invigorated, energized, and motivated by the words you’re writing.Getting better things done. Once you start realizing what exactly it is you’re going to offer to people through your blog, you’ll start to prioritize your day differently. You’ll have comments to respond to, emails to answer, and social media promoting to do, but all of this is building a pipeline of targeted warm leads to your business.It’s creation. Period. You’re creating stuff. Stuff can be bought, sold, added to, reworked, and changed, but most importantly this stuff is a form of asset–an asset you own and control. No word ever published online has a negative value.Blogs are the news vehicle of the future. This one might receive some flak, but oh well. I truly believe that blogging–at least the general, broad definition of content-creation by the lay person–is the new form of news delivery. We’ll still have reporters and journalists, but the news and noteworthy stories of the day are now in our hands–it’s our job to be the first-hand eyewitness accounts of the current goings-on.Blogging can boost productivity in unforeseen areas.You might not realize it yet, but blogging leads to a funny ailment I like to call “picking-blog-headlines-for-everything-that-happens-in-your-life.” If you’ve been driving down the freeway and want to suddenly write a post bemoaning the terrible billboard ad called “7 Reasons Your Company Sucks At Advertising,” you know what I mean. This productivity booster is a cool thing, though–it helps keep the “idea bucket” full, and it transfers into many other forms of content, not just blogs.Blogs are a great way to measure success. However you define success, blogging can track it. You can search through your year-old archives or do a specific series–either way, your words won’t lie (unless you lied when you wrote them…). Want to earn $100,000 this year? Start blogging the results of your business’ advertising and marketing campaigns, and include revenue reports.Accountability. This one’s simple. Blogging is usually a public-facing event that we engage in with the sole purpose of gaining readership. These readers, while sometimes harsh, are for the most part very truthful. They’ll keep us focused on our published and public goals, and that alone is worth the asking price.Because everyone else is. Okay, I didn’t want to use this “cop out” reason, but there it is. If you’re a business owner without a blog, you’re already behind. If you’re an individual with something to say, get started saying it. You may not realize it, but there’s at least one other person in the world who needs the kind of expertise you have, no matter how trivial. Everywhere you look, there’s a blog, video feed, or YouTube channel dedicated to the obscure and random. Do us one better and create something worth sharing.

Maybe I’ve convinced you, maybe not. But you won’t change my mind–the benefits of blogging (creating content and sharing it online) far outweigh the downsides and work we need to put in to it. This is why you need a blog.

If you’ve never tried it, check out my site for some great resources, but just know that blogging is a perfect example of something that “you get what you put in to it.” It can take your business or your life to another level, and it’s not hard to do. It takes work, sure, but everything of value does anyway!

And if you need some specific help, start by asking the right questions–here are 101 of them!

(Photo credit: Blog on Typewriter via Shutterstock)

Nick Thacker is a writer from Texas, and he's interested in hacking life to make it better. His posts are helpful for writers, bloggers, and pretty much anyone who wants to hack their life! Check him out on his website, where he talks about how to write, and be sure to grab his new book, Building A Blog for Readers. Also, be sure to grab the newsletter!


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Wednesday, June 27, 2012

10 Time and Space-Wasting Widgets You Should Delete From Your Blog Today

It’s easy to get so excited about your new blog that you want to use every bell and whistle that you can get your hands on. But if you’re serious about building a significant readership or turning your blog into a business, going overboard with widgets and plug-ins can actually hurt you.

Here are 10 time and space wasting widgets your should delete from your sidebar today:

Subscription Count/RSS Widget. This is a great idea if you have a legion of subscribers, since nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd. Otherwise, it can work against you by functioning as negative social proof. If your RSS widget shows you only have a handful of subscribers, many readers will wonder why they should subscribe if no one else is doing it.Calendar. Calendar widgets were fun and interesting when the Internet and blogs were new. But now, they’re really not. If someone wants to see something you’ve posted at an earlier day or month, they can always check out your archives page.Irrelevant Affiliate Ads. I often see new blogs whose sidebars are stuffed with all sorts of random banner ads and affiliate offers. It’s important to remember that people won’t click on your ads just because they’re there, and they’re definitely not more likely to click just because there are a ton of ads on the page. Relevance is key, so stick to promoting just one or two offers you know your readers will find useful and relevant.“Share This” Sidebar Widgets. Unless your blog is the most groundbreaking and incredible thing they’ve ever seen in their entire life, a visitor is much more likely to share single posts or pages than they are to share the homepage of your blog.“Hosted By” Badges. Most visitors don’t care who hosts your blog. And if they do, they’re more likely to respond to a well-written review post about the pros and cons of your hosting service. If you want to make affiliate sales through your hosting provider, it’s a much better way to go about it than a standalone widget in your sidebar.Blogroll/Link Exchange. If you must have a list of links of other blogs, move them to a separate page. Your sidebar should be reserved for the things you absolutely need your readers to see or do (and having them click away to someone else’s site shouldn’t be your priority).Facebook Stream. Facebook page status updates out of context can be distracting to your readers. If you really want them to become a fan or friend of your Facebook page, skip adding the feed preview and just use a simple and compact “Like” button instead.Recent Posts. It’s much more useful to have your most popular posts listed in the sidebar. Recent posts can easily be found in the archives or on your blog’s front page.Tag Cloud. No one uses them and no one has ever left a blog just because it didn’t have one.  Use a search form instead, so people can find exactly what they’re looking for instead of having to weed through post tags.Blog Ranking/Technorati Widget. Your Alexa and Technorati rankings don’t mean much to your average reader (unless you’re blogging about blogging), and I can guarantee you they won’t be looking it up just because they noticed it on your sidebar.

If you give your reader too many calls to action at a time, they’ll generally decide on inaction, since it’s far easier to do nothing than it is to choose from a plethora of options. The best thing to do is to keep it simple and save your sidebar space for the most important actions you want your visitors to take on your blog.

Faith is a freelance writer,web designer and editor of MoolahBlogger, which is dedicated to helping you build a successful blog.


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