There are times in life when someone may be asked to fill out a power of attorney form. At another time, someone may decide that they need a formal means to allow someone to act on their behalf. Some people may have heard of a power of attorney, and others may simply be aware of such a creature, but have only a vague idea of ​​what it does. So let’s define it, let’s see when it could be used, let’s see what types there are and what are the disadvantages and advantages.

In its simplest form, a power of attorney is a formal, legal means of transferring your authority to make certain decisions and act on your behalf, on your behalf, to another person. The types of actions allowed are generally defined to a certain extent and allow the document holder to make everyday decisions on his behalf, represent him in specific legal situations, or handle business, legal, or financial situations on his behalf. A completed form of power of attorney can state very specific situations in which it can be used, or it can be quite broad in scope, depending on your wishes.

The use of power usually takes the form of a kind of preemptive strike. You know that you will not be able to attend to certain matters, for example, so you assign the task of acting on your behalf to another person. People in the military, for example, are often away from home when important events occur, so they can run to the Judge’s Advocate General’s (JAG) office and fill out a power of attorney form to allow their spouse to take over. charge of certain events on your behalf. A company executive or owner may not be able to be physically present at a major business event and may empower another to act on their behalf. Others may simply be planning ahead for a time when they may not be able to make certain decisions for themselves. Having completed what is usually a relatively simple form assures them that someone they trust will be in control and can legally act on their behalf.

Basically, there are two types of power of attorney: durable and limited.

A durable power of attorney allows another party to act on your behalf in almost any form or type of business or transaction. Someone who wants to separate themselves at least semi-permanently from certain activities, such as buying and selling stocks or managing property, might choose this option. Disabled people who are unable to travel to conduct their own business may designate a trusted person to have the authority to act on their behalf. Someone who is preparing for a day when they will no longer be able to accurately assess and act on matters that require their thought, decision, and action can prepare for one before then.

Limited power of attorney is a simple matter. It is used to allow your representative to act on your behalf, but with certain limitations. There are essentially two possible limitations:

* By Task: In this form, the authority granted is stated specifically for a certain purpose… buying a car or selling a certain property, for example.

* By time: In this instance, specific date limits are set. This could be used if you were going to be out of the country for a week or two, but wanted to make sure certain things were taken care of while you were away.

As you can see, having someone available to act on your behalf at times when you are unavailable or incapacitated can be really helpful. This “proxy” can help you keep your affairs under control while you are busy with other situations or events. All they have to do is present the power of attorney form you prepared and sign it or act as if you were there yourself. The scope of authority, whether by task, time, or both, is easily written into the document. In the limited form, the authority granted will automatically expire at a certain time or upon completion of the task, but, as the person who did it in the first place, you can revoke it at any time.

It is a simple task to complete, but in some cases legal counsel may be recommended. It’s also a common task, and you’ll be able to find well-designed power of attorney forms at office supply stores and online.

If you want to be a successful manufacturer of plush toys, you have to treat marketing like it’s the Holy Grail. Most custom plush toy inventors would tell you that marketing is everything and for good reason. It’s like having a website. If you don’t market your website using SEO efforts, no one will see your new website. The same applies to stuffed toys. Even if you have the coolest idea, no one will see it if you don’t market it.

It is not enough that you have a separate marketing strategy for your custom plush toys. Every aspect of your business should have a bit of marketing. You should treat everything you do as a marketing opportunity. As a plush toy manufacturer, you would have plenty of opportunities to do so. From bookkeeping to delivery, you need to do a bit of marketing for your stuffed toys. It’s a tried and tested way to be visible to your prospects. It’s called an “in your face” marketing strategy.

That is why it is important that you study marketing. You will be doing so much marketing that understanding at least the basics can help you get it right. Sure, you can hire a marketing company for your custom stuffed toys. But how will you know if they are doing things right? Better yet, how will you know which marketing company to choose for your stuffed toys? As a manufacturer of plush toys, marketing is one of the skills that you must know. It is something that can push you in the right direction and will open many doors for you.

So where are you going to get this knowledge? Obviously, you can take some courses, free or paid. There are many offline and online institutions that conduct marketing courses and you can take advantage of them. You don’t have to worry that it is not suitable for custom plush toys. Marketing consists mostly of theories and strategies that you can tweak to fit your stuffed toys. Even if you only get the basics, you’ll get the information you need to at least get started. Just remember that it’s an ongoing process so keep learning so you don’t get left behind. As a plush toy manufacturer, you can use that advantage to succeed.

Once you have the knowledge, you can put a bit of marketing into every aspect of your daily activities for your custom plush toys. Of course, this is separate from the focused strategies you will implement for your stuffed toys. But if it’s too much for you, you can hire a marketing company. But you can be sure that they can’t fool you. It is because you are a stuffed toy manufacturer who has marketing savvy. This is how you will know if your personalized plush toys are being marketed correctly. If marketed correctly, you will have more continuous sales of your stuffed toys. That’s the success you got because you chose to arm yourself with the necessary marketing knowledge.

Before defining the professional sale. Let’s look at some of the related professions. Below are some definitions of professions/occupations that relate to Wikipedia professional selling:

• Marketing It is defined as an ongoing process of planning and executing the marketing mix (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) for products, services, or ideas to create an exchange between individuals and organizations.
• Advertising It is defined as a form of communication that generally attempts to persuade potential customers to buy or consume more of a particular brand of product or service.
• public relations It is defined as the practice of managing the flow of information between an organization and its audiences.
• sales promotions defined as predetermined actions designed to increase consumer demand, stimulate market demand, or improve product availability for a limited time (i.e., contests, point-of-sale displays, discounts, free travel, and sales incentives) .

What about the sales profession?

Note that in the definitions above, the profession is *not* defined as the individual. For example, marketing is not defined as “people who market.” However, the sales profession is often explained as “individuals who sell.” Therefore, the sale should not be defined in this way. Also note that the above professions are *not* defined by the activities of those individuals. In other words, the profession of advertising is not defined as “putting ads on television.” Therefore, the sale should not be defined in this way.

Academically, selling is considered a part of marketing, however the two disciplines are completely different. Sales departments often form a separate grouping in a corporate structure, employing people who specialize in specific sales roles. While the sales process refers to a systematic process of repetitive and measurable milestones, the definition of sales “profession” does not exist (so far with this article).

So the questions become:

• Who is “in” the profession and who is not?
• How is selling related to marketing, advertising, promotions, and public relations?
• What shared competencies do people within the sales profession need?
• How do these competencies align with the roles in terms of focus and differentiation?

A definition must provide a meaning. To determine the meaning of the vendor profession, it’s helpful to determine what the vendor profession *should* contain.

The following three principles are necessary for professional selling:

• The focus of the sales profession is on the human agents involved in the buyer-seller exchange.
• Effective selling requires a systems approach, at least involving roles that sell, enable sales, and build sales capabilities.
• A specific set of sales skills and knowledge is required to facilitate the exchange of value between buyers and sellers.

Within these three principles, the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) offers the following definition of professional selling:

Professional selling is:

“The holistic business system required to effectively develop, manage, enable, and execute a mutually beneficial interpersonal exchange of goods and/or services at equitable value.”

Note: This definition was published by ASTD in 2009.

What does this definition accomplish?

First, creates a definition of world-class sales. An organization that wants to compare its sales effectiveness can take advantage of the above definition to clearly understand the strengths and weaknesses. Without such a definition, most adjustments to the sales team are arbitrary and subjective. By understanding the system view required for sales effectiveness, organizations can look at individual sales team members, as well as sales team processes and tools, and how they align with the buyer.

Second, enables more consistent results in performance through the clear establishment of roles regarding who is “in” and who is “out” of professional selling. For example, if you don’t involve a human agent, you’re not in the sales profession; is a marketing function with a transaction (ie, a “sale”). For this definition, sales operations, sales recruiters, and sales trainers are “in” the profession because they possess unique skills outside of their regular job titles. They possess knowledge and skills that are unique to allow definition.

Third, the definition lays the foundation for sales talent management/people strategies. With such a definition, sales development employees can create learning solutions that fit the unique aspects of a sales culture. At the same time, front-end recruitment strategies are more clearly linked to retention strategies.

Four, helps the organization in an exemplary performance. By setting a standard with such a definition, organizations don’t have to settle for mediocre sales effectiveness. They can use the definition to help bridge the gap between the sales ability and the competence of the sales team.

There are millions of websites online. You may feel that the competition is too great and you will never get your website to appear on the first page of Google or any of the other search engine listings. But it’s not impossible. When you use the right tactics, you can improve your website’s ranking on Google.

Here are 5 tips to get you started.

1. Keyword Research

Google directs people to your website based on the keywords they have entered into the search box. That means those same keywords need to be on your site and easy to find. They should be part of the content and part of the navigation. Research your keywords and provide the most valuable and useful content possible. Provide what your current and potential customers are looking for and it will set you apart from the vast majority of your competition.

2. Create more content

Google and the other search engines will scan your website and index its content. The more relevant your content is, the more value search engines will place on your site. All search engines like new content because they want to provide their users with the most up-to-date information. But don’t compromise the quality of your content by trying to post something new, say every day, if it’s just a bunch of crap.

3. Review your analytics

It goes without saying that if you want to improve your website’s ranking on Google, you should install Google Analytics on your website. These free analytics help you track where your customers go on your website, how long they stay on your website, how they got to your website, what keywords they use to find your website, how many visitors return to your website, and plus. This information is important. Check your website analytics regularly. Create content that matches what you find.

4. Don’t overuse keywords

While it’s important to use keywords to get your website to appear in Google search results, you don’t want to use too many. Generally speaking, your keyword should be used once for every 100 words. If you repeat your keywords too much, Google will ignore your website because its content will be considered artificial and unreadable.

5. External links

If other high-quality, authoritative websites link to your website, Google will see this as a “recommendation” of your site’s value and will rank your website higher in their search listings. To get more of these backlinks, contact respected websites or blogs to see if you can provide a guest post or article. That post or article will contain a link to your website.

If you take a look at the article, The Aesthetics of Reading, you can see just how intricate and complex typography really is, why it should be so important, and how it affects a reader’s mood and cognitive performance.

But if you don’t have time or just want me to summarize it all for you, well, here it is.

The researchers found after the study that if the document is written correctly, it not only makes it easier to read, but also enjoyable and easier. On the other hand, bad typography makes the version difficult to read, which obviously, in turn, makes people disinterested. If whatever you’re designing is correctly written, you can put all the information you want and it still won’t be a hassle to read.

Good typography was also found to increase cognitive performance. This means that good typography makes it easy to accomplish whatever task is needed. Now, I bet that’s something you didn’t expect.

Typography has a very clear effect on the mood of the reader and also affects productivity, engagement and creativity.

Now, let’s move on to explain the effects a bit more in depth.

why does it matter

If you’re not even sure why you should pay attention to typography, to keep it simple is how you can keep your reader’s attention on your illustration, branding, or design. Yes, pictures are worth a thousand words, just like your logo or other artwork. But typography has a big influence on how long they keep looking at your work and the impact it has on them.

Fonts, colors, sizes, and everything else you use are important. You can read this study if you want to learn more. Typography may be an art, but you still need to look at its roots in human cognition.

You can get attention by designing your words differently, and even adding them to a list of priorities or importance, making them easier for the human brain to parse and understand and facilitating mental processing.

How to start

Well, you need to know exactly what it is you’re trying to achieve. The goal of your typography project should be clear. Knowing what you want your readers to feel is important, and then working on keeping that thought in mind will help you clearly emphasize the elements.

Try different font styles, sizes, colors, underline the text, make it bold, italic, or whatever you need to do to make it convey that exact mood that will let people know about your work and not just grab their attention at first glance. but keep it there for a while. If you are a layman, you can simply try a logo design tool and see what works for you and what doesn’t.

Also, do not forget that it is very important that your text is legible, even in small fonts. Characters need to be able to be identified correctly and make reading your text smooth without spending a lot of effort understanding just the first letter.

The following are some things to keep in mind to improve your typography skills.
• Individual typefaces – fonts
• Avoid all caps or all caps
• Line length
• Spacing between lines
• Letter spacing
• Your audience
• Complementation: contrast and vitality

In conclusion

Typography is an art form that focuses on the visual component of the written word. Just by visualizing it properly for your target audience, you can create an unforgettable impact. For any designer, it is crucial to pay close attention to typography and work to master his skill if he is to develop and enhance his career in the design industry.

Marketing is one of the two key priorities in business. Without it you have no business. It’s not something you should ever relinquish full control of in your own business. You want and need to be in touch with your customers and their desires, fears, and goals, as well as how they want information from you. For that reason, you can’t depend on a single connection source. This article includes the must-haves for attracting fitness clients.

The thing to remember about each of these marketing venues is that they have multiple ways to help you. The richer the content you have, the more powerful they will be. You’ll attract customers looking for what you have, as long as you use titles wisely. It will also improve your search engine optimization if you play it right.

• YouTube video can help you attract customers looking for a solution to a problem or a specific service you offer. They will find you based on your title that matches their search. This is where you need to think like your customers think. It is important to think about the objective of each video and plan it from the shot to the editing.
• Facebook Business Pages can help you connect with and get referrals from your existing customers and their friends. That is, if you do it right. You are going to need to create a reach for your clients beyond your services and share your own promotions. Publishing for your fans is not the same as advertising. Don’t think of it as a bulletin board listing your club’s special offers. Think of it as a conversation with the goal of eventual conversion.
• Twitter posts are more instant gratification. Your client wants them to be innovative, avant-garde and the more current, the better. If you make them look witty or improve their status by liking or sharing, you’ve won the Twitter game.
• Blogging is one way to improve your SEO. Do it consistently and use images and videos within it. You are essentially multiplying your reach when you embed a YouTube video within your blog on your website. Share the link on Facebook or tweet. One activity and multiple arms.
• Writing articles in online sources. Write for someone else’s blog. Provide an electronic publication. That gets you seen again organically and expands your reach in ways you can’t on your own.
• Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr and other social networks are coming quickly and just like the ones mentioned above will be or are important. If you join, stay active. Putting up a Facebook Pro page and then posting every other month or even a couple of times a day won’t help you. Commit to doing it and stick with it if you want to see results. When you slow down or stop posting, you also prevent your posts from being seen again when you decide you’re in the mood. Facebook will decide that you are not relevant since no one is engaging and even the number of fans you think you are reaching are not showing in your posts. Other networks can follow below.

One thing that is not included above is reciprocity. You also need to interact with others. You can’t just throw constant information out there. You should comment, like, and share others’ information openly and generously if you expect reciprocity to flow your way.

If these are not skills you have now or want to undertake, be careful who you hire, how you train them, and don’t let it go completely unsupervised. The biggest mistake most fitness owners are making these days is not knowing how to use the media to their advantage. Doing it and doing it well are two different things. It can be your best friend if you make the effort to get advice on how to handle it. It’s highly traceable, has almost immediate response, and can show you a return on your time and energy with little investment.

The importance of recruiting new talent

Hiring new talent for your company is very important for the future of the company. No matter the size and scope of the business, you need to find the right people with the right skill set and quality. These people are necessary for the growth of the company. When a company manages to find the best candidates, it must motivate them and provide incentives for them to enjoy working there.

But first, how are you going to attract the best recruits? It starts with listening and creating a workable recruitment marketing strategy.

Recruitment marketing has changed and trivial recruiting methods don’t seem to work. There are many business leaders who believe that hiring is their number one concern. This is why implementing strategies to acquire the best talent is something really important now.

No longer the HR headache, now the acquisition of recruiting the best and brightest candidates has also become a priority for the business as a whole.

Change in Recruitment Processes

Times have changed and the internet is actually making things more fun, but challenging to compare your progress against the competition. Whenever someone is looking for a job, they will Google it and save themselves a lot of hassle.

Searching for jobs on Google is fast, convenient, and comprehensive. For example, by using Google, a person will be able to find out the workplace, available positions, and salary information.

Therefore, recruiters need to start thinking like creative marketers to attract top talent to their brand. They have to learn how Google displays and prioritizes available jobs in search and how they can get to the top spot for specific keywords. The recruiting game has changed. Credit goes to Google. Many companies are quickly adapting to this new way and are really playing their role as marketing recruiters as well.

Recruitment Marketing – Beating the Competitors in Talent Acquisition

If other companies want the same candidate, how will you use brand marketing to attract and win over your competitor? A company can focus on ensuring an exceptional candidate experience and implementing key performance metrics. By employing different marketing strategies, such as video job ads, landing pages, and refining your job descriptions, your company can build relationships with the ideal candidate, increasing the quality of applicants it receives.

Using the inbound marketing approach will help you connect with talented job seekers and start engaging them with your company network.

Talent acquisition now looks more like science. To arrive at a working strategy, carefully planned recruiting and branding marketing practices must be used. Creating compelling content is key to adding interest to job descriptions. It’s a great idea to consult with the marketing team in order to use their marketing skills to come up with a proper action plan when creating recruiting marketing materials.

Now, is the recruitment marketing practice working or not? Take the next step and use analytics to see what others are saying about you and measure your recruiting progress compared to your competitor. Dive deep into your talent competitors to understand how competitive your employer brand is today. Also, start using your data analysis team to help you quantify your findings into a single score. Your data analytics team can collect all available data points, uncover patterns to help you create a valuable report packed with insights and recommendations on your talent recruiting performance. Happy recruiting!

What is Fiverr?

Fiverr is a website that hosts all kinds of commercial and non-commercial services, with thousands of what we’ll call “micropayment” entrepreneurs, each touting what they can do for you for just five dollars. They all start at the same price: $5. Hence, a “Five-er”. A job (a “job” as they call it) for only five bucks? Really?

How can someone do something that will take time and charge 5 bucks and make a substantial amount of money on an endeavor like that? And how does that help a network marketing business?

Well, welcome to the shrinking world of commerce and the Internet. The short answer is that Fiverr is not only a valid source of labor at rock bottom prices, but it is an opportunity for all network marketing business owners because it is based on the same concept as a network marketing business. online: the law of large numbers can help you make money if you work them right. Just as important is the opportunity to network and connect with new business owners you never would have met without this platform, and that alone makes Fiverr worth looking at as more than just a place to spend five bucks.

To fully understand Fiverr, we look at Fiverr from two angles, because we’ve used both sides: as a service buyer and as a service provider. This article covers using Fiver as a buyer.

First, a quick look at the Fiverr website:

Who dreamed of Fiverr?

Fiverr is the perfect example of when someone with a brilliant idea takes on the internet and creates a win-win situation for both buyer and seller. At $5 a concert you certainly can’t complain about an expensive experience! Fiverr is a pretty simple concept if you can get past the barrage of ads from every Fiverr entrepreneur offering services. There are some pretty amazing statistics on Fiverr:

• Fiverr was founded four years ago by Shai Wininger and Micha Kaufman. A blog written by Micha over a year ago indicated at the time, 1.5 million people use Fiverr to buy and sell Gigs and many millions more visit the site each month. Fiverr members come from over 200 countries and sellers offer over 1.8 million Gigs across 120 different categories. One Gig is purchased every 6 seconds. Clearly, a year later, those numbers have grown.

• Alexa ranks Fiverr (as of 2/14/15) as the 349th most popular site globally and 370th in the US.

• Fiverr has generated over 3 million “gigs” (the term they use for jobs). When you consider that many Fiverr sellers make more than just the base $5 (as the number of gigs done increases, you can charge more) it’s clear this is a money maker not only for founders, but also if you have success as a seller

So what can you get on Fiverr? Well, A LOT – Here are the main categories:

Graphics and Design- Cartoons & Caricatures / Logo Design / Illustration / eBook Covers & Bundles / Web & UI Design / Photography & Photoshopping / Landing Pages / Flyers & Brochures / Business Cards / Banners & Headers / Architecture / Presentation Design / Others

online marketing – Social Marketing / Fan Pages / Get Traffic / SEO / Bookmarks & Links / Article Submissions & PR / Video Marketing / Other / Blog Mentions / Keyword Research / Web Analytics / Domain Research

Writing and Translation – Copywriting/SEO Keyword Optimization/Creative Writing & Scripts/Translation/Transcripts/Website Content/Press Releases/Résumés & Cover Letters/Speech Writing/Proofreading & Editing/Reviews/Other

Video and Animation – Commercials / Editing and Post Production / Animation and 3D / Testimonials and Reviews of Actors / Intros / Stop Motion / Puppets / Others

Music and Audio – Audio Editing & Mastering/Jingles/Songwriting/Music Lessons/Rap Music/Hip-Hop Music/Custom Songs/Sound Effects & Loops/Custom Ringtones/Voicemail Greetings/Narration & Voice Over/Other

Programming and Technology- WordPress / Web Programming / Mobile & Web Apps / Website Builders & CMS / File Conversion / E-Commerce / User Testing / QA / Databases / Desktop Apps / Data Analysis & Reporting / Support & IT / Others

Advertising- Hold Your Sign / Flyers and Brochures / Human Billboards / Mascot Models / Banner Advertising / Radio / Music Promotion / Outdoor Advertising / Others

Business – Business Plans / Career Consulting / Market Studies / Presentations / Virtual Assistant / Legal Consulting / Branding Services / Financial Consulting / Business Advice / Others

other – Lifestyle / Gifts / Fun and Bizarre

Buying on Fiverr: what do you buy and how do you do it?

Buying on Fiverr is not difficult. From the list above, you can see that buying something in these broad categories is not a problem. For Fiverr shoppers, this is a great thing: there are so many prospective business owners offering you what you want, it’s a matter of finding someone who has a catchy ad or whose description of what and how they’ll do what you need is the best. than most. You will have almost unlimited options.

While that may be a good thing, consider this: There are three main categories that Fiverr has implemented when buying a gig. There are Fiverr members in the “High Rated” category, members in the “Recommended” category, and finally the “newbies” in the “New” category.

While there certainly has to be a way to categorize those offering services, this “class distinction” almost felt like it was discriminatory until we looked at the sheer number of individual jobs being offered. Fiverr had to find a way to delineate “newbies” vs. more experienced members.

The day we were on the site researching Fiverr, when we wrote the phrase that begins every Fiverr concert: “I’ll do it”, this was the result:

High rating – All categories – 63,741 Recommended – 215,861 New – 52,731.

That’s a total of 332,333 individual gig options! When you consider that each web page you can see when you get results is typically 6-10 gigs on a screen (considering some screen sizes are small, others are large), at 10 gig views per screen, it would take! you 33,234 screen scrolls to see all the alternatives! For example, 10 seconds per screen to see if any value was perceived would be 543 hours, or a little over 3 weeks to see all the options! Clearly, you will have no problem choosing from such a large universe of sellers.

The main hurdle you will have as a Fiverr buyer will be choosing the best rated seller from this huge sea of ​​Fiverr members. It is not as daunting as it seems. You’ll have to scan just a handful of sellers to understand what to look for in an experienced seller. Do you have a video? What is your lap time? How are they ranked and do they have positive testimonials? After several minutes, you’ll have an idea of ​​what to look for.

When we bought concerts, we sometimes spent more than $5. Why is that? Well, technically, that’s all we had to pay. However, the jobs that were done for us were done quickly and efficiently and we paid extra to make that happen – instead of a 3-day turnaround, we opted to pay another $5 for a one-day turnaround. . In one case, we wanted some “bells and whistles” so we paid another $10 for the concert. Those extra bells and whistles are offered only through highly rated, recommended sellers.

NOTE: If you consider our average ticket was $10, and over 3 million concerts have been completed, that equates to 15 million in revenue, pretty solid! Actually, it’s pretty sure there are plenty of sellers on Fiverr who routinely make much more than $5, so you have to conclude that Fiverr has carved out a very profitable niche. We believe this strong financial performance bodes well for Fiverr to continue as a major player in this growing “outsourcer” market.

Once you find a Fiverr provider you like, simply send an email through Fiverr, or just pull the trigger based on their description and make a purchase for $5. The give-and-take and communication on Fiverr between The buyer and seller is very seamless and similar to any good transaction based site, so we never encountered a problem when ordering, adding extras to a gig, and finalizing the transaction. You can then offer “tips” if the project was good, and testimonials can also be left. In that sense, it’s not unlike an E-Bay environment: a shopping community with published results.

A few shopping tips: You can see all categories from “high scores” to “new” and you can see the number of gigs processed and the reviews and rankings just like on eBay, Elance or any number of internet sites where the services are offered. Go with the experience of the person and let your gut guide you. Ask questions through Fiverr to the seller and your shopping experience should be a good one.

Now, we want to emphasize one angle: there are network marketing services that are valuable and can be purchased on Fiverr. You can buy backlinks, you can have link wheels built, you can write blog content, you can have SEO keyword phrases researched, you can have video scripts built, you can make videos, in short, there is marketing in Valuable network “nuts and bolts” that you can buy from Fiverr members that can really help your network marketing business.

Just do your due diligence and shop smart. Ask questions and your experience will be positive.

“Away to the Great Plains of America, to that vast short-grass western prairie now mostly plowed! Away to the still empty land beyond the kiosks, malls, and velvet ropes of restaurants!”

Thus begins Great Plains, the 1989 survey of America’s heartland. That vast inland expanse of plains and prairies stretching from Canada in the north to the Texas Panhandle in the south. About 2,500 miles long and about 600 miles wide at its widest point, the Great Plains encompasses parts of the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, and parts of the US states of Montana, North, and South Dakota. Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas.

Part history, part travelogue, part sprawling road trip, Great Plains has the grandeur and expanse of the frontier itself in its concise 214 pages of main text, which is no small feat, let me tell you.

When he wrote this book, Ian Frazier had driven some 25,000 miles on the plains, from Montana to Texas and back. Twice. As well as many shorter distances. His wanderings took him from an abandoned anti-ballistic missile system command center in remote Montana to the exact spot where Bonny and Clyde plunged into the Red River; from the location of Sitting Bull’s camp at Grand River, to the site of Custer’s last stand at Little Big Horn; from Fort Union in North Dakota to Fort Stockton in Texas.

It is no coincidence that rivers appear so much in this book, even as peripheral ‘characters’. The Great Plains are sometimes so dry and arid that in the early years of exploration parts of it were known as the Great American Desert. It made sense for early settlers, like Native Americans, to build their forts and villages, their towns and cities along the banks of any river large enough to provide a source of vital food and water for the population.

It is also no coincidence that the story of the conflict between Native American Indians and settlers emerges on the Great Plains. Frazier gets to examine the slaughter of millions of bison, the betrayal and death of Crazy Horse, and meets and mixes with numerous descendants of the great warriors of the past as he traverses this vast space.

All the great characters are here; ranchers and homesteaders, highlanders and fur trappers, outlaws and gangsters, cowboys and Indians, railroad barons, oilmen, coal miners, and more. You get to meet the great and the low, the rich and the poor, German emigrants and former black slaves from the South, and the men and women who fought for generations (and still fight today) to make a living in the Great Plains.

Ian Frazier is clearly a man in love with the Great Plains, its history, and its huge cast of fabulous characters, both modern and ancient. As an introduction to this vast area of ​​land and open space, Great Plains is both entertaining and informative, packed with obscure and ultimately immensely readable information, facts, and historical references.

Finally, the book is well indexed, includes 16 pages of black and white photographs, and has almost 70 pages of extensive notes to supplement the main text. Highly recommended.

Combine the power of the Internet with the evolution of digital media, apply the principles of “social networking,” and you have the main ingredients for the recipe that is revolutionizing the way business is conducted today. All you have to do is look at the wildly successful companies that have been built on the social media platform (MySpace, Ecademy, Linked-In, Flickr, Facebook, etc.) or the unprecedented growth of the Blogosphere and you’ll quickly know it. will recognize. Social networks are here to stay.

While social media clearly allows large corporations to be more productive by extending their brand and having better communication throughout the entire value chain, it is its impact on small businesses that is perhaps most impressive. The ability of social media to level the playing field for the individual professional and small to medium business is truly amazing. It was the Internet that established the global economy, but it is social networks that are making it happen.

A bit of history… The term “social media” in its most classical sense is best defined as the study of how people interact with each other. Study the dynamics between nodes (people) and links (their relationships). Since the term was coined in 1954 by JA Barnes, its importance has leapt from the halls of academia to gain visibility in the boardrooms of global corporations. It has evolved from the study of human relations in sociological, anthropological and psychological settings to the study of professional relations and organizational theory in business settings.

When all the buzzwords and tech jargon are stripped away, social media is all about aligning interests and motivations to build influence. There are smart, well-established business people with virtually no networks and little real influence, and there are what on the surface appear to be shadowy individuals with huge networks who wield tremendous influence.

Social media analysis has shown that the greatest amount of power and influence within the corporation does not necessarily reside at the top of the organizational chart, as one might think. Studies have found that the people who have the most influence in a company are the most trusted people with the broadest base of connections, and not necessarily the person with the highest rank or the biggest title. Likewise, the same applies to external networks… It’s about quality (are the people in your network meaningful?), character (do the people in your network trust you and do you trust them? ) and the relevance (are the people in your network capable of exerting an influence that is aligned with your needs?) of the people in your network who matter.

The last and most important ingredient in building your network is that you must be a contributor… The old axioms “you will reap what you reap” or “give and you will receive” have never been truer than when applied to social media. If you are truly motivated to provide value and benefit to your network members, you will receive value in return. However, if you are a user and abuser of your network, only taking from others and giving nothing back, you will bleed your network dry only to see it crumble before your eyes.

With the right motivation, careful construction, and active management of your network, there’s no reason to assume you won’t be successful. Focus on leveraging the most important spheres of influence for the mutual benefit of your network members. By adopting the suggestions in this article, your network will grow geometrically as it spans industries, geographies, and cultures.