Two of the services we frequently use with our Clients are Idea Generation and Problem Solving. We approach both challenges with very different, process oriented methods but there is one thing that remains constant – Our ability to think laterally and come up with novel concepts by looking at situations in new and different ways. Many of our Clients are so deeply involved in an issue such as their daily business that they find it hard to change perspective and see things from an alternative angle. This is where we come in… we tend to see things that are ‘outside the box’.

Vertical thinking, also known as logical thinking, takes an idea and carries it forward. Lateral thinking, on the other hand, provokes fresh ideas and essentially changes the frame of reference in almost any situation. Vertical thinking tries to overcome problems by dealing with them head-on, lateral thinking attempts to bypass obstacles using a variety of different approaches.

In essence, Lateral thinking is a tool that helps us change our way of thinking about something often by modifying our perceptions.

With logical thinking you start out with certain given components and boundaries wrapped in a process. This is similar to the situation in chesswhere you start out with specific pieces and are expected to play by the rules. The issue is that in most real life situations, we can not use the chess model or logical thinking to solve problems because you don’t know what the pieces are, what they represent or how many pieces actually exist… knowing the rules is almost irrelevant to solving a problem or generating new ideas.

Throughout our lives we are handed several different rulebooks (cultural, social, business oriented etc). When we get these rulebooks we just assume that the components that the rulebooks refer to, simply exist and we tend to accept that certain boundaries and limitations are present because they were mentioned in the rulebook. Lateral thinking throws out the rules and assumptions as well as the boundaries and limitations so that we are free of our social, cultural, geographic and demographic bonds.

Lateral thinking focuses on changing some element to enable a new and fresh perspective of a given situation. Lateral thinking deals primarily with perception. By using lateral thinking techniques we can organize the external world into the pieces that we can then process. Perhaps more importantly, by observing lateral thinking in others we can generate new ideas and better understand how they perceive the world around them.

The brain is a self-organizing information system that forms asymmetric patterns. In such systems there is a mathematical need for moving across patterns. The tools and processes of lateral thinking are designed to achieve such lateral movement to accomplish a given result.

A famous person once said that you can’t dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper. Think about that for a moment… If you were driving in a car on the highway but your intended destination is behind you, driving faster while keeping the car on the same heading will not get you to your intended destination.

If you were to continue thinking about a problem or a solution in a given way, this may not be as useful as changing tact and trying something completely different. Additional effort in the same direction will not necessarily help you get the results you were after but applying some proven tools designed to turn the car around, may offer you options that you never knew existed. It’s a format of thinking ‘out of the box’ and our Clients believe that we are very good at it. It may be because we do it frequently.

If you have a challenging problem or need some new ideas, please, fill out our form and allow us to get in touch with you today.

As we sell more and more iPhone Apps, we collect more and more feedback from both our Customers and people who think that everything on the iPhone should be free. At first we were dismayed by the prospect that an entire generation of people (many iPhone users) actually paid for the mobile phone but now expect software developers to design, code, test and launch applications for free given the efforts involved, the costs for the hardware and the coding tools etc. We initially wondered how we could possibly make it happen. Could software be offered for free?

On a bustling corner of São Paulo’s quita district, street vendors pitch the latest “tecnobrega” CDs, including a few by a hot band called Banda Calypso. Like CDs from most street vendors, these did not come from a record label. But neither are they illicit. They came directly from the band. Calypso distributes masters of its CDs and CD liner art to street vendor networks in towns where they plan to tour, with full agreement that the vendors will copy the CDs, sell them, and keep all the money. That’s OK, because selling discs isn’t Calypso’s main source of income. The band is really in the performance business — and business is good. Traveling from town to town this way, preceded by a wave of supercheap CDs, Calypso has filled its shows and paid for a private jet. Not a bad way to offer free software we thought.

Back at ground zero, our developers were asking for their paychecks and our freelancers were requiring payment for Apps that had just been accepted for launch. We can’t blame them for wanting money after all, they need to eat too but, this same generation of gotta-haves want to get paid for their time and yet expect most things that they need to be free – someone is going to have to pay for all this free stuff if you read your college ECON 101 textbook it’s likely to define economics as “the social science of choice under scarcity.” The entire field is built on studying trade-offs and how they’re made. Milton Friedman himself reminded us time and time again that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch. But Friedman was wrong in two ways. First, a free lunch doesn’t necessarily mean the food is being given away or that you’ll pay for it later, it could just mean that someone else is picking up the tab. Money is not the only scarcity in the world today… the other items include time and reputation. if you build on reputation, you gain respect especially in the troughs of a given niche market. If you increase attention you can actually build a business as you convert from reputation to traffic and traffic as many of us in this digital age know, can be converted into cash. There is, presumably, a limited supply of reputation and attention in the world at any point in time. These are the new scarcities — and the world of free exists mostly to acquire these valuable assets for the sake of a business model to be identified later. This ‘free mentality’ shifts the economy from a focus on only that which can be quantified in Euros, Dollars and cents to a more realistic accounting of all the things we truly value today.

How a company presents an offer for a product today differs in many ways from the past in that the price of each individual component is often determined by using psychology, not cost. Your mobile phone company may not make money on your monthly minutes — it keeps that fee low because it knows that will be the first thing you will compare when picking a carrier — thus another component, your data volume and your monthly voicemail fee is pure profit to the carrier. So you see ads for free phones but I have yet to encounter free calling plans.

You get the pipes for free but the water passing through those pipes is expensive. So, what are we to do about our dilemma? Many of our target prospects want something for free and yet our developers need to eat. If we were to offer a free ‘lite’ version, then we would encounter higher dev costs and support costs but the idea has crossed our mind.

Wait, there is another way… How about building real value into your offering so that people won’t mind spending some spare change if an App helps them do something that they wanted to do before but were not able. If an App were to focus on leveraging those scarce resources that we listed a few paragraphs above such as helping a user to save time, gain respect or save money – the App would pay for itself and that, in essence, is currently our favorite model of ‘free’.

What makes a good name for a business? I mean, what’s really in a name? There has been much psychological research into the process of naming a company and even more investigation into names that helped propel a firm into the Fortune 500 stratosphere. In this article we are going to explore a few of the best methods known and outline the process we use for our Clients at the same time. Up to now, this was a highly confidential document kept in our vaults because we have used it in the past to create some very compelling brands for our Clients.

Generally speaking, there are four key similarities that winning brand names have in common. The number of syllables in the name, the visual appearance, the meaning or implied meaning of the word or phrase and the linguistic elements that make the name memorable and easy to speak when communicating it to others.

Let’s start with syllables – a good name should have an absolute maximum of 4 syllables in order to make it easy to remember and pronounce, examples here include APple, AMaZON, iPHONE, GOOgle, YAhoo SWISSair etc.

The next similarity all winning names have in common have to do with their visual appearance – for businesses where the name needs to be communicated primarily in writing, words which form visually interesting shapes help to anchor the success of the name. Examples that come to mind include: Google, Apple, Sony, Oracle, Levis.

Meaning – having words which have specific meaning, implied meaning, double meaning or evoke certain thoughts or emotions in a person are said to be powerful in generating a strong, memorable name for your company. This does not always need to be an obvious or business descriptive meaning but can be based around controversy; Virgin is a great example of this and so is Big Ass Fans and RedBull.

Lastly, let’s review the most complex of these similarities – linguistic elements such as plosives and fricatives. Plosives are sounds formed when airflow to the vocal tract is stopped. Words that use P, T and K are good examples. Fricative sibilants cause us to roll our tongue. Examples include ‘s’ and ‘z’. When words use both plosives and fricative consonants the word tends to have a stronger and more memorable impact on both the speaker and the listener. Examples include Prozac, Microsoft, Kodak and Pepsi.

So with a bit of the psychology presented, how do you create a really great brand name?

For folks with no time to spare and a dream of running an online businesses that have a flair for something different and exciting in the web 2.0 space, check out this site, it is loads of fun!

For those of you with your feet more solidly planted on the ground, there are a few ways forward. One is to use a dictionary, a search engine, a thesaurus and a healthy dose of imagination to brainstorm your way to the idea brand name… this is what most people do until they get a bit frustrated and basically run out of time or patience (whichever occurs first). At BoxOnline, we prefer a process oriented approach because it opens the team up to new trains of thought that allow participants to really think out of the box. The net result is a bigger list with much more diversity and a strong focus on the product, the Customers who will pay for the product and the industry in focus.

When the list has been prepared, our team of analysts use resources such as The National Business Register to check each idea against registered business names, domain names, limited companies and trademarks. There are other such resources as well and this is an important step prior to presenting executives with a list of viable candidates.

Many of our Clients claim that they don’t have the time or the money to invest in something like a name generation workshop. They believe that they can do it on their own and, to this we politely offer our best wishes because during the past 20 years we have held 400 name generation workshops and we deliver results for our Clients. In fact, we even guarantee our Clients that we will find a winning name that is still available for registration or we will refund your money… it’s that simple.

If the name of your business and the image it conveys to your Prospects and Customers is important to you, then let’s sit down to establish the strongest possible brand in a structured best practice workshop.

The process oriented approach to developing a brand name for your business takes a lot more time and effort that reviewing a word list or playing around with the dotomator but the results are usually very rewarding and lasting.

Are you ready to have a look behind the curtain?
The first step is gathering enough relevant information. Below are many of the questions we ask in our data gathering phase of the workshop. If the team, the timing and the element of creativity are all positive… we usually produce a list of 10 to 20 viable names which then need to be checked and cross checked to ensure that they are not yet trademarked or registered to another business before we begin exploring or confirming domain availability.

Name Development Process

Understanding Your Purpose and Your Product

The word “product” refers to whatever you are naming, whether it’s an object, a person, a company, a service, a piece of intellectual property, an event, or an abstract idea. Sometimes product and company will both be used to clarify the meaning.

“Customer” refers to whomever you want the name to attract.

Save every name you think of, regardless of quality. A poor name may become the kernel of an outstanding name.

Begin brainstorming the name itself.

Consider the four most important issues in creating a memorable name:
the purpose of the name
the nature of the product
the nature of the person you want to impress and
the impression you want to make.

Here’s the first set of questions to get you launched into our process approach:

How convinced are you that this project is worth the effort?
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What is the expected lifespan of the name, and what does this imply for the amount of time and money you should devote to it?
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What would you gain or lose by delaying the project; and how long might you delay it?
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What are your personal feelings about the project?
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If your feelings are less than enthusiastic: what is the reason, and what would it take to change your mind?
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What if you were to quit the project now?
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Who else is involved in the naming:
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Who else may be working on this name–or on other names for the same organization? How about pooling resources?
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Who will decide upon the name, and when?
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HOW will the decision be made? Do you still need to decide how to decide?
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How much research of reserved and registered names are you expected to do before submitting your recommendations?
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At this point, does everyone agree on the importance, the required resources, the division of labor, and the final deadline?
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If not: what are the differences? How should they be resolved?
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IF YOU ARE CHANGING A NAME: [Consider the next 13 questions. Otherwise skip to "DEFINING THE PURPOSE OF THE NAME."]

Why was the current name selected? (What impression was the name supposed to convey? Was the selection arbitrary or political?)
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What are your reasons for changing the name?
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How sure are you that a change is justified?
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Could it be that a winning name has simply become boring to people within the organization?
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What are the dangers of weakening the market position held by the current name?
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What if you change a component of the marketing formula OTHER THAN the name?
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redesign the package–size, shape, material, graphics
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target to a different customer
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change the method of distribution
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What if you REVITALIZE the name, rather than risk losing what it has gained?
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modernize the visual image of the name and the logo
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modernize the sound of the name or the sounds associated with it
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update the people/things/activities associated with the name
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DEFINING THE PURPOSE OF THE NAME:

Are you seeking a name with local appeal, regional appeal, national appeal, international appeal, or a combination of these?
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As part of your total marketing effort, what do you want the name to DO?
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help position a new product in people’s minds
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help position a new company in people’s minds
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help position a new company along with its primary product
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help revitalize/reposition a mature or lagging product
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help revitalize/reposition a mature or lagging company
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help overcome a damaged reputation
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help entice people to attend an event
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What type of person do you want the name to impress or attract?
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What thought have you given to the FIRST IMPRESSION you want the name to make? (What do you think it should immediately imply or immediately bring to mind?)
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What thought have you given to the TYPE of brand name/trade name/service mark you’re seeking?
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coined, arbitrary, fanciful: Bic, Kodak, Pringles, Tic Tac
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coined, suggestive: Cheerios, Crayola, Jif, Kleenex, Polaroid, Purex, Rice-A-Roni, Ziploc
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real, arbitrary, fanciful: Birds Eye, Carnation, Corvette
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real, suggestive: Airstream, Bronco, Budget Gourmet, Grape Nuts, Janitor in a Drum, Midas, Safeway, Tiger Paw
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real, descriptive: Jiffy Lube, Murphy’s Oil Soap, Tender Vittles
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If this is a technical product for a scientific/technical market: what if you choose a friendly, nontechnical name?
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If you’re positioning a company along with its primary product: should their names be similar? Which one should you focus on now?
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If the product creates a new product category: should you concentrate first on a name for the category, or first on a name for the product?
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If this is one item in a product line: what thought have you given to creating, maintaining, or preventing similarity among names?
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UNDERSTANDING THE PRODUCT:

What is the CORE IDEA behind the product you are naming? (What is the customer to expect from the product? What is the promise? What miracle does the product perform?)
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Which words that pinpoint the CORE IDEA offer clues for a name?
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What total package of benefits does the user of the product receive?
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What does the product help a person save, gain, improve, achieve, or enjoy?
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What new or different expression of the good life does it provide?
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What fear does the product reduce?
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What loss does the product prevent?
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What is the ONE KEY BENEFIT, and how might it be expressed in the name?
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What are you really selling? (For example: soap, or cleaning power? Fax machines, or speed of information?)
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What important problem or difficulty does the customer often face, for which this product would be a help or solution?
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What name might suggest an answer for the problem?
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What is most interesting about the USE of this product? Imagine the name expressing:
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what the product is doing; the reason it’s being used
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the unique way it’s being used
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the special time when it’s being used
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the important place where it’s being used
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something else the person can do while using it
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What desirable aspect of product DESIGN might be reflected in the name?
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convenience, accessibility, maneuverability, ease of operation
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durability, longevity, reliability, repairability
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elegance, beauty, grace, color, style
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practicality, comfort, economy
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shape, size, weight, portability
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speed, power, strength
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versatility, adaptability, flexibility
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association with an historical period or with the future
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association with a country/continent/geographic area
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association with a particular group of people
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What distinct or unusual SENSORY PERCEPTION is associated with the product? Is it so essential that it warrants expression in the name?
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What sight, sound, taste/flavor, odor, or texture?
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When the product is handled or experienced, what “feel” does it have, and how might you convey this feeling in a name? (such as well balanced, delicate, sturdy, snappy, smooth, responsive)
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What other intangibles are associated with this product or with this KIND of product? Is one of them strong enough to center your thoughts about a name?
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fantasy, whimsy, escape from the ordinary
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friendship, love, romance
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insight, understanding, higher awareness
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joy, fun, happiness, cheer
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loyalty, devotion, admiration, respect
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progress, improvement
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quality, rarity, excellence
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safety, protection
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status, prestige, success
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thrills, excitement, adventure
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trendiness, timeliness, agelessness
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What ACTIVITY is synonymous with this product? What images do you associate with the activity?
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What MOTION or RHYTHM is peculiar to this product, and what does it suggest for an attention-getting name?
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For varieties of movements, see the IdeaBank Topical Category called action/motion/movement/rhythm.
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What CHANGE or EFFECT does the product bring about? How might the name of the product point to this desired result? (as in Downy fabric softener and Perma Soft shampoo)
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What special effect does the product have on people?
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Does the product decrease, minimize, or eliminate something?
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Does it increase, expand, maximize?
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Does it attract or bring together?
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Does it energize, invigorate, activate, embolden?
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Does it promote, enable, empower?
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Does it save, keep, preserve?
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Does it strengthen, fortify, reinforce?
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Does it serve as a catalyst to transform or convert something into something else?
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Does it transform itself? Does it create something new?
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What value does this product add to an existing product or service?
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What if the name communicated the value added?
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Because you want your customer to think “this is my kind of product,” what words could you use as metaphors of its character?
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aggressive, competitive, fierce, intense
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calm, tranquil, serene
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cheerful, cheery, optimistic
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capable, competent, qualified, skillful, proficient
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charismatic, persuasive, irresistible, compelling
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comical, funny, witty, clever, entertaining
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friendly, kindly, comforting, likable, tactful, loving, helpful
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honest, genuine, dependable, predictable, trustworthy
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smart, bright, intelligent, brilliant, knowing, wise
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smooth, sophisticated, suave, urbane, first-class
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splendid, incomparable, peerless, superb
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strong, confident, forceful, persistent
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If the product could talk: what words would it use to describe itself? How would it describe its own identity?
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Imagine listening to what the product is trying to tell you. What is it saying about the name it would like to have?
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DISTILLING YOUR MESSAGE:

To summarize your analysis: what position do you want this product to occupy in the customer’s mind? (Where, in people’s thoughts about the product category, do you want THIS PRODUCT to be?)
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To achieve this position, which focus should your message take?
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suggest what the product is or does
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suggest the main benefit of using the product
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suggest both its purpose and its main benefit
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If you’ve not yet distilled the essence of the name: should you try harder, or should you consider an ARBITRARY name?
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If you do select an arbitrary name: should it be coined, or should it be a real word? Does that matter?
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Should it be fanciful? Or suggestive of the product?
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What should be the TONE, including the SOUND, of the name? (What would be inviting? What tone would be in tune with the customer?)
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assertive, forceful, commanding, take-charge, leader-like
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brilliant, sparkling, twinkly, shiny, bright
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chic, sophisticated, subtle, elegant, honeyed, moneyed, smooth
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classic, ageless, timeless, eternal
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exquisite, lovely, beauteous, handsome, rare
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intelligent, intellectual, educated
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flamboyant, reckless, creative, risk-taking
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futuristic, modern, forward-looking
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helpful, cooperative, sympathetic, soothing, gentle
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macho, competitive, military, rugged, burly, bullish
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mysterious, intriguing
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nostalgic, sentimental, hearkening to the past
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outdoorsy, woodsy, nautical, environmental
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patriotic, nationalistic
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powerful, potent, lusty, healthy, robust
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practical, reasonable, no-nonsense, businesslike
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quick, crisp
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romantic, flirtatious, passionate, risque
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scientific, technical. high-tech
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warm, homey, comfortable, steady, down to earth, protective
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whimsical, light, flighty, humorous, merry, happy, joking, jolly
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young, trendy, upbeat, vibrant, energetic
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zippy, zingy, tangy, hot
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SUMMARY:
You have now addressed the basic issues in naming:
the purpose of the name
the nature of the product
the nature of the person you want to reach and
the impression you want to make

The next step would be either continue brainstorming with
questions about the Customer – Competition – Market or
use questions from our Name Generation Techniques.

If you still need a good name for your product, please do get in touch with us and let us know how we might be able to help?

A growing number of people around the world claim to be “electrosensitive”, in other words physically responsive to the electromagnetic fields that surround electronic devices such as mobile phones. In fact, Sweden has recently recognized such sensitivity as a disability, and will pay for the dwellings of sufferers to be screened from the world’s electronic smog.

This is a superb example of a knee jerk reaction rather than the result of an effective problem solving process. It is unfortunate that the kind and caring politicians who sponsored the subsidy in Sweden preferred to throw money at the unknown cause rather than actually investigate it and apply some form of process to identify the most probable cause for the sensitivity.

The issue is that, time and again, studies of those claiming to be electrosensitive show their ability to determine whether they are being exposed to a real electric field or a fake one is no better than chance. So, unless these sensitive people are lying about their symptoms, the most probable cause for the symptoms must be sought elsewhere.

In Germany at the University of Regensburg, Michael Landgrebe and Ulrich Frick think that the “elsewhere” in question is in the brain and in a paper presented recently to the Royal Society in London, they describe an experiment which, they think, proves their point.

Dr Landgrebe and Dr Frick used a body scanner called a functional magnetic-resonance imager to see how people’s brains react to two different kinds of stimulus. Thirty participants, half of whom described themselves as electrosensitive, were put in the imager and told that they would undergo a series of trials in which they would be exposed either to an active mobile phone or to a heating device called a thermode, whose temperature would be varied between the trials. The thermode was real. The mobile phone, however, was not.

The type of stimulus, be it the authentic heat source or the fake electromagnetic radiation, was announced before each exposure and the volunteers were asked to rate its unpleasantness on a five-point scale. In the case of heat, the two groups’ descriptions of their experiences were comparable. So, too, was their brain activity. However, when it came to the fake phone exposure, only the electrosensitives described sensations such as prickling and even pain. Moreover, they showed neural activity to support these perceived sensations. Some of the same bits of their brains lit up as when they were exposed to high temperatures.

This suggests that electrosensitivity, rather than being a response to electromagnetic stimulus, is akin to well-known psychosomatic disorders such as some sorts of tinnitus and chronic pain. A psychosomatic disorder is one in which the symptoms are real, but are induced by cognitive functions such as attitudes, beliefs and expectations rather than by direct external stimuli.

The paradoxical upshot of Dr Landgrebe’s and Dr Frick’s experiment is that mobile phones do indeed inflict real suffering on some unfortunate individuals. It is just that the electromagnetic radiation they emit has nothing whatsoever to do with it.

If you have a situation where actual results deviate from your expectations and the cause is not known… please do us all a favor and either apply our Problem Solving Methodology directly or contact us to do it for you.

Most of us go through the process of performance reviews each year and this year I thought I’d try to share a few tips on making them more effective for all.

To start with, think about the following:
1. Journal your thoughts
Dedicate 4 pages for every member of your staff. Throughout the year note specific points on achievements, failures, Client feedback, project involvement and results, behavior within the team etc. I love to use a mind map for this sort of thing. So, if Autumn is the season for performance reviews, all you will need to do is whip out your mind map and create a summary for the discussion.

2. SWOT Analysis
This has always been a favorite tool for me. It is really nothing new but it sure is efficient. I typically use page 2 of the employee’s section in my journal to jot down the person’s strengths and weaknesses as they unfold during the year. Then I add to that the opportunities both inside and outside the firm in addition to the threats that I perceive relevant to this team member. I do the same SWOT for the firm as it applies to this employee such as the threat of losing this person to the competition or the opportunity to promote this person to run a new project should we land the big deal next quarter. It is very helpful in keeping my thoughts clear when decision time is upon us managers.

3. Review the Mantra and if you don’t have one… the mission statement will do. This element of the review relates performance to our company’s goals and with our company culture. One thing that I do is compare an employee’s performance with our mantra… Have they helped us to live up to our goals? How can they improve or do the goals need some adjusting? This is what I reserve page 3 of the journal for.

4. Management principles
I am asked once in a while to review a company’s management principles and rate management’s performance against these principles. This is such a ridiculous task since most managers have not memorized the principles and are expected to follow them. The real joke is that the principles are usually very honorable and inspiring but rarely if ever adhered to in the real workplace. These docs are handed to me with pride, but few managers are able to provide concrete examples of how they live up to such ideals in their daily business. How sad is that? My 2 cents… drop the ideals and get a grip on reality. Either write something that your people will use as helpful guidelines or simply stick to the mantra. End of story.

5. Client feedback
Each employee should have a folder or binder containing feedback from Clients. It serves as a reminder of good performance, gratitude and it inspires your people to keep over-delivering. I too keep a list on page 4 in my journal of every instance (that I am aware of) where Clients have provided me with feedback on my employee’s performance and whether it was positive, negative or neutral in each case. I can highly recommend this as it is usually a very real reminder of things that went right during the past year.

Since I have suffered through several ridiculous performance reviews in the past using standardized forms and the happy face vs sad face methodology which inevitably lead to more smiley faces than you can shake a stick at, I decided to ban such nonsense and get on with pissing people off when they need to hear the truth and delighting others when they over deliver and make my Clients happy – I don’t wait until the annual review, I offer my feedback on a job well done immediately.. OK, I am the first to admit… I offer my 2 cents when something goes wrong as well. After all, my goal is to over deliver and thus delight my Clients so that I can live by our mantra and help you to succeed.

This is the first of a series of posts we are going to publish on state of the art search engine optimization techniques to help you rank your site organically in the top search engines as high as possible for your top keyword phrases.

There are two main areas that search engines consider when they’re deciding how to rank your page and the first is what you publish on your page and how relevant that is to what people are actually searching for. We call these on-page elements. The good news is that you can optimize on-page elements easily. All you need to do is edit the text on your website.

The second thing the search engines look at is how popular your site is on the internet.

• How many other sites are linking to you?
• Do you have important authority sites linking to you?
• What text do such sites use to link to your site?

These are called off-page elements and we will address them in the next post on this topic.

On-page elements are important in determining your rankings but off-page elements are even more important. You’re unlikely to get to the #1 spot in Google, MSN or Yahoo purely because of your on-page elements, but they could mean the difference between being on page 3 or page 1 – So be sure to read Lesson 2 in this series for some off-page tips.

Here are a few critical on-page elements that you need to optimize in order to get reasonable organic listings for your keyword phrases.

Ensure that your <title> tags include the keyword phrase that you are optimizing for.

<title></title> tags indicate the title of your web page and gives the search engines a strong clue as to what a specific web page is about. This text appears on the very top of your browser window when you are on a given web page and this very same text is what the search engines will display in their organic listings as the clickable text link to your site. So, it’s really important that your <title> tags contain the keywords that you’re optimizing that particular page for.

For example:

If you  wrote an article about how to read text faster, then the title of the page could be:

How to read text faster | Read Text Faster.

notice that I used the separator ‘|’ to boost the importance of my keywords for this page: this is an easy and natural way of doing it. You can use another separator if you wish, the idea is to present your keywords clearly for both users and search engine consumption.

Ensure that your <h1> tags include the keyword phrase that you are optimizing for.

Search engines read H1 tags first to find out what your page is about like headlines in a newspaper. If the search engine spiders discover your most important keywords in your <h1> tags, your page will be seen as more relevant for that search term and you will rank higher.

In your first 50 words of text be sure to include your keyword phrase.

Many search engines pay more attention to the first 50 words on a page than to the rest of the content on that page so be sure to include your keywords at least once within the first 50 words for each page you publish.

Keyword density: at least once in every 100 words of text on your page, incorporate your keywords and keyword phrases.

Your keywords need to appear a few times on your page integrated into the text but not more than 4 times for every 100 words. This is also known as 4% keyword density. If you go any higher than 4%, your site may be penalized for using a spam tactic.

Your internal site links need to include your keywords.

Search engines use the words in your link text (otherwise known as “anchor text”) to estimate the nature of the page you’re linking to. This can be used to your advantage in your on-page SEO efforts, giving your pages a little boost for your keywords.

We have many Clients who struggle to rank well in the search engines until they understand the importance of this tactic. Prior to working with us, they insisted on having a link on their site called ‘Home’. These people are actually optimizing their home page for the word “home” when they should be optimizing it for their main keyword instead! If they were to change the text “home” to “Read Faster Home”, or “Improve Reading Comprehension home”, they would give themselves a boost for “read faster” or “improve comprehension”. If your keyword for a page is “optimize your website”, then link to it from your menu using the text “optimize your website”, or “How to optimize your website”.

The same goes for all pages on your site. Don’t ever link to a page on your site using “Click here” unless you’d like to rank well for the phrase “click here”.

Original content means that visitors will spend more time on your site.

The search engines don’t want to display twenty sites with the same content. It doesn’t provide a good experience for their users. So you’ll find that many search engines have implemented “duplicate content penalties” for sites that seem to be displaying content very similar to content found on other website(s).

So what do you do if your content is the same as someone else’s?

This happens quite often, particularly if you’re using content from private label rights (PLR) articles, where hundreds of other people might be doing the same thing. The trick is to reword the article to make it unique. Shuffle the paragraphs, use synonyms, and try to change the article by at least 50%, and preferably more to be on the safe side.

Get the best quality content that you can for your site, because the search engines will also pay attention to how long people spend reading your pages. The longer visitors stay on your pages, the more relevant your site appears to the search engines for the keywords you have optimzed the page for. If visitors leave your site within a few seconds, the search engines may interpret this action as a poor fit for your keyword phrases. So try to write text that your visitors would be interested in and thus, try to increase the amount of time visitors spend on your site.

People today, overuse and misuse the word ‘problem’ and it is becoming an issue for me because, here at BoxOnline, our consultants use a special tool to solve problems and this tool is very effective – but only when you actually have a real, genuine problem. This is kind of like reaching for the screwdriver when you know that you need to tighten (or loosen) a screw. At the same time, you know from experience that a screwdriver is not very helpful when it comes to tightening or loosening bolts.

So, when a Client tells us that they have a problem, we get all excited because we are trained and experienced problem solvers. The thing is, most people claim to have a problem when what they really mean is that they have an issue or a situation instead. So, what exactly is a problem?

A problem can be defined as a situation where you have all 3 of the following circumstances simultaneously:
1) You have a deviation from norm.
2) You do not know the cause of the deviation.
3) You must know the cause of the deviation in order to continue

Let’s clarify the above a bit better. When there is a deviation from norm, something unexpected occurred and when you do not know why this something occurred, it is likely that you do not know the most probable cause for the deviation.

If your project is not able to continue after the unexpected thing occurred then you need to repair the damage. The best way to repair something is to know what broke. Thus, if you do not know the cause for an unexpected deviation and you cannot move forward, you have a problem. Most people (especially those with lots of experience) attack each problem with guesses as to the most probable cause (MPC). There are two issues with guessing:
a) it is hit or miss
b) you can’t pass your lucky guess on to others so that they could solve their problems in a similar manner

The good news is that problem solving is not rocket science. The method that we use was designed and layer out by Kepner Tregoe back in the 1950s to provide NASA with a powerful tool for solving real problems in space. This problem solving tool is one of the reasons that Apollo 13 was able to make it back to earth despite multiple systems failures. The process works.

We can apply our problem solving process to your problem and help you get to the bottom of it without guessing. If you have a problem and would like to see this process in action, one of our consultants would be delighted to help you so please feel free to contact us and let us know when you’d like to schedule a problem solving session.

If one or two of the three circumstances described above do not apply to your situation – YOU DO NOT HAVE AN ACTUAL PROBLEM. You have something else!

Analogy: You look at a board in the floor and spot a metal nail sticking out. You don’t want someone to trip over the nail or to cut their foot so you go get a tool to put the nail back where it belongs. Do you select a hammer or a screwdriver?

That’s right, as soon as we have labeled a given situation “a problem”, we can reach for the appropriate tool to help identify what the most probable cause is or was. Then the cause can be dealt with and your project can move forward again. Any questions?

Our consultants have been using this tool successfully for more than a decade. That’s the thing about good process, it never gets old.

The most obvious reason for putting together a business case is to justify the resources and capital investment necessary to bring a change project to fruition. This may imply that a business case is simply a financial document but please don’t be mislead – business cases need to include financial justification but more importantly, they need to link all of the relevant facts in a cohesive story outlining the what, when, where, how and why for investing resources into a project. The purpose of a business case is to capture the reasoning for initiating a project or task. It is often presented in a well-structured, written document but may also come in the form of verbal argumentation. The logic of the business case is that when resources such as money or effort are consumed; they should support the business. Upgrading a given piece of kit (hardware, software etc) to improve system performance is a good example because the “business case” is that better performance would improve customer satisfaction.

Essential elements of a business case include:

• Reasons why the project is necessary.
• How the project or results generated by the project will solve given issues or capitalize on specific opportunities facing the organization.
• Focus: Exactly what ‘problem’ or ‘issue’ does the project address or solve?
• What is/are the recommended solution(s)?
• What are the benefits to the business?
• What will happen to the business if the project is not undertaken?
• Timing: When will the solutions be deployed?
• Resources such as money, people, and time needed to deliver the solution and realize the benefits?

The Business Case Process should ensure that:

• The required issues and concerns have been thoroughly considered and documented
• Both the value and risks inherent in the proposed project are clear
• The project is sponsored by, and has the commitment of an executive with the capability and authority to deliver the benefits
• The delivery of the outcomes and benefits can be tracked and measured.

Your Business Case should contain some or all of the following information types (depending on the size, timing, scale and availability of information):

• Reference; project name/reference, origins/background/current state
• Context; business objectives/opportunities, business strategic alignment (priority)
• Value Proposition; desired business outcome(s), outcome roadmap, business benefits (by outcome), quantified benefits value, costs/ROI financial scenarios, risks/costs of not proceeding, project risks (to project, benefits and business)
• Focus; problem/solution scope, assumptions/constraints, options identified/evaluated, size, scale and complexity assessment
• Deliverables; outcomes, deliverables and benefits planned, organizational areas impacted (internally and externally), key stakeholders, dependencies
• Workload; approach, phase/stage definitions (project (change) activities, technical delivery activities, workload estimate/breakdown, project plan and schedule, critical path)
• Required resources; project leadership team, project governance team, team resources, funding
• Commitments (required); project controls, reporting processes, deliverables schedule, financial budget/schedule

While one of your primary goals may be to get funding, your chances of success will be greater if you keep the following goals in mind as well:

• Make it interesting; remember someone will need to read it.
• Keep it clear and concise.
• Minimize jargon and conjecture.
• Provide the reader with a clear vision of the end state.
• Communicate all facts as part of the overall story – if you’ve done your homework, here is the chance to prove it.
• Demonstrate the value the project brings to the organization, Customer(s) and financial bottom line of the company.

After preparing your business case you and your team will likely experience some positive side effects including:

• CLARITY: Organization of thoughts, activities and knowledge
• REALITY CHECK: An objective review of the ideas and facts related to the project
• STRENGTH: The ability to identify holes, inconsistencies or weaknesses in the effort
• ELEVATOR PITCH: An improved ability to communicate the purpose of the project
• ROI: Financial justification for the effort

Below we offer an outline that includes many of the above recommendations. Remember that your business case should describe to the reader the problem or opportunity that exists. Then, the business case should describe how the problem will be solved or the opportunity exploited. The outline presented below shows you how to effectively tell the entire story of your project and concludes by demonstrating the expected ROI and financial impact you expect to achieve.

Executive summary:
Pretend that you have two minutes to tell someone about the project and justify your requests for resources and funding.

Each paragraph in the executive summary should succinctly convey vital information about the project, and communicate the story to the reader. The information in each section of the executive summary is typically extracted from the detailed sections of the business case. We recommend creating the executive summary after you have completed the rest of the sections.

Current state assessment and problem statement:
The situational assessment or current state assessment refers to the details regarding the problem or opportunities facing the organization. It is a statement about what is happening in the organization today. Most projects are started by the original project stakeholder or champion because something is wrong, or a major opportunity is being missed. Every project usually has one or two key themes related to issues or opportunities. In one paragraph or less, clearly state the specific business problem.

Project Overview:
The project description section introduces your reader to the details of the project. This section should give your stakeholders confidence that your team will professionally, efficiently and aggressively seek the best processes, systems, and organizational elements to enable your company to overcome the issues presented above. There are two main components of the project overview section:

• description and scope
• objectives

Use a maximum of nine bullet points to state what the proposed solution is expected to accomplish. Some examples may include purchasing hardware and software or selecting a new vendor.

Solution Overview:
Summarize the solution that your team recommends to address the issues and opportunities presented in the current state assessment. Be sure to cover the following topics:

• Current Process and ‘fit’ into the big picture
• Requirements
• Alternatives
• Compare Alternatives
• Additional Considerations
• Action Plan

Current process: Identify the organizational processes that the proposed solution will likely affect, including the departments within your organization, relationships with Clients, external partners, and the competition.

Requirements: List the resources needed to complete the project, such as staff, hardware, software, print materials, time, budget, and so forth.

Alternatives. Outline at least three other options to implementing the proposed solution. Be sure to include basic requirements and an estimation of project risks for each, ramp-up time, training costs, and potential project delays.

Compare alternatives. Compare and contrast each of the alternatives with the proposed solution and the other alternatives. State similarities and differences, benefits and detriments, and costs associated with each option. Basically, answer the question: “What is the cost to get to the future state, and is it worth it?”

Additional considerations. List critical success factors other than ROI metrics; for example, affects on partnership agreements with specific vendors or the potential need for help desk or Customer support.

Action plan. Now that management understands the solution and the financial return that will be realized from implementing the solution, they will want confirmation that the solution can actually be implemented. Propose specific action steps. State your short-term (first three months) and long-term (three months to conclusion) action plans, including major milestones. This section will reassure management that your team has carefully and professionally considered all major issues of the implementation. A number of major elements are important to successful implementation. Your implementation section should address each area.

• Implementation components
• Implementation timeline
• Major milestones
• Major dependencies

Critical assumptions and risk assessment:
Most business improvement projects will make assumptions in order to develop the solution. It is vital that the business case documents these assumptions. You should test your assumptions with project stakeholders and operational managers prior to placing them in the business case. The statement of assumptions should be followed by an impartial discussion of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) that are associated with the recommended solution. It is also important that the business case discuss the risks associated with both implementing and not implementing a solution, the seriousness of the apparent risk should it occur and the probability of the risk occurring.

Conclusions and recommendations:
This section closes out the business case. It should reiterate the key themes that caused the project to be undertaken. It should restate the solution in at a high-level. It should identify the return on investment and the overall benefits of the solution. It should restate the risks of doing nothing and re-convey a sense of urgency. Finally this section should state the conclusions the reader should draw from the business case, and your recommendations for next steps.

To build a successful team is not a magical secret nor is it an exact science but to increase your probability of success, we have collected a few suggestions from our Clients whose teams outperform their competition year after year.

Firstly, the interview…
We could dedicate an entire blog to the art of the interview so rather than delve into this topic today, we will post articles on successful interviewing techniques, top 10 questions to ask and what to look for during and immediately after the interview process. Suffice it to say that the interview is where both parties (the employer and the prospective employee) get to strut their stuff and present themselves in a positive light creating feelings of desire in a similar method to some dating rituals we witness in the western world. Should a candidate actually receive and accept a job offer, the trial period begins and this is the focus of our article today.

There are several reasons for the trial period and one of them is that it gives each party an opportunity to walk the walk – can the employee actually deliver what they claimed to be capable of delivering during the interview process? Successful companies with successful teams require existing employees to accept some HR related tasks in their workload and one of these tasks is the process of inducting new hires into the complexities of existing business processes and offering them some form of introduction to the company culture at the same time. In the top performing companies, such an induction involves up to 10 employees for each new hire with two distinct outcomes; one is to have 10 different people assess the new person over a period of 3 months and the other is to offer the new hire the opportunity to bond with a few existing employees or even model someone that has achieved the recognition or status that the new employee aspires to attain.

Many companies have decided that a one month trial period is sufficient and I argue against that view based again on the dating game analogy. It takes months to get to know someone well enough to be able to assess their performance and come to a conclusion if this person adds value to the team or not. The most successful method that we have seen in the trial period phase of assessing new employees and determining if the fit works is a review 2 to 4 weeks after the new employee starts work. Questions such as How do you feel when you’re at work? Is something missing that we can provide to help you get the job done? What might we have promised you, but haven’t yet delivered? Do you look forward to coming to work each morning? What could we improve regarding teamwork? How do we compare to other employers? etc etc etc…

The answers to these sort of questions help to remove potential road blocks that could derail an employees good intentions and positive moral so you want to ensure that the communication channels are left open and that there is a healthy dialog between the new employee, management and the existing staff. At the same time, it is often valuable to gather feedback from the entire team involved with the introduction of the new employee to collect their opinions and ensure that everyone has what they need to get the job done effectively. After all, a business oriented team is like a football team in that the players have one major goal in common and they all need to pull together to score. The issue with many new hires in companies today is that often their input is ignored during the trial period and thus the new employee learns to play ping-pong rather than football. Incidentally, the game of ping-pong relates to the process of throwing a business issue back and forth between employees rather than gathering forward momentum and getting a job done. Several of our Client’s employees decided that ping-pong was their game of choice especially when it came to Customer service and this is one of the reasons that we were hired to restructure the organization and build a strong football team.

Would you like more information on how we might be able to build a football team for you? Please tell us about your current situation and your objectives – we would be honored to help you to score the next goal.

A few years ago an engineer I know retired after 30 years of loyal service for his employer, a large industrial company in Switzerland. After weeks of attempting to solve a problem with one of their largest and most productive machines, the company decided to bring in this retired engineer to try to solve the problem. After all, he was the best problem solver the company ever had. The engineer accepted the challenge and spent a day analyzing the large piece of equipment before making an X with his black pen on one specific component of the machine’s electronics. “Replace the component with the X on it and your problems are over” said the engineer. The part was replaced and sure enough, the machine roared to life and within hours was back up to full capacity. A few days later the company received a bill from the engineer for 50,000 CHF for his consulting services. The company demanded a detailed report to justify the high cost and the engineer replied immediately with the following:
A single identification marking with black pen: CHF 1.00
Knowing exactly which component to replace: CHF 49,999.00
The problem solving engineer received full payment for his services within the month and is still comfortably retired.

A more believable story comes to us from a lady in New Jersey who says that she got a plumbers bill for $1000.00 and can’t believe it since the plumber was in her cellar for less than 5 minutes. I know this lady, so I asked her to get the plumber to present a detailed invoice. Here is what he sent her the very next day:
Dear Mrs. Smith,
Despite the fact that it was past midnight when you called me to put a stop to the loud noises in your basement, I will not charge you for interrupting my beauty rest. Here is my detailed invoice for the services performed at your home two days ago.
1. Use of hammer $0.99
2. Knowing exactly which part of the boiler to hit $999.00
Total Cost for this service call $999.99

Thanks for your business.

There was no argument – the plumber knew what he was doing and this bill was paid that same week.

Let’s look at the above from a different perspective, If you need experience something that you did not expect to experience… perhaps something with a negative outcome… and you do not know the most probable cause… and you have to solve this problem… Then call a professional. At BoxOnline, we provide our Clients with professional problem solving process in addition to experienced professionals in a variety of industries. If you have a problem that needs a solution, contact us today.