Facebook became the most popular web site in the USA

Facebook is the most popular Internet site in the USA. According to analytical company Hitwise, the traffic on Facebook is equivalent to 7,07% from the general number of open web pages. One year ago given indicator Facebook was equaled 2,5%.

On 2nd place Google — 7,03%. Google for the first time has conceded the first place in the list of popular web sites (since September, 15th, 2007). Then Google has bypassed other popular social webhosting — MySpace.

Facebook is the truly largest social network in the world. The portal audience makes more than 400 million persons. Under the informal information, in the 2009 Facebook has earned about 700 million dollars.

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Profile of a Marketing Champion: Unilever's Silvia Lagnado

Silvia Lagnado, new group vice-president at London-based Unilever, embodies marketing championship—in particular, the ability to "span silos" by building bridges between marketing and her company's many other functions to generate cash flow. She heads a team devoted to "brand development," including conceptualizing new products and creating advertisements, packaging, and marketing strategies.

In her daily operations, she interacts with Unilever's finance, supply chain, research and development, and human resources departments. She also collaborates extensively with the many far-flung brand-building teams of salespeople and marketers operating around the world to bring the division's offerings to market.

Silvia says the most effective way to "market marketing" in an organization is to make it very personal for staff in other key positions. She advises: "Have people think about which brands they themselves really respect and which products they love—then ask them what has made them think and feel that way. They will likely discover that a marketer's efforts are behind their feelings of respect and love."

What follows is part of an interview I conducted with her to learn what makes her a Marketing Champion.

* * *

Roy Young: Tell me a bit about your background. Did you come up through the typical marketing ranks? Or was your path to where you are now more diverse?

Silvia Lagnado: I joined Unilever in 1986, in Brazil, after getting a degree in civil engineering. But I've always worked in marketing and brand development, and the work has taken me all over the world—Brazil, the United Kingdom, Argentina, and the United States.


RY: In your view, what skills have been most important to your ability to succeed on the job?

SL: I'd say it's hard work, the ability to combine strong analytical skills with intuition, the courage to take risks, integrity, and the ambition to do good work.

RY: Of all the groups with whom you and your team interact, which relationships are the most likely to experience some tension?

SL: My team's relationship with the brand-building groups is most likely to experience some tensions and complications. The brand builders are under enormous pressure to deliver our products to market every day, to both distributors and consumers. They need product mixes on time and in full from my team. If we don't have a good relationship with them, they may start perceiving us as uncommitted to the work.

RY: What steps do you take to construct a bridge between your team and the brand builders?

SL: I've found that aligning both sides behind a compelling vision is crucial. If we can both get emotionally attached to the vision—and agree on where we want to take our brands, why this is an exciting space, and how we plan to succeed there—each group can look beyond its own pressures to the more important, higher-level goals.

RY: In your division, are you the person who articulates that vision and strategy? If so, how?

SL: It's a bit of an art rather than a science. But to me, a good vision needs three elements: It has what I call a spiritual component; it taps into our desire to do something good for society. It has an emotional component; it makes people feel eager to be working together. And it has an intellectual or rational component; it communicates a clear marketing strategy—the set of steps we need to take to get the product to market.

In crafting our vision for a product, my team often talks with sociologists, anthropologists, and other academics about how our product could serve a real need in society.

RY: Can you give me an example of a vision that helped you create a bridge to the brand-building teams?

SL: When I ran the Dove brand for Unilever, we developed a vision that had to do with helping women feel beautiful. Core to our vision was widening the definition of feminine beauty and challenging stereotypes about what beauty looks like. We wanted to position the Dove brand as a way to help women feel greater self-esteem and appreciate the diversity of beauty. We spent a lot of time and effort on research and on talking with sociologists about girls' and women's body image.

It takes work, but you can't give up until you have the vision and until it means something personal to each person who hears it.

RY: How do you know when you've crafted a compelling vision?

SL: You know it when you've hit it just right: People clap when you present it to them at a conference or in a meeting. They get what it's about, and they feel excited by it. They want to work with you to make it real.

But it's not enough to craft the vision and communicate it just once. I also develop internal-communication strategies to deliver the vision to the brand-building teams as often as possible. We use all kinds of internal-communication tools—conferences several times a year and in many countries, webcasts, video conferencing—whatever it takes to communicate regularly with the brand builders about our vision and strategy for the product. You can't over-communicate about this.

RY: In addition to crafting and frequently communicating a vision and strategy for a product, what else do you do to forge connections with the brand builders?

SL: Listening is a crucial skill. I try to craft a culture of listening and learning in my team. We need to listen carefully to the brand builders' needs and learn from their experiences with the market, so we can incorporate their ideas into our brand development. It's about being curious about and respectful of them.

As an example, if many of the brand building teams are telling us about a fast-growing trend in the market, or about a problem customers are having differentiating versions of our product on store shelves, we need to listen to that and ask ourselves how we're going to respond. Even if we decide not to follow up, the brand builders know we respect them if we've heard their input and explained the reasoning behind our decisions.

I think of my team as fulfilling a servant-leadership role with the brand-building teams. They are our customers. The more we understand their needs and can deliver what they need—on time and in full—the better we can work together.

RY: What have you found most challenging in your efforts to span silos between the brand-development and brand-building groups?

SL: It's hard to strike the right balance between all the internal communication and focus you need to align people behind the vision, and all the everyday work you need to get done in your job. If there's too much talking among ourselves, we neglect our day-to-day jobs and our focus becomes too inward. But the market's outside, not inside. And if we don't talk enough together about our vision, we have more time for our daily jobs, but we don't create the strong relationships needed to work well together. It's a balancing act.

RY: How do you deal with this challenge?

SL: We only communicate about our vision and strategy when we have solid content to convey. We also try to use high-impact communication tools, such as webcasts. And it's helpful to make sure you're inviting the right people to the right meetings.

RY: Can you give me an example of positive business results you've gained by being a silo spanner?

SL: Well, I'll use Dove as an example again. My team had proposed rolling out a single product campaign across all 84 countries where Dove is sold. The campaign involved ads showing a diverse array of women and a Dove self-esteem fund aimed at helping young girls and women with their body image.

Initially, a lot of brand-building teams (and some members of my own team) resisted the campaign and refused to run it. They thought that the idea of widening the definition of beauty might be OK in England and the United States, but it wouldn't appeal so much in Latin countries or Asian markets. They assumed that you have to show stereotypically beautiful women to sell a beauty product like Dove.

But we had done our research, working with psychologists and anthropologists to identify the real social need for better self-esteem. The campaign is now running in countries around the world, and Dove is one of the fastest-growing products on the market.

RY: What advice would you offer other marketing professionals seeking to "market marketing" inside their organizations—that is, to help non-marketing executives understand and appreciate the value that marketing brings to the table?

SL: Unilever is a strongly marketing-oriented company, so I've never had to actively sell marketing here. But I believe that the most effective way to "market marketing" in an organization is to make it very personal for people: Have people think about which brands they themselves really respect and which products they love—then ask them what has made them think and feel that way. They will likely discover that a marketer's efforts are behind their feelings of respect and love.

RY: Anything else you'd like to say about how to be an effective silo spanner?

SL: Hmmm... This is hard work, and you get discouraged sometimes. It's good to have a half dozen soul mates to provide emotional support and keep your energy up when things get tough. My soul mates have consisted of colleagues, people who were working for me, and even partners at ad agencies.

Note: To learn how to become a marketing champion, read the book I wrote with Allen Weiss and David Stewart titled Marketing Champions: Practical Strategies to Increase Marketing's Power, Influence, and Business Impact (Wiley, 2006). For more information about the book, go to www.marketingchamps.com or order at Amazon.

12 Global Small Business Trends to Watch in 2008

Small businesses are the heart and soul of our world entrepreneurial economy. They create, inspire, and fundamentally change people's lives.


In the United States, we keep nurturing the entrepreneurial spirit—a force that built America—and people from all over the world, rather than offering criticism, are engaging in the highest form of flattery: imitation.

We must be doing something right!

Let's take a look at 12 global small business trends to watch in 2008—trends that can be embraced by any culture and will add value to any nation.

1. Embrace the world

Small businesses will embrace the world and make globalization come true. When there is nowhere to grow, branching out globally offers a wealth of opportunity, including rapid expansion.

2. Export like mad

Small businesses will discover that a weak US dollar offers an exciting, challenging, and fantastic chance to export. It makes all American goods a flashing blue light special. As a result, small businesses will start to export like mad. Their mandate in 2008 will become "Go forth and export!"

3. Do whatever it takes

Small businesses will do whatever it takes to survive—good times or bad—and going global will be the ticket to thrive. For most entrepreneurs, decisions throughout the year will be made fast, and living with the consequences will be a fact of business life.

Globalization 3.0 will be driven not by the folks in India or China but by budding "born global" entrepreneurs and small businesses taking their businesses global from anywhere.

4. Adopt the outsider lens

Small businesses are good at adopting an insider lens when making judgments while immersed in a situation. Soon, though, small businesses will adopt the outsider lens, which involves removing or detaching oneself from a situation and establishing a realistic understanding of the risks involved.

This is a cleaner lens and is more useful in doing business with the world, especially when one must be sensitive to so many different cultures.

5. Disturb the status quo

Small business will not settle for the ordinary, or for establishing rules, because they have things to accomplish. They will break rules and disturb the status quo to overcome obstacles and achieve brilliant results.

6. Lead the way

Small businesses will continue to lead the way in global trade. They typically generate 29 percent of the US export sales in a given year, and in 2005 they accounted for nearly $300 billion of the $906 billion generated by all US exporters.

Doing what's right and what matters will empower small businesses to stay the course of international expansion, even if analysis might point to a different path.

7. Prove global small business is the real deal

Global small businesses are the real deal, and they will prove it by continuing to deliver results across borders—leaving people and businesses better off than they were before.

The ideas they promote and profit from are authentic and are based on the genuine needs and desires of consumers worldwide.

8. Set priorities

Small businesses will align their goals for going global with their passion. They will set a few priorities (one being going global) and will charge on until results are achieved. They will become a world powerhouse of productivity.

9. Invest in collaborative innovation

Small businesses will realize that innovation is the fundamental driver of economic opportunity, greater globalization, job creation, improved business competitiveness, and thriving.

Social networking and media are merely the tip of the iceberg. Thanks to technology, anyone with a good idea, anywhere in the world, can now launch it in a heartbeat and for relatively little expense.

More collaborative innovation will take place this year, with further emphasis placed on orchestrating resources, reaching outside of an organization for new ideas, and fostering interaction, whether it involves your own participation or not.

10. Push forward

Small businesses will push forward to passionately engage their entire organization and their constituents, but they also will pay attention to managing the push-and-pull of interactions. This is an area where we will not have much control. Get used to it.

Prepare to use the Internet as an effective tool to create market pull by raising your company's profile and getting other people to talk about it. Push forward to build Internet share, which is critical for success, rather than mindshare.

11. Forget about size

It doesn't matter (unless you are talking about an entrepreneur's dream—and if that is the case, then dream big). With powerful software and outsourced processes, small businesses can go head to head with large companies.

More than ever, small businesses have the advantage over large companies: Small businesses are adaptable, flexible, resilient, maneuverable, and more global.

12. Ensure knowledge sharing

Small business owners will begin to foster knowledge-sharing across disciplines, making the ups and downs of the organization more transparent to all. Cooperation and sharing of ideas typically promotes the best possible results. This belief will encourage continuous improvement and high achievement in 2008.

IBM Marketing Champion Uses Online Marketing to Boost Divisional Revenue and Share of the SMB Market

Sandra Zoratti, vice-president of worldwide marketing of the soon-to-be-formed InfoPrint Solutions Company, a Ricoh/IBM joint venture, added interactive marketing to the InfoPrint Solutions Company marketing mix to multiply the reach of the sales force in pursuit of the coveted small and medium-sized business (SMB) market.


Here is an overview of Sandra's innovative marketing communications approach. She will present this case study in more detail, with hands-on demonstrations, at the upcoming Business Marketing Association's annual conference (www.bmaconference.com).

The SMB market has been defined many ways. IBM uses the most frequent qualifier of SMB—number of employees. The challenge, of course, is to find a relevant definition and segmentation so that online tools can appropriately filter and quickly direct qualified SMB companies to content that is most relevant to their needs.

Historically, IBM has had a strong presence in larger corporations. But industry experts now maintain that the growth rate for information technology investments in the SMB world exceeds that of larger businesses. A few years back, IBM made a strategic decision to capitalize on this opportunity.

A Tough Challenge

Though awareness of IBM's brand was strong, IBM worked to establish and boost brand consideration and brand preference in the SMB arena, via targeted efforts in three areas:

1. Gaining the trust of potential SMB customers through deeper relationships with them

2. Proving relevance—that IBM provides solutions and products that meet SMB customers' needs

3. Demonstrating—for sales reps and customers alike—that IBM is easy to do business with

The business model for SMBs is very different from that of large enterprises. First, the customer needs—and thus the required solutions—are different. Second, the relationship requirements or sales coverage are different. Third, there are many more SMB companies than large enterprises.

Thus, to accomplish the three objectives outlined above, the challenge was how to implement a marketing model that helped to create stronger relationships, extended the reach of the sales teams, and was easily executable.

IBM's solution: Integrate traditional marketing approaches with online, interactive communications tools to enable the acquisition and retention of SMB customers.

Introducing Online Marketing Tools

The IBM team piloted several types of online marketing tools; two examples are given here, and the full portfolio will be demonstrated during Sandra's presentation at the BMA conference:

1. Sales Rep Store: The sales rep store consists of a Web site where reps can provide unique customer offers and customizable messages for clients—for example, live assistance, time-sensitive offers, personalized content, and links for assistance. Sales rep photographs and contact information are included.



By helping field reps customize their communications with clients, the sales rep store helps meet the division's goal of establishing the relevance of its products.

2. Express customer store: With its rich media and interactive format, the Express customer store supports the goals of demonstrating that IBM is easy to do business with and gaining customers' trust. Through this microsite, SMB customers can learn more about the IBM solutions based on their unique needs.



There is a guided tour of the site, a concierge service, and information tailored to self-select filters. Customers can also pose questions to sales reps, exchange messages with them through instant messaging/live assist, and check references before deciding to make a purchase.

"Selling" the New Tools

Sandra's group also worked to get the sales staff on board with the new online tools. To achieve sales adoption of the online tools, IBM embarked on an effort to systematically educate the sales force on the value of the tools with proof points of success and easy-to-use demonstrations.

This interactive marketing approach to SMBs has proven worthwhile on several fronts. For example, the online tools have helped sales reps become much more productive than before, as measured by their increased "face time" with customers and their greater speed in constructing presentations and other sales materials.

Customers have also been attracted to IBM's new Express store. For instance, the microsite has enjoyed open rates as high as 20%, which is the percentage of SMB owners who decide to visit the store after receiving a broadcast email inviting them to visit. In addition, customer participation at the site has proved extensive, as measured by average viewing time and click-through traffic.

Express has now been deployed in the United States, Canada, and several Latin America countries; the U.K. Italy, France, Germany, and Portugal; and China and Korea. It has won the Horizon Interactive Awards "Best of Category" award and the Web Marketing Association "Best B2B Microsite/Landing Page" award.

These results have helped win the attention and support of upper management, which has applauded the team's efforts and given it the green light to enhance the program. Whereas the project started with a pilot program, it now enjoys continued investment and commitment.

In developing these online tools, the SMB team adopted several marketing-champion tactics to manage all four directions of the "marketing compass." Sandra adopted a similar approach, gaining buy-in for online approaches by "managing North"—maintaining a steady focus on the company's high-level strategy for expansion and translating that into a complementary marketing approach. Doing so is a critical success factor, and Sandra "managed North" effectively.

She also "managed East" by building bridges to the division's sales force. She showed sales reps how the tools she was proposing would help them handle their jobs more productively. And she carefully cultivated supporters who could spread the word about the tools to more hesitant sales reps.

Sandra "managed South" by piloting the interactive marketing program to ensure that the marketing budget was managed carefully and ROI (return on investment) was positive—so that she could secure additional commitments.

And she "managed West" by analyzing how new opportunities provided by interactive technology could further help her align the soon-to-be-formed InfoPrint Solutions Company's marketing approach to the division's new strategy.

By managing the four points on the marketing "compass," Sandra was able to transform her ideas into actual programs and resources.

Those new online marketing tools will prove even more valuable now as the IBM Printing System Division transitions to the Ricoh/IBM InfoPrint Solutions Company, offering a perfectly timed opportunity to implement this strategy within the new organization.

BearingPoint's Paul Dunay: Marketer on a Mission to Demonstrate Differentiation, Positioning and Branding

Since that time, I've watched as Dunay has steadily ramped up his presence in the field of what he calls "Buzz Marketing." I began tracking his blog, Buzz Marketing for Technology, in which he discusses innovative ideas for B2B technology marketers, specifically how to leverage Web 2.0 tools to create "Buzz."

I thought, "How rare to see a senior marketer from any professional service firm—even one as prominent as BearingPoint—leading a series of cutting-edge conversations that do not appear to be directed at just his internal colleagues." (The vast majority of B2B or professional marketing observers and commentators are like me: analysts, authors and consultants.)

Imagine my delight when I checked in with Dunay and learned the extent to which he has intentionally begun to "do things differently" and how positively it has benefited BearingPoint. Here is his story:

My career thus far has focused on the intersection of marketing, services and technology. I've been observing with great anticipation as the business world slowly begins to embrace Web 2.0 and all its possibilities—blogging, podcasting, videocasting, RSS, wikis, interactive search, and so much more. I became convinced that our firm needed to embrace these new technologies to create an arena of "conversational marketing."

But about a year ago, I had an epiphany regarding my role as a marketing leader for my company, and the skills that I bring that can help my colleagues succeed and grow. Being a B2B marketer in a professional services firm, I live within reach of some of the finest business-oriented content and content creators on the planet. I realized that I could best explain to my colleagues what a thought leader does in a Web 2.0 world by actively demonstrating it.

I developed an internal Buzz Marketing e-newsletter, which I began to distribute to my colleagues throughout the firm. My topics related to the social media "tipping points" that I believe are ahead of us as Web 2.0 spreads. And I started my Buzz Marketing for Technology blog.

From there, I pushed ahead to demonstrate other ways that our firm could use social media tools to expand and enrich our customer conversation. For example, I jumped on the opportunity to do podcasts when Apple announced that the new version of iTunes would accept them. As a result, my team was the first consultancy to get a podcast posted on iTunes, beating IBM's debut by a week. Now, a year and a half later, I get three or four requests a week to network or do public speaking, and my blog has just broken Technorati's Top 80,000 (out of 5+ million blogs).

But, most important, at BearingPoint I've begun a broad and deep engagement with my colleagues. There is buzz in our firm for Buzz Marketing. My enthusiasm, even evangelism, for all things Web 2.0 has truly begun to take hold. Folks are frequently asking my help in their efforts to enter this new, highly connected arena for differentiating, positioning, and branding their services.

My quest is to help BearingPoint expand its industry leadership through powerful, content-rich client conversation. I will continue to teach by example that integrated marketing—sticky marketing—is the most effective way for our firm to maintain and grow its eminent market position. It changes how we differentiate, position and brand the firm. My goal is for people to say, with respect, that BearingPoint is everywhere.

Leading by Example

What Dunay has done is highly unusual in a professional services environment, especially one as large and far-flung as BearingPoint. His colleagues tolerated, and even fostered, his independent actions. And now his individual "evangelism" has been endorsed organizationally. His colleagues are working collaboratively with him, overcoming internal silos and barriers, to bring germane content to clients in a newly effective way.

Dunay's leadership by example has set in motion a sea change that will inevitably reconfigure the way this global firm differentiates, positions, and brands itself. This is no small feat, and reflects very positively on BearingPoint.

Find Your "Paul" and Let Him Loose!

When writing about professional services marketing, I've talked about the importance of individuals manifesting "professional bravery" and "doing things differently" to help their firms gain new marketplace leadership. Indeed, most marketers regularly do find ways to demonstrate their own kind of courage and innovation.

But it's rare that I hear a professional service marketer use the word "quest" when describing an internal marketing initiative. This word, "quest," bespeaks a higher level of personal initiative and risk-taking than what I've seen in most professionals (even beyond marketers!).

It speaks of the courage to embark on a significant pathway without asking for the organization's permission... the chutzpah to risk being told "no you can't do that"... and the professional passion to envision how one's individual actions can benefit an organization of thousands of people.

Beyond the 4Ps: The 5Ts of Marketing Operations

CMOs of global companies are now confronted with unparalleled challenges—and opportunities:


Marketing accountability: It is no secret that CEOs are demanding greater ROI on their marketing investments. Consequently, many CMOs are driving initiatives to make the marketing function more accountable and measurable.

Globalization: Serving global markets necessitates that marketing coordinate campaigns across continents to leverage cost and synchronize messaging; however, campaigns must also meet local needs and norms.

Complex consumer expectations: Consumers have become increasingly vigilant about spam and privacy. Compliance with the regulations of each country and state is mandatory.

Mergers and acquisition (M&A) integration: Frequent M&A places constant demands to rapidly integrate messaging, Web, and collateral of newly acquired companies into the corporate brand. Inadequate marketing budgets frequently associated with acquisitions place additional stress on existing budget priorities.

New marketing technology: The advent of new internet technology has enabled unprecedented interactive dialog with customers. This presents a huge opportunity for forward-thinking companies to target and reach customers in personalized ways. However, new technologies must be implemented and integrated across the world with regional marketing teams that execute campaigns locally.

Stakeholder agreement: Coordination with regional marketing groups, product business units, and sales is a major task. Processes are needed to prioritize and support new product introductions and demand generation within marketing budget constraints. Terms such as "What constitutes a qualified lead?" need to be standardized worldwide. Otherwise, roll-up, visibility, and accountability via actionable CMO and campaign dashboards become nearly impossible.

Marketing Operations Emerges as a Discipline

Faced by these demands, many CMOs have commissioned a marketing operations organization to tackle these challenges. Originally designated to create metrics and dashboards for accountability, marketing operations is increasingly being treated by leading companies as a foundation to the marketing function.1

Marketing operations is the only function (other than the busy CMO) that manages marketing from an end-to-end perspective. Marketing functions such as PR, product marketing and regional marketing only see a portion of the big picture.

"Marketing operations ensures marketing is run as a business," states a VP of Marketing Operations at a major Silicon Valley firm, "We strive to enable the marketing organization to be streamlined in day-to-day processes so they have time to think, focus on the customer and to innovate."2

The 5Ts of Marketing Operations

What constitutes marketing operations? Based on our work with clients, and in our research, we have found that marketing operations is an emerging dimension to the marketing mix. Enabled by new processes and technology, it goes beyond the 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion), and 3Cs (Customers, Competitors, Corporation3), to fully round out the marketing mix.

The 5Ts of Marketing Operations:

1. Total Strategy

2. Techniques & Processes

3. Tracking & Predictive Modeling

4. Technology

5. Talent



By approaching marketing operations across these dimensions, CMOs have an integrated approach to enable marketing worldwide.

Let's describe the 5Ts in more detail.

Total Strategy

This area involves strategy development in the product portfolio. It is not uncommon for large companies to have dozens of products in their portfolios—some have hundreds. Managing investments and priorities across the portfolio is paramount.

• What constitutes effective strategy development for each product?

• What are the key elements needed in each plan to win in the marketplace and to roll this out worldwide?

• Where do we "double-down" our investment? How do we gain market share with our resources? Where do we reduce investment?

• Does the organization reflect how our business should optimally interact with customers? Are there new ways we can improve our dialog and reach?

Chief of staff for the CMO: Based on our work with clients and research, the head of marketing operations in a number of companies takes on this role—driving the organizational agenda, identifying "white spaces," and ensuring measurement results are discussed at review meetings.

Techniques and Processes

How should information flow most effectively across the marketing organization worldwide? How do we make decisions? What are our governance processes? What is our roadmap for marketing processes next year? in three years?

• Fiscal planning processes and reviews

• How should budgets be allocated?

• How should we optimally interact with our customers? What are the touch points?

• How should information flow within marketing and with other stakeholders such as sales and business units?

• Standards and criteria for evaluating new initiatives and campaigns.

• What are product launch categories (e.g., criteria for "A," "B," or "C" launches)

• Can we apply Six-Sigma to our processes?

Tracking and Predictive Modeling

How do we make marketing more accountable? How do we measure campaigns and ensure better predictability of outcomes?

• How are we doing today? Metrics and dashboards.

• Forecasting—What are leading indicators of the future? How can we better target and predict? e.g., data-mining customer databases.

Technology

How do we implement technology across the globe to enable effective customer dialog, demand generation and measurement? What are the business requirements for IT? How does technology support the marketing and sales process road map for the next three years? How do we integrate with sales technology?

• Internet/Web/e-commerce

• Consolidating/rationalizing customer databases

• Online customer forums

• Marketing resource management software Analytics/decision-making software

• Marketing research databases, etc.

Talent

How do we ensure our marketing personnel are trained and able to work with new marketing technologies and processes? How can we enable them to make the right decisions based on analytics and campaign scorecards?

• What are the roles and responsibilities of each talent community?

• How do these communities interact? Where are the hand-offs?

• Training strategy with a marketing skills curriculum across the marketing function

• Ensuring balancing between the art and science of marketing

The 5Ts Transform the Future of Marketing

Although foundational, the 5Ts have a deep and significant impact on customer relationships. For example, by implementing integrated technology for demand generation and customer database access, regional marketing personnel can build innovative campaigns on top of a marketing operations infrastructure. By tracking the success of a campaign, companies will realize better customer targeting and ROI; they learn from prior successes and failures.

Although it can be a multiyear process for large organizations to implement all of the 5Ts, a holistic, integrated approach to marketing operations gains CMOs greater accountability and ROI for their organizations worldwide. It enables them to "run marketing as a business."

The 5Ts add a critical foundation to the marketing function, enabling marketing operations to support CMOs in tackling contemporary challenges and opportunities. The 5Ts are dramatically transforming the marketing function and changing how marketing will be conducted in the future.

Endnotes:

1 In a number of business-to-business-focused firms, marketing operations is combined with the sales operation function to promote integration of the two groups. Although organizationally integrated, the purpose of marketing operations remains the same.

2 HBS N. CA Marketing & Sales Roundtable, "Marketing Operations: How It Will Transform Marketing Forever," Panel Discussion with VPs of Marketing Operations from Symantec, Cisco, BEA, and a consumer packaged goods expert, June 20, 2006.

3 The 3Cs have been used in other forms and described in different ways. For example, we have heard "Communication" used as a "C." Our description is what appears to be most consistent in the literature. Other forms could be substituted for the 3Cs and have the same effect. The intent here is to avoid debate on this element, as it would diminish the central topic.

Speaking Their Language: How to Localize Your Message for Global Customers

Can you read Chinese? I suggest you find a way. Or find a way to get your message, your product information, and your Web site into Chinese.


It's estimated that by 2015 China will have a middle class twice the size of the entire US—more than 600 million people—with disposable incomes. Even with our current recession, China could generate $860 billion in retail sales in 2009, according to Wikinvest.

How about Hindi, Bengali, or any of the scores of languages spoken in India? The billion-strong population is experiencing a similar jump in middle-class wealth. India's middle class is expected to grow to 40 percent, from just 5 percent, to make it the fifth largest consumer market in the world in 2025. In 2005, private spending reached about 17 trillion Indian rupees ($372 billion).

I haven't even mentioned Spanish (spoken by 350 million inside and outside the US), German (the largest country in Europe, excluding Russia, and one of the world's strongest economies), or Japanese (a top worldwide exporter with a consumer culture that's equally famous worldwide).

Speaking their languages is good business in any kind of economic climate. And now, with worldwide recession, I'd be safe in saying surviving—and even thriving—hinges on effectively reaching out to the world's non-English speaking consumers.

Can you read Chinese? I suggest you find a way. Or find a way to get your message, your product information, and your Web site into Chinese.

It's estimated that by 2015 China will have a middle class twice the size of the entire US—more than 600 million people—with disposable incomes. Even with our current recession, China could generate $860 billion in retail sales in 2009, according to Wikinvest.

How about Hindi, Bengali, or any of the scores of languages spoken in India? The billion-strong population is experiencing a similar jump in middle-class wealth. India's middle class is expected to grow to 40 percent, from just 5 percent, to make it the fifth largest consumer market in the world in 2025. In 2005, private spending reached about 17 trillion Indian rupees ($372 billion).

I haven't even mentioned Spanish (spoken by 350 million inside and outside the US), German (the largest country in Europe, excluding Russia, and one of the world's strongest economies), or Japanese (a top worldwide exporter with a consumer culture that's equally famous worldwide).

Speaking their languages is good business in any kind of economic climate. And now, with worldwide recession, I'd be safe in saying surviving—and even thriving—hinges on effectively reaching out to the world's non-English speaking consumers.

A Glimpse Into the Future of Advertising: Japan's Dentsu

The fifth-largest advertising organization in the world is Tokyo's Dentsu. Its gross profit of more than $2 billion is largely generated in Japan.


Although Dentsu politely declines to name its clients, a little research reveals that its biggest accounts include Shiseido cosmetics and Toyota.

Masako Okamura was one of Dentsu's first female creative directors.

After starting out in the PR division, Okamura became a copywriter in 1992. She expresses pride in having worked with Akira Odagiri, considered one of the masters of Japanese creativity, who now heads the creative department at Ogilvy & Mather in Japan.

Okamura was promoted to creative director in 2001, making her one of the most senior members of Dentsu's approximately 800 creative staff.


Okamura's working day begins at around nine and can end at any time from four in the afternoon to four in the morning, "as is the case for most creative people around the world," she says. Although the agency's creative directors are assigned identical booths, she has a view of Mount Fuji from her desk.

"On the desk are all kinds of funny toys from around the world, as well as various stock images sent from overseas production companies, so the younger staff members often drop by to see if anything inspires them," she says.

The creative process is a team effort that requires regular brain-storming sessions: "In my team, the one hard-and-fast rule is that meetings are limited to 90 minutes."

Okamura acknowledges that some aspects of Japanese advertising may appear to be barriers to creativity—for instance, the reliance on celebrities. Yet she says there are ways of being creative within these constraints.

For example, in the middle of a recent standup comedy boom, a campaign for Shiseido's male grooming range Uno featured 50 hip young comedians in individual 15-second spots—a feat that got the brand into the Guinness Book of Records.

As for the brevity of Japanese spots, she points out, "Young people in their teens and twenties can grasp a visual idea in a few seconds. This kind of advertising works very well on mobile phones. It is now being adopted in the West, but it was pioneered here."

But as the drive toward creativity continues, an alternative approach is emerging. A 2005 spot called "Husky Girl" might be considered something of a pivotal work. The ad promoting the giant Ajinomoto Stadium in the suburbs of Tokyo was no less than 90 seconds long. It featured a series of beautiful young girls—all with the voices of chain-smoking truck drivers. The payoff shot revealed that their vocal chords had been shredded by all the shouting and cheering they'd been doing at the stadium's football matches. The gently humorous ad hinted at a new direction in Japanese advertising.

While longer spots and story-driven ads are beginning to make an appearance, the traditional spots that survive are greatly appreciated. Okamura observes that in other markets consumers might be suspicious of advertising, but the Japanese are fans of it. There's even a magazine devoted to the subject called CM Now (CM being an abbreviation for "Commercial").

Japanese society is changing—and consumer responses along with it. "After the collapse of the bubble economy in the 1990s, the modes of behavior that defined men and women became blurred. Men have become less career-obsessed, more spiritual. And women have become more independent. They have their own money and spend it more freely. So women in advertising are portrayed as independent, both emotionally and economically."

Viewing habits in Japan are also changing. "Over the last ten years, I think there has been a decrease in the tendency to watch TV every evening," says Okamura. "But that's because TV has changed. Now you can watch TV on your laptop or on your mobile phone. So we have seen a shift of commercials to these new media."

And Japanese consumers don't feel hunted by the agencies, Okamura insists. "Advertising is a form of culture among the younger generation. Today they barely differentiate it from any other form of entertainment."

Note: Article adapted from the book Adland: A Global History of Advertising (Kogan Page, 2007).

Going Global in a Web 2.0 World: A Punch List for Small Business

When the environment got tougher, she contemplated closing up shop and going to work for someone else. But that notion terrified her. Losing her creative and independent spirit in exchange for secure employment at a company outside of her own seemed like a high price to pay for not coming up with a solution to her business problem. But if she didn't make a change soon, her business would dry up—job or no job lined up—putting her and her family at risk both financially and emotionally.


After many sleepless nights and much thought, she set out to take a leap of faith and make a big change. That change, she realized, involved doing business not only with the guy or gal down the street but also with the world.

How could Sid, with a small operation and no real following outside of Detroit, do that? Easy. Let's take a look.

The first thing she did was conduct a Google search on the Internet population and arrived at Internet World Stats (internetworldstats.com). She learned that there are more than a billion people using the Internet—a whole heck of a lot more potential customers for her design business than in Detroit. Next she asked herself, How will they find me?

In a world that is now fully connected, people and businesses are putting their opinions, observations, insights, thoughts, and capabilities online for all to see. This is a trend that is growing globally by the nanosecond, and Sidney decided to stake her claim on a big piece of it. Here's what she did to make sure customers worldwide know she exists.

She set aside a couple of weeks to learn everything she could about Web 2.0 and the new media world, including visits to MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Second Life, and Twitter, among others. The following month, she designed profiles about her business on every single new media outlet that she thought mattered—anything that appeared to be a growing global trend.

Here's a punch list on what she covered—whether video, social or photo sharing—along with notes about how she used the medium:

Video sites

1. YouTube (youtube.com): Broadcast yourself and your business. A good example is Blendtec, a 186-employee company in Orem, Utah, that built brand awareness with its "Will it Blend?" series. Watch Chief Executive Tom Dickson blend up an iPhone: (youtube.com/watch?v=qg1ckCkm8YI).

French startup Dailymotion (dailymotion.com/fr, or, in the United States, dailymotion/us) also lets you share your videos. It plans to compete against Google's YouTube. When Sid spotted all this, she did some further thinking and planning. Shortly thereafter she created a knockout video talking about what makes a great brand and great design.

Social-networking sites

2. MySpace (myspace.com): Meet people from your part of the country and keep in touch. Includes blogs, forums, email, groups, games, and events.

Facebook (facebook.com) is another social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study, and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends and to create new business opportunities.

Sidney set up profiles on both sites to ensure that she builds her global audience and makes new friends and business contacts outside of Detroit.

3. Second Life (secondlife.com): A three-dimensional, virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents (avatars). Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown to more than 9 million residents.

Sidney created a design environment showing 3-D clips of her best client work, allowing visitors anywhere in the world to view the content and to spend as much time as they want with it.

4. Bebo (bebo.com): Operating in six countries, this social-networking site is designed to allow friends to communicate in various ways. Sidney created her Bebo space to generate more global buzz and additional business contacts.

5. Xanga (xanga.com): An online community for friends, where you can easily start your own free blog, share photos and videos, and meet new people. Sidney launched a blog reflecting her design expertise; she updates it frequently.

6. Zooped (zooped.com): A business, music, and personal blogging social network. Here, Sidney developed a small area showing how music influences design and design influences music—a marriage made in heaven.

7. Mashable (mashable.com): A social-networking and social-software site that operates in different countries and in different languages. The site combines tools or data from one or more online sources into a new, integrated whole. Sidney established herself as the best little designer on the planet by mixing and matching all her new world media.

8. Twitter (twitter.com): A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? It is a social-networking and microblogging service utilizing instant messages on your phone or right on the Web. Sidney created an account and sends a weekly update via cell phone to all her friends and colleagues, offering the latest new design tip and explaining where to find her if they need design help.

9. Pecha Kucha Night (pecha-kucha.org): Young designers meet, network, and show their work in public. It's social media at its best, very global, and will soon make PowerPoint presentations obsolete. Sidney developed a presentation highlighting how less is more when it comes to design.

Photo-sharing sites

10. Piczo (piczo.com): An online photo-Web-site builder and community. People can sign up for free and make their own advertising-supported Web sites. Choose from photos, glitter, video, and shouts to stay in touch. Flickr (flickr.com) is already old hat. And Picnik (picnik.com) provides useful photo editing tools (autofix, rotate, crop, resize, exposure, colors, sharpen, red-eye removal, and more) in a Flash interface. There's also a Brazil-based newcomer in the online photo-sharing space, Fotolog (fotolog.com). Its users are based largely outside the United States.

Sidney features a handful of her best photography, which made her work on client Web sites and brochures sing.

* * *

After putting all these new media to work for her business, Sidney has become a true global player. Her global small business is booming and she has developed what is called a global online sphere, encompassing all things relating to herself and her business. She has added to her team five new staff people who, together, speak seven different languages, and she finds herself out on the speaker circuit talking about what she did to boost her global presence. (At present, she is a nominee for the New Media Global Designer of the Year Award.)

The lesson Sidney learned? Immerse yourself in every imaginable online global marketing medium, have a big voice, and use it to influence the people you come in contact with.

That is the only way to move outward from Detroit, to get ahead of new media trends, and to thrive in the global marketplace.

Micro Branding—Macro Results

When I was visiting India recently, a rather unusual product and branding concept came to my attention. Lijjat Papad is a bread product, known to all throughout India. The fascinating thing about the product lies not in the taste of the bread but in its production and distribution.


You see, this bread is not mass-produced by a commercial bakery. It's baked by thousands of women in their own homes. During the early hours of the day, the Lijjat Papad trucks visit these countless cottage bakers to collect and deliver the popular staple to the millions of mom-and-pop stores across India.

In the context of this economic model, the term "homemade" takes on real meaning: The bread is produced by the people, for the people.

The philosophy behind Lijjat Papad is not unusual on the subcontinent. Telecommunications, cosmetics, and newspaper companies all leverage the power of the people to build their brands.

Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, for example, has become famed for its Nobel Prize-winning microfinancing and microcredit facilities for the poor, and has given birth to a range of socially enabling programs. Its Village Phone Program, started in 1997, provides an income for more than 200,000 Village Phone operators in rural areas. Mostly women, the Village Phone operators invest in a mobile phone, which they are able to rent to other villagers as required.

The unique program is administered by Grameen Telecom Corporation for the benefit of rural communities. A byproduct of this service, and of Grameen Bank's microfinancing services, is that millions of people all over Bangladesh have become ambassadors for an accidental brand—Grameen. The name is revered globally as well as locally as a leader in corporate social responsibility.

Hindustan Unilever Limited's (HUL's) initiative in rural development is known as "Shakti," which means "strength." Launched in 2001, Shakti builds on a four-decade-long commitment to integrating local business interests with national interests.

Shakti creates Shakti Entrepreneurs and aims to reach 500,000 villages, and affect the lives of 600 million people, by the 2010. It creates income-generating capabilities for underprivileged rural women by providing a sustainable micro-enterprise and improving health and hygiene awareness.

HUL offers business training to Shakti women who become direct-to-home distributors of a range of mass-market products (like coffee, laundry powder, toothpaste) in rural markets. Again, the branding benefits are enormous.

HUL is seen as a company that has created a win-win partnership for all: families depending on the organization for their livelihoods, and rural communities becoming self-sustaining through the partnership.

On the other side of the world, Natura, a Brazilian cosmetics and personal care brand, has developed a network of more than 56,000 consultants who represent the brand and spread the word about it across South America.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the brand is the fastest-growing cosmetic brand in the region and an annual turnover of $2 billion. (Click here to see my latest video from Sao Paolo and learn more about Natura.)

Each of these companies has torn down the wall between their customers and the brand. They've enabled customers to spread the word and secured hundred of thousands of brand ambassadors for next to nothing.

This is a trend that's likely to grow around the world, perhaps not in the real-life, community-based style adopted in the Indian, Bangladeshi and Brazilian examples, but perhaps in an equivalent online version.

I might be naive, but why don't corporations use their networks better? Only a handful of brands have leveraged online communities actively, as Lijjat Papad has done offline. Very few companies have systematically leveraged their consumers' increasing communications power, which is full of capacities for advocating brands.

Probably big corporations don't know where to start—or end. But the word-of-mouth network may not be as complex as you think.

During Bill Clinton's second election campaign, his team identified a trend among his potential voters. The most powerful pro-Clinton voices didn't fit the usual profile. They belonged to "soccer moms"—those who developed an invaluable network of contacts chatting to each other, and offering each other advice while waiting to collect their kids from soccer. It was the soccer moms who generated the buzz and energy that helped Bill Clinton secure a second term.

The soccer moms have taught us that the essence of a powerful targeting strategy isn't to target everyone but to find the snowball at the top of the mountain and give it a nudge. It rolls downhill, capturing attention and growing to encompass whole villages of people on its way.

I'm sure you're able to find fans, like the soccer moms, of your brand somewhere on the Internet. If they haven't already sent you emails or letters, you'll most likely find them in chat rooms. Perhaps your brand is mentioned on some of their Web sites.

Find them and categorize them according to the type of admiration they have to your brand. Are they big-time fans, or just supporters? Is your impression that they have a large group of followers, or is it that their opinions tend to spark a debate? Once you know your brand fans, develop a plan for reaching them.

LEGO established a LEGO's builder community—a group of LEGO maniacs (as they called themselves) who simply adore the brand. That community is now the key driver for LEGO's research and development activities—and a vital part of its communication strategy, helping to spread the word across the world.

Don't stop there. Find groups who aren't yet fans—people whose interests match to your brand, who, like the soccer moms, have a strong and respected voice in their communities. Then create a program around them, for them, and, in the end, by them.

That was how Natura and Lijjat Papad grew to become market leaders. And they both did so without spending millions of dollars. A highly targeted, highly relevant approach was enough to secure an invaluable group of followers which today has become the core of the brand.


As Benjamin Franklin once said, "Tell me and I'll forget. Show me and I'll remember. Involve me and I'll understand." The better you are at involving your customers in the philosophy of your brand, the better they'll understand why you're special.

A Five-Step Guide to Take Your Campaign Global

Nearly every marketer is familiar with some of the more infamous global marketing translation gaffes, from "Got Milk?" (rendered as "Are you lactating?" in Spanish) to the slogan "Come alive with the Pepsi generation," translated into Chinese as "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave."

Those are, of course, a couple of extreme and highly visible cases. But small errors in the translation of marketing materials—brochures, ad campaigns, websites—occur every day as companies make the move into the global marketplace and promote their products and services in local languages.
How can you ensure that your translated campaign carries the impact of the original? And, looking even further back, how do you avoid the enormous cost (new creative, photography, design) of having to launch a new marketing campaign for each local market?

Enter marketing "transcreation," the process of linguistic and cultural translation that helps companies avoid potential problems from the very beginning. It is a method of naming products and working with catchphrases and idioms across multiple language markets while also maintaining brand and message consistency.

Here is a five-step guide of how to take your marketing campaign to a global audience:

1. Assess your campaign and content
Evaluate the goals of the campaign. If it's already live in a market, take a close look at the concepts, graphics, and headlines to assess their cultural relevance and appropriateness in the target market.
If you're just starting out, try to select concepts, copy, and graphic elements that will work evenly across cultures. For example, you may want to avoid symbols that carry deep political meaning in some parts of the world, such as a red star.

2. Bring on a qualified translation/localization team—and be ready to work together closely (and patiently!)
Select a group that has a rich understanding of both the source and target languages, and which also has qualities that you value (e.g., leadership, experience, customer service).
Then recognize that good trancreation is going to take time and effort on your part, too. Think about how much you invest in other efforts to maximize impact, such as demographic studies and multivariate testing; now apply that same energy to ensure this campaign makes sense abroad.
Build in the time to explore and collect ideas, conduct multiple copy reviews, and perform due diligence. Consider that your internal team will have to provide the firm and its linguists with a detailed transcreation brief (see No. 3, below) and collaborate with them during the process.

3. Create a transcreation brief
This document summarizes fundamental information about the company, product, and campaign to ensure that all teams understand the nuances of the language and business needs.
It specifies the target audience (age, lifestyle, behavior) and the thought process that has gone into producing the original text.
The brief also explains how to approach certain elements, such as branded terms that must remain in English or have particular translations, taglines, and images.

4. Hand over to translation/localization agency
Provide your agency with your transcreation brief and the actual creative that needs to be localized. Discuss with the agency the thought process behind the original creative and what concerns you may have about any of your target markets.

5. Transcreate
The agency begins with translation—literally. A linguist sits down with the source copy and creates a draft, sentence by sentence. This is technically an accurate translation, as it closely follows the original text. However, its purpose is to deliver the exact meaning from the original copy, not to impress the reader and win customers.
The translation is then refined: The text goes to another linguist who works solely with the target (translated) copy and the transcreation brief. The linguist edits the copy until it truly sounds as if it had been written for the target market, but within the parameters and objectives of the campaign. At this point, the linguist may even make suggestions to you for alternative images or concepts that would make translation even smoother.
During the transcreation process, the linguist is guided by the following principles, which may affect the ultimate outcome of your campaign

Harmony of Images and Text
More so than any other kind of text, marketing copy is full of figures of speech, humor, and cultural references. When these are adjusted during the translation process, sometimes the imagery has to change with it. For instance, assume we were to translate one of our own tag-lines, such as this one:




We'd likely run into problems, because not all languages have the verb "bridge." We'd have to use a synonym like "unite" or "connect." A linguist might decide to use "bridge" as a noun (to ensure that the image remains relevant) and tie in the meaning in other ways.
Or the linguist might even eliminate "bridge" altogether and use a phrase such as "Can your application eliminate the language gap?" or "Can your application bring down the language barrier?" In both those cases, a new visual would be required.

Sometimes, You Just Have to Pick
In some cases, not all meanings contained in a sentence can be carried over to the target language. As much as we want it to, wordplay often just doesn't work in a different language, and a translator has to choose whether to stick to the meaning, at the expense of style, or develop the concept that best adapts to the structure and use of the target language—at the risk of losing some of the meaning.
Take, for example, the above case of translating a tagline. If we were to adapt "We get it" to a Spanish audience, we would put together two Spanish linguists to brainstorm on the meaning of "We get it" and create a few synonym phrases, such as "We understand," "That's our business," and "That's what we do."
Linguists would write down the many possible translations:

• Entendido (Got it, understood)
  
• Entendemos (We understand)
  
• Entendimos (We understood)
  
• Sí, lo entendemos (Yes, we understand)
  
• Nosotros sabemos (We know)
  
• Lo sabemos (We know it)
  
• Nos encargamos (We'll take care of it)
  
• Nos encargamos nosotros (We'll take care of it)
  
• Como no (Of course)
  
• Claro (Of course, it is clear)
  
• Por supuesto (Of course)
  
• Obvio (Of course)
  
• Lo tenemos (We have it)
  
• Es lo nuestro (It's our stuff)

What then? With so many possibilities, what should be chosen?
Your agency will work with you and your team (and, if appropriate, your overseas team) to look at the choices and narrow down the options, taking into consideration the campaign visuals and supplementary text.
Ultimately, the final, selected phrase should closely convey to the new target audience the same general meaning and desired impact that was intended for the original audience.

* * *
The most effective way to create a localized marketing campaign is simply to recognize the intricacies involved in the process, and have the patience to do it right from the beginning.
When moving their products and services into new market, businesses cannot afford to underestimate the importance of people's sensitivity to their language and culture. Having a global creative process that includes transcreation, not just translation, will save you many rewrites—and headaches—down the road.

How to Write Your Thesis

I. Thesis structure		II. Crosscutting Issues		III. Editing Your Thesis
	Title Page		What We Are Looking For		Copy Editing
	Abstract		Planning Ahead for Your Thesis		Content Editing
	Table of Contents		Writing for an Audience		Avoiding Ambiguity
	List of Figures		Skimming vs. Reading		Thesis Length
	List of Tables		Order of Writing		Writing for an International Audience
	Introduction		Figures and Tables
	Methods		Tying the Text to the Data
	Results		Giving Credit
	Discussion		Final Thesis
	Conclusions		Resources
	Recommendations
	Acknowledgments
	References
	Appendices

How To Get Started With Your Master Thesis – A Psychological Checklist II

Much of the difficulty arising from the thesis-writing exercise is psychological rather than technical. To finish your master thesis, you shouldn’t only have the right topic, adviser, method, equipment, reading materials, etc. It is much more important to have the right attitude. Think about it; solutions to technical problems can be found in many books, but if you don’t have the will, the inclination or the patience to look for them, they won’t do you much good. Here are some tips that can help you put yourself in the right frame of mind for thesis writing.

Get Organized

You probably know the old saying, “It’s easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees.” This applies in thesis writing. You can become so caught up in individual tasks (e.g. reading all the materials you can find on your topic, interviewing subjects for your case studies, drafting and redrafting your proposal, etc) that you might lose sight of the fact that you do have a deadline, and that it’s the complete output – not the individual steps or efforts (however superb or impressive) – that will be evaluated and graded. You should really get yourself organized.

First, write down your ultimate goal: to finish your master thesis on time. Write down your target defense date so you’ll have a definite date to work towards. After that, list down all the things you need to do to achieve your goal (e.g. design research, gather data, look for applicable theories, choose an adviser, meet with adviser, pass the first draft, etc).

Next, arrange the tasks chronologically. The first tasks should be those things that you need to accomplish before you can move on to other tasks; for example, theoretical framework and research design typically come before data gathering. Subsequently, break down the tasks into specific steps. To find an applicable framework, you will have to do some research in the library. Once you have reduced all the tasks into a series of small steps, get your planner then list down all the individual steps according to their proper order.

The result of this exercise is a blueprint of your goal. Since your thesis work has been resolved into very specific and manageable tasks, you will not find the overall task – that of finishing your thesis – particularly overwhelming.

Make it a Daily Habit

The clearest and the most detailed master thesis plan will not help you if you don’t have the discipline to stick to it.

One good way to develop discipline is to set a definite “thesis schedule”. If you have nothing but your master thesis on your plate right now, treat it like you would a full-time job. Set the hours between 8-12 and 1-5 as thesis-writing periods, for example. Then, force yourself to start working on your thesis every 8 am without fail. Likewise, stop working by 5 pm. Stopping work on time will prevent exhaustion, deprivation, burn out and other negative attitudes and feelings from taking root; these can make you more unwilling to continue working on your thesis.

If, on the other hand, you have other things to do apart from your thesis, you should still set “thesis working days” or “thesis working hours” that will remain inviolate and be devoted entirely to your thesis.

By sticking to a strict schedule, you’ll soon acquire the “thesis habit” and treat your thesis as a fundamental part of your day. Once you reach this stage, you won’t start out each day by wrestling with the question “Do I or do I not work on my thesis today?” which is almost always followed by the decision, “Not now; I’ll start tomorrow.” Through organization and discipline, therefore, you’re assured of unwavering focus; you’ll be able to make a gradual but steady progress towards completing your Master thesis and getting your master’s degree.

Author: Vladimir Chen

Article Source: EzineArticles.com

Top 10 Social Bookmarking Websites

What is social bookmarking you ask yourself? Well here it is. Social bookmarking (sometimes referred to as social tagging) websites allow you to bookmark a link of interest to a website and later retrieve if from any computer. Remember when you would have to write down websites you liked or could not access or recall a website because you were nowhere near your computer. Well not any more, now you have access to improve you internet experience through the use of these social bookmarking websites.

I have compiled a list of my top 10 social bookmarking websites. Some of the criteria I used to come up with this list include:

· Easy for first time users to understand, user friendly

· Simple to add a bookmark

· Have a lot of readers/followers

1. Blinklist.com - Blinklist.com is very user friendly. Any first time user on this website will have no problem finding their way around the website. Once you add your bookmark, it very simple to view it at anytime. All bookmarks are saved with a screen shot of the website, short description and the URL.

2. Digg.com - Digg.com is a very recognized social news website with a very positive reputation. It was due to the popularity of digg.com that many other social networking websites were formed. Anything bookmarked to digg.com will rank high on Google and other search engines. Digg.com meets all the criteria's used for this list, it is very user friendly, easy to use and has many users.

3. Newsvine.com- Newsvine.com is excellent because not only can you bookmark content on your website, but you can also view all the up-to-date news information all other users have to offer. An excellent advantage is that newsvine.com has so many users that the possibility of attracting many readers is unavoidable, which is excellent for your business.

4. Sphinn.com - One of my favorite websites for many reasons. One, it is very easy to navigate (I like easy). Second, it breaks down all news posts, for example, "hot news" is broken down into sections that are very important to the success of every website like SEO and PPC, etc..

5. Mixx.com - This is a flourishing bookmarking and social media network. Fellow bookmarking website competitors include digg.com and reddit.com.

6. Reddit.com - Stories submitted to reddit.com immediately available for readers to view and vote. Like other social bookmarking websites, more votes on your post the higher the rank it will receive. Once s registered user, you have access to view your submitted bookmarks along with those bookmarks that were either liked or disliked by other readers. This is an excellent tool to help you track not only whether it was liked but also if it was read.

7. Delicious.com - delicious.com is an excellent source for social bookmarking which allows its users to create tags, save them to your account and share all tags with the public. As said by delicious.com "Delicious greatly improves how people discover, remember and share on the Internet." Once again, very user friendly and easy to bookmark websites. Delicious is owned by Yahoo and is a must have for your social media and bookmarking strategy.

8. Propeller.com - Remember Netscape? For those of you who do, Netscape was purchased by AOL in 1998 and is now better known as Propeller, which is an excellent social bookmarking community. Once an account is created and a link has been added, readers can vote, comment, share with a friend or even bookmark for later reading. Sources say they should be redesigning the websites appearance soon, looking forward to it.

9. Bookmarktracker.com - If you're the type of internet user that prefers not to download programs into your computer than this is the social bookmarking website for you. Most websites require downloading of software in order to successfully bookmark items. Bookmarktracker.com allows you to copy and paste the website URL into a field in your account and as easy as that the bookmarking is done.

10. Startaid.com - Last but not least, staraid.com is another excellent social bookmarking website which allows you to create a customized homepage for each account holder. In this homepage, account holders are able to see all bookmarks and manage them as well.

Social bookmarking websites have become a popular way to store, manage and share search links on the internet.

I Hope this information is useful and remember no harm can come from creating your own social bookmarking account.

Happy bookmarking...

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jennifer_Gonzalez

Thesis Statement Writing

Writing a thesis statement can be one of the most important, yet most difficult parts of your entire paper. There seem to be varying rules and standards that need to be applied in order to determine whether or not your thesis is of high quality or not. However, there are some universal rules that, if followed, will always create an excellent thesis.

Universal Rules of Thesis Statement Writing

1. Your Thesis Should Reflect the Type of Paper You Are Writing

There are three basic types of papers that require a thesis statement: argumentative, analytical, and explanatory. Each of these three unique purposes creates a specific purpose for your thesis.

An argumentative statement should define the subject, what the subject should do or change, and the reasons that this is the case. For example, "College graduates [Subject] should be required to participate in an internship [what the subject should do], relating to their field of study, in order to gain real world experience [reason to change 1] and a working knowledge of their industry [reason to change 2]."

An analytical thesis should provide a clear message what action or conflict needs analyzed. For example, "An analysis of the NCAA basketball tournament selection committee reveals the challenge of accepting teams with a solid season-long performance or a team with an average season-long performance capped by an outstanding final eight games." From this statement, the reader knows that you will be sharing with them 1. an analysis of the NCAA basketball tournament selection committee and 2. the challenge of choosing between the two types of teams.

Finally, an explanatory thesis statement needs to identify the subject and what you will be explaining about them. For example, "The average plan to lose weight consists of eating right, daily exercise, and sleeping well." Your paper would then explain how or why a diet plan revolves around these three characteristics.

2. Always Ask Yourself...

There are a series of questions that you need ask yourself about every thesis statement that you write. The answer to these questions will help you decide of you have formulated a successful thesis statement.

Where is your thesis statement?

Ideally, your statement will be as early in your essay as possible, preferably in your first paragraph. For longer essays, it may be necessary for your thesis statement to be several sentences or be in the second paragraph. Try not to bury your statement in the middle of a paragraph. It should either at the beginning or end because it allows that thesis statement to guide the readers more effectively.

Is the statement specific or general?

A specific statement essentially summarizes the purpose of your paper in one sentence. If it is too general or broad, there is a good chance that you paper will not be able to cover every aspect or caveat of the statement.

While writing your thesis statement can seem like a daunting task. Following these two simple rules will help you to create an effective thesis every time.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jason_Kay

Pros and Cons of the Thesis Theme For WordPress

here are the pros and cons of the DIY Thesis Theme for WordPress Blog sites:

PROS:

1. Thesis is Search Engine Optimized - You need a theme that makes it easy for the search engines like Google to find your blog without too much tweaking and effort, and Thesis achieves this well. Thesis is clean and presents content well, it uses a clean code structure and has search engine friendly urls.

2. Beautiful Layout - Thesis is a modern, simple, and minimalistic theme. It has just the right amount of white space. The minimalistic look is good for all types of businesses and subjects.

3. Customisation Is easy - You don't need to know code, changing the design is easy via the Design Options.

4. Plenty of Options - Thesis offers many ways of changing the way your site looks - no of columns (1 to 3), their widths, fonts and their sizes, no of sidebars and their widths and more, all can be changed.

5. Lifetime Support and Free Upgrades - Upgrades occur about every three months and are free forever. Very active support forum and very good video tutorials.

6. Thesis Is Stable - Thesis is made in such a way that no core files need to be tinkered with.

7. Multimedia Box - Flexible box where you can have a video, an opt-in form, photos, and even display a different video/form/image on each page.

8. Google Analytics - Code can be added without altering files.

CONS:

1. CSS code needed - It's a disadvantage if you don't know CSS code, as you can't get the full juice out of thesis.

2. No Actual Design - Thesis is vanilla - plain but professional. It needs customising. Options are: use the basic theme design options (fine for basic customisation), learn CSS or hire a Thesis coder. The support forum can help you out if you want to tweak things yourself.

3. Price - $87 for personal use, $164 for developer - It's a matter of opinion and depends what you want. $87 is not a lot to spend for something that will definitely save you a lot of time and headaches, as WordPress always has some niggles. Remember, you get the free upgrades and great support forum. So theoretically you wouldn't need to buy another theme again.

All in all thesis is one of the best themes out there for WordPress - great SEO, flexible and looks clean and crisp. The lifetime upgrades and support are worth a lot, as many themes do not offer these. You can always try it out as they give money back if it doesn't suit. But you won't need to, most people adore their Thesis blogs, and with reason too.

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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Reena_Gagneja

Building a Thesis Statement Beats Finding a Topic to Write About

A painless way to find something to write about is to grab the first topic that comes to your mind and brainstorm assertions about it. The combination of a topic and an assertion about that topic creates a thesis statement.

Your topic need not be vitally important. You do not even have to have an original perspective on the topic. All you need is find something that interests you enough that you can spend an hour or two working with it.

You can easily make your own thesis builder with a piece of ruled paper and a pencil. Put a vertical line down a piece of paper. Write your topic to the left of the line. To the right of the line, write an assertion about the topic. The topic and the assertion together should read as a complete sentence. For example, to the topic "hot weather" you could add the assertion "brings out the worse in people." That topic and assertion could become the thesis statement for an essay.

Identify other potential thesis statements by brainstorming other assertions about your topic. Do not take time to evaluate how good an assertion is. Just get ideas down. Force yourself to work fast. You may want to set a timer for five minutes so you are not tempted to dawdle.

As you brainstorm, you may get an idea for a slightly different topic. For example, instead of writing about hot weather, you may want to assert something about working outdoors in hot weather or being in summer school in hot weather. That shows your brainstorming is shaking ideas loose. Be sure you write down your modified topic as well as the assertion about it.

When you have exhausted your ideas or the timer rings, look to see if any of the potential thesis statements looks like one on which you can write in the time you have. You may have a couple that are too small or too silly. You may have some would require too much research for the time you have. However, with a little luck, you will have at least one that is suitable for your assignment.

If the thesis builder does not produce a suitable thesis first time around, try brainstorming on a second topic for another five minutes. In 10 minutes, you are almost sure to find something better to write on by this method than by hours of unfocused brainstorming.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Linda_Aragoni

Quick Tips in Writing An Excellent Thesis - Planning a Term Thesis

Before you start writing - in fact before you get very far gathering information - you must decide two things:

· What your paper is about (the topic);

· For whom it is written (the audience).

Normally, the audience of a scholarly paper consists of people familiar with the general area but not with the specific topic. For instance, if you are writing about implementation of a numerical equation solver in Prolog, you can assume a passing acquaintance with numerical methods and with Prolog.

To a considerable extent, the choice of audience is up to you. But once you have made it, stick with it - unless there is a good reason to do otherwise, write all parts of your paper for the same audience. If you have a hard time visualizing the audience, try writing a paper that you would have understood if someone had given it to you a month ago, before you started researching the topic. The topic of a paper is often expressed in the first sentence.

The reflects a general principle: get to the point early. State your conclusions at the beginning, and then state the reasoning that leads up to them. Never leave the reader wondering where you are heading with an idea. Outline the whole paper before you write it. If you find this difficult, make an unordered list or collection of ideas you want to include, and then sort it.

The first paragraph of a paper is the hardest to write, and it is a good idea to try writing it - or at least sketching it - long before you write the rest of the paper. Often, once you compose the first paragraph, the whole paper will fall into place.

You do not need a long introductory section. Many term papers wander around for a few pages before they reach the main point. Do not do this. If you have an introduction (necessary in a long paper), it should be an overview of the paper itself, not a disquisition on other "background" topics, nor a record of everything you looked at while starting to research the topic.

You do not need a "conclusions" section at the end unless the paper either

(1) reports an experiment or survey, or (2) is rather long (thesis-length or more).

When you come to the end of your argument, stop, ending, if possible, on a general point.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ahmad_Alim

How to Do Proper Market Research - 5 Essential Tips You Need So You Can Make More Money Online

One of the most important steps in Internet Marketing is doing proper market research. I cannot emphasize enough how critical this step is for the success of your business. Too often Internet Marketers make the mistake of choosing a market that interests them or they are passionate about. There is nothing wrong in doing that except you have to make sure that the market is a hungry one.

So how should you do your market research. Here are a few pointers.

1. Pick on one of the three big markets: Here are three proven markets that need no further market research. These are Health, Wealth and Love. And in these broad markets, you have many niches. For example, when you take love- the niches can be Dating, Save Marriage, How to get my ex back, intimacy, infidelity. And you can further break down these niches into sub niches.

2. Amazon: Amazon is a fantastic place to do market research. You can easily check the best seller in the market and pay close attention to the number of comments for the best sellers in the market. When you see comments in thousands, you can be pretty sure that there is a lot of passion in the market and it may be a market that has a lot of buying potential.

3. eBay: Take a look at eBay pulse and look for hot products.

4. Forums: Visit forums in your marketplace and see the number of posts, members and the recent activity in the forums. Some forums have posts every second. Such a high level of interest is very good because again it is a sign that it is an active market.

5. EzineArticles: Go to EzineArticles and look at the number of views for the market you are trying to enter. In EzineArticles, you will find the following categories have high number of views- weight loss and relationships.

Once you can do proper market research, you will be making a killing online without fear of any form of competition. Take the time to do your initial work because this is the foundation of a successful online business.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Casey_Gentles