Will Social Media Ever Rule Your Business Growth?

I believe when you went through my previous articles you found a lot of topics about social media and content marketing that we are using it as privately, and most of our business. However, there is a huge difference between these two.

If you use social media for business, you would benefit from goals, focus and consistency. It requires a thorough understanding of how social media work (and I would like to stress the word social here) and how to optimize your efforts on the various platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

You need to learn how to plan your activities and how to link them to your business goals. Besides that, you might need to learn new skills like writing inspiring blogs and catchy updates.

Learn more get more?

Last week I was lucky to attend Digital Marketing Meetup| Writing for Social Media. This meeting or session was all about tips and tricks about Digital Marketing and how you can change your business in effective way, but you will need to understand how your mind works in a change process.

Learning new social media skills and creating the habit of doing regular updates, interacting with people online and writing blog posts, all have the characteristics of a change process: it can be unsettling, time-consuming and often we give up at the first sign of a setback. At least that’s what I have experienced since I decided to make social media my core business.

The mashable.com now became the famous technology and social media online blog founded by Pete Cashmore in 2005.  The blog taught me some valuable lessons about change. Once you apply these lessons to your activities on social media, you might be better able to see the bigger picture of the changes you go through. It will help you in the process of incorporating social media in your day-to-day business activities.

10 ways to make social media an effective business habit.

1) Follow the bright spots. You might have people in your environment who have been using social media for business for a longer time than yourself. Ask what works for them, what they do and how they do it. How often do they post? What do they discuss in their blogs? How do they stay focussed? You can also look for the bright spots in yourself. What has worked for you on social media so far? How can you repeat your successes?

2) Shrink the change. Once you decide to share your knowledge and expertise in blogs and updates, you might get overwhelmed by all the choices you have to make. Is it better to write a blog? Will video be more effective? On which platforms do you need to post and how to vary your updates and tweets?

Set yourself small goals and develop a step-by-step plan. Instead of starting with two blogs a week, start with one blog every two weeks for the first half year and limit your time on social media to 15 or 30 minutes per day. This will enable you to take social media one step at a time and keep the overview you need.

3) Be proud and celebrate your accomplishments. It is easy to get distracted on social media. You will come across people in your field of business who are ahead of you, which can be really demotivating sometimes. To keep the spirit high you can better look at what you have already accomplished. Maybe you have written a few blogs since you started, and you might have created your first newsletter. Well done! Be proud, celebrate your achievements and then move on.

4) Set specific dates and times for your activities. A consistent presence is important on social media. It is better to publish a blog every two weeks, than four blogs in one week followed by four weeks of silence. Being consistent on social media is what most business people struggle with. Before the week starts, block time in your agenda to write your blog and to do your updates. Be as specific as possible, e.g. I will write my block this Wednesday after lunch time. Being specific will increase your chances of making things happen.

5) Use checklists. Checklists give peace of mind and keep you focused. Create a checklist for the promotion of your training programmers and events. And even if you start blogging, it helps to use a checklist to ensure you don’t overlook important aspects of the content, lay out and promotion of your blog.

6) Find a buddy. It helps to have a friend, colleague or business partner who is going through the same process and who you can share experiences with. This will keep you motivated and you can encourage each other when you lack motivation or don’t see where you are heading to.

7) Give yourself clear directions. This will help you to stay motivated. How many new followers would you like to get this month on Twitter? How many new LinkedIn contacts would you like to give a call this week? How often will you write a blog?

8) Change your mindset. I sometimes come across people who say that social media is not ‘their thing’. What happens if you would say to yourself: ‘as a professional business owner I embrace social media as it enables me to get in touch with relevant people. Via social media I can share my passion and expertise with my audience.’ Which type do you want to be? Who would you like to identify with?

9) Find the feeling. Social media is about connections and interactions. Posting updates without interaction might easily make you feel disconnected. Chat with people via Twitter. Engage in a discussion on LinkedIn. Find the human touch.

10) Accept your learning curve. As mentioned before, learning how to apply social media is all about change. Each change has a learning curve. It is tempting to expect direct results from your efforts on social media, as it is such a direct form of communication. Some people easily lose interest once the magic is not happening. I completely understand. However, give yourself time and accept that mistakes and frustrations are part of the process.

How easy is it to for you to incorporate social media in your business? What do you struggle with?

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Build Your Income By Creating Your Own Online Business

Today, I would like to discuss the success and fail of small business.  Approximately 65% of small businesses fail within the first year. I would ask how many of the people you know who have started a business has truly succeeded? How many of them put on a happy face yet are still at every networking meeting looking for business?

After the crisis in 2008, I spent two years thinking about the business I need to start with as self-employee to support my income. That time my starting point was to create a business plan and find out what is the sector is not substantially affected by financial crisis. And I found the answer!

The plan was to create an online business and build a hub that can deliver a greatest benefit and do have something of value to share with the world, something that can generate income for me for the rest of my life! I learned to trust myself to work hard, to stay focused under pressure, and to even enjoy the process. I have read multiple of researches and public articles about online services, and I found consumers spent £30.2bn on online goods and services in 2007-2012, according to IMRG, the industry body for global e-retailing. Over the past 10 years, the growth of the internet has resulted in the high-profile successes of many internet-related businesses. After all these researches and articles about online business I found the real success stories come from those who find a way to generate just a few thousand dollars per month, enough to cover their expenses.

I would say having the right technology in place can help online business to grow and help any small business do what they do best – but even better and with more profit – and free up time to focus on growth. In the same time if plan to start the online business, we should know our target market, know our competition, attract funding and finding a niche. 

Your Website

I decided to create an online platform UAEMD.NET which provides an online directory of all United Arab Emirates (UAE) physicians, practices, hospitals, clinics, medical suppliers and insurance companies. The Find Physician search functionality allows visitors to search by any health services, specialty or expertise. 

Websites will set you back varying amounts. "The cost is relative” and try to keep the site clean and simple: people will buy from you if they trust the site and can find what they want.  "Make sure you update your website's content constantly, as innovation, imagination and invention are essential if you are going to succeed in the longer term,"

Building Traffic
Running an online business is deceptively simple. Look at my web site UAE Medical Directory, for example. The structure isn’t very complicated. It’s mostly just content and some ads. But it consistently generates a nice five-figure monthly income. Anyone can do it, right?

The key factor in building a successful online business is traffic. If you can’t build sufficient traffic, you won’t be able to generate much, if any, income. And unfortunately most people are really bad at building traffic. They apply completely inept strategies that don’t work, and they usually give up within a few months after starting.

Building traffic is not remotely easy for most people. This problem isn’t unique to the web though. You see it in every field. Some authors sell millions of books, while the average book doesn’t even sell 5,000 copies. Lots of people can write a book, but relatively few know how to sell a book. Lots of people can create a web site or blog these days, but few know how to attract large amounts of traffic

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If you can successfully build lots of traffic, it’s fairly easy to generate income from it. You also have time to figure it out. If you can grow your traffic, you can maintain your traffic, and that gives you time to figure out how to monetize the traffic.

Customer Transactions
Make it fast and easy for customers to navigate or looking for a service, as a site with a difficult sales process is likely to lose customers. Websites should be easy to navigate so users don't get frustrated and leave without making a purchase. Security should also be a priority, and potential customers should be assured their details will be kept safe.  You should talk to your customers as often as possible and help them to get to know you and build confidence in you and the services you provide. Ask them what they want from you and react to what they tell you.

Start Small and Have Patience
Don't give up your day job too soon, as it will take time for your internet venture to grow – and in the meantime there may not be much incoming revenue. I have spent more than 3 years to find key drivers of traffic growth. You'll need lots of energy, enthusiasm, determination and passion; but you also need to be realistic. "Success on the web is rare," warns Cohen. "While many businesses are launched, few make a profit, and most will never see a return on investment. That said, while starting up an internet business can be one of the toughest things you ever do, it can also be the most rewarding."

Conclusion
Running an online business can be a wonderful growth experience, and the income and freedom it can provide is certainly nice too. People really shouldn’t be deprived of this opportunity for technical reasons. The self-publishing power of blogging technology has gotten us partway there, but it’s only one piece to the puzzle. I encourage you to take a good look at my website www.uaemd.net!, and then you can sketch out the picture about how to create an idea about your online business and putting online business success within reach of most people.  

I would sum up, if you want to set up an internet business, you have to convince all the people around you it's a good idea. Put in your own time and energy, but other people's money – and take as much advice from other people as you can.

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Build a Good Business Reputation Through Go Green Strategy

A growing small and big business needs a reputation, it is like a plant needs water. Evolution in technology and understanding has facilitated the transformation for more cost-effective for businesses to “go green.” Yes, going green does protect the environment, but it can be good for your company as well. You’ll gain customers, which customers? The customers who support and appreciate companies that respect the environment

From adding recycling bins to your office, to reducing your carbon footprint, there are many simple ways you and your business can reduce their environmental impact and can actually help your company’s reputation. In my previous articles I have mentioned that taking steps to green your business will not only help the environment or getting high reputation; in many cases it reduces your costs over time while attracting customers and employees who support environmentally friendly businesses.

Nowadays, business and academic interest toward green product development is rapidly growing. Green product development is receiving increasing attention as means to improve companies’ performance (Chung and Tsai, 2007). In fact, it may be a significant source of competitive advantage when it allows for either product differentiation (Orsato, 2006) or low cost manufacturing.

It cannot be done without clear vision and studied plan, organizations’ leaders are responsible to deliver plans and results to meet the enterprise’s sustainability goals. Therefore, going green will help your company to gain respect in your community. Simply put, it shows you and your organization are care. Individuals and businesses want to do business with companies that aren’t just in it for themselves. By going green, you’re showing others that you’re interested in the world and the planet we live on.

I would say, creating green processes to the workplace make a healthy environment for employees. Also, it reduces the majority of the unnecessary waste. On the other hand, getting employee input can be one of the most effective ways of finding innovative solutions to reducing costs and becoming more eco-friendly. 

As I am interesting in IT industry and digital field, I will input my example about go-green from IT aspect. Green computing strategies challenge the common misperceptions that green computing will cost more; however, these strategies actually improve an organization's bottom line rather than shrink it when adopted. By integrating green computing strategies, organizations have a clear path to create savings that will improve IT, free up capital for other investments, generate goodwill with their constituency groups-all the while exemplifying good stewardship of the economy and environment. 

Now is the time to make a positive impact on your community, on the environment and on your profit margins by implementing go green strategy, less wasteful green solutions in your business, these strategies should be viewed as part of a broader initiative to reduce the cost of doing business.  I would therefore say, green IT takes advantage of cutting-edge solutions that keep you connected and improve reliability, while reducing energy consumption.
 

For instance, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is also something to be skeptical of when it comes to green IT. So moving 50 desktops from 250-watt computers to a single 2,000-watt computer might seem like a 10,000-watt energy savings, unless of course you’re going to keep those desktop computers to use as VDI endpoints. If you are, then you’re actually adding another 10,000 watts of energy consumption and working toward the opposite of green IT.

In American University of Sharjah (AUS) we have adopted Citrix (A new approach to desktop deployment) in all AUS colleges and schools which is also VDI technology to improve business continuity and data security, reduce university power consumption; the result then AUS can be greener. 

In AUS IT data-center, we have created new virtual machines. The plan is to select machines that provide the most computing power for the least amount of energy consumption. The strategy is to ensure that every watt is being used to full advantage by moving older, lower-efficiency servers into virtual machines running on newer, higher-efficiency ones.

Going green is important for the future of the economy and our civilization. Companies going green can provide necessary leadership in the green movement, work wonders for the environment, significantly improve their bottom lines and show they are excellent corporate citizens

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How KPI Can Keep You Ahead Of The Competition

I attended Computing Technology and Information Management Conference this year, and I had the pleasure of sitting on a panel with one of educational institution participant who was one of Keynote Speakers and he is working in (Rochester Institute of Technology) to discuss some approach to defining and measuring attribution, a practice that leads to sustain educational sector in terms of different aspects. While we covered a variety of topics, one of the most fundamental attribution challenges that we discussed was that many services in universities do not define, own and measure their key performance indicators (KPIs). It seems that many organizations are thinking about KPIs, but don’t really know how to begin defining them. 

In fact, I have been asked by some of participants there, “What should your organization KPIs be?” As a believer in letting the data drive decisions, the fact that KPI definition is a question scares me to my core. 

I had refreshed my memory and reached a point says whether we are using loosely defined KPIs or established ones or not using KPIs at all, I have talked about reviewing the requests and metrics that drive university IT services was a great exercise and example. Creating IT helpdesk Ticketing System was my input in KPI discussion and the valuable contribution to the bottom line.

What are KPIs?
Key performance indicators are things that we can measure in our business or organization to evaluate the success of either the business as a whole or a component or activity within the business. "KPIs, or key performance indicators, help organizations achieve organizational goals through the definition and measurement of progress. 

Therefore, tracking performance is a vital way for service providers to ensure their businesses are moving in the right direction. However, identifying the right KPIs for your organization isn’t that straightforward. The reality is that there isn’t one single metric that a business can look at to measure success. Further, there are a lot of measures to consider, and no single metric or set of metrics is going to be right for every service provider. I would say considered time, cost and quality as the predominant criteria for measuring project performance.

For instance, at AUS - IT Department and Media Department have developed and created a set of Key Performance Indicators for multiple Information Technology Services areas in order to best provide reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) metrics.  These areas currently include Help Desk, Web Services, Network and Systems Availability, and Educational Digital Media.  

Choosing the right KPIs requires a good understanding of what is important to your business and the customers that you deal with. This latter component is a key because most KPIs are tied to service delivery, and what’s important to internal teams may not matter to the customer. What do you think?

I would therefore say, to push your KPI evaluating in right direction and be effective, managers need to assess the alternatives available and pick the metrics that make the most sense for their business and organization.

Key Considerations for Managing KPIs:-
Tactics for tracking KPIs will vary substantially according to the metrics being assessed and the specifics of the business. However, following are some key strategic considerations that cut across all organizations and KPIs:
 

Consistency. On a consistent basis, whether daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly depending on the metric, service providers need to be gathering performance data and continue to do so over time. It is only by gathering this multi-interval data that managers can start to spot trends and truly understand the trajectory of the business.

Communication. The best KPI tracking is meaningless unless it is communicated to the right audiences. Both with customers and among internal teams, KPI reporting needs to be useful, relevant, consistent and timely. 

Actionable. KPIs need to help identify problems and strengths and inform actions that can improve performance

Customer or Employee Satisfaction and Sentiment

Customer or Employee satisfaction is critical for any business, and is a vital KPI for the service provider to track. Unlike a lot of other KPIs, which are more objective in nature, when it comes to customer satisfaction, the only thing that matters is the customer’s perception of your business and its services. Consequently, it’s critical to do surveys on a consistent basis to track how customers feel about your company. It’s simple, without customers your organization wouldn’t be here. Any organization has customers it has to satisfy. 

In the same time, we can safely say that employees are still the most important ingredients in any business. We all know that companies don’t do well if their employees are not happy and this again applies to all enterprises.

To sum up, we should determine the KPIs that are the most meaningful to our business. Taking the time to identify an organization’s most important KPIs, and tracking those KPIs consistently, is a critical success factor for every service provider. So it can be interpreted internally or used to benchmark the organization against competitors. If done properly, KPI will provide clear results of an organizations performance and strengthen its ability to improve it’s performance

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Think Like A User And Let Your Business Grow

Understanding your customers and their buying habits will help your business to sell products effectively, compete with other suppliers, target new customers and identify new opportunities. Generating demand for your product requires more than simply releasing it onto the market. You need to conduct research, determine what consumers' needs are, establish yourself as a leader in your industry and repeatedly prove your products' worth

From my perspective, there are many factors can help your business to grow and differentiate from other competitors, creating a website for your business consider as one of these factors. But do you think only the website has a positive impact on your business image and reputation without having a good content or web strategy? Without strategy, you might just get a great looking website that doesn’t work.  I would therefore say any successful website begins by first understanding client’s business and brand strategy, their objectives, and the market. 

On the other hand, when you created your business website did you ask questions below?

What do visitors do on your site?
What would you like your audience to do?  

These simple questions relate directly to your overall website (and business) strategy.  When you have a well thought-out strategy, that is executed well, you’ll also have more engaged visitors. But how, specifically, do you get engaged visitors?

User experience (also known as UX) has direct impact in visitors’ engagement in your website and it can mean many things to different people, depending on who you ask and the type of business they conduct. At its core, UX is the process of creating equilibrium between consumer needs and business needs.

The consumer wants to find information, make comparisons, purchase something from a website, or comment on your company’s blog. The business wants to create awareness, increase user participation, make a profit, and keep their clients happy. Each of the aforementioned activities takes the same basic concept into account – to create the best user experience.

Therefore, user experience (UX) is an important part of any startup website journey, and providing a great customer experience is critical to the viability and profitability of any business. From my point of view; applying UX method will lead to better business growth and generally facilitates faster new customer acquisition. This leads to dramatically lower customer acquisition costs, increased revenue, and a massive competitive advantage. It also keeps customers happy, and reminds them that your organization never needs a second chance to make a first impression.

For instance, recently, I went to the website of a Emirates Airline to find out good package journey to Europe. The website was amazing because it has a massive online services, was valuable content of data, and latest features in their website. While waiting for the Skywards cards to be delivered to my P.O Box, I received status email messages that have clear information about the package and the journey.

This “customer experience” was decidedly great and positively impacted my overall impression of the company, which will lead to my spending more money with this company to do other reservation.

Today, Emirates says its passenger traffic is rising at 20 percent annually and it generated greater traffic for the this year compared with markets in airline serves

To conclude, user experience (UX) will not only drive new leads and opportunities, it will enable you to nurture long-term relationships that are fundamental to growing your business.

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Time to Fix Your Digital Business Development Path

The internet has a big role and impact in the customers’ engagement with brands and services review. It is transforming the economics of marketing and making obsolete many of the function’s traditional strategies and structures. For marketers, the old way of doing business is unsustainable, nowadays the use of technology to radically improve performance or reach of enterprises – is becoming a hot topic for companies across the globe. Executives in all industries are using digital advances such as analytics, mobility, social media and smart embedded devices, and improving their use of traditional technologies such as ERP – to change customer relationships, internal processes, and value propositions

Consider this example: Not long ago, a car buyer would methodically go through several processes pare down the available choices until he arrived at the one that best met his criteria. 

In old school process which I name it "Analog Business" a dealer would reel him in and try to make the sale. The buyer’s relationship with both the dealer and the manufacturer would typically dissipate after the purchase. But today in all the digital process and technology, customers are promiscuous in their brand relationships: They connect with myriad brands—through new media channels beyond the manufacturer’s and the retailer’s control or even knowledge—and evaluate a shifting array of them, often expanding the pool before narrowing it
For instance, booking an appointment for your car maintenance entails calling the dealership and speaking with a person who uses scheduling software and checks a database for the necessary parts. 

In the Digital Business era, your car acts as a semi-autonomous agent on your behalf; alerting you and the dealer to the need for maintenance, scheduling the appointment, and ordering the necessary parts. It may even drive itself to the shop. 

So back in the good old days before the internet and social media there weren’t that many places you could complain, certainly not that publicly anyway
All complaints would largely be in the form of a phone call, a letter or maybe even an ad hoc visit, but your complaint was very much between you and them.  There was no public hanging for providing a bad service unless it got to the press. There was an element of being able to keep things quiet. 

Then along came the internet, review sites, forums, blogging and of course social media! Now there is no hiding place.  Forums and review sites gave people the chance to share their opinions and experiences but this still meant that your thoughts were largely hidden away.  

Social Media nowadays, such as Twitter or Facebook has allowed people to rant to an even bigger audience, example below shows how the technology has facilitate the communication channel with the services supplier to raise the complaint and get responds faster.

The use of digital business techniques, such as experience design, mobile and social media leverage, and information and systems integration across the enterprise can produce unified business and customer relationship views. There are several valuable initiatives underway in the industry today. These include product bundling and innovative stickiness-generating features, as well as advanced analytics for granular segmentation –

The Digital Business Development Path (see Figure 1) examines six different business era models from before the Web to after the Nexus of Forces (social, mobile, cloud, information) to help organizations understand their current state and assist CIOs in making the case for digital business.  Figure 1. Gartner’s Digital Business Development Path

Gartner predicts that by 2020, 75% of business will be transforming to digital businesses or preparing to become one. Based on Gartner digital business survey we deduce that only 22% of respondents defined themselves as already being a digital business. Most organizations, or 41%, see themselves as a digital marketing business, and 22% of companies remain Web businesses.  

Where is your organization today and where do you want it to be before your competitors?

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6 Things to Know About Choosing a New IT Vendor

Some times we love to share every information we read, like or dislike about articles we came across, and today I would like to share attached information about the process we should know when we are choosing a new IT vendor from separate article!

No one should sign a contract with an IT vendor without fully evaluating who they are and what they do. We tend to approach new vendors based on the products they sell and choose vendors largely based on what we believe the products do. Unfortunately, this leads us to buy solutions that we often never fully deploy or that often fail to meet our expectations. What's more, we rarely conduct a causal analysis of the problems.

I've covered enough failed projects over the years to be able to group most problems into several areas that you can (and should) explore before taking in a new vendor or even continuing with an old one. I've identified 6 things you likely aren't asking vendors before you make your selection. Read More..

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Why Brand Personality is the Best Thing To Improve Your Content Marketing

As I mentioned in my previous articles, the great content is always your key to better engagement, and in turn, more conversions. What's the key to great content? Make what you produce more personal.

To begin with, I would like to start the article by small introduction about content and say content is the driver of many brand experiences - and even if you sell a product, often your marketing and thought leadership content is the filler that keeps the relationship strong and healthy. 

Great Content means build Great Engagement! But it also defines a brand or author and helps people stay focused on the core message or value. Be it games or whitepapers or tweets or micro-sites, content is both integral and inextricable to the relationship. I'm also convinced that it needs to be more personal.

I believe everybody here knows that content marketing works and has a good impact. If it didn’t then the whole idea of using the internet for marketing purposes would be in dispute! Do you know why?

Well, the internet is an information machine full of content! videos, ebooks, whitepapers, press releases, Facebook, forums, blog posts, podcast, tweets, articles, etc. It’s all content isn’t it? 

However, the problem lies with whether or not the content marketing strategy you use will fit in with your personality or not. I would therefore say the automation of personality can have a big impact on content marketing success. As in any brand personality, the characteristics must be authentic and sustainable. Unlike "human interactions" where we use lots of clues - behavior, physical characteristics, attitudes, beliefs, and demographics - to form opinions and likability, a brand personality is built through every direct or indirect interaction with the brand. Introducing appropriate emotion into your message is another recipe for personality. Personality comes out naturally when you tell a story. Everything has a story behind it. The trick is in the telling. So content is a common interaction - usually indirect but often direct, too. 

Marketers have long given brands a "personality." The brand personality enables a consumer to express his or her own self - or ideal self - by participating with the brand. It is not your logo it is not your photo, it is your voice, design and reputation combined into one impression. Unlike product attributes, which tend to serve a utilitarian function for consumers, brand personalities tend to serve a symbolic or self-expressive function. 

If you’re not building any impact, you aren’t encouraging repeat business, and you aren’t creating curious new customers, meaning they won’t be there to convert later on. The key to brand impact, both online and offline is a content marketing strategy that focuses on shareable, valuable content. Having a large group of followers is meaningless if those people are not engaged. So the challenge is to how to allow the "real people" behind the brand to build a personal and enduring relationship that supports and doesn't usurp or dilute the brand.

As you create your content, consider how it impacts your brand and how people perceive you. Always keep an eye on the bigger picture. Personality is one thing—over-sharing is quite another.

The social nature of our digital lifestyles has led to a new level of "sharing" of personal information. While I don't think sharing private information in a business context is appropriate, sharing some level of personal information makes perfect sense. Yet, talking about the kids or your dog or morning commute via a brand account can extend the level of the brand relationship.

No one pretends that the brand is an actual human being, but it does have characteristics and a voice that speak through social channels. We all know and value that there are people behind that Twitter or Google + account and that those people have lives and interests and experiences. Exposing some of that personal information as part of the content strategy is certainly appropriate and builds on the perception of the brand level persona.

For example, you're sure to have amazing moments at your company that are awesome to share - like a promotion for someone on the team, or the launch of a new product feature, or the project that you implemented. Your reaction to those events is personal - but not private information - and thus makes the brand more real and connected to the humans that customers want to have a relationship with.

Relationships with your clients and prospects are what bring the buying life cycle to a natural close, resulting in a sale. Establishing a personality within your communications will help you develop that relationship and grow your business.

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Did You Apply 3Es Before and Get a Good Reputation for Your Business?

Having a good reputation can benefit a business in a multitude of ways including the future value of an organization in the marketplace. A company achieves its competitive advantage when it succeeds to implement the strategy of value creation which is not possessed by its competitors on the market or in the industry, this in turn will lead to build a solid and notable reputation in marketplace. Think for a moment about the organization to which you belong or the department you are working with. Does your organization or company have a good reputation? Do you think your organization created or built right fundamentals of reputation's concept? Do you believe your company or organization should apply or adopt 3E’s elements in order to improve and protect its reputation? I would say good reputation is impossible to maintain without internal organization support.

I know you could ask a question; what is 3E’s means? The answer is 3Es are a set of recognized reputation tactics I sketched out to be examined at any organization, which leaders and managers can use it or apply it to differentiate their company’s service or products in highly competitive markets.

The 3Es are: (Emotions, Employees and Efficiency)

Emotions Factor
Emotion in organization presents original work from leading scholars in the field, they engage with emotion as a qualitative phenomenon which shapes and is shaped by organizational life.

Emotions in any workplace play an essential role in how an entire organization communicates within itself and to the outside world. Events at work have real emotional impact on participants. The consequences of emotional states in the workplace, both behavioral and attitudinal, have substantial significance for individuals, groups, and society. Positive emotions in the workplace help employees obtain favorable outcomes including achievement, job enrichment and higher quality social context. Whereas negative emotions such as fear, anger, stress and guilt, however increase the predictability of workplace deviance and how the outside world views the organization.

Employee Factor
Building reputation through your employees is always the first step.  It is even more important to encourage behaviors and demonstrate values which enhance your company reputation. Furthermore, best businesses invariably have the strongest employees. A company, as they say, is only as good as the company it keeps. 

That's precisely why supporting your employees and it should be available in a business leader's top priority. From my perspective keeping communication lines open, motivating, job satisfaction and listening to your employees' suggestions all crucial to your company's success. "Happy employees equal happy customers," and as Rick Galbreath said, "The final recipient of any misunderstanding between employee and boss is always the customer."

If you would like to pick one of these things we can talk about job satisfaction as the promotions provide opportunities for employee growth, more responsibilities and increased social status (Robbins 1993). More satisfied workers are less likely to leave their employer. Job satisfaction is influenced by a lot of variables. Promotions are an important aspect of employee’s life. Considerable increase in pay or wage of an employee also constitutes major effect on work. Different organizations or institutions use promotion as a reward for high productivity of their workers which accelerate their efforts. It can be only useful way of compensation where employee gives significant value to promotion, if not then pay or wage increment is best reward for more exertion, whereas employee dissatisfaction may result if an employee perceives that their efforts are not recognized or that their rewards are not equitable tied to their performance or tailored to their needs. 

Employees are fulfilled when they feel there is environment to learn, grow, take on additional responsibility and move up the ladder. Employee appreciation is the priceless impact on workplace reputation. Your employees are one of your biggest advertisements.  What they think say and do is totally representative of your organization.  Your business is the sum total of all of your employees, like it or not. What do you think?

Efficiency Factor
Efficiency in organization is the ability for organization to implement its plans using the smallest possible expenditure of resources. It is considered as an important factor in the firm's organizational effectiveness, this being the ease and degree of success with which the organization is able to accomplish its aims.

For example, if one business is able to produce 100 units of its products by spending $30 per unit, it is more efficient in production than a similar business that produces 100 units of the same product spending $40 per unit. Organizational efficiency is gauged using a number of quantitative figures such as production costs and production times because it is too broad of a concept to be encapsulated in a single figure. Increased the efficiency in your business make implementation both cheaper and smoother, but it is less useful if the plan being implemented was a bad plan. For instance, when your organization decided to change the unsupported physical servers which are drained your IT budget, and your services start growing, so do power and cooling costs. The organization bring to IT VMware virtualization that can help your organization to reduce energy costs and meet your business demands so that business is efficient, but the decision was almost certainly foolish and misguided when then did not do backup the data or enables to seamlessly extend datacenter, and increase availability! Despite this, organizational efficiency is still important to planning because it enables plans that are otherwise impossible.

To sum up, applying 3Es I believe can help organization or company to  differentiate its product/services in highly competitive markets, allow it to have premium quality , and can become the ultimate factor in whether a customer decides to patronize one business over another.

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How Green IT Changed How We Think About Organization Sustainability

Over the last few years, the term of “Green IT” has begun to be used to describe a form that pour into two trends. The first trend involves the growing concern about environmental issues across our life in communities. The second trend involves Information Technology the use of digital tools and techniques for manipulating information, and the social phenomena that surround these systems.

As we know the Information Technology industry (hardware, software and services) has provided many tools to help generate and process data, communicate globally, and improve productivity.

With data consumption rising more than 10% every year and with most companies still hitched to dirty energy sources, we see there many companies found a full-fledged green transition in the IT sector is urgently needed and becoming sustainable!

Information in general, and IS and IT systems in particular can play an important control role through support of environmental management systems, life cycle analysis, and design for the environment practices. What do you think?

From my perspective, information technology is positioned to play a key role in facilitating the shift toward sustainability - oriented business. As the use of IT in business grows and both public and private demand for environmental and social responsibility increases, the need for effective sustainability - oriented IT systems will similarly expand.

In the same time and before applying sustainable technique or sustainable technologies, do you know what are the steps should followed to adopt this strategy? Do we understand what it takes to finance the energy improvements we require? Do companies have good information regarding the results of their sustainability initiatives? Can they report with confidence measures of tangible and intangible benefits? Do companies work to propel business applications while ensuring the server maintains a small carbon footprint? Do buildings with more natural light really improve productivity and morale?

For instance, laptops and mobile devices – information technology (IT) is not only a booming economic sector but also an energy-intensive one. There is a research says it accounts for 2% of human greenhouse gas emissions worldwide! Did you hear about that?

I would therefore say Green IT is the latest buzzword being promoted and become one of the best strategy that delivering incremental benefits to the organization by improving end-user working practices, creating energy efficient office environments and reducing data center energy consumption.

For Instance, the City of Calgary really does have to think about going “Green” and introduce new innovative technologies. Calgary this year has different projects in Green Technologies such as, Waste-heat capture program and Imagine Calgary

Going green is not only relate with the reduce the amount of paper we use or carbon footprint , it is the way to think of using information technology tools — from sensors to databases and websites to integrate sustainability factors into business operations.

Another Example I have in American University of Sharjah, in June 2011 AUS has lunched higher standard for academic buildings to sustain the campus environment. The building incorporates the most advanced technological facilities of academic infrastructure in the UAE and region. 

From IT aspect many of the clever ideas connected with Green IT and sustainability involve the joint use of purely virtual space, most servers used today utilize between 5 and 15% of their total capacity while consuming 60 to 90% of their maximum energy consumption at idle. To overcome all these energy consumptions AUS has adopted a visualization (VMs) which allows the number of physical servers to be drastically reduced for large power savings and has contributed to add more space (Increase Data Center Capacity) in the data center once visualization is implemented due to the decreasing amount of physical hardware needed. 

Clearly underlining that several organizations take Green IT seriously can boost that organization’s image and brand. Today, image and brand are significant aspects of competing for sales of products and services and for attracting and holding onto staff.

So it the time to integrating your Green IT strategy into business objectives.

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