Tag >> A Game We all used to play and today's Marketing Frenzy

Now in business for 10 years, I have had to reorder my business cards a number of times over the years. Earlier this year, my provider suggested that I add a QR Code or TAG to my cards.

Using the cameras on Smartphones, (after loading the simple software on the phone) simply take a picture and a couple keystrokes and your phone is launching to a website, digital video or wherever the tag holder has directed the TAG to go.

Silly me, I thought OK, this looks like a pretty good idea, but the last thing I want to do is get out there in the business world with something so new, that it will take a lot of explaining to just help people understand what it is.

Flash Forward 6 months, and sure enough, the excitement of QR Codes and TAGS are starting to be seen all over.

As more of my business associates begin using TAGS and of course a number of my friends at Microsoft begin to highlight their use more often, it's become evident. TAGS are here to stay.

In our Promotional Marketing Industry, look for Suppliers to be inserting them into Catalogs. Some will include one, the forward thinking ones, will be adding multiple ones throughout their catalogs and onto their fliers and e-fliers also. Come the Trade Show season soon, we will be seeing these in trade show booths, and highlighting new products etc.

Once people find out how easy they are to use, to be able to gather additional information, in digital form, be it web pages, facebook pages, or linking directly to YouTube or company videos, we will find them more in use.

OK Folks TAG you're it. Time to go out and use this technology to better your business!

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Managing using "Manageable" Blocks of Time for Success

Time. It seems like so many folks have or have had opinions on what are the best ways for us to go through each day, or order to be more productive, more balanced and or a more effective leader.

From The 4 Hour work Week, to the The One-Minute Manager and a number of others.

Working through your time into manageable blocks that can be impactful for yourself or your organization can help

Denis Shackel suggests in a book titled the same . . . that Leaders can make the Impossible, Possible by working through challenges Five Seconds at a Time

In an overview of the book:

When a tragic mountain-climbing accident left business professor Denis Shackel stranded on Mount Ruapehu in New Zealand, he turned to the leaderships principles that he'd been teaching for years to survive the longest night of his life.

Alone, with temperatures plunging to -30 degrees Celsius, Shackel first broke the night into five thousand five-second intervals. He decided to deal with only one interval at a time -- a strategy based on his knowledge that effective leaders break big challenges into smaller, more manageable ones. Then, stepping back to see the bigger picture, he relied on vision, intuition, and faith to keep him alive. Shackel emerged from this harrowing experience having cemented his belief that the principles fundamental to leadership are also key to tackling any challenge.

Are you setting aside a whole day for a specific task?

Or into intervals that are more manageable?

There are a number of other great points in his book including:

** Treating delays as "found" time.

** Establishing Trust with and Delegating to others

** Understanding your Strengths, concentrating on them and outsourcing / delegating others.

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Finding your Blue Ocean

It's been a couple of years since I first was introduced to Blue Ocean Strategy and it's principles continue to be seen from day to day. Part of the Strategy, suggests that you as a individual in your Personal Brand, or your firm as a company, create value proposition that is very different than the competition. What you bring to your industry or customers that is so unique that you begin to leave the competition "in the dust" or playing in that other "red" ocean where everyone is biting off small pieces of the same pie.

Having the opportunity to spend some time this week at Insead University, which is where the two authors of the Blue Ocean Strategy collaborated for their research, I am amazed at how the "Strategy" has turned into a whole educational practice here at one of the top Graduate Business Schools in the World and via corporate training programs that can develop simulations for an individual company or group.

Continual reminders of Blue Ocean Strategy:

** Create uncontested market space

** Make the Competition irrelevant

** Create and Capture new demand

** Break the Value-Cost trade off

** Align the whole system of a firm's activities with it's strategic choice of differentiation and low cost

In Today's World . . . Businesses need "Fans & Advocates" .vs just customers.

As you go forward in your business, what are you doing to turn your customers into raving Fans?