As you continue to update and build your professional profile on LinkedIn, in the background they are starting to match your experience with available jobs in the market (near you), so you don’t need to spend all of your time reading job descriptions that might not match your skill set. By now, you have realized that searching for a new job is almost a full-time job in itself, and being able to find more jobs that fit your experience can dramatically increase your productivity during your job hunt.

Here a few steps to help you get better job suggestions on LinkedIn:

1. Finish your profile (get it to 100% completeness).
2. Set your profile so that you are accepting job offers and enable others to message you directly without being contacted as contacts.
3. Check your job tab daily (or set a cal reminder to check at the same time everyday) or subscribe to daily email alerts for all new postings.
4. Upload your resume to your profile, this way you can simply click the “apply now” button on the job you are interested in (it will allow you to use the most recent resume uploaded).
5. If you are set on one particular position, take the time to learn as much about the company as possible, identify who the decision makers are, and try to connect with them before submitting your resume.

Of course, there are always other job websites, but for now LinkedIn is one of the only sites that recommends positions based on your experience.

Here are 5 things to think about when looking for a new job: (resume focused)

1. Is your resume the best it can be?
2. Does it read well, or appeal to the jobs you are applying to?
3. Is the design of your resume out of date, or lacking personality?
4. If you saw your resume, would you read it?
5. Have you thought about your intro message? Now more than ever, it’s important that you get the attention of the HR department reading your resume, so put some creative thought towards how you want to describe yourself, in one or two sentences (kind of like your 10 second elevator pitch).

These questions should help you determine if your resume is up to par, or if you need to update before beginning to apply to jobs. Never settle for “It’s okay”; those are the resumes that never get passed the front door. Make every application count! Need some help? Feel free to reach out to me if you need help getting started.

If you look at a normal click thru rate of 1% you’ll notice that most of the industry is at the same rate, and trying to improve. I’ve seen click thru rates of  3 to 5% on campaigns I’ve sent, and it directly correlates to the message you want to tell, and how your audience perceives it. If you are looking to improve click thru rates this year, and not sure where to start, try the following on your next campaign:

• Review the last 5 or 10 campaigns, and identify which ones had the highest click thru rate;
• of the top performing campaigns, look at what the message was, and what links they clicked on;
• from those top clicked links, what was the language style you used, and could you mirror it with any other campaigns;
• from the list of successful campaigns, try to look for other winnings and adapt those new principles to your future campaigns.

Try these tips on your next few campaigns, look at what was successful, and what didn’t work. From those learnings, start planning the next updates to your future campaigns. Always be testing your email marking based on winnings from past campaigns.

10 questions to ask yourself before redesigning your website:

1. Why do I need to redesign my website now?
2. Does my current website provide enough information for my visitors?
3. Does my current website design appeal to my visitors?
4. Do I need to update the entire website or just parts of it?
5. What feedback have my viewers given about the current design and layout?
6. Do I have a budget for this redesign?
7. Where do I find a web designer?
8. Do I need to update just the frontend of my website or the backend (or both)?
9. When is the best time to launch a redesigned website, and how?
10. Will this redesign help grow my website?

Ask yourself these questions, take as much time as you need to think this project through, and develop a project outline. If you need help getting started with a project like this, give me a shout!

It’s simple – with the following monitoring solutions, you can track the daily, weekly, and monthly progress (marketing) of your competitors, for as many competitors as you want: 

1. Subscribe to your competitors email marketing messages.
2. Follow your competitors Twitter stream, and join their Facebook group.
3. Create a Google alerts account, and start adding keywords, and links to track.
4. Run monthly SEO reports (the reports will show you traffic volume, content creation, and how active they are with social media).
5. Monthly website reviews – plan monthly meetings with your staff to review your top five competitors, and determine if there are any learnings you can take away for your own company.

If you use these five tips to track your competitors, you will find it reduces the manual effort and help you focus your time on more important things.

Here are 5 reasons why you should finish your LinkedIn profile:

1. You will be ranked higher on LinkedIn’s search results when someone is looking to find a professional with your experience;
2. your profile will be indexed into Google search results when someone searches your name;
3. employers will see that you take your professional career seriously, and will be able to learn more about what you have to offer;
4. if you are seeking a new job, your complete profile will better recommend jobs based on your past experience;
5. if you have applied to positions using LinkedIn’s job search, employees will be able to see your recommendations and get a good sense of your professional background.

For the past few months I have been searching for a project management application that would work on my iPhone, iPad, and Macbook pro. After downloading and deleting a number of solutions that didn’t really solve the major concerns I had when managing projects both for personal and business use, I came across an app called “Things” by Cultured Code.

Things (for the iPhone, iPad, and Macbook) seems to be one of the best applications to manage a number of projects, and it does this in a simple to use interface (wifi syncing). The price is a bit higher than some of the other solutions, but based on what it has to offer, I would say it’s a great application to spend your money on if you are looking for a project management application (for your mac devices).

Here are few reasons why I enjoy (recommend) using Things:

• They have developed a version for all mac devices;
• the application design and layout is very minimalistic;
• wireless syncing (when connected to same wifi connection);
• constant updates of software (shows that they are committed to improving the technology of their application);
• this application has kept me better organized simply based on how my alerts are delivered.

If you have an apple device and are looking for a great project management tool, check out Things by Cultured Code.

Visit the Things website.
(Twitter: @culturedcode)

Before getting started, you should always create a project list and identify all of the tasks before launching your new blog. I typically use “Things” (a mac application) to manage projects, but you could do this simply by writing down on a piece of paper all of the items you need to complete before getting started. To help, I have put together a simple task list to follow during your blog project.

10 must-haves when starting your own blog:

1. What is the topic of your blog?
2. What will the name of your blog be?
3. Is your domain name available?
4. What blogging solution will you use? (WordPress, Blogger, Drupal, etc.)
5. Will your blogging solution have a mobile application to compose from? (this is important to consider!)
6. Do you need a hosting plan?
7. Will you need to hire a consultant to do your design?
8. Post schedule – it’s always a good idea to determine how often you can write, and how you will manage your time effectively.
9. Will you add advertisements to generate revenue? (Google ads or third-party)
10. How will you drive traffic to your new blog?

If you are able to cross off all of the above, the only thing left on your list is to launch! Good luck.

There are a few effective ways of testing your email subject lines with your customer base, and if you do not have an email solution that already has existing A/B testing then you can try this:

• Take a sample size from your site (10,000 of 100,000) and from there split your sample size in half, and send the exact same email campaign but with two different subject lines. For the test to be really effective, make sure you test two totally different styles of copy, but both relating to your message. From there you can get a good sense of what type of writing styles your audience reacts best to.

If you are using an email delivery solution like Mailchimp, you can test your subject lines with their A/B testing tools. The way their A/B testing works with subject lines is extremely effective, in that you can select a percentage of your total base to test with and it will send subject A to one group, and subject B to the other. After your test period (you can set a time limit on which performs the best within an hour), Mailchimp will pick the subject version that had the most “opens” and send that version to the rest of your base.

The goal of testing subject lines is to ensure you are sending copy and creative that your audience is interested in, and that drives higher click thru conversion rates per campaign. Keep testing everything, keep looking for opportunities to better your messaging, and always be mindful of your unsubscribe rates per campaign (if you find you are getting higher unsubscribes when sending one type of message over another, then maybe it’s time to update how you are creating those messages).