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Benefits of effective content marketing

Content Marketing is one of the core strategies of marketing which helps to create brand awareness and increase the value through different tools of content which includes descriptions, images, videos, blogs, related articles, infographics, updated posts on social media platforms and so on. If we elaborate on the word Content, it means defining something through different means and tools. Means social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest. Not only these platforms, but it also includes the content of the website of that brand or an app. Content marketing is essential for all.

The main goal of content marketing is to educate the audience by providing detail information about that specific product or service. It won’t only increase their knowledge it will increase product or service visibility which will increase audience trust towards your brand. It also helps to retain the customers for a longer period which will increase the sale. Be Wikipedia in your product or service industry.
But don’t ignore the word marketing with content. We cannot ignore the promotional content by just providing the informational content. We have to balance it by using different marketing strategies. Some marketing experts suggest that you should use an 80/20 rule for your content marketing. It means 20% of the content should base on promotional content and the rest of the 80% on information-based.

Benefits of effective content marketing:
Content on-site: The more you update the content, the more it will come on the audience’s newsfeed which creates awareness for your product or service. Now you can update the content in different forms like social posts, images, small videos, posts on hot topics, infographics and so on.
Ranking in Search Engine: With the help of keywords in your all updated post and content, you can rank your website or page on top in search engines. But the selection of keywords plays an important role in it. You have to select the appropriate keywords for your content which are directly unified with your brand.

Traffic through Social Media Sites: Through the sharing of your content on your social media sites, you can increase your exposure which will lead you on a big platform. Through social media, more people will read your content. Not only this, they would be able to share that content with their friends which increases the traffic on your site.

Lead Conversions: The major purpose of your content is to provide valuable content with information for your reader. Your content should be that engaging that people will visit again whenever you come up with new content. Once people start visiting on your site, the remaining space can be used for the advertisement of your products or services. Conversions can easily be increased if you come up attentively.


Build a Reputation of the Brand: Your content will build the reputation of your brand because it will create an impression in readers’ minds for your brand. You have to engage the readers by adding value to your content. You can add value through making it informative, helpful and educative. You just don’t have to do it but do it tactfully.

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Are Project Managers Born Leaders?

While it may be assumed that when you accept the role of project manager, you also indirectly accept the role of a leader; that is not the case. Essentially, leadership and project management are two different aspects to look at. A successful project manager may not translate to being an exceptional leader. To be precise, project managers are to control the three major factors (namely scope, budget and time) that influence the quality of service delivered. Project managers implement new tools and techniques to deliver impeccable results. Successful project management can be achieved by having adequate knowledge of project framework and being aware of newer methodologies.

However, in the ever-evolving world of business, every organization needs their project managers to develop exemplary leadership skills. In today’s time, project management calls for individuals who can offer a wide range of expertise and capabilities. Therefore, it is no longer feasible for a project manager to just manage. Project managers must also act as leaders, i.e. motivate and inspire, be team builders, develop communication with every member and lastly maintain integrity coupled with being a confident problem solver. If the question in the topic of the blog is altered, i.e. can project managers become leaders? The answer will be a definite yes.

Effective communication is a great start to being a project leader. You must know your team members and convey to them about what and how it needs to be done. As long as the leader is not articulate enough and cannot get a point across, the team fails to achieve a satisfying outcome. The key to reach a level of excellent communication is having the ability to deliver feedback that is both positive and constructive and also be a patient listener towards members’ suggestions and input.

To ensure a productive work environment, a project leader must possess enthusiasm towards a project. Project management is not just about knowing your goal, it also about managing your team members because that is a leader’s primary job. In times when failure seems inevitable or there is a huge burden to handle, it is the project manager’s attitude that changes inevitable failure into an astonishing success. The project manager must have a positive approach towards work and be a source of motivation for the team. His words should be encouraging so as to maintain productivity and not let the team members give up.

Team building might seem easy but it surely is not. It is a task that requires immense patience and impartiality from the project manager’s side. When a team works together, issues and conflicts are inevitable. However, a project manager must deal with the conflicts from an early stage and not let it grow. His job is to maintain a friendly work environment and keep the team focused on a common goal eradicating any selfish motive. Team building also consists of being aware of each team member’s personality and treating each one of them equally and in a manner to achieve the desired results.

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What makes money and time so important to project management?

The success of a project depends on factors like integration, scope, quality etc. Modern day project management is constantly evolving but time and budget are still the solid foundation of project management. However, we will leave the rest of the factors to some other blog and discuss how the two equally crucial yet demanding factors, time and money, affect the outcome. Time and money are not only inter-connected but also very important in what is termed as the “planning” stage of project management.

Time and budget constraints have a positive impact on project management because the restrictions of both increase productivity and thus a higher success rate. Restrictions of both keep the wheel rotating and do not let complacent attitude become a part of the work and employees. The major task for the project team is to work efficiently while also meeting the time and budget constraints.

A project manager must first understand the time and budget constraints and see how it applies to a project. The project is then planned and managed accordingly. While the cost allocated can be adjusted, fluctuations in time are rarely possible unless the due date is moved ahead.

Cost:

The budget is not just the amount of money needed; it is a reflection of the work of the project and the resources required. A comprehensive budget takes into account how funds will be utilized throughout the course of the project. Generally, a project’s expenditures show an increase when resources utilized are increased.

The monetary commitment of a project is dependent on various factors. The factors include the cost of labour, services and materials used in the process, and other overhead costs. The budget allocated might show an increase as each stage of execution is elaborated.

Every project essentially has costs that might be fixed or varying or both. The project manager must know how to control costs throughout the course as per the requirements and quality of the work. The budget is estimated by evaluating historic data, average vendor and resource costs.

Time:

Time constraint for a project is basically the time allocated to the project from beginning to end, i.e. till the work is delivered. Time can be assigned only after being thoroughly aware of the work that project requires. To be more precise, the project is first broken down into components and then into sub-components to estimate the time that would be needed for the completion of the project.

Time management is vital and can be achieved by devising a timeline that mentions the duration that each component of the project should take. The schedule must be properly planned and constantly compared to the on-going project so as to clearly judge the progress of the project. However, it is also important to remember that time management is required at an individual level as well. Team work and support enhances both creativity and productivity by keeping the spark of motivation and dedication alive.

Constraints of time and money are vital to project management because both these factors determine the quality of the work produced and delivered. A project manager must devise a budget and schedule that all the employees agree on.

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Organizational Performance Management

Performance management design concept. Typographic poster. Performance management concepts for web banner and printed materials.
Performance management design concept. Typographic poster. Performance management concepts for web banner and printed materials.

A very crucial question that need to be pondered over is how does organizational performance management fit in. when talking about small startups, OPM main seem quite a big deal. But what if the organization is somewhere in between. On one hand you no more do all the logistics yourself on the other hand, there is still time when you will be cutting checks for a large number of employees.

For understanding how organizational performance management fit in, you first need to understand that OPM is a good thing. Relating strategy with implementation, making a strong link between strategies, how it is planned and then implemented in order to deliver on portfolio grounds. Also realize how important its value is.

Thing to keep in mind is OPM at scale is even better. If you don’t scale OPM to where your organization is OPM may seem quite complex to you, even in try of attempting it. If you think OPM is a good thing don’t waste a single moment trying it. It has been witnessed that the organizations that doesn’t seem to care enough about OPM, witness a downfall in their businesses. At times teams get frustrated and at times the progress get halted. And the same answers are given by the leadership- work harder.

Performance management is a lot more than the appraisals given at the end of the year. It’s about translating goals into outcomes, or results that are effective and has a huge progressive impact on the organization. It includes individual employees, teams, processes and the organization as a whole.

Effective PM will help you in nurturing individual performance, foster ongoing employees hence increasing overall organizational effectiveness.

OPM and strategic planning is closely related, here we will discuss how strategic planning has influenced private and public sector organizations. Indeed strategic planning is a crucial step in the management of any organization, regardless of at what level they reside. Public agencies have a greater challenge in evaluating their results. Whereas, private organizations have clear goals and results as the outcomes are closely related to the financial goals. Rapidly changing and increasing demands for programs, products and services and greater demands for accountability are the adequate reasons the public sector organizations have tend to opt strategic planning which leads to good organizational performance management as well as good results in overall progressive growth of the organization.Organizational PM helps in improving different levels.

How OPM can help?

  1. Assessment of your existing performance appraisal system.
  2. Development of performance plans in accordance with organization’s missions and goals.
  3. Writing elements and standards that involve measure of performance.
  4. Pay for performance systems
  5. Reward systems linked to your performance appraisal systems.

OPM mainly involves identifying the gaps in performance against the objectives of business, further recognizing where the gaps lie and deploying the improvements to close the gaps. Some of the key features are

Establish objectives, analyze process performance data, identify and implement improvement, implementation of improvements

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Enterprise Function Support

valueIf you are new to project management, you surely need to know and understand this phenomena,the first thing is understanding enterprise function model. The enterprise functional model is generic one that can be applied to numerous organizations, in any industry. It can be of two ways, product driven and service driven. It represents the highest level functions in an enterprise.

Now a days with the changing needs, everyone is in need of enterprise function support, it is more demanded as hybrid project delivery approaches. The quantitative analysis as show that the hybrid project delivery is becoming rather common these days.

In order to add more value to one’s business the things like aligning business activities is coming into considerations by project management leads. The activities which are made top of the list are project delivery activities.

The considerations may include activities like speed at which project iterations are produced using agile method, complexities of business and technology, and the increasing expectations of customers. Though these considerations are not limited to the ones discussed in the article, there can be many others as well.

All of these enhances the importance of enterprise functions and their support such as portfolio management, release management and resource management etc. these and other enterprise delivery disciplines have been identified by a framework known as scale agile framework. This has been identified as the key to success in agile project delivery methods.

Coming back to enterprise function model and its key features, the material used in enterprise function model gives details about

  • Overview of functions used.
  • Functional responsibilities
  • Terminology

This model is generic and can be implemented to a wide range of industries and enterprises.

The approach used can be product driven or service driven.

A function can be understood as a group of knowledge related (subject area activities).

These activities need to have a purpose.

The framework used for enterprise function model has an impression of creating a sense of getting a long lost thing back specially when considering the innovations, but that’s not the case.

Rather this framework has helped in identifying the critical need to have these functions in place and engaging all types of deliveries in an enterprise.

Whether there are project managers or agile leads, both can increase the percentage of their project’s success by getting closely related and integrated with enterprise functions. Lacking of this will create troubles for enterprise and organizations will have a hard time in processes like schedule, resource, dependency, testing and implementation. Without having any robust enterprise function model in place, the enterprise may lead to lesser number of successful projects ultimately reducing the business value and profit share of organizations, which is indeed closely related to how organizations design their work infrastructure.

Talking about function and their model, it varies with the scope of the industry, whereas the thing that has been seen is all enterprises do have research and development function.

Consistency while following the right model and delivery is very important for businesses.

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Hi friends, have problem listing open end activities in primavera P6?

import-projectIf you want to list up open end activities in primavera v6 and you can’t find any option in p6. A simple way is exporting activity relation detail to excel and separate predecessor with only SS successor. But that is a too lengthy process because at times you don’t know what formulas to apply in excel for fast working.  In excel one predecessor can have more than one successor. So you have to select predecessors with fully SS relation successors only.  Download are free to use schedule viewer. We have a project health check section which provides various checks including ‘ACTIVITIES WITHOUT SUCCESSORS’

There is a checkbox under this section where you can include or exclude activities with SS successors only. You can then export the activities to excel.  Hope this would be of great help for you on your project. You can still contact our experts if you face any ambiguity on provided email addresses globally or contact the vendor who provided you with the software.

Here are some problems that you might face and we are giving a solution to it in advance so that our blogs could be of great help for you. If you use the above-mentioned schedule viewer, and if it proves to be good there might a problem arise that it shows activities without predecessors or successors. It might not show open end activities. Only showing milestone activities with no successors and predecessors, this might create a lot of confusion or ambiguity. The problem can be, your, not tagging the checkbox. Consider, start to logic as missing.

Done. The other problem can be how to export that list to excel. When you try to export the whole project is exporting. Well, that is a big issue but you need not worry. When all the project activities are exporting including those without successors but you just want to export the list , not the Gantt then what you need to do is after clicking export and the options box comes up , you ought to select ‘expand to level  1’ and uncheck or deselect the ‘ draw Gantt  option’.

Another problem that can arise is , what can be the formula or any other method for extracting  SS relation activities in excel. The solution is using the formula countif(). You could sum up the total number of successors for each activity ID and the subtract the number of SS successors.

Another problem can be with the registration code being invalid there can be multiple reasons for it but one that has been commonly witnessed is moving or copying the existing file if you have copied or moved the file, the new file would need it’s own registration key. For the key that has been generated to you , you must use it for the existing file and not for any of new, moved or copied a file.

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Standardization and How it Effects a Project Manager’s Business?

project-managementThis article is written for the better understanding of how the standardizing of project management adds value to once business, in any industry, the growth is driven by standardizing project management across the organization.

Some key capabilities for standardization:

An enterprise must invest in standardizing, codifying and documentation of project management practices. It doesn’t mean one way of managing projects but a portfolio of consistent projects the enterprise.

Different business units and verticals may follow different methods or templates for following project management. Many variations are carried out in order to meet the needs of customers and specific markets.

For instance just think if standardizing is not done, it can reduce management’s ability to track and control price change requests and manage scope stuff, which may result in lower margins and increased project risks. Formalizing projects help scale your business. Fostering standardization of processed such as change management, scheduling, costing and project reporting is also very important.

Another major step in standardizing is consolidating and integrating project data. Project teams can also improve productivity and effectiveness.

Benefits of standardization are vast and far reaching, those organization that combined standardized project management processes with the right kind of technology get a significantly good result and successful projects. The outcomes include improved project team productivity, fewer project losses, the higher instance of projects that get completed on time, and are under their financial reachability.

Standardizing project management across an enterprise often encounters resistance. Because teams usually working as how they might be feeling but often you have to encounter adjustments one way or another. There is a positive side of creating consistent project management experience.

Standardization can have the following positive impact on a project manager’s life.

If you are a project manager, you can experience that your life may go from slow and steady to chaotic in a matter of seconds. , it is witnessed it would be helpful both for the leader and the teammates to work efficiently if you share a common way of working such as a framework or interface etc.

Considering an example, if the schedule of your project is built on the same tool as your teammate, it would be easier for you to grab what’s next on the to do list.

When hiring a new project manager, standardized project management, which is already implemented in the enterprise may help the new hiring in the understanding of how the work is done in that organization. Thus, drastically reducing the learning curve.

The cooperative continuous improvement is a very important thing and I have always been in the favor of improving. And the best way of doing this working along the other project managers, peers or pioneers both. This will help you in carrying out your tasks in more effective and standardized way. Thus making standardizing your tasks easier. Having someone to share your ideas and looking up to someone for some good experience is indeed a good strategy

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How Outsourcing Adds Value to Your Business?

outsourcingBefore pursuing to the understanding of adding value to your business, first, we need to understand what is outsourcing.  According to our very own Wikipedia, this term refers to a practice used by different companies in which they transfer a portion of their work to different external companies, this is a cost effective way but the condition is, it should be used properly. The external sources or service providers ought to be Specialists in their related fields.

Leaders choose out-sourcing to enhance business value propositions to stake-holders.

The question arises how and why the need arises, some of the processes are temporary and the company does not intend to hire a professional for doing that task.

However, before that, it is necessary that you should think and study about all the advantages and disadvantages of giving the resources and time of your business to a third party vendor, which is indeed very critical for your business.

As every other strategy related to business, there are many pros and cons to outsourcing as well. If not done right, it can bring down your business and create a lot of unrest.

Famous outsourcing business streams may include,

Pros of outsourcing

  • Swiftness and expertise
  • Concentrating on core process
  • Risk sharing
  • Reduced operational costs
  • Reduced recruitment costs

Cons of outsourcing:

The disadvantages include:

  • Risk of exposure of confidential data
  • Hidden costs
  • Lack of customer focus

How it adds value to your business:

When outsourcing, making a strategy which is effective in lowering the cost is very important.

Project managers can help make one.  Considering this three part structure,

  1. Assess the current state
  2. Consider the “to be” state
  3. Consider the governance require to sustain the future state

Project managers can avoid some common pitfalls in their outsourcing projects:

  1. Add a legal team, consisting of procurement and legal outsourcing experts which will help you in making the agreements.
  2. If you have any senior leaders around you, invite them to your project, in this way you can steer the initiative this will also help align it to the business mission.
  3. Gather some leadership support from your seniors; they might help you abstain from committing some serious blunders.

The things that count should be on finger tips of a project manager while handling a process with outsourcing aspects. Leaders can capitalize business value by keeping the right things in mind and if the outsourcing is done with a defined end.

Just to get an idea, consider that Assessments can be made on few things, such as

  1. Associate labor costs
  2. Labor expertise
  3. Value and non value support services
  4. Baseline of operational measures and service levels.

Project managers can help in many ways make an outsourcing strategies that trigger capitalization.

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Does Internet of Things(IoT) changing project management?

Internet of things refers to ever growing network of physical objects that contains an IP address that features for internet connectivity. The communication that occurs between these devices and systems is what enables.

IOT-project-managementThe way IOT is changing project management is not just because everything these days is internet enabled but because the software for project management we use will be more inter connected. And hiring project managers will help us in handling the projects whether it is research or development in a better way. And even if your projects are not IOT related today, they will be in the near future.

There are a number of people that think IOT is not related to construction or medicine. For example if you are digging the road or working on some product of home appliance or working in the clothing industry, how does the internet of things effects project management there.

You don’t think it is vital to all the industries, it is, for now IOT is in its infancy. It is a broad term but we can narrow it down to enhance our understanding they say basically it’s a networking thing that have something embedded. Which allows to gather and share data. Which is indeed the very point of progress these days. Let us take an example here. A retailer has a dress, he thinks of doing something new, different and innovative with this dress. Starting from health care or may be it can even alert to health care. All of this just based on one dress. Another point is that this dress can even alert the person from some dangers. Like they are not aware of a car coming up from behind them and they might get hit form that car.  It doesn’t basically includes wires hanging all around or big things coming out of the dress just some technical things embedded as a thread or whatever stuff the dress is made up of.

A number of people believes the internet to be old and soon to be replaced by something else. But internet of things is the next big thing because innovation and communication would always be the need of the hour. A need for progress, development, innovation and handling the projects with the most refine and adequate knowledge of things.

As mentioned in our previous articles, IOT will change the way we drive our business models, it might change the way we do business, automating things that are done manually today or in the near past. Same things will be revolutionized by the use of IOT. It will have positive effects enhancing professional efficiencies and operational efficiencies.

Let us take here an example of a 3D printer for a better understanding of IOT and how it relates to project managers, a project manager will go to the R&D folks. Bringing the system where it needed to be whether the system needs to communicate? The project manager will go back to the R&D asking them, have you think of this or have you think of that.

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Ways To Monetize Your Websites

Email Marketing

This is one of my favorite things to talk about because it’s just so powerful.

Building an email list can make you a lot of money, help you build a solid brand and of course help readers come back to your site, time after time.monetize-your-business

Email marketing can be seen to make you money in a few different ways, such as direct email promotions, to deliver free reports that are monetized and my favorite, to drive traffic back to your site where you make money from other methods.

Gone are the days of finding it hard to get people to subscribe to your website.
A few years ago, we added a lightbox popup to IncomeDiary. Over night, we went from getting 20+ subscribers a day to well over 100.

At the time, most websites hated the idea of using popups because of the negative association people have with them. But these popups are different. Instead of popping up in another browser window, they popup as part of the page you are on. It was a lot less intrusive. Even better, it wasn’t to promote something spammy, but rather something of value to the reader.

After seeing the massive results, we decided to develop our own software so that other website owners can experience the huge gains we have. We called it PopUp Domination.

Even after selling over 30,000 copies, big names in the industry still didn’t want to use it. They thought they knew better.

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Ways To Monetize Your Websites

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