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The Death of the Technical Author?
Technical Authors do not have high prominence in the workplace, and they don't have the best of images (as can be seen by the movie "The Technical Writer"). Today, there are a number of Technical Authors struggling to find new employment in the current IT sector, and one can find messages on Internet newsgroups questioning the future employment prospects for Technical Authors in North America and Europe. Some wonder whether the role of the Technical Author will disappear, like other careers have in the past. In this article we look at the problems faced by Technical Authors in defining their role, and make some recommendations for the future.The problemsLet's first look at a number of issues that Technical Authors face :1. Overlapping technologies means overlapping job rolesTechnologies and software are developing in a way that means the boundaries between the programmer, the Technical Author, the Web Developer and the Trainer are becoming blurred. For example, the online Help that will ship with the next release of Windows (code name Longhorn) may look more like a Web site or a Web-based learning (CBT) system t

will come from where your competitors depart from convention.
7. Utilize search engines to discover the sources of your competitors' incoming links. These sites may be potential link partners for you as well. For more on linking strategies, see our research brief on that topic:
http://meclabs.com/cgi-bin/pl/pl.cgi?mls
8. If practical, make purchases from your competitors. How is their customer service? Are they utilizing drop-shipping or other forms of outsourcing? What can you learn from watching how they do business?
9. Monitor your competitors over time. Sign up for their email lists and analyze their marketing messages. How strong are your competitors' brands?
10. Analyze your competitors' Google, Overture, and other PPC ads. Knowing the best keywords for your market, it shouldn't be hard to locate your competitors' ads. These may give you ideas about how to modify your own campaigns.
11. Analyze your competitors' ratings and rankings on a number of platforms, including Google PageRank, Alexa, BizRate, comparison engines, and incoming links from other websites. The following spreadsheet may be useful in helping you track this analysis: http://www.meclabs.com/CompetitiveAnalysis.xls
Once you have compiled this data, you should be able to use it to gauge the effectiveness of your competitors' marketing efforts compared to your own.
12. Depending on entry and exit barriers for your industry, your competitive environment will change over time. Competitors will enter and leave and the most resilient among them will learn and evolve. Continue to analyze your competitors as time progresses. Consider performing a competitive analysis update on an annual or semi-annual basis. No company exists in a vacuum online. If you ignore your

Thoughts On Corporate Identity
Classically Corporate Identity has favored logo related issues that either represent admirable aspects of a company or that engender feelings or emotions companies want potential or actual customers to experience. Although we still hope to show admirable attributes and evoke proper emotions through Corporate Identity, there is a need today to provide more.As with so much of life the Internet has forever changed the way we identify our businesses.Identity is made up of many things but at its most basic level is comprised of Image(s) and Information. Image may be an actual graphic component or a series of key words or phrases that create a mental picture or a combination thereof. However, everything is information (small i). But in the case of Corporate Identity information must be restricted to that which pertains to the fundamental tenets upon which the business has been established and / or will thrive.The first of these factors, Image, has been defined, discussed and theorized about for centuries. It is the domain of artists, literati, philosophers, psychologists and psychiatrist

Knowing who your competitors are, as well as their strengths and weaknesses is an essential part of assessing the market for your product for your product or service. Most businesses have direct and indirect competitors.

1. What is competitive analysis?

A competitive analysis is a formal evaluation in which you review the businesses of one or more companies that compete, directly or indirectly, with your own. Online, competitors have access to each other's company information and marketing materials that they might not be able to gather as easily in the offline world. This allows for even greater opportunities to benefit from competitive analysis data. But how can companies improve by analyzing their competitors? And what is the best way to implement a thorough competitive analysis? For a business to succeed, you need to know almost as much about your competitors as you do about your own company and customers. Unfortunately most business owners make the mistake of waiting until a competitor opens up shop across the street and is cutting into profits to find out who and what they are up against.

A Competitive analysis allows you to identify your competitors and evaluate their respective strengths and weaknesses. By knowing the actions of your competitors, you will have a better understanding of what products and services you should offer; how you can market them effectively; and how you can position your business.

Competitive analysis is an ongoing process. You should always be gathering information about your competitors. Look at their Web sites. Read their product literature and brochures. Get your hands on their products. See how they present themselves at trade shows. Read about them in your industry’s trade publications. Talk to your customers to see hoe they feel about competitive products or services.

2. What are the benefits of conducting a competitive analysis?

The benefits of conducting a competitive analysis include: 1. You will identify WHO you are competing against. You will be able to assess the threat levels presented by other companies in your market.
2. You will identify your own weaknesses. Companies who do not pay attention to their competitors may not understand just what they are doing wrong because they have no frame of reference. Studying your competitors offers you a perfect opportunity to find out how you can better serve your customers.
3. Once you've identified those weaknesses, you'll be able to improve your business in a number of ways. The order in which those improvements should be implemented will often be dictated by the analyses of your competitors. For example, if all of the other companies sharing your target market have a certain feature considered essential to that market, this will be one of the first things you will want to remedy.
4. You will also identify your strengths. By comparing your own online presence to those of your direct competitors, you will discover what sets your business apart from theirs. These qualities can then be emphasized in your marketing efforts.
5. Additionally, you will be able to identify or confirm your Unique Value Proposition (UVP). Your UVP is the single most important element of your business that sets you apart from your competitors. Do you have the largest catalog of products? The lowest prices? The best customer service? Competitive analysis will help you develop your UVP and test the validity of the claims you make about your business.
6. You will be able to determine what factors drive success in your market space. These may vary greatly from market to market, and may not be what you originally expected. You will identify what specific actions you need to take in order to improve your competitive position

Identify your competition

Every business has competitors; you need to find out who your customers can approach to get a product or service that fills the same need as yours does. Even if your product or service is truly innovative, you need to look at what else your customers would purchase.

Begin looking at your primary competitors. These are the market leaders, the companies who currently dominate your market. Next, look at your secondary and indirect competitors. These are the businesses who may not go head-to-head with you, but who are targeting the same general market.

Finally, look at potential competitors. These are companies who might be moving into your market and who need to prepare to compete against.

Analyze strengths and weaknesses

After you have figured out who your competitors are, determine their strengths and find out what their vulnerabilities are. Why do customers buy from them? Is it price? Value? Service? Convenience? Reputation? Focus on as many “perceived” strengths and weaknesses as you do on actual ones.

Tabulate the strengths and weaknesses in a table format. This will allow you to see, at a glance, where each competitor stands.

Look at opportunities and threats

Strengths and weaknesses are often factors that are under a company’s control. But when you’re looking at your competition, you also need to examine how well prepared they are to deal with factors outside their control. These are called opportunities and threats.

Opportunities and threats fall into a wide range of categories, such as technology, regulatory and economic. You should consider the following guidelines when conducting competitive analysis.

1. Utilize a multitude of resources to identify your competitors. Who else is bidding on your PPC terms? What sites come up as natural search results for your terms? Check trade association memberships and business registries. Use your referrer data to identify what sites your visitors are coming from. Don't overlook word-of-mouth information from your customers and investors. These sources should yield a number of direct and indirect competitors. Narrow the scope of your analysis if necessary, but the most effective competitive analysis will compare at least three to five leading companies in your market.
2. Identify key success factors (KSFs) for your industry and rate yourself and others on each of them. One useful tool is the "strategic group map", which is part of a supporting Word document available for download:
http://www.meclabs.com/CompetitiveAnalysisSupplement.doc
3. Identify the competitive strengths of each company in the analysis, including your own. What makes each company unique? Do they own patents or copyrights that give them a competitive edge? Is there a dominant company with market share at or near "critical mass" level?
4. Identify the revenue models of your competitors. How do your competitors make money? Are you overlooking potential sources of revenue?
5. Do your competitors utilize partnerships, outsourcing, or other strategic relationships? Could your own company benefit from such relationships?
6. KEY POINT: In the course of your analysis, make note of unique or creative elements or approaches your competitors may use. Often, the greatest insights will come from where your competitors depart from convention.
7. Utilize search engines to discover the sources of your competitors' incoming links. These sites may be potential link partners for you as well. For more on linking strategies, see our research brief on that topic:
http://meclabs.com/cgi-bin/pl/pl.cgi?mls
8. If practical, make purchases from your competitors. How is their customer service? Are they utilizing drop-shipping or other forms of outsourcing? What can you learn from watching how they do business?
9. Monitor your competitors over time. Sign up for their email lists and analyze their marketing messages. How strong are your competitors' brands?
10. Analyze your competitors' Google, Overture, and other PPC ads. Knowing the best keywords for your market, it shouldn't be hard to locate your competitors' ads. These may give you ideas about how to modify your own campaigns.
11. Analyze your competitors' ratings and rankings on a number of platforms, including Google PageRank, Alexa, BizRate, comparison engines, and incoming links from other websites. The following spreadsheet may be useful in helping you track this analysis: http://www.meclabs.com/CompetitiveAnalysis.xls
Once you have compiled this data, you should be able to use it to gauge the effectiveness of your competitors' marketing efforts compared to your own.
12. Depending on entry and exit barriers for your industry, your competitive environment will change over time. Competitors will enter and leave and the most resilient among them will learn and evolve. Continue to analyze your competitors as time progresses. Consider performing a competitive analysis update on an annual or semi-annual basis. No company exists in a vacuum online. If you ignore your

How Clear Are Your Goals?
It was a foggy mid-October day as I made my way into the office to commence my work day. I was stuck in our normal morning commute and not able to see the buildings in Calgary’s downtown core. I began thinking to myself-- do I know where my end destination is? Absolutely, I could not see the building that holds my office however I still knew where to go.As my thoughts went on, I started to thinking about business and how some entrepreneurs hesitate to shoot for their goals simply because they cannot see their destination. They just do not go for it. They wait for the weather to clear so they can see where they want to go. What would happen if the weather never cleared? What would happen if while you were waiting for the skies to clear and the sun to come out your competitors claimed your goals from themselves?As my commute continued to my office, I started to see building outlines and my end destination started to come into sight, still fuzzy from the fog and snow in the air that day. The same can be said about achieving your business goals, if you step off and start making some movement towards your goals in business, you w

our customers to see hoe they feel about competitive products or services.

2. What are the benefits of conducting a competitive analysis?

Identify your competition

Finally, look at potential competitors. These are companies who might be moving into your market and who need to prepare to compete against.

Analyze strengths and weaknesses

Tabulate the strengths and weaknesses in a table format. This will allow you to see, at a glance, where each competitor stands.

Look at opportunities and threats

Opportunities and threats fall into a wide range of categories, such as technology, regulatory and economic. You should consider the following guidelines when conducting competitive analysis.

Fund Raising Strategies
In every fund raising event that you plan to organize, there should always be a strategy that is appropriate and will surely work out with your fund raising event. But, how can you determine what is the one for you? Actually, fund raising strategy can have a lot of different ways to carry out. However, choosing the right and best fund raising strategy can be complicated as there are several of them that seems all to work out.Your fund raising strategy must have a good plan. Make it a point to have your volunteers understand what is expected of them whatever strategy you utilize. And ensure that each one of them is equipped with information about the fund raising event so that the team will have a unified concept of the whole activity and confusions will be avoided. You have to remember that the success of any organized activity has something to do with teamwork as well. So, can you expect success if your team doesn’t have the same understanding of what’s going on? It is guaranteed that any event that you might come up with will go smoothly if you take advantage of a good fund raising strategy.Some fund raising strategies may include

success in your market space. These may vary greatly from market to market, and may not be what you originally expected. You will identify what specific actions you need to take in order to improve your competitive position

Identify your competition

Finally, look at potential competitors. These are companies who might be moving into your market and who need to prepare to compete against.

Analyze strengths and weaknesses

Tabulate the strengths and weaknesses in a table format. This will allow you to see, at a glance, where each competitor stands.

Look at opportunities and threats

Opportunities and threats fall into a wide range of categories, such as technology, regulatory and economic. You should consider the following guidelines when conducting competitive analysis.

Lose Lips Sink Ships in Industrial Equipment Buying
When you are in business and considering opening a new factory, industrial unit or business you must be wise as to keep things quiet. Why you ask? Well if you are in a limited industry sub-sector you may find that the equipment makers in the industry have a network and the word spreads like wild-fire in the industry.Let us say you are building a produce processing center? There may be only 2 or 3 makers of certain types of equipment for conveyors and size and shape sorters. You may find the XYZ Company guys are in Bed with Vern Johnson company over there at Blue Harvest Produce Processing or claim to be. So you must be careful of what you say and who knows who. Perhaps you are thinking I thought the Johnsons were smarter than that, they probably are, they cannot be all that stupid?The XYZ Company Group sure allows a lot of lose lips to sink ships and this is quite common and you might never know this or consider this when entering the niche processing of peaches in Georgia. You would be wise to keep what you are doing close to the vest, as you maybe surprised how many people are very close to the industry. From bankers, insurance pe

o a wide range of categories, such as technology, regulatory and economic. You should consider the following guidelines when conducting competitive analysis.

Retain Your Best People
Many managers and team leaders ask me how to deal with employees in a way that will maximize their potential, create loyalty and respect, and cut down on high turnover and destructive behavior in the workplace. The single most common reason people stay or leave an organization is based on the relationship they have with their direct supervisor. Therefore, the key is to show a keen personal interest in each person. Recognize everyone's uniqueness and find ways to allow that uniqueness to be expressed at work.The following tips can be adapted to your particular situation.- One-on-one Meetings.- Build trust; have meetings in your office over lunch or coffee with each individual.- Get to know your employee by asking about their career goals, even if you have to acknowledge that working at their present job may just be a stepping-stone on the way.- Ask what opportunities for growth they might like in their job.- Ask what part of their present job they enjoy the most. Find ways to give them more of those tasks.- Ask if there is any part of their job they don't like. If possible, relieve them of the parti

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There are hundreds of case manufacturers providing numerous styles of shipping cases in various sizes and dimensions. Most of these case companies offer foam inserts. Some are layered foam that is cubed and some are uncubed layered foam. Most would like you to believe that their cube foam is an easy way to create your custom like foam insert.

Adaptation of personnel on a workplace is the necessary link of skilled manage-ment. Unfortunately, importance of measures on a vocational orientation and adaptation of workers is not seriously enough perceived by staff services during a long period. Until now many state enterprises and commercial organizations do not have the basic adaptation pro-grams even. At the same time, there is large western experience of the use of adaptations techniques, which only lately other staff services and agencies began to adopt.

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