During these trying times we should be ready to be tested on our ability to create and promote our web presence . Here are a few recession beating steps to make your internet marketing recession -proof.

1. Retain what you have. Do all you can to retain what you have. The best challenge would be to safeguard your existing client list. Be more patient and accommodating.
2. Friendly yet effective Content. No one wants what does not work. If content can drive business then ensure that the site content is like a dozen sales guys blabbering to the target audience. Each page has to be relevant and to the point, answering all questions that could arise in the minds of potential customers.
3. Adopt search engine optimization. . Make sure your site is easily ‘crawled’ by the search engines. Best brochures are useless without circulation. Beat content is garbage if you are the only one reading it. Make effective efforts to use the best SEO practices.
4. Return on investment in advt. If you’re spending money on advertising, measure every ad for effectiveness. Advertisements need to convert to be effective. Do not ignore failures. Use every Ad penny wisely. Adapt to the changed mindset during recession to bring out the key advantages of your products or services. Hit where it ‘makes a difference to the client”…
5. Back to roots. Some marketing methods have worked for decades: Wonesty.persistence & Research. Don’t get cheap & understand the client and the market moods. It’s time to respond to needs not wishes.
6. Synergy is the key. Align forces and resources wherever possible
7. Go wild. This is not a time to get conservative. Your competitors probably will. This is a good time to stand out, not by being silly or overspending, but by making sure you have a particularly effective message, and that you carry that message everywhere. Remember, internet marketing is always cheaper than other media. So expand, don’t shrink, what you’re doing online.
8. TRY blogging & social networking. It would never hurt.
9. Go deep. Deeper, crisper information.
10. Sensitive discounts only. Enter the price and the discount wars but make efforts to sell quality and class first.

Wonestly yours

Harjeet Kakkar

Slowly they walked in with humility
magically they transformed with ability
spoke whenever they did thoughtfully
delivered whatever they did interestingly
looked whenever they did expectantly
hooked to whatever delivered hungrily
grasped whatever they could smartly
shared their smiles devoutly
Learnt their first lessons humbly
the noises were those like bumble bees
the whispers the shouts were honey like
the gongs were always ready to strike
their views maybe naive but they were not
they wanted to strike the iron hot
they wanted to iron out the misery
they wanted to shape their destiny

I THOUGHT I WOULD TRAIN THEM BUT WHO AM I
MY LECTURES WERE SHADOWED BY what and why

I thought of adding value to u and me
but followed you to campus with joy and glee

My heroes the Industry welcomes Thee…

SAME  DATE , SAME DAY A MONTH LATER …HE GOT A FATTER CHECK.. BUT IT WAS ALSO THE HIS LAST ONE WRAPPED IN A PINK SLIP.

DAVID DIDNOT KNOW WHAT HIT HIM, HOW AND WHERE DID HE GO WRONG.

He was smart punctual, honest and hardworking. He had all that was required to fulfil his role . Yet he was in the first group of people fired.

Each year a million people get the PINK SLIP in North America ALONE. Many see it coming for obvious reasons.

TEN THINGS YOU MUST CONSIDER WHEN YOU GET FIRED OR LOSE A JOB.

1. IT CAN HAPPEN TO ANYONE ANYTIME

2. IT COULD HAPPEN EVEN IF YOU DONT DESERVE IT..DONT DWELL ON IT

3. REVIEW YOUR RIGHTS . TAKE PROFESSIONAL ADVICE AND IF YOU FIND GAPS FIGHT POSITIVELY

4. TAKE A STOCK OF YOUR PERSONAL INVENTORY. EACH ASSET SHOULD BE EVALUATED. EACH PENNY LOCATED AND EACH FORGOTTEN LOAN RECOVERED

5. EVALUATE YOUR LOANS AND REACH OUT TO YOUR BANKER OR CREDIT CARD COMPANY BEFORE THEY START HUNTING YOU.  MORE OFTEN THAN NOT YOU SHALL BE ABLE TO STRIKE A FAVORABLE DEAL.

6. REHEARSE HONEST ANSWER TO THE FUTURE EMPLOYERS FAV QUESTION”WHAT WAS THE REASON FOR LEAVING THE LAST JOB”.

7. VOLUNTEER INFORMATION DURING PERSONAL INTERVIEW AND QUICKLY MOVE ON FORWARD.

8. STAY FOCUSSED ON CURRENT SITUATION. DONT BECOME A COUCH POTATO.LESSER TV MORE OF ONLINE JOB SEARCHING. ACTIVATE YOUR PEOPLE NETWORKS AND DONT BE SHY TO ASK FOR HELP.

9. STAY SHARP AND FOCUSSED. TAKE FREQUENT POSITIVE BREAKS. MAINTAIN YOUR PERSONAL HYGEINE, SHAVE AND BE APPROPRIATELY DRESSED. MOSTLY “ITS ALL IN THE MIND”

10.LASTLY NO PERSONAL GRUDGES, NO FORMER BOSS/MANAGER BITCHING, POSITIVE ATTITUDE AND NO SELF PITY.

ALWAYS REMEMBER

Failure is an event, never a person.  ~William D. Brown, Welcome Stress

Pink slip refers to the American practice, by a personnel department, of including a discharge notice (printed on pink paper) in an employee’s pay envelope to notify the worker of his or her termination of employment or layoff.^[1] According to an article in The New York Times, the editors of the Random House Dictionary dated the term to at least 1910.^[1] Originally the color of the paper had no particular significance. In the UK and Ireland the equivalent of a pink slip is a P45, in Belgium the equivalent is known as a C4

Vhire4u.com conference room

Event: Group discussion for management trainee selection

Topic  Global recession ..reasons and impact on India

Answers were interesting … i would like to share them with the web world

1. Osama ( she meant obama) does not want outsourcing to India

2. Obama wants to keep all jobs for black Americans

3. Banks in usa gave huge loans to India and china which they could not repay

4. Iraq war has driven usa bankrupt

5. Usa has printed lots of fake currency without gold standards causing inflation

6. American banks gave lot of loans to citizens without paperwork and they defaulted

7. America has no black money to support its white economy

8. China has caused usa bankruptcy to be a superpower

9. There were no rains in usa this year causing food shortage and inflation ( this one  I liked the best)

10. People in usa take home loans but spend them else where on good food and clothes.

I can go on and on . Youth of today. They would browse the net for hours for all sorts of info. But young MBA’s had no clue . In the end i made an open offer . Anyone who answers “What is sub prime mortgage  crisis?” gets a job right away. 

126 answers …all wrong , weird and hilarious.

god help the world ..:)

Hi!

a/s/l

26/female/LA usa  and u?

27/male/chicago  and single ready to mingle…

sweet !

what do u do?

I am a professional boxer.. I play for money ..and u?

I am a ballet dancer and trainer

gosh!!!

I was just watching my buddy Daniels’ screen. There he was 40+ , slightly on the plump side , almost bald and unable to climb the third floor when the lift was not working. Boxer ..my foot. Yet he could go on and on…for hours , one lie after the other. Later he would try to meet the girls he chatted with. Dunno how he could gather the guts but somehow he did.

So one day after numerous chats he decided to meet this one too. We waited for hours before we got a call. Hi! I would love to meet you but i have a confession to make…. ahh.. emm… I am not as young as I said . Well I could see a grin on Daniels face. “Its ok”, he said . So, how old are you?

53…  THUD!!!!

Honesty is the human quality of communicating and acting truthfully related to truth as a value. This includes listening, and any action in the human repertoire — as well as speaking. Superficially, honesty means simply stating facts and views as best one truly believes them to be. It includes both honesty to others, and to oneself  and about one’s own motives and inner reality. Honesty, at times, has the ability to cause misfortune to the person who displays it. Honesty can also mean fairness, and truthfulness, and the avoidance of misleading people.

Web and honesty are a rare combination. Judging by my personal experiences I am afraid extremly rare.

So I thought why not create  a new word. Who knows it might become a movement one day .

My crusade is about WEB+HONESTY = “WONESTY”.

If all works well , some years from now people wud say ..hi I am xyz and I am Wonest.

Average homosapien spends 3-4.5 hours on the Internet. At any given time 15% of humanity is not practicing “WONESTY”.

Imagine …Trades , deals , chats ,confessions, promises, miracle cures, tourism, counselling etc etc .. All aided and abetted by dishonesty in the real and “DISWONESTY” in the virtual world.

Well! we might end up spending 15% of our lives in an unreal , DISWONEST virtual world. Scary!! isn’t it?

But then imagine if Daniel was honest. OH for gods sake I know its difficult to imagine that but hypothecially. Then the conversation would go like this…

hi!

Hi!

a/s/l

53/female/champaign usa  and u?

46/male/palm springs and married always on the leash…

sweet !

what do u do?

i am a cook at the Indian eatery?

i work at the grocery store.

ok ttyl.. bye

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.  ~Henry Louis Mencken, A Little Book in C Major, 1916

It all started with a chance conversation with a gentleman on American Airlines. Seated in business class after a battered reality check on US STAFFING conditions.. …. let’s call him Mr. INDIA

He was going back and forth from business to cabin. Then I had to poke my nose and ask. I am glad i did.

He looked calm, a rarity in 2008. We struck the right cord almost immediately.

Why, where, how long, how many are normal idiocrasis on Desi gene pool. What next.. was interesting. Mr. India was not on a pleasure cum business trip. He was an NRI going back home…Forever.

Obviously, I had to ask… and be apologetic in my typical gene set. But there was nothing to feel bad, no apology, no sorry, no sadist sigh.

“He was a migratory bird”, he said. A true one indeed. He had to push himself towards greener pastures in unfriendly climate and so he was heading towards India.

Recession “It’s all in the mind.”

Mr. India had not lost any job. Nor had his wife teaching at Boston university. They had come to America 11 years back in search for a decent lifestyle, good higher education and a secure birthplace for their children.

Now he says… that dream has outlived it’s life.

America is like a drunk younger brother. Always in debt…younger brother and US government is like the elder brother always paying his debts off, getting into younger ones drunken brawls, fighting lost meaningless causes. Of course, the younger brother keeps drinking… as his debts are always paid off.

“I want his drinking problem to be taken care of and not his debts.”

Mr. India has a point. First manufacturing, then services and IT. Now where are the jobs? And where is the mindset? It’s all in the mind……

Obama… sounds different. We are tense. Are we? Yes, mostly about Outsourcing. Remember 1000 million people is a big enough market. A huge ocean of opportunities.

World is just doing a “cut for seat” as we do during our diwali card games. It’s not going to stop playing. It’s just trying different things from now…as always. It’s a cycle…. good for all of us. It’s the time to introspect to produce the best. Time to cut out the frills, and to do a personality ISO audit. Improvement of self creates improvement of society …old boring yet “true”. Now is the time to enhance skill sets, improve employee confidence and create cohesive “thin lean mean teams”. Jobs are plenty for those who deserve. The need of the hour is to be a professional… a true professional with genuine skill sets.

To all those striving to reach foreign lands… world is a global village… world is a global marketplace. Trade where there is profit. It’s not the PASSPORT, IT’S THE MINDSET. “IT’S ALL IN THE MIND”. I said it but do I mean it… Is it really all in the mind!