Thursday, September 29, 2011

5 TIPS ON HOW TO AVOID CALL CENTER HOPPING

Call center hoppers are still a common trend. Some agents get their first paychecks and then just decide to disappear. These agents hop from one callcenter to another hoping that the next one is where their careers get built.

Testing the waters isn’t really a bad thing, but do recognize when resigning is becoming a habit. If you find yourself in your 4th callcenter job within a year, then analyze if you are just having extremely bad luck, or, it might be your attitude — chances are, it’s your attitude!

Many agents find the negative side of everything.

My uncle taught me that a career is like a seed in a plot. Once you plant the seed, you need time for it to grow. Once grown up, only then can you transfer it to another plot. If you transfer a small sprout, it will never grow big.

I personally know some callcenter hoppers, some are now 35 years old and they still have no stable careers. Make constant career shifting a habit and you will reap it when the time comes.

So here are some tips to help you fight the temptation of writing that resignation letter!

1) Research before getting hired

Rather than getting hired first then regretting it later, make sure you do proper research on your target company. Go to Pinoyexchange and find discussion threads about the callcenter that you are eyeing. Find people online and offline who can talk to you about your prospective workplace. Be wary of false information though, because some callcenter agents tend to exaggerate and give false feedback. Putting effort in gathering information is way better than getting hired — only to be discouraged once live.

Here’s the link to PinoyExchange and look for the Callcenter thread.

http://www.pinoyexchange.com/

2) Know what to expect

When the final interview comes and the interviewer asks you “if there are any questions”, then fire away and ask. Ask about the salary, the schedules, the environment, growth, metrics, how cold the aircon is etc.

If you applied in a decent callcenter, then the HR personnel should answer your questions about the actual work. It’s their job to answer your questions after you pass the interviews. (You can also say that you want to know what to expect because you want to find a lasting career.) If they refuse to give information, then do not sign that contract! That company is not being professional, and it seems as if they do not care about your wellbeing.

3) Stop looking for better work

You want a job where you can be happy? A job where you can make friends? An easier job where you can make petiks, or where the avail time is longer? Somewhere where you are allowed to browse or take endless breaks?

These jobs do exist, but if you chase after them all the time, then what does that say about your character? A Job is something that was never meant to be easy.


4) Aim for maturity and discipline

No working conditions are perfect, but if you find that the work is something you can live through – then go for it! You will learn discipline and maturity when you face challenges. It may be hard, but overcoming hardships builds you up as a person.


5) Know when to Quit

Quitting is not bad — just make sure you are quitting for the right reasons. There are a lot of bad callcenters out there. (This is why I did suggest that you research first before signing that final contract.) But if you’re really are stuck in a career where you cry every single day and regret coming to work, then write that resignation letter.

Do remember, that there is a thin line between nag-iinarte ka lang and the job is really bad. If qutting is becoming a habit, then chances are nag-iinarte ka nga.

You only quit when:

1) There is no possible growth or the compensation is really bad.
2) The bosses are evil to the extent that they will personally harass you.
3) The company does not follow the labor code.
4) The environment will damage your health and mental wellbeing.

Any other tips you can think of?

Saturday, September 24, 2011

7 Tips of Making Your Blog Entertaining




1. Headlines

This is a visual thing that basically just makes your blog easier to read. By using headlines effectively, things like H1 or H2 tags, you can break up your blog post and make it more readable. The easier blog post is to read, the more retweets and comments you will get.

2. Images

This is the same as #1, I almost have images with ALL of my blog posts. Very few don’t have any. Another reason for this is that most of my images if the reader clicks on them will take them somewhere that I want them to go to. Also if anyone shares my actual blog post, say over facebook, it will have a nice image associated with it.

3. Tone of Voice

Blogging is an innately personal thing, even if you are building it for your business. I mean it could be a blog on fitness gloves for all I care, it still needs a personal tone to it. Without the personal tone you lose one of the greatest powers of the blog, which is binding people to you closer and building relationships with these people. The relationship is what leads to people coming back to your blog over and over again.
Which builds your audience and as well as your marketing power (From the retweets and facebook shares etc.)





4. Stop focusing just on keywords

A lot of people, including me, when they first start blogging are obsessed with keywords. They all want free traffic from the search engines after all. Which is great, but it is not going to happen just overnight especially when your blog is new. A lot of people blogging today try to make their keywords feel natural, creating a blog post that sounds really weird.
Instead of focusing just on keywords, write what also comes to your mind. After all, my post on Why Orcs are Better than Elves definitely had no real keyword value. Though it had the entertainment factor there for sure!

5. Being Totally Transparent

This is something that has grown on me over the weeks of learning more about blogging and getting this blog more noticed. That is, your audience loves it when you’re being real with them. When you’re not just telling them a story, but a TRUE story. They also love it when you share with them not only your successes so they may applaud, but your failures so they may also relate with you.
It is something I want to do a lot with my facebook marketing reality show that I mentioned in my New Years Resolutions post.
The more real you can be, the more entertainment value your blog will truly have.

6. Switching It Up

Most blogs, this one included, almost every post is just written in words. Very few blogs do audio posts or video posts despite the huge demand for them. This is something I plan on doing more, as I love doing audios personally – though not so much video – and it will diversify my blog up more. Allowing people who aren’t into reading 600-1,000 word long blog posts into still devouring my content.
Keep it different having mixed posts between audios, to videos to text. Or combine all 3 in a single post to see what the effect is.

7. The Most Entertaining Value…

The biggest form of adding entertainment with your blog is if you think about every post before you actually begin to write it, and ask yourself how is this going to help the audience I am trying to reach out to? How is this going to help build that relationship with my readers that I need?
If you make sure every blog post you give adds value to someone’s life, then typically you’re on the right track. There is so much garbage out there people are always reading, it is like this huge breath of fresh air when they get to read something that is actually good. Or something they can implement RIGHT away with.
So go for the goal… the goal of value.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

3 Simple Tips to Drive Instant Traffic to Your Website or Blog



1) Article Writing: This is one of the best methods of pulling large amount of traffic to your website. You have to make the article interesting to the readers. This will make the readers wanting to get more from you alone. There are many article directories you can submit your articles to. You can Google “article directories” and you will be surprised by the large numbers of article directories you can submit to. You have to writing new articles on regular bases and continue submitting them to article directories. Most people find it hard to write new articles. But that should not be an excuse for not writing. There many sources online where you can pick ideas from. You can pick an idea from online forums, magazines, newspapers and so on. After picking these ideas, you must be able to come out with your own articles. Many people always want to play smart by copy other person’s articles and using them as their own, that is a big mistake which can affect their ranking in search engines.

2) Pay per Click Advertisement: You can set up an Adword campaign for example with Google. You will set the amount of money you want to pay per click. It can ranges from $0.01 to as high as $70 per click. It depends on how competitive your niche is. After setting up the campaign, you can start seeing traffic within 24hours of setting it. But let me quickly inform you that it is also one of the easiest ways to quickly lose your money. The reasons may be as a result of some lapses like bad landing page, high cost of product(s) you are promoting, highly competitive niche and so on. For you to see any significant results from your campaign, you have to make amendment to the above lapses. Without doing this, you can lose all your money set for the campaign within some minutes. That is why it is advisable to always consult those people that know how to set the campaign and let them teach you.

3) Social Networking Sites: Most people have not tap into the use of social networking sites as a source of traffic. Social networking sites can generate hundreds of thousands of traffic to your sites if you know how to go about it. Let us take facebook for example; facebook has millions of users on its platform. You can take advantage of this by setting up a fan page or group for the website you are promoting. But you should not make it glaring that you are promoting you website. If you make it glaring, people will consider it as spamming which may lead to the blockage of your account. You can also buy an advert space on facebook. This will make your website gets to large audience as you can easily set the geographical location you want your advertisement to be viewed.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

7 Best Reasons To Go To Work Naked…





1. Ur boss is always yelling, “I wana see ur ass here by 8 am.”



2. Can take advantage of computer monitor radiation to work on ur tan.



3. “I love to chip in but I left my wallet in my pants.”



4. Gives ‘bad hair day’ a new meaning.



5. To stop those creepy guys in Marketing from looking down ur blouse.



6. People stop stealing ur pens after they’ve seen where you keep them.



7. No one steals ur chair.



Friday, September 2, 2011

11 Differences between those who dream and those who act:



1. Wanna-be’s obsess about ideas.

Entrepreneurs obsess about implementation.

2. Wanna-be’s focus on positive thinking.

Entrepreneurs plan for multiple contingencies.

3. Wanna-be’s want to get on TV and get famous.

Entrepreneurs build their list.

4. Wanna-be’s seek a perfect plan.

Entrepreneurs execute and adjust the plan later.

5. Wanna-be’s wait for their lucky break.

Entrepreneurs engineer four, five, six plans and execute them in tandem, wagering that at least one plan will get traction.

6. Wanna-be’s fear looking stupid in front of their friends.

Entrepreneurs willingly risk making fools of themselves.

7. Wanna-be’s shield their precious ideas from harsh reality, postponing the verdict of success or failure until ‘someday’.

Entrepreneurs expose their ideas to cold reality as soon as reasonably possible.

8. Wanna-be’s put off practicing basketball until they’ve got AirJordans.

Entrepreneurs practice barefoot behind the garage.

9. Wanna-be’s believe what they’re told, believe their own assumptions.

Entrepreneurs do original research and determine what paths have been already trod.

10. Wanna-be’s believe they can do anything.

Entrepreneurs do what they’re gifted for and delegate the rest.

11. Wanna-be’s think about the world in terms of COULD and SHOULD.

Entrepreneurs think in terms of IS and CAN BE.