CIO.com recently stood up an interesting survey - BlackBerry Users Vote: How Tethered Are You?

I think a more important question for company decision-makers would be, How Tethered Should My Team Be?

My world is very interesting and overall I think unique. Not unique for the tech industry but unique as compared to the work force as a whole. I require myself to be electronically connected at almost all hours of every night and day. Much to Nicole’s chagrin, yes, ‘every’ night and day. My tech team is nearly the same and during their disconnected times there should be another connected person capable of filling the needs of the organization.

Let’s move to other member (sets) of the organization’s team. Should the Operations team be consistently connected? Should the Creative team be consistently connected? Should the Sales team be consistently connected? Should the Marketing team be consistently connected? (I’ll stop there but there are other teams just a critical such as HR, Finance / Accounting, etc.) Within each of these teams an evaluation of senior management, team leads and team members should also be weighed. Should they, or at least their role, be consistently connected?

Here’s my answer - YES! Yes, they absolutely sure should. Each of these teams occupies a vital role in the decision-making processes that are important to the organization’s success. A senior member of each of these teams should be always available, reachable and able to communicate at any given time as dictated by the real-time needs of the organization.

So how do we make this connected state happen? Smartphones. Smartphones that are reliable, (platform) stable, secure, usable, functional and yes, okay attractive. Smartphones that put email, SMS, MMS, Internet access, IM and phone calls at your fingertips. RIM’s BlackBerry tops the list of recommendations from leaders of most top organization around the globe including myself. Nokia (the N95) makes fine smartphone products as does Palm (the Treo series) and HP (the iPAQ series).

CIO.com’s Survey Results for “How Addicted to Your SmartPhone Are You?
5% - My phone is for business. I put it away at night, unless I’m traveling for work.
2% - I check messages every few hours after work and on weekends. But I’d never bring my smartphone on vacation.
19% - I’m more productive because of my smartphone, and it doesn’t negatively affect my work/life balance. I wouldn’t call it an addiction.
67% - My smartphone never leaves my side. At work, rest, play, vacation, you name itmy best electronic friend is with me.
7% - IMHO That’s NOYB. BB4N. EOM. (In my humble opinion, that’s none of your business. Bye bye for now. End of message.)

Where do you stand? Do you make yourself available to be a vital piece of your organization?
-kp.

Business owners and marketing directors want to know how to be found on search engines.  It is one of the most frequently asked questions we receive.  It may not be the most important question regarding internet marketing for all or our clients but it is almost always in the marketing mix.  Traffic from search engines can greatly increase the sales or services provided by a company.  There really is no silver bullet but there are four ways to increase search traffic: 

• Copywriting

• Linking strategies

• Networking

• Traditional Advertising

Copywriting encompasses using the right keywords in the copy, the title of your page or subject matter, the popularity of the subject matter and url’s to name just a few.  Copywriting has a direct affect on providing readers or visitors to your site with relevant copy and gaining links to your site.

Linking strategies is the art of getting or acquiring other websites to link to your site.  It is very time consuming to go out and get websites to link to your website.  Creating a topical area with relevant information can encourage others to link to your site.

Networking online includes going to blogs within your niche, get to know others in your market and link to similar but not competing sites. Linking to them and they will reciprocate.  Use the social network to increase your web presence including YouTube.com, MySpace.com and even Twitter.com to name just a few.

Do not discount the use of traditional advertising such as T.V, radio, newspapers, magazines or even billboards to drive traffic to a website.  Traffic to GoDaddy.com surged more than 1500% on Super Bowl Sunday 2006 and Budweiser.com increased more than 500% according to ComScore Networks Very few companies can afford a Super Bowl ad but it does illustrate the power of traditional advertising.