Come join me as I talk about:

• What is the cloud?
• Why the cloud?
• Is the cloud for me?
• Is the cloud safe?
• How can the cloud save my business money?

Rensselaer County Regional Chamber of Commerce presents - Professional Development Series: Computing in the Cloud

Featuring Lauren Groff of Groff NetWorks

When:      Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Where:    Hilton Garden Inn, 235 Hoosick Street, Troy

Time:       7:30 a.m. registration; 8-10 a.m. program

$25 Chamber members / $40 non-members

To register, contact Kate Ollier, Programs & Communications Manager of Rensselaer Regional Chamber of Commerce at: KOllier@renscochamber.com 

Event Registration Hotline: 518-274-7474

      So you've bought into the whole social media and online marketing idea and you're Tweeting, posting to Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging and using Google+ (not to mention dozens of other online tools and resources) to promote your company. Whew!

     HootSuite is an online aggregation tool that allows you to review and manage all your online postings and presence through a simple, easy-to-use interface. All in one place, you can manage your company's Twitter accounts, your personal Facebook account, your company Facebook fan page, your LinkedIn posts, your WordPress blog entries and even more. You can even assign rights to any of your accounts to other team members without ever giving up a single password.

• Monitor social mentions of your name or company wherever they happen.
• Pre-schedule posting to happen any time in the future.
• Easily post your message across multiple social media sites with the simple click of a button in your HootSuite portal.
• Create custom reports to see where your traffic goes and what is working.

     Are you about to experience dam failure? Let me explain what I mean. As a CEO Coach, I have conversations with leaders of companies from a variety of industries, shapes and sizes. Yet one pattern that nearly all these business leaders share is that they say "yes" too often.

     Think about your schedule like a reservoir with the dam. Every time you say yes to something, you're adding more and more water to that reservoir. Say yes too often, and, pretty soon, you're going to have to open the spillway to let something else out. Keep this up for a while, and eventually you'll experience dam failure.

     To protect reservoir of time, I'm going to give you two tips that you can use to help you say "no" more often that you say "yes".

     The first deals with saying no to others. The more successful you become as a business owner or a CEO, the more people will be drawn to you. They'll want you to be involved in their projects. That's not to say that you should say no to all of them, but you need to be judicious in the "yeses".

     A simple way to handle this is to ask for requests through e-mail. E-mail allows you to review their request in a calm environment, away from social pressure, and view it in relation to your calendar. Then, if you decide to say no, you can take your time to craft a diplomatic response.

     The second tip deals with saying no to yourself. Most entrepreneurs, business owners, and CEOs are great idea generators. They have many ideas about business improvements or maybe even new business ventures. However, when they say yes to too many of those ideas, pretty soon they have to open the spillway of their time reservoir, causing them to neglect other things or, even worse, experiencing dam failure.

     I recommend using a perhaps list. A perhaps list is running list of all those great ideas that you have. Put ideas on that list, and then set up a schedule, perhaps once a month, to review that list and decide whether it's time to add something new to your already busy schedule. These two simple tips will help protect your precious time and focus. Follow them consistently, and you'll go a long way toward avoiding dam failure. 

     I read somewhere that the average Microsoft Office user uses less than 10% of the features available to them in the software. If that's true, then Office is a treasure trove of shortcuts, tools and features just waiting to be unleased. Of course, we don't know what we don't know - which is why most people never invest in training to learn these features and tools and make shorter work of various projects. To quote an old axiom, "We're too busy chopping trees to stop and sharpen the axe."

     Of course, not all training is created equal and you DO want to make sure you are getting the biggest bang for your buck. So, the first thing you need to determine is, which software applications do you use the most? Word? Excel? Publisher? Next, you need to determine your learning style. Are you good at self-study or do you prefer to have someone walking you through the lessons? There are many self-study and online courses to choose from, and the one that we recommend is: MicroKnowledge (see www.microknowledge.com).

     For more than 25 years, they have provided high-quality training, consulting and documentation services to businesses of all sizes, government agencies and not-for-profit organizations in Tech Valley and throughout the United States.