John Vespasian asked:


Forget about enthusiasm and motivation. Do not waste your time trying to impress people who do not care for you. Most of the career advice that you will hear comes from ancient times that, actually, never existed. Make a commitment to discard inherited nonsense. It is time to rebuild your strategy according to reality.

Pick up a pen and piece of paper and write down the names of unsuccessful persons you know. Chances are that your list will be quite long. Look at the names and ask yourself some hard questions. Recall their individual circumstances, assess their challenges, and question their excuses.

Some men and women in your list will be intelligent and educated. From those, a few might deserve being recognized as brilliant. Others will be highly motivated and enthusiastic. How come that they are not progressing in life? The primary reason of their failure might be their belief in false ideas, such as overwork and career planning.

Let me put forward some controversial truths. These are the kind of statements that you might have heard before but that you were too quick to discard. Reality can be disrupting, but you will benefit from acknowledging facts as they are. You might want to sit down before you read this:

1.- MANY MARKETS ARE CLOSED. Ignore the propaganda and examine the facts with a cool head. If you are trying to enter a market dominated by highly entrenched players, the undertaking might require too much effort to be worth it. People might preach openness and fairness to the gallery, while their actions show that outsiders are not welcome. Stay away from those markets. You have better things to do with your life.

2.- SOME PROFESSIONS OFFER LITTLE OPPORTUNITY. College counsellors usually possess good statistics about the employment market. On that basis, they can tell students about the earnings that they can expect on their initial job should they choose, for instance, to become embalmers. The problem with this sort of advice lies in its short-term focus. Instead, go and talk to someone who works in your field of interest and ask how fast people can move upwards from their initial position. If the answer is unconvincing, stay away. There are plenty of professions whose markets are growing. Why on earth would you want to enlist in a losing legion?

3.- THINKING LOCAL IS A RECIPE FOR DISASTER. National economies and international trade are likely to transform the face of our cities in the next twenty years. Currencies fluctuate and importers might become exporters. Present territories of immigration might give rise to waves of emigration. Things are going to change massively in the next decades and nobody is quite sure how cards will be reshuffled. In this environment, thinking locally might bury your professional chances. Spread your risks and boost your career. Learn a foreign language and stay mobile.

Advertisements for jobs and training programmes always fail to tell you the ultimate truth: nobody cares about your career as much as yourself. Employers who cheer you up with empty motivational talk frequently turn out to be exploitative. When it comes to your professional future, as for everything else, you will be much better off if you remain sceptic and think for yourself.

JOHN VESPASIAN writes about rational living. He has resided in New York, Madrid, Paris, and Munich. His stories reflect the values of entrepreneurship, tolerance, and self-reliance. See John Vespasian’s blog about rational living.

http://johnvespasian.blogspot.com/

Integrity Career Transitions asked:


When the going gets tough, the tough get…creative. With over 11 million people in the country now out of work and the unemployment rate up to over 9%, competition in the job market is getting hotter than ever.

Gone are the days when waiting for job advertisements to come up or visiting your local employment agency were enough. Jobseekers these days are having to be proactive in their campaign, and more than ever they are having to make sure that they stand out from the competition – or eliminate it altogether.

So, what is the answer? Does a guy or a gal have to don a clown costume or run amok with a pitchfork to get noticed these days? In short, no. There is an easier, and a more legal way, and it is called branding.

Branding is a marketing term which is all about deliberately and consciously creating an image that ‘customers’ can form an emotional attachment to. It is what gives them that warm, fuzzy feeling when they think about a particular product or service or company, and when it comes to the moment of choice, it is what ‘pre-sells’ one commodity over another. In the same way that BMW conjures up images of sleek style and remarkable performance, branding makes your name synonymous with the job that you want and the skills and qualities that a prospective employer needs.

Make no mistake, you have a brand image already, whether you realize it or not – it just might not be one that you are comfortable with. Put yourself in a prospective employer’s shoes – but do it honestly. What would you think of you? Do you see a guy who always does a good job and does it on time, or someone with a ‘can’t do’ attitude who is lacking in motivation? If it is the latter, then maybe now is the time to re-invent yourself.

Honest self-analysis is one of the keys to successful personal branding, and you can make a start on this by taking a good, hard look at your strengths and weaknesses. List your skills, qualifications and experience. Hone in on your positive personality traits. Consider the areas where there may be weaknesses, things that you can address and improve upon. Keep an image in the back of your mind of the person that you want a prospective employer to see when you walk in through the door, and make yourself that person.

Branding is not about eliminating the fun things, the quirkiness, from your personality. It is about recognizing and capitalizing on your marketable qualities, and about growing those qualities to make you even more desirable within the job market. It is about making a personal promise to a potential employer that will make him feel reassured and confident.

When you have a clearer idea of what it is that you want to project to the outside world, verbalize it. Create your own branding statement – a short, succinct statement that sums up what you are best at and what your unique promise of value to an employer is. This is not merely a job title, but a statement that sums up your skills, your abilities and your uniqueness.

Once you have done this, put your branding statement absolutely everywhere – on your business cards, website, blog, Facebook account and anywhere else you can think of. Make your brand part of every offline and online interaction that you have. Research the market and the industry you want to be in, identify potential employers and network your way into the job you want. With a strong brand that not only promises, but delivers, your reputation will precede you and open the doors to that inner sanctum, the ‘hidden’ market.

Created your brand already? What is your promise of value to a potential employer or your killer branding statement?

Debajyoti Das asked:


How to Start Blogging – Steps for becoming a Blogger

1) Find your Niche – Now when I saw this Tip, I didn’t even knew what’s a niche. What it means to me is your interests. For Eg. -My Blog Realtrix is about Internet & Web and Computing Stuff. Similarly you should find your Interest about what you are going to Blog about. Some Ideas I think you can be blogging about are Blogging, Computing, Tech, Motivation, Entrepreneurship, Music, Bollywood, Parental, Personal & Education.

2) Find which Blogging SW you are going to Use – The are many. The most Popular is WordPress & Blogger. Lets be straight Wordpress is much better than Blogger. BUT is better as it not 100% free. Hence, Blogger is the Best Option. I am using Blogger as Its highly Customizable. Also Blogger is a part of Google Services.

3) How to Start & what to write – Before making your own blog see what other Bloggers are doing and writing about on the same topic you are going to write about. Then make a list of Stuff they are not Writing about but you think should be written about. Now you know what to write about in your Blog.

Tip : If you are a regular reader you might have seen that I use Images for every Post I write. So you can start collecting Photos for your Blog Post in advance.

4) Starting Your Blog – Check Out the Video here to know how to Get a Free Blog at Blogger.Com. Set Up the Blog there following the Video Tips. Read : How to Create a BlogSpot Blog for Free ? – Video Guide For Beginners

5) Search Engine Optimization – This is very Important when Starting a Blog… See Below “Tips for New Bloggers”

6) What Template to Choose and Where to find Them – Your blog Template, I think is one of the Factors which will keep bringing back Visitors. I means think it this way if you see a very Nice Looking Blog … Don’t you try to remember it and Go back to See what’s new going On there ??

Best Tips for New Bloggers

Do you want to increase traffic to your blog? Well, here are some ready tips to make a move in the world of success blogging. Get started with the following tips that make your task easy. Some of the Easiest Ways to Improve your Blog, SEO and its Traffic/Visitors.



Make a habit of posting regularly in the blog.

Choose a proper template for your Blog. You don’t expect people to like it if you have a cooking theme in a Technology blog.

Write a topic and post it in different sections and thereby create a series. This increases the curiosity of the web visitors who turn to the blog for the interesting follow-ups.

Optimize your blog to make it load Faster so that new visitor don’t get annoyed to sit idle while your blog page loads.

Try to blog out breaking news first. It increases the popularity and creates an authentic image in the web community.

Use right keywords in the body content. The placement of the keywords in accurate density proves to be search engine friendly.

It is very important to encourage comments of web visitors in your blog. Highlight the most relevant comments on the blog. Try to build a cordial relation with the web visitors so that they visit your blog over and over again.

Submit your blog in blog directories and the RSS feed in RSS directories respectively.

It will be fruitful if you use the Ping-O-Matic service. Enter your blog name and its URL and select the directories according to choice. Any updates in your blog are automatically updated in the directories. The web visitors in these directories will able to access your contents.

While designing your blog it necessary to make an email subscription button and form. This proves to be very user friendly.

Try to comment on other blogs. This will introduce your blog in the blogger community.

List your favorite blogs in the blog rolls. You must also try to list your blog in other blogs.

It is highly important to add your blog’s URL to your email signature and any profiles other social networking sites. This will also introduce your blog in the web community.

It is essential to use Digg, Stumble and other social bookmarking sites for your blog. Once you send a post in the aggregators, it will reach millions in no time.

Write on related topics. Post related Articles in a row. This helps in stirring up the interest of the web visitors.

Show the topmost posts in the your blog which received great popularity. This will bear evidence of your blog’s authenticity and significance.

It is mandatory to add “previous” and “next” post buttons. This helps the user to quickly and easily navigate through the Blog.

Try to build up inbound links in your blog. This will help the web visitors to access other important pages in your blog and thus enhance traffic flow.

Rework on the previous Old posts. Try to check out every detail in your post and make it exciting.

Track your Visitors. See where they Come From, Searching for What. When they leave. etc.

Use photos in your post.

Make a Translation Widget In your Blog to help foreign visitors read what you have written.

Utilize your Online time when Not Blogging.Find Important Things to Do when Not Blogging.



Also Read : How to Boost Blog Traffic – Must Read