As social media, web3.0, mobiweb and clouds advance forward as a raging technology tsunami – a job seeker might well be asking themselves whats the best way of getting my CV or resume to a recruiter in a way that I can give myself the best chance of getting noticed.

Naturally we’ve all got our paper based version tucked away in the coffee stained folder marked “Job applications” that of course is a few years old or at least as old as the last time you were in the position of looking for work.

Any design oriented person would have ensured that their name was in 34 point bold, the font styles were consistent and serif’less, the kerning of the letters would be perfectly formed together with a nice pantone #344 border around the CV ensuring that if the document was in a pile on someone’s desk – then the border would make it stand out and entice the reader to view it.

Line managers will soon turn to their trusty Google and query you.

Setup your online CV

Today – its easy and I mean really easy..to setup an online profile of you.  At a basic level you can go to wordpress.com or blogger.com (part of Google) and setup your own blog page.  You may be a little more advanced and have already bought your domain name (well done) – if you haven’t, get it now as an exact match… ie. “FirstnameFamilyname.com” .. or .org .net .co.uk .org.uk.  The next step would be to make sure you have a good profile on LinkedIn – in fact make sure your external URL has your name in it now.  (its a bit of landgrab – just like facebook was when it let you choose your public URL)

 <title>Paul Bannister | Expresso Coffee Expert | London</title>

<h1>Paul Bannister - London</h1>

<meta name="description" content="Check you drink the best -

Hire an Expresso Coffee Expert for organic roasted and green beans

 - Paul Bannister in London"/>

Since the advance of Google Caffeine – the focus on sites is around performance and social links.  In fact friend feed seems to be getting higher ranking than facebook  at the moment.  So its really important to ensure you site is optimised and if possible you are using a CDN (Content Delivery Network).   For further tips and ideas on how to optimise your site see this post Optimising your blog.

I thought in addition to all this it would be useful to create a check list of all the other signals that Google considers in its algorithm.  There are 200 of these that can be broken down into different themes for you to focus on.  You should use it as a checklist to run against your website to make sure you are appealing to Google and of course your readers.

This list is big reading and I found various key lists around the web mainly Vaugns List and this published by the Search Engine Journal.   I suggest you get on their mailing list as the site is good reading.

I have listed some of their key points below together with some tips on how to capitalise on it.

As a disclaimer its important to understand that this information is not from Google and its not the definitive answer, but a pretty good indication of the what the algorithm might use to deduce your ranking.

Domain: 13 Signals
1. Domain age – Age ranks better, because 1 you can link faster to it, and 2) Most top 10 in your nice are probably older.
2. Length of domain registration – Try and register your domains for longer than 1 year.
3. Domain registration information hidden/anonymous – Google likes to know your accountable
4. Site top level domain (geographical focus, e.g. com versus co.uk)
5. Site top level domain (e.g. .com versus .info) – My tip only use .com, .net or .org for international and .org.uk and co.uk for uk specific traffic.
6. Sub domain or root domain?
7. Domain past records (how often it changed IP)
8. Domain past owners (how often the owner was changed)
9. Keywords in the domain – Exact match domains matter!  If your keyword is in the domain it will rank faster than anything.
10. Domain IP
11. Domain IP neighbors
12. Domain external mentions (non-linked)
13. Geo-targeting settings in Google Webmaster Tools

Server-side: 2 signals
1. Server geographical location
2. Server reliability / uptime – Get a free monitor setup for 2 URLS at http://host-tracker.com

3. Setting in Google Webmaster Tools for location  – http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Architecture: 8 signals
1. URL structure – Use proper words in your links that are meaningful.  If using wordpress use permalinks.
2. HTML structure
3. LSI (Latent Semantic Index) words
4. Use of external CSS / JS files
5. Website structure accessibility (use of inaccessible navigation, JavaScript, etc)
6. Use of canonical URLs
7. Valid code – check against http://validator.w3.org/

Content: 14 signals
1. Content language
2. Content uniqueness
3. Amount of content (text versus HTML)
4. Unlinked content density (links versus text)
5. Pure text content ratio (without links, images, code, etc)
6. Content topicality / timeliness (for seasonal searches for example)
7. Semantic information (phrase-based indexing and co-occurring phrase indicators)
8. Content flag for general category (transactional, informational, navigational)
9. Content / market niche
10. Flagged keywords usage (gambling, dating vocabulary)
11. Text in images
12. Malicious content
13. Rampant mis-spelling of words, bad grammar, and 10,000 word screeds without punctuation
14. Use of absolutely unique /new phrases.

Internal Cross Linking: 5 signals
1. # of internal links to page
2. # of internal links to page with identical / targeted anchor text
3. # of internal links to page from content (instead of navigation bar, breadcrumbs, etc)
4. # of links using “nofollow” attribute
5. Internal link density

Website signals: 7 signals
1. Website Robots.txt file content
2. Overall site update frequency
3. Overall site size (number of pages)
4. Age of the site since it was first discovered by Google
5. XML Sitemap
6. On-page trust flags (Contact info ( for local search even more important – Make sure your phone number is on the site), Privacy policy, TOS, and similar)
7. Website type (e.g. blog instead of informational sites in top 10)

Page-specific signals: 9 signals
1. Page meta Robots tags
2. Page age
3. Page freshness (Frequency of edits and
% of page effected (changed) by page edits)
4. Content duplication with other pages of the site (internal duplicate content);
5. Page content reading level
6. Page load time (many signals in here)
7. Page type (About-us page versus main content page)
8. Page internal popularity (how many internal links it has)
9. Page external popularity (how many external links it has relevant to other pages of this site)

Keywords usage and keyword prominence: 13 signals
1. Keywords in the title of a page
2. Keywords in the beginning of page title
3. Keywords in Alt tags
4. Keywords in anchor text of internal links (internal anchor text)
5. Keywords in anchor text of outbound links
6. Keywords in bold and italic text
7. Keywords in the beginning of the body text
8. Keywords in body text
9. Keyword synonyms relating to theme of page/site
10. Keywords in filenames
11. Keywords in URL
12. No “Randomness on purpose” (placing “keyword” in the domain, “keyword” in the filename, “keyword” starting the first word of the title, “keyword” in the first word of the first line of the description and keyword tag…)
13. The use (abuse) of keywords utilized in HTML comment tags

Outbound links: 8 signals
1. Number of outbound links (per domain)
2. Number of outbound links (per page)
3. Quality of pages the site links in
4. Links to bad neighborhoods
5. Relevancy of outbound links
6. Links to 404 and other error pages
7. Links to SEO agencies from clients site
8. Hot-linked images

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Backlink profile: 21 signals
1. Relevancy of sites linking in
2. Relevancy of pages linking in
3. Quality of sites linking in
4. Quality of web page linking in
5. Backlinks within network of sites
6. Co-citations (which sites have similar backlink sources)
7. Link profile diversity
1. Anchor text diversity
2. Different IP addresses of linking sites
3. Geographical diversity
4. Different TLDs
5. Topical diversity
6. Different types of linking sites (logs, directories, etc)
7. Diversity of link placements
8. Authority Link (CNN, BBC, etc) Per Inbound Link
9. Backlinks from bad neighborhoods (absence / presence of backlinks from flagged sites)   (It seems that this is less of a factor nowadays – as it would be too easy to affect someone else’s site.)

10. Reciprocal links ratio (relevant to the overall backlink profile)
11. Social media links ratio (links from social media sites versus overall backlink profile)
12. Backlinks trends and patterns (like sudden spikes or drops of backlink number)
13. Citations in Wikipedia and Dmoz
14. Backlink profile historical records (ever caught for link buying/selling, etc)
15. Backlinks from social bookmarking sites.

Each Separate Backlink: 5 signals
1. Authority of TLD (.com versus .gov)
2. PR of a domain linking in
3. PR of a page linking in
4. Location of a link (footer, navigation, body text)
5. Anchor text of a link (and Alt tag of images linking)

Visitor Profile and Behavior: 6 signals
1. Number of visits
2. Visitors’ demographics
3. Bounce rate
4. Visitors’ browsing habits (which other sites they tend to visit)
5. Visiting trends and patterns (like sudden spiked in incoming traffic)
6. How often the listing is clicked within the SERPs (relevant to other listings)

Google now measures CTR (Click Thru Rate) and reports it in Webmaster tools.  So clearly it’s a big ranking factor with Caffeine.

Penalties, Filters and Manipulation: 12 signals
1. Keyword over usage / Keyword stuffing
2. Link buying flag
3. Link selling flag
4. Spamming records (comment, forums, other link spam)
5. Cloaking
6. Hidden Text
7. Duplicate Content (external duplication)
8. History of past penalties for this domain
9. History of past penalties for this owner
10. History of past penalties for other properties of this owner
11. Past hackers’ attacks records
12. 301 flags: double re-directs/re-direct loops, or re-directs ending in 404 error

More Signals (6):
1. Domain registration with Google Webmaster Tools
2. Domain presence in Google News
3. Domain presence in Google Blog Search
4. Use of the domain in Google AdWords
5. Use of the domain in Google Analytics
6. Business name / brand name external mentions

Feedback below…

For people looking to get started online or even old timers – Steve and Tim who started commission Blueprint (probably one of the most successful Internet courses out there) have given me permission to give away one of their courses for free.  Whats the catch…there isn’t one.  Its just there for you to register and watch the videos/read the manuals and you can get started.  Its called ‘Mine Money Online’ – even as an experienced marketer there are some gems in there.  Then if you are ready to go further, you can go on to join one of their more advanced courses like IMA.  In the meantime its a no brainer.  Get it now while you can

I’ve now been using IMeye for over a week now – and its incredible software.   Here are some things I have been doing:

Firstly – unlike any other keyword tool, you don’t bother with any seed keyword.  You start with traffic and competition.  So I’ve been setting the software to the following:

I set the competing pages (pages in the Google index mentioning the same keyword) parameter to no more than 100,000 pages and competing titles (pages on the index with the keyword in the title of the page)  to no more than 30,000.  Then I add the column showing the highest Adwords cost per click.  This tells me if the adsense revenues are interesting or not.  If its at least $3 then its good, as you would normally get about half that.  Finally I put a filter on to show me any domains that are for sale or auction that match these keywords.  If not, I clear the filter and then do the following:

At this level of competition I know I can compete and using some SEO I can get into the top 10 in about 2-3 months or sooner.  Then I sort by traffic and start working my way down until I find strong traffic with words that make sense with something I can sell on or get adsense revenue.  When I find an interesting word I check it in Keyword blueprint (added free package to IMeye users) and see if I get a Goldstar.  This means that its very easy to rank – and also verifies the figures in IMeye.

Now heres the difference.  Its generally accepted that if you get an exact match domain – keyword.com /.org /.net then you will have an excellent chance of the being ranked very quickly.  The problem is most of these have gone…but if you can find one then go for it.  However if you find out what country the traffic is coming from, then you could buy an exact match from that country, and following this line of thinking I have now bought 4 domains, of which 2 are specific exact match.org.uk or .co.uk which are just for UK traffic.

If you are in Australia, France, South Africa or Canada you will be quids in, because the traffic is less competitive than in the US.  Even better is that you do some keyword research using Google Insights and look for local trends there, and then validate them using IMeye or your own tool you could find some real gems.

So to sum up, find the less competitive traffic and find out what region the traffic coming from.  You can do this by setting your keyword tool to relevant datacentre for that region.  Then look for exact match domains local to this area and start building links or use EVO2.

More info on IMeye

Link to the video on IMeye site

Let the keywords find you!

If you know anything about Internet Marketing, you know the most successful affiliates approach marketing by finding the traffic first.

Many people approach it the other way – and this costs – because they will find a product they would like to promote, and then work out how to sell it by researching keywords – but with so many dead ends and blocks from the competition its difficult for sure.

The smart people find the traffic, and more importantly the RIGHT traffic first with little competition and then dominate the niche.

IMeye Review and Bonus

Doing this involves researching keywords and how much traffic there is for the keyword. Then establish, from the high traffic keyword, which ones have the least competition by identifying which ones have less than 50,000 pages with your keywords in its title.

Then you need to establish what is on page 1 of Google to see if you have any chance of getting on it….right? For example you also need to check that there is:

• No eZinearticle there
• No youtube
• No exact domains
• No youtube videos
• No Squidoo lenses
• No Hubpages
• No Blogspot sites

It’s a lot of work yes?

Well imagine if there was a tool that could do this for you. A tool that had already done the research and simply presents you with the best options.

IMeye is the ultimate solution for keyword researching niches. All you need is to feed it a seed word and it will come back the best options like:

• Number of searches
• Number of competing pages in Google
• Number of “intitle” competing pages in Google
• Number of words in the keyword phrase
• 2 Adwords bid estimates: the highest one, and a “cheapest click” one
• The top 10 web sites in the Google search engine rankings
• The adwords ads that are running
• Which Clickbank products have been promoted using this keyword phrase
• Which affiliate offer categories have been promoted using this keyword phrase

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IMeye now Live – Awesome Video ==>

Flags that identify:
- If physical goods being sold for this keyword
- If there any “exact” domain matches present in the top 10 of the SERPS
- If EzineArticles in the top 10 of the SERPS
- If youtube in the top 10 of the SERPS
- If Amazon in the top 10 of the SERPS
- If Yahoo Answers in the top 10 of the SERPS
- If Squidoo, Hubpages, or Blogspot in the top 10 of the SERPS
…and that’s just a start. Imagine being able to build smart queries quickly and easily using any or all of those criteria!

Full breakdown of IMeye here

I have been involved in IMeye’s development for the past 3 months, and I can safely say there is nothing like it out there. Its one of those products that is a “no brainer” especially as it comes from a quality company which is massive in affiliate marketing ($10m per year).  Steven Clayton and Tim Godfrey have produced commission blueprint, NicheBlueprint, SEM business blueprint and various essential SEO tools like article and blog blueprint and more.

I have practically all these – and I can say that they are all top notch quality products with sincere support and backing.  To give you an idea Steve practically lives in the forum, and comments in response to questions more than the moderators or even their support employees.  The guy loves what he does its refreshing and re-assuring to see that – and makes me feel good knowing I have this kind of support behind me.

IMeye is now live and I’ve been using it –  register on my list for more details and inside tips on how to use it.  ==>

Meye is NOW LIVE – Watch This Video

Keyword Research – Been there done that… right?
Maybe not… because we think we’ve completely reinvented it and have produced the most game changing tool in Internet marketing since Word Tracker arrived all those years ago.

As you know, keyword research tools usually work in the same kinda’ way… like this:

	You provide a seed keyword.
	The tool starts to find as many ‘related’ keywords as it can.
	You wait for the tool.
	You select the keywords you’re interested in for further analysis of SEO or PPC competition etc.
	Any keywords that pass the previous step are typically looked at manually to see what the competitive landscape is.
	Hopefully you ‘sort of’ stumble upon a keyword or two that you can use.

…and that’s all fine. However, we thought we could do better.

And we have.

Introducing IMeye …

A revolutionary new way to find profitable markets and niches by making keyword research “smart” and not relying on you to accidentally find decent opportunities!

What about tools like Keywordspy and Spyfu etc.? Is IMeye like those?

Absolutely not.

IMeye uses a proprietary method of gathering the BEST keywords out there, doing all the analysis and research on them (before you even start searching!!(?)) …and then stores them in a HUGE database ready for your use.

Keywordspy and Spyfu really work the same as any other keyword tool… in other words they don’t do the analysis for you in the same way… and you still need some kind of “seed” whether it’s a domain or a keyword or something like that… you can’t just have it find keyword opportunities without pointing it in a direction.

What we’re basically saying is this….

View Full Video Information Here
The amazing thing about IMeye is that you don’t need any of the following…

	You don’t need seed keywords.
	You don’t have to wade through 80-90% of the keywords that are garbage…
	You no longer need to wait around while the tool sits and churns through its analysis.
	You don’t need to look at keywords that are obviously too expensive to use for PPC.
	You don’t need to see keywords that are too competitive to make quick progress with SEO.
	You can just ASK IMeye what YOU want… and it will instantly deliver.
	You simply no longer need to stumble around in the dark hoping to bump into profitable keywords…IMeye will shine the spotlight directly onto them.

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So what kind of data does IMeye store for each keyword phrase?

	Number of searches
	Number of competing pages in Google
	Number of “intitle” competing pages in Google
	Number of words in the keyword phrase
	2 Adwords bid estimates: the highest one, and a “cheapest click” one
	The top 10 web sites in the Google search engine rankings
	The adwords ads that are running
	Which Clickbank products have been promoted using this keyword phrase
	Which affiliate offer categories have been promoted using this keyword phrase
	Flags that identify: - If physical goods being sold for this keyword - If there any “exact” domain matches present in the top 10 of the SERPS - If EzineArticles in the top 10 of the SERPS - If youtube in the top 10 of the SERPS - If Amazon in the top 10 of the SERPS - If Yahoo Answers in the top 10 of the SERPS - If Squidoo, Hubpages, or Blogspot in the top 10 of the SERPS

…and that’s just a start. Imagine being able to build smart queries quickly and easily using any or all of those criteria!

Let’s look at some real world uses of IMeye…

1. Say you wanted to build an Adsense empire,

…You would ask IMeye to give you keyword phrases where:

	Monthly search volume is greater than 15,000
	Competing pages < 50,000
	Intitle competing pages < 10,000
	No exact domains exist in the top 10 SERPS
	No youtube videos in the top 10 SERPS
	No Squidoo lenses in the top 10 SERPS
	No Hubpages in the top 10 SERPS
	No Blogspot sites in the top 10 SERPS
	Adwords high bid estimate > $5.00

Finding keywords that meet this criteria will quickly allow you to build up adsense sites on exact match domains and QUICKLY get them ranked, And… since they have will have high Adwords bids… they’ll have high payouts from Google Adsense.

Just get an exact domain, throw up some articles and adsense ads, do some link building, rinse and repeat… and you can build an INCREDIBLE autopilot Adsense income in this way.

2. Next… if you wanted to zero in on SUPER PROFITABLE e-Commerce niches

We own and have seen tons of VERY profitable e-Commerce sites and they all have one thing in common… They were NOT the first ones to sell something online in that niche!

The odds of finding something profitable to sell online that NO ONE else is selling are… well… close to zero… and why bother anyway?

If you can find niches where people already make money, but… where you can use your Internet marketing expertise to compete aggressively… that’s all good. IMeye can direct you RIGHT to these opportunities.

In this instance, you would ask IMeye to give you keyword phrases where:

	The Monthly search volume is greater than 15,000
	The Competing pages < 500,000
	Intitle competing pages < 50,000
	Physical goods ARE being sold for this keyword

This will give you keyword phrases that get enough traffic, that you’re able to compete on with SEO, and where people are already selling goods. You would then get in there and take over the market.

Alternatively… If you don’t have the patience for SEO… and want to use Google Adwords to drive traffic immediately, you would ask IMeye to give you keyword phrases where:

	Monthly search volume is greater than 150,000
	Adwords CPC’s are < $0.20
	Physical goods ARE being sold for this keyword

These queries would find cheap clicks where there’s enough volume to get 100 visitors per day or so and where others are selling goods online. The idea would be to swoop in there and take over!

Next… increasing Affiliate marketing revenue and finding new opportunities. For instance…

3. Looking for a new SEO project to increase and diversify your revenue?

You would ask IMeye to give you keyword phrases where:

	Monthly search volume is Greater than 15,000
	Competing pages < 500,000
	Intitle competing pages < 50,000

You would take a look at those results and then sort them in descending order of search volume. Think some gems will stand out there? Oh yes they will.

OR…let’s say you want to find some cheap click opportunities, you would ask IMeye to give you keyword phrases where:

	Monthly search volume is Greater than 150,000
	Adwords “cheap click” CPC < .20

You would then take those results and sort them in ascending order of CPC. You’ll find VAST sources of untapped traffic that you could use for any number of affiliate marketing projects!

4. Want to market a particular Clickbank product through SEO ?

You would cherry pick the competitions’ keywords for Clickbank products by asking IMeye to give you keyword phrases where:

	Others have used the keyword phrase to market the CB product you’re interested in (e.g. Fatloss4idiots)
	The Monthly search volume is Greater than 15,000
	Competing pages < 500,000
	Intitle competing pages < 50,000

You would then sort them by anything you like and key right in on the best ones that have the most volume and least competition.

5. Have an affiliate offer (e.g. CPA offer from Azoogle) that you want to promote through Adwords ?

You would cherry pick the competitions’ keywords for affiliate offer categories by asking IMeye to give you keyword phrases where:

	Others have used the keyword phrase to market the category you’re after (e.g. Acne)
	Monthly search volume is Greater than 150,000
	Adwords “cheap click” CPC < .15

You’re now looking at proven keywords that have enough volume and are cheap enough for you to buy traffic and make money with…simple as that.

AND THAT’S JUST A START…

There is so much more to IMeye and so many other ways that you could use this tool. Trying to put a document together with all its uses would be like trying to document all the uses of a hammer!

But hopefully this gives you a great idea of how flexible, complete, and incredibly powerful this tool will be and how easy it could be used to dramatically increase your subscribers’ online revenue.

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There is also a great video here

I‘m amazed sometimes that large enterprises with great brands sometimes completely forget the basics of procurement for talent management software.

We have been talking to a couple of companies recently, and have found ourselves being compared to a competitor we have never heard of. That obviously concerns us – but what’s really worrying is that from an analysis of the provider in question we find that the service they are selling is extremely basic, and probably represents a tenth of the functionality we provide – so why is this prospect looking at it so seriously? Sure enough it turns out that the client likes the idea of a simpler solution. Ah – so fair enough, we have to get better at delivering our products that are not only completely flexible, configurable with a great UI but also simpler to use.

Then I thought, how robust are they? – After looking at their applicant tracking website and to my horror you can see their entire online application internals (ie. their log files) are completely open to the public Internet, including their data cache.   So anyone with a snooping mind could not only look at all their customer url requests, but could also potentially expose the candidate personal data. If that is not a breach of data protection I don’t what is.

But lets give them the benefit of the doubt – they must be new to this game and their customers will run a simple penetration test, and I’m sure they can close all the holes quite quickly. They must be a company in good standing for the customer to be even talking to them? – I tell myself. However a quick check at companies house reveals that not only have they got a revenue of peanuts – they are also insolvent, and have been so for the past few years.

The point of all this is that being a SaaS provider you have a duty to deliver a quality service that is available, secure and has proper disaster recovery so that your customers can trust you. If you do not subscribe to these principles – then don’t compete in this space!  If SaaS starts to get a bad reputation for poor reliability, insecure and flaky delivery then we all suffer.   At the end of the day we are managing other peoples data and we have duty commercially and morally to respect that.

And to the blue chips who are buying services like this – please – do the due diligence and don’t buy in to every person who comes through the door with a nice story on social media.

If you are in recruitment or HR you know that getting quality response for your jobs is essential.  Many of you are using job boards and job board aggregators like Broadbean to get your vacancies broadcasted.  Hopefully you are also using indeed.com and trovit as these are free and all you need to do is make sure your posting is well structured (specifically the xml) in order to get the best out of them.

What about your job posting page itself?  If you are using an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) or recruitment software that creates the posting pages you need to check whether these getting reach.  By that I mean if you go to one of your pages on your website – is it optimized for SEO?

Firstly a quick primer on Search Engine Optimisation basics:

So how does this apply to my job postings?

1. Ensure the job posting has its own page and is well formed (ie meets the points above)
2. The page title must be accessible directly – ie. no iframes – Check with your ATS vendor that your jobs aren’t framed.
3. The page title must be the role, location and skills
4. The page description (Meta Description) should include the same elements, but written as text someone can actually read.  It should also include similar locations and skills and roles.
5. The job role should be in the H1 and should be written similar to the title.
6. A google compliant sitemap.xml file needs to be published with the references to the pages, with the correct indexing frequency defined.

OK..so that seems straightforward…but what about traffic?

Just finished reading “Behind the Cloud – Marc Benioff.”  This is the man and the story behind Salesforce.com.  If you want to get into the mind and understand the company ethos of the biggest success story of the last 10 years in the software as a service space its a must read – in fact Salesforce.com started SaaS as we know it now.  He calls it a playbook – the whole story divided into 10 Parts and each part split in to around 10 “plays”.  It covers his philosophy from startup to marketing, sales, technology and most importantly corporate philanthropy.  The style of writing makes the book easy to dip in and out of as well as a cover to cover  journey through the trials and tribulations of the evolution of startup to corporate.

To be honest his startup was a lot more glamorous than the ones I’ve been involved with (after all he seeded it with $6m from his pocket) – I’m not talking expensive jets and so on – but certainly great locations and interesting offices employing the true dot com lifestyle of relaxed attitudes, Hawaiian shirts combined with through the night working sessions.  He talks about some of the guerilla marketing tactics employed to challenge Siebel, the then crm leader by camping next door to their offices, interrupting and picketing their (Siebel’s) conferences and trade shows – it makes for great entertainment.  I can imagine when you have little to lose (in marketing terms) and much to gain, controversy like this will certainly win out against the establishment (old style ERP software for example).

To me it was not like a typical “I’m a great Entrepreneur – look at me” story, but something that will provide many people with some valuable tips or principles about how to approach business, run startups and run an organisation with real culture while providing value to the world around them.  Its really worth looking at his 1-1-1 model (1% equity, 1% time and 1% product) model for using business to promote and contribute to good causes.  The time element is probably worth more than anything else – as it allows all employees 6 days a year todo something that actively contributes to their community of choice.

Why is this important for HR? – Attraction and Retention of employees.  GenY (Is that term overused?) candidates want to work for companies with a greater mission than profitability.  They want not only a rewarding career and environment but also for a company that has values and contributes back into their community.  But we know this right?

Grab the book – read it and enjoy it.  It has an upbeat style and moves along with a compelling pace.  Who knows you may feel inspired to implement a couple of ideas in your organisation.

My Twitter Software will search for suitable people to follow, and it certainly works most of the time.  However with all these automated tools they use directory searching and rely on the information in the directory to be right.

Twellow is one such example.  The problem with this is you can also be following a lot people who are not relevant, and end up being on the receiving end of a lot affiliate sales tweets (I guess SPAM springs to mind).

However I came across a blog comment the other day that broke down a Google query that will search across twitter BIOs.  Now this is clever and its simple.  All you need is to run in Google is:  ”bio*” site:twitter.com your phrase  so for example if I am looking for people in recruitment software, then the phrase would be:

"bio*" site:twitter.com recruitment software

Try it…you get accurate results and a more focused group of people to follow completely relevant to your interests.

Thanks to Greg at Staffing talk