Black republicans 08

Archive for January, 2011

I’ve seen lots of wedding websites. Hundreds of them in fact. And the successful ones, the ones that actually draw people in and get them to contact you, not to mention the ones who rank higher on Google, are the ones that have equal emphasis on both their text AND their design.

But, most websites I see, either focus on having lots of pictures and images to tell their story, or they just have a whole lot of words with no real thought to design.

So if you’re using both photos and words to tell your story. Congratulations! You’re well on your way to having a fabulous website that really works for you. But if you are one of the others – and I know you are out there – I need to be honest. You need to fix your site.

Let me explain why.

First, the image driven site.

These can be absolutely beautiful sites with tons of beautiful images. And I’ll put it out there – I L-O-V-E image driven sites. I’m really drawn to this style because I’m a visual. I learn by seeing. Plus, I’m normally going at 100 miles an hour and images allow me to quickly see what you can do. They draw me in and tend to invoke instant emotion too!

And if you have an image driven website with very little words, you’re probably the same as me. Pictures speak to you.

But I think you can see the problem I’m going to point out. Not everyone is a visual. Some people need the words.

Then there is the text driven site.

It’s a page with words and maybe little else. Don’t get me wrong. I can like these too. Probably because I write for a living! But I really do like to read what others write. It helps me understand your point of view and get to know you in a way that pictures don’t as readily convey.

Again, the problem is, not everyone likes to weed though text. And if you get a visual on your page, they’re going to hop off pretty fast, even if you’re fabulous and the best at what you do.

And truth be told, a lot of text driven websites aren’t very pretty either. Not because they don’t have photos. It’s because they are trying to do things with the words to liven up their site. Poor color choices, reverse fonts, and flashing words are just some of the travesties that I see.

The best sites are the ones that combine both photos and text. I can’t give you an exact ratio, because it depends on you and the products/services that you provide. However, you should strive for at least 75/25 split between the two. It doesn’t have to be even. But you do want to make sure you offer enough of both to balance the other out.

Add words to your image driven site to explain your inspirations. Tell me why you do what you do.

And if you rely solely on text. Add some images. You need to break up that solid wall of text. Use images of your designs. If you’re just starting out, buy the artwork.

Technical analysis is a must before you make that precious investment decision. Momentum is one factor that both novices as well as seasoned investors know about. However, there is a lot more to this practice. Technical trading analysis is all about stock evaluation and the statistical analysis of various marketing activities.

In order to carry out this task, various commodity charts and tools are used for identifying market patterns. To understand how commodity charts operate, it is very important to study details that relate the entire market place. With this you will have a generalized understanding of what a commodity really stands for and the process of trading it. In simple terms, commodities are basic wealth used in commerce.

Importance of commodity charts

Technical trading heavily relies on the use of commodity charts. Commodity charts allow traders to invest freely since they can trust the company for its value and returns. This is critical information when you want to trade in the market.

Since commodity charts help track the stock trade involving both buying and selling therefore they are a great means of long-term investment. This helps predict whether the stock will grow or decline over time. Technical analysis is primarily concerned with the overtime price fluctuations.

Technical trading analysis

Implementing proper technical trading analysis ensures that the investor holds enormous advantage over someone who has not invested proper time on this activity. In most cases, analyzing a chart is directly synonymous to a person’s trading success.

The prices of stocks go up with the supply and demand of stocks. If the supply is more than the demand then the prices fall while a reverse situation can cause significant hike in the prices. Hence, charts are very important as they maintain a record of the price shifts.

Complexity, rapid change, information overload, meaningful work and endeavors, enormously difficult decisions and a global economic malaise are but a few of the daunting challenges that face people in organizations today. Perhaps no time in history has the need for bold and effective leadership been more needed, demanded or required. Yet it seems the ability to respond to this call for leadership is inadequate because by some expert accounts leadership development is going nowhere fast. These are the findings of the last two biennial global leadership forecasts conducted by Development Dimensions International where on average more than 14,000 executives and HR managers from over 70 countries were surveyed.

Just think of it, after spending billions of dollars on talent management initiatives, on behavioral screening, on performance measurement equations and metrics, leadership development is going nowhere fast? How can this be? Where are the leaders, where is the leadership? Perhaps the answer lays in a lesson from the movie Indiana Jones and The Raiders of the Lost Arc. As Indy and Sallah learned when they searched for the Well of the Souls in hopes of finding the Arc of the Covenant, make sure your digging in the right place!

Say the word leadership and it means different things to different people even though many are drawn to the notion of a positional or heroic leader. In 1978 James MacGregor Burns, the patriarch of leadership thought in America, wrote that the predominant leadership approach tends often unconsciously to be elitist; it projects heroic figures against the shadowy background of drab powerless, masses. In the idea economy, where Peter Drucker has pronounced the knowledge worker as the leading class, this notion of leadership is an aberration completely out of touch with the reality of today’s world. Have you been on the Internet lately– not a really drab and powerless place?

Yet it seems we continue to dig in the same place although at a frenzied pace. That place is marked by a factory mindset–an industrial perspective portrayed as an indescribable set of traits fully owned by the leader who sits at the top of the organization. In the factory mindset, whatever the leader does is leadership. All we have to do is make better leaders follow their orders and we will be saved!

The fact is that the ideas and principles of the leadership models built for industrial times are grossly limited and incongruent for an interconnected, extremely aware, technology and information enraptured society. A society that is surrounded by rapid complex change and charged with making infinitely difficult decisions and who, at the core of its being, seeks purpose and meaning from the work it does.

In this environment, the job of leaders is changing dramatically as innovation, leadership and learning at all levels of an organization have become the lynchpins of creative success. 21st century leadership must focus on melding a multitude of diverse talent and individual ability into collaborative, interdependent, and unified action capable of addressing the most complex and intractable issues and challenges.

The challenge for all 21st century leaders is to create environments built on mutual trust and continuous learning where participants in these leadership-dynamics are fully engaged, derive meaning, take ownership and responsibility for the results, and come to do their best work each and everyday. In the 21st Century, organizations must expand their thinking and act outside of the box with a notion of leadership that views participants as fully involved partners that bring talent, energy, creativity and combined action to bear on the issues at hand. In the 21st Century leadership is no longer a noun, but a verb where the actions of a committed group of people teach us that leadership is what people do together. Perhaps, it has always been so. Now, start digging!