People love their smartphones. Whether you’re walking down the street or inside a shopping mall, sitting in a coffee shop or at the airport, half the people around you are looking down at their cellphones.

Eighty-three percent of American adults own a cell phone, and 42 percent of them own a Blackberry, iPhone, or a similar smartphone, according to a recent Pew Internet Project report. The study also found that 87 percent of smartphone users access the Internet or email on their device. Two-thirds of smartphone users do so daily. Increasingly, just as how the home broadband connection remains always on, the mobile connection seems to be ever present.

Today’s apps-savvy consumers want business information delivered concisely and available for reading on the fly. Thanks to the explosion of Internet-enabled mobile devices, you and your customers can communicate on the go. Here are six easy ways to deliver on mobile devices marketing that encourages customer interaction.

1. Make Your Emails Mobile-Friendly
Whereas delivering email marketing that can be read on mobile devices used to be optional for a business, now it’s essential. Keep a message’s subject line short and place high up in the message your brand name, the offer, and the call to action.

Keep your email design simple and light on text, and offer a link to your company’s website or Facebook page so a reader can find out more.

2. Give Mobile Customers What They Need
Forty percent of U.S. smartphone owners compare prices on their mobile device while shopping inside a store, according to HubSpot, an Internet marketing firm in Cambridge, Mass. If you do not optimize your site for mobile users, you may miss sales opportunities. The most sought-after information (a company’s hours, locations, and directions) and popular features should be front and center where customers can easily find them. If mobile consumers cannot find the information they need to guide their purchasing decisions, they may click — but then take their business elsewhere.

3. Invite List Sign-ups via Text Message and Quick-Response Codes
Customers entering into your retail establishment probably are carrying their cellphones on them. Build your contact list by inviting patrons to send a text message (if your email service provider offers this feature) or scan a QR code. Put a sign at your cash register to encourage such activity while the shopping experience is still fresh.

A savings coupon or special offer can sweeten the deal for any customers who sign up via text message or QR code. And you end up building your list without having to manually enter email addresses after deciphering handwriting on a sign-up sheet.

4. Build Your Fan Base
Your socially active customers have a Facebook or Twitter app loaded on their smartphones. A sign or poster that encourages them to connect with you in the social media sphere can propel significant growth of your network — and expand your company’s visibility to the contacts of your new followers. Be sure to give customers a good (and fun) reason to like or follow you.

5. Tap Location-Based Services
If you run a brick-and-mortar business or host an event, encourage people to check in on location-based services like Foursquare, Gowalla, or Where. You will gain information about your regular customers and how often they visit you. It also lets your customers share information and tips about your business with others. A unique special offer can encourage these regulars to check in more often.

6. Encourage Reviews on the Run
Encourage customers to share their thoughts about their experience while they are still at our place of business. Post a sign that says, “How’d we do? Let us know!” You can even direct customers to sites like Yelp, Where, Google Places, or TripAdvisor, where you would like them to offer reviews of your business. Make sure you post your company’s Twitter handle, so customers can include it in reviews and follow your business on Twitter for updates. Be sure you stay on top of any customer reviews posted about your company.

More mobile technologies are springing up, enabling businesses and customers to stay connected, regardless of location. Remember: All these gadgets and apps can support your marketing but they should not drive it. You still need to focus your message on how your company provides great products and services. Know who and where your customers are. Then bring the goods to them. Mobile strategies let you package your marketing to better reach them.

While analysts and economists may disagree on the solution to an economic recession, they all agree that job creation and wage rates play a critical role in economic growth. You may be inclined to believe the issue today is a lack of jobs, citing job cuts and layoffs as support. However, the winners of the Nobel prize in economics for 2010 disagree–it may be a lack of proper job training.

Peter Diamond, Dale Mortensen and Christopher Pissarides shared the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for their work on wage formation through search markets. Professor Diamond is known for his conclusion that higher levels of unemployment insurance can actually lead to job creation, a point hotly debated by politicians. Mortensen and Pissarides are well known for their work in finding a negative relationship between the number of jobs and the level of unemployment.

Applicants Lacking Job Skills Training

These three economists have developed theories which explain how so many people can be unemployed with a large number of job openings on the market. Put together, their work suggests the issue is not lack of jobs, but lack of an efficient market to match employers with the right employee. This is especially the case in terms of skill set. Recruiters and temp agencies believe the issue is not a lack of jobs, but a lack of qualified candidates.

Doug Beabout, CPC, of The Douglas Howard Group believes the skills gap will only grow in the future. “There will be between six and eight million jobs open by 2013, and that’s just representing the jobs that exist right now, with no growth in the economy taken into account,” said Beabout.  He continues, “There will not be people in our population who can do these jobs.”

Skill Sets that Can Make You More Competitive

The Pacific Northwest, Texas, Arizona, Silicon Valley and the Mid-Atlantic regions all cite a lack of employees with the right skill set. Those employees lucky enough to have this coveted skill set are paid higher salaries and receive higher bonuses. It is not surprising that the coveted skill set revolves around technology.

In 2010, the Global Knowledge/TechRepublic 2010 Salary Survey conducted a survey of key decision makers. They listed Windows administration, network administration and security as the primary desired skill-set. Database managers for Oracle, IBM and Sybase are also in high demand and the demand for those in mobile and web application development continues to grow.

From a broader perspective, organizations are looking for project management skills, experience in health care technology and management, software engineers, virtualization or data storage experience and business analysis.

Business analysis includes strategy and organizational behavior, project or work place transition specialists and implementation strategists. Business analysts with business process improvement experience are also highly sought after.

Who Gets the Bonus?

A recent survey by Mercer suggests employers plan on sharing built up cash reserves on their current employees rather than hiring additional employees. The survey, which has been conducted for more than two decades, includes responses from more than 1,100 employers and includes the pay of more than 12 million employees.

On average, employers plan on increasing base pay by 3 percent in 2012, with the top performing employees expecting to see an increase by an average of 4.8 percent. Many employees are doing the work of two or three people after layoffs and these raises give top talent a reason to stay.

Furthermore, and even more disturbing for the average employee, is the gap between top and average talent. Employers are investing more money in on the job training programs for top talent, which enables these lucky few to focus on career growth rather than job protection. The practice is known as segmentation or differentiation.

The only way for the average employee to close the gap is to invest in their own, self-made, job skills training program. The challenge is figuring out which skill-sets have the highest utility; that is, pay the most, for the shortest amount of training.

Adaptation is a buzzword in the business community because it grapples with the fact that the only thing predictable in life is change.

Adaptation turns upon a simple question: Can your business learn from external events?

A young business succeeds because of its ability to profit from a particular external environment.  Energized by its early achievement, the young business is prone to repeat the same practice without regard for change.  In short, the successful, young business stops learning as it ages.  It risks becoming a victim of its own success.

The solution is to borrow a page from educators and foster systemic lifelong learning in your business.  When your business becomes a lifelong learner, it capitalizes upon change.  It does this by ensuring that every person in your business’ value network – that collection of customers, employees, suppliers and anybody else who interacts with your business – is a co-producer of value.

While an organizational overhaul requires considerable time and effort, below are two tips that will place your business on a path to lifelong learning.

First, are you resolving customer feedback constructively or productively?  Most businesses take a constructive approach to customer feedback.  Customer feedback is valued and concerns are resolved satisfactorily.  This is good.  However, the lifelong learning business goes one step further and focuses on productive solutions.

A productive solution means that customer service experiences are effectively communicated to product development and sales departments.  Customer service is not simply a matter of product support to protect a reputation or to preserve customer loyalty.  Customer service is a window into why and how your customers use your products. This information will suggest your business’ next innovation or sales pitch.  In essence, your customers become co-producers of value.

Second, are your senior managers aligned with your business’ strategy, vision and values?  A senior manager without strategic knowledge is not capable of making good decisions in a changing environment.  A senior manager without knowledge of the organization’s vision and values lacks the most basic tools to take the right risk at the right time. It is that simple.

In an environment that can only be described as a strategic vacuum, silos evolve naturally; there is no broad interdepartmental co-operation – the production of value through synergy – because there is no sense of context.  Your business will not anticipate change, let alone learn from it.  Avoid silos by talking with your senior managers about how changes to the external environment affect what your organization is trying to achieve: the wheat of the matter.

At the individual level, lifelong learning requires a voluntary and self-motivated pursuit of knowledge over the course of one’s life.  At the business level, lifelong learning needs an organizational structure that treats every node in your value network – including customers and senior managers – as co-producers of value.

Set Goals

Meetings

Performance Measurements

Delegation

A good reason to seriously consider enrolling your kids in preschool: it seems that the skills that help workers gain better job opportunities are learned in preschool, according to economist James Heckman.

Heckman found in his study that employee training programs for unskilled youth in their early 20s don’t make an impact on job prospects, and in some cases are detrimental to the worker’s quest to find a job.This is because the students are missing the abilities learned in preschool that are needed to learn new things, which Heckman terms “soft skills.” These include the ability to “pay attention and focus, being curious and open to new experiences, and being able to control your temper and not get frustrated.”

In fact, the Perry Preschool Project has data to support Heckman’s theory. In that study, researchers followed a number of subjects whom them placed in two groups — one that went to preschool two hours a day, for five days a week, and another that led normal lives without enrolling in preschool. When they followed up with the participants about 20 years later, they found that the boys who went to preschool earned 50 percent more than those who didn’t. The girls who went to preschool were 50 percent more likely to have a savings account versus the girls who didn’t.

NPR says:

If [the kids] learn these skills now, they’ll have them for the rest of their lives. But research shows that if they don’t learn them now, it becomes harder and harder as they get older. By the time the time they’re in a job training program in their twenties, it’s often too late.

Heckman is an economist so he thinks about this as a cost-benefit analysis. To him, the message is clear: If you want 21 year-olds to have jobs, the best time to train them is in the first few years of life.

Webinars are a great way to demonstrate a VAR’s expertise to a targeted audience: Existing customers and prospective customers. However, in our conversations with VARs we have found that many are reluctant to host their own webinars.  They are either unfamiliar with the procedures involved, or simply lack the necessary technical resources and expertise. Here are some quick tips to help VARs host webinars.

They include…

Don’t make it sales focused

This is the biggest mistake a VAR can make when hosting a webinar. No one is going to sign up for a webinar titled “Why our Product is the Best” or “Why you should Buy our Product.” This type of webinar only helps the VAR.

The types of webinars people will want to attend are the ones that have some benefit to that person, besides buying the VAR’s product. Therefore, one of the best ways to generate a large audience for a webinar is to feature a topic that is both interesting and relevant to the target market.

VARs should think about who they want to attract to the webinar, (titles, company size, and vertical) and then research the issues facing these industries today. Once you’ve learned about a few major problems that your target audience is dealing with, find a way your product fits in, and that is your topic. For example, Astaro has hosted several webinars targeting the healthcare industry discussing how hospitals can take advantage of the HITECH Act. The presentation had a section on security but Astaro’s products weren’t the main topic. Though catering the topic of the webinar to your audience is a good start, another way to attract even more viewers is to…

Do Promote in multiple ways

Marketers have become over-dependent on email, and while this is still a great way to invite people to webinars there are plenty of other ways to drive attendance. In addition to email you can post a link for registration as a Google Ad, as a Tweet, or on your Facebook wall (don’t have Facebook or Twitter? Read this post on how to use social media for marketing). Be creative, and post a link to the registration whenever and wherever you can.  That said, you should still…

Do Refine and add to your email lists

Of course you should always send a registration link to all of your clients and prospects via email. Be sure to refine your list so that only the relevant targets receive the email, and add to it by purchasing new lists if you don’t have a large enough database.

Do Have guest speakers from multiple organizations

To have outside speakers involved. Your organization may not have a lot of expertise on the topic that draws in the most audience members, so bringing in a well-known guest speaker can help you earn some credibility on a difficult topic.  Furthermore, having an expert present can help improve and expand your webinar’s content. Talk to your vendors to see if they can provide a speaker or if they know of anyone who can speak on the topic you are considering. Having more than one speaker can make the presentation more interesting.

In some cases you may be forced to pay for a guest speaker. The money you spend will be well worth it because the speaker will probably want to promote the webinar for him/herself as well, helping you reach an even larger audience.

Do choose your platform

There are several great webinar platforms that allow VARs to host webinars, create registration pages, and compose invitations for meetings. Some good choices are Go-to-Webinar, Cisco WebEx, or Microsoft Live Meeting. Ask your vendors what they are using and see if you can take advantage of their subscriptions. Upon starting the webinar, you’ll want to…

Do allow your audience to participate

Allowing webinar attendees to ask questions makes the webinar more engaging and may bring up opportunities to mention your product. However, when a webinar is live, permitting uncensored questions can be risky. In order to ensure the webinar stays focused and appropriate, use a platform that allows audience members to pose questions directly to the meeting organizer via a chat feature. Then have the moderator read the questions that are appropriate.

Do follow up

Like any good initiative, you should always follow up with attendees, as well as those who registered but did not attend. Only after you’ve followed up can you determine if your webinar was a success by comparing the results to your goals.

Considering contacting a recruiter to find out about executive or leadership jobs in your field? Many job hunters assume forging connections with recruiters will put them closer to lucrative, high-level positions that aren’t otherwise advertised.

However, a successful recruiter-job seeker relationship doesn’t just happen. It’s important to understand the relationship among all involved parties (the recruiter, company, and you), get your resume in top shape, and to be ready to deal with potential objections.

These tips will help you prepare to work effectively with a recruiter—with better results from the relationship and a faster outcome for your job search:

1. Recruiters often source candidates that have been there, done that.

Career professionals and executives that have followed a straight-line, traditional career trajectory (and very few job changes) are the best candidates for working with a recruiter.

The reason? Recruiters are hired by companies to identify talent among leaders who can demonstrate commitment to a specific type of career or skill set, with steady advancement toward a senior-level role in their particular field.

2. A recruiter’s mission is to focus on the needs of their client companies.

What many job hunters fail to grasp is that recruiter job orders often contain specific detail on the background, education, career history, and competencies  of the ideal candidate.

Depending upon the recruiter’s relationship with their clients, they may not be able to convince the company to take a chance on your background—especially if it’s not in line with these requirements.

A recruiter must not only be comfortable with the strength of your credentials, but confident that you represent a true personality and leadership fit within their client companies. After all, the recruiter’s professional reputation is riding on their ability to supply the all-around perfect candidate.

3. Your resume must be ready for presentation to their clients.

Too often, job seekers dash off a resume to recruiters that undercuts their abilities—making it difficult for the recruiter to promote the job hunter as a viable candidate.

If your leadership resume hasn’t had a review from colleagues or a resume professional, it can be worth your time to request a critique or suggestions. Some recruiters even refer their clients to career coaches that can elicit a strong brand message on the resume.

Others can often see qualities in your background that you’re too close to realize, and their recommendations can make the difference in the response you receive from a recruiter.

As a job hunting method, working with recruiters can be very effective, but only if you go in with an awareness of your role, fitness as a candidate, and realistic expectations.

Are you wondering why everyone in the business world is so agog over LinkedIn? If you’ve been avoiding LinkedIn because you think it’s probably just a more boring version of Facebook, you’re missing out. This professional networking site has become a very powerful tool for job candidates who want to increase their visibility and showcase their best qualities.

1. Update Your Status ASAP

If people know you are job hunting, they are often happy to help you out. When you post to let your network know about your job search, put a positive spin on it. For example, “I’m starting on my job search today. The years I spent at (name of previous company) have prepared me well to advance my career through this transition. I’m excited to see what’s available on the job market. If you know of anyone who’s looking for a (name your job title) with (name a couple of your top skills), let me know!”

2.  Get Relevant Recommendations

Former managers, direct reports, coworkers, clients, and vendors can be great sources for recommendations on LinkedIn. When recruiters view your profile, they are very interested in what other people are saying about you. Don’t spam your network with requests for recommendations. Instead, ask about a dozen people who have worked closely with you to post feedback that is specific and focuses on both your character and your job skills.  See my recommendations as an example.

3.  Find Out Who You Know

Use LinkedIn to get the inside scoop. Run a search on LinkedIn for a prospective employer’s company name cross referenced with the name of your high school, any colleges you’ve attended, and your past workplaces. That way, you can pull up anyone you know who is or has been involved with a prospective employer. You can pump them for information about the company’s culture and how they were successful in getting a job there. It’s even better if they know the recruiter or someone else in the hiring decision-making chain. Friends of friends may also be able to hook you up with an inside connection.

4.  Use the Job Search Function to Boost Your SEO

Finding posted jobs is only one of the reasons to spend time browsing the job search area of LinkedIn. This is where you will find out what skills recruiters in your industry are looking for. These are the keywords you will need to add to your LinkedIn summary and your resume so recruiters who are looking for jobs that aren’t posted can easily find you.

5.  Do Unto Others

Stay on the lookout for ways to assist people in your network in their job searches as well. The more you give, the more you get back on LinkedIn. For example, if you become active in a professional group geared toward your area of expertise on LinkedIn and start sharing your job search tips, you stay at the top of people’s minds when they become aware of a job that would be right for you. When you post helpful advice online, it also makes you look like a team player in the eyes of recruiters.

With the rise of social media, today’s consumers are seeking personalized, one-on-one interactions with the companies they do business with—but they don’t always receive them.

Sadly, generic marketing and advertising messages are still prevalent. Only now, with the rise of smart-phone use and consumers surfing back and forth from viewing family holiday photos on Facebook to reading their email, sending personality-free corporate messages is less effective than ever.

Here are a few suggestions to help you humanize your email marketing content:

• Avoid robotic language – Don’t let your emails consistently sound like a sales pitch. Read copy out loud to ensure it sounds conversational. Spend less time talking at your customers and prospects and more time paying attention to their behaviors and listening to them via social networks, community forums and surveys. Speak to them like they are human beings—because they are!
• Reevaluate your content – You don’t always need more content, just a different kind. Make sure your email arsenal includes messages designed simply to inform, entertain, surprise and provide value rather than sell. Use your blog, Twitter and Facebook posts or even your customer support staff. Listen to the questions that your customers and prospects have, and then use your emails to help provide answers and insight. All of these can be great resources for a new angle on content.
• Use humor – People like to laugh! Consumers enjoy and respond well to humor. Adding a touch of fun to your messages is an attention-getting way to add personality. The voice used in your email messages should be the most logical extension of your company and its brand or image.
• Incorporate customer and employee voices – According to Nielsen’s 2009 ‘Global Online Consumer Survey‘, customers and prospects place tremendous value on peer opinions and reviews, even more so than on ads. Add content such as peer reviews and testimonials to give your emails a more human feel—and increase your revenue.

As you begin to add personality to your content, remember that ‘humanisation’ isn’t just a new buzzword—it’s a way of marketing that brings your customers’ and employees’ personalities into your company messages. Humanization is now an expectation, so drop the ‘corporate speak’ and communicate with people like they are, well, people!

By:  Carrie Miller

Less than a year ago, Tim Hendricks was a vice president and stock trader 21 years into a career at Merrill Lynch in downtown Chicago. These days Hendricks is selling refrigerators and air conditioners at Abt Electronics in Glenview – and happy to have the job.

He’s one of the countless underemployed workers created by the current recession – countless as in no one is keeping track of them.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks one segment of the underemployed: those who are working part time but would rather be working full-time.

Involuntary part-timers

In addition to the 9.3 percent unemployed the U.S. reported in the second quarter, another 5.6 percent are what the bureau’s alternative labor statistics report calls “part time for economic reasons.”

In Illinois the unemployment rate was 9.4 percent with another 6.1 percent involuntarily working part time hours – which generally means no benefits like health insurance and sick leave.

Like the the other north Chicago suburbs, Glenview’s unemployment rate is substantially lower because its workforce tends to be more highly educated and highly skilled. But for those same reasons, it is especially susceptible to the other type of underemployment.

Government statistics don’t keep count of people who, like Hendricks, are working full-time jobs below their skill and experience levels. Sometimes called “mal-employment” by economists, this type of underemployment is hard to gauge without surveys because these workers aren’t applying for government benefits.

“This question has been around a while but no one’s measuring it,” said Paul LaPorte, who works in the BLS office of economic analysis and information in Chicago.

“That’s the true definition of underemployment,” LaPorte said, “underutilizing your skills; you have qualifications yet somehow through no fault of your own you got stuck doing this other job.”

Funding your job search

Jan Leahy sees both types of underemployment every day as director of the Career Resource Center in Lake Forest, a non-profit that primarily helps professionals who are looking for work.

In this tough economy, it’s “not uncommon” to see people with graduate degrees or decades of professional experience taking retail sales or other service jobs to bring in some income while they continue a job search, Leahy said.

Job seekers who have put a lot of effort into sending out resumes and making connections have to decide whether to accept lesser offers in their fields: shorter term assignments or contract work, Leahy said.

“It’s a difficult choice because it does take them out of the market and there can be a loss of momentum with their job search,” she said.

Short-term jobs can open doors

Taking a contract job was the right decision for Pam Siudyla of Highland Park, who just completed a 10-month assignment in the purchasing department of Rust-Oleum in Vernon Hills that was initially supposed to last three months. Siudyla said she had been unemployed nearly 6 months and took the job because she “needed to do something.” Now she’s on the job hunt again.

While she was at Rust-Oleum, she learned how to use the business management software SAP and made some valuable connections.

“It worked out well because I was able to update my computer skills, earn a little money and keep my experience current,” Siudyla said.

Another “underemployed” worker with a unique perspective on the job market is Pat McGarrigle of Lake Forest, who has 30 years experience with hiring and firing other people in human resources.

He’s now working three days per week as HR director for the 200 employees at a Joliet company that recycles cooking oil into animal feed and biodiesel. The 62-year-old spends the rest of his time looking for a full-time job where he can finish out his career.

He has been doing shorter-term human resources gigs since last June, when the Des Plaines packaging company where he had been HR director nearly 10 years was bought out by a rival and he was let go.

Like Siudyla, he said taking contract work has been good experience, teaching him a few new tricks and allowing him to share his own wealth of knowledge.

“I like knowing I may be able to help the company improve their processes and to have that be appreciated,” he said.

“It makes you feel good at a time when you really need a ego boost.”

Working three days per week also provides some “respite and reprieve” from the job search grind, McGarrigle said.

“It can get rather frustrating doing that day in and day out,” he said.

Unexpected rewards

Taking jobs that don’t necessarily use all of your skill set can be extremely rewarding, said Leahy, the Career Resources Center director.

She recalled one professional worker who decided to get a retail job while he was looking for career employment and, since he was an avid fisherman, applied at a Bass Pro Shop and ended up loving the job.

Likewise, Hendricks said he wasn’t sure what to expect going from selling an abstract idea like stocks to selling refrigerators and washers and dryers at Abt.

Now he loves it – and the Glenview family-owned business where he works, its “Fortune 500” level benefits, onsite fitness center and his fellow employees.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “This is my career now.”