Linked In only 15 minutes a week.

 Linked In: Only 15 minutes a week.

By Mike Ferretti

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You likely spent more than 15 minutes this morning getting your coffee, In that same amount of time you could be keeping up all that hard work you spent building your brand.

Spend your time as follows.

6 Minutes: Engage

This may be the hardest part but but it is easy with LinkedIn. A little share, Like a contacts post, Comment on their stuff or Endorse their skills. Each little interaction helps your brand stay in front of your contacts. To get the most out of this, work out a list of about 20 people you want to stay in front of. Then start clicking two or three each week. You will look like a networking pro and will find that your contacts respond in kind. 

5 Minute: Profile Check/Update

Size up your profile and address easy to fix items like typos, dead links, contact info and scribble out some notes for anything you find that will take a while that you can do when you do have a few more minutes to spend on your brand and social self.  Think about your current branding - is it still sending the right message. If your looking for a job is that clear yet subtle? If you are looking for new clients, do you spell that out?

Look at your call to action(CTA) You know the little blurb, infographic or picture that tells profile visitors how, why and where to get in touch with you. Make sure it is in your Advice for contacting section but you might also include it right up in your summary.

Here is an example that I have seen

"I value any opportunity to act as a career mentor or chat with other professionals in the venture capital world. Feel free to connect with me here or on Twitter @[yourhandle]."

Your CTA can be very simple but if it is outdated then it is useless. While I am thinking about it...Are you inviting the right kind of people and are you inviting them to a platform where they can actually engage with you? Also make sure you are aligned with your current career goals or you could be wasting your precious branding and profile engaging with the wrong people at the wrong time.

2 Minutes: Share

Next quickly scan your feed for the most interesting article you can find. You know something that is related to your area of expertise and the kind of thing your network will love. Share the article with a short comment on why you think it's useful. Now you rprofile is in good shape and you have activated your presence with content.

2 Minutes: Pair Down your connections

No don't grandstand with a facebook style purge. You just want to make sure that your connections are high quality and part of your brand. Sure quantity is OK but really you want quality connections to help you reach your goals.

Quickly scroll through your connections looking for people you simply don't remember any more or haven't actually had a real conversation with. Make sure you don't click on their profiles and pay them a visit, you don't want to draw attention to your paring down session. Work from your connections tab and here is link on how 

That is it! 15 minutes will keep you going until you can spend more time on bigger updates. It will keep your social self and personal branding on autopilot and your network thinking you are a social ninja.

5 Steps to enhance your consulting profile on LinkedIn.

5 Steps to enhance your profile using LinkedIn

1)      Create or update your profile 

1)      Add your latest projects under the projects section.

2)      Connect your twitter account so updates go to your twitter followers

3)      Add a link in your profile to your blog(start a blog to write about your projects)

4)      Update linked In when you add a new blog post.

2)      When you start a new project link with your team members

1)      Great way to see who you are working with and what they have accomplished

2)      Easy way to stay in touch as people move around internally and externally

3)      Ask some of these folks for recommendations for your profile

3)      After meeting with the client team try to link with as many as you can, IE exec sponsors, PM, HR etc

1)      See items above, this is an easy way to build your network and competency

4)      Put aside 30-60 min each week to look at or provide updates in your groups.

1)       You do belong to groups don’t you? Great way to help build your self as an expert

2)      You don’t need an update every week but if you have one post it

       5)   Use your status updates to announce positive events about your project.

1)      This is one area to be careful using social media

1)      Don’t give exact time or locations

2)      Don’t mention your client name

3)      Don’t say anything you would want to see on you tube

2)      Examples I have used ( feel free to use as a template)

•        In Delaware, So excited to meet my new client face to face today.

•       Looking forward to kicking off my new program in Buffalo today.

•       Just met some great people at my new client

•       Wow, I am so excited…The client has an awesome team working on this project

•       Amazing, the program is green and ahead of schedule, Great job Team

How to build reference ability into your engagement

Client referenceability, why do you need it? First off a good reference makes it easy for the sales team to do their job, It normally means your client is easier to work with and third reason it is the right thing to do. In my role as an engagement leader there are many times when you have to deliver news that the client may not like, but that doesn't mean they will not be a reference. Having worked with over 200 different clients in the past 10 years I have outlined a few easy to remember steps to help you build and keep referenceable clients. Remember references come in many forms so try to define the top 2 or 3 that you will ask for over and over again.

Building client referenceability can be fairly easy if you follow the 3 easy steps outlined below.

Start with the end in mind. What this means is tell the client you want them to be a reference from day 1. Sure they may use that point to their advantage sometimes but you want a reference that will be open and honest so it is usually pretty easy to call them on unfair requests. Otherwise start the conversation early on what they think it takes to be a referenceable client. In many engagements you are working with the clients critical business issues. Use this these to also formalize what will get them to be a reference. You may be asking for a LinkedIn reference, a social media reference, to speak with a potential client, do a press release or even create a promotional video. Let them know what you will be asking them to do during your project.

Test for the reference you want. I.e. After the first milestone in your project or after the first win or loss ask the client if they would give you a good reference. This is a win/win situation no matter how they reply. If they reply positively ask if they would write something up for you. Just a few lines about how you handled the situation and why they are still comfortable giving you a good reference. If they reply negatively then you get some real knowledge, ask them what or how you could have received a more favorable response and a positive reference. Then pay attention to what they tell you. If the reply is about your product and it doesn't do what wanted then you have something to follow up with product management, you might even test that reason by asking if the product had to cost more but included that function how likely would be to pay more for the product.

Make the reference a deliverable in your project plan. Before your project is complete begin to ask for the reference and/or add the reference as a deliverable to your exec sponsor or project manager. Make it very matter of fact that no matter the issues during the project the final product and service were worth the trouble and they are happy with the results.

 Sometimes no matter how happy your client is or how much they like and support your work, product, or service the corporate culture may limit the type of reference they can provide. If you have asked early, tested several times during your highlights and lowlights and gave the client a deliverable more than 80% of the time you will get your reference. When don't it should be easy to learn why not and use that knowledge on your next engagement.

Install New Magento Security Patch Immediately

Install New Magento Security Patch 

By Mike Ferretti

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Just received the latest notification from Magento Enterprise edition.

You may want to check your release and get this patch installed.

Today, Magento are releasing a new security patch (SUPEE-6788), Enterprise Edition 1.14.2.2 and Community Edition 1.9.2.2 to address over 10 issues identified through our comprehensive security program, including remote code execution and information leak vulnerabilities. This patch is unrelated to the recent Guruincsite malware issue. There are no confirmed reports of attacks related to these issues to-date, but it is important that you deploy the patch in order to protect your store. More information about the patch is provided in the Magento Security Center and in the Magento Enterprise Edition and Magento Community Edition release notes.

http://magento.com/security

Keep orders flowing by keeping customer safe.

Keep orders flowing with customer safety

By Mike Ferretti

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So you have built up a pretty good consumer base for your ecommerce site. With several large cyber attacks and stolen credit information here are a few ideas for your e-commerce site and a few for your shoppers. After all if you can help keep their information safe they can feel more secure shopping on your site.

While your password rules may not require much in the way of a password that doesn't mean you shouldn't educate your prospects and customers alike. When signing up for your site offer suggestions on how customers can make their passwords more secure. Add a link below the password line to  everyplace a prospect has to enter a password on your site to explain more secure password options. Make it obvious if you offer 2 factor authentication.  Then you can offer the following as just a few ideas on better passwords.

Use or create Passwords that are hard to guess this may sound simple but a lot of people struggle trying to remember unique passwords. This means don't use simple password such as 123, pets name, birth date, spouses names, kids names or the like.

IF you are like us then you need to have many passwords so use passwords easy to remember.

Criminals have developed highly sophisticated hacks to guess your password including birth dates, pets names, and 123 combinations.


Use different passwords for different sites. Its not that hard based on what you have learned above. But if you still think you may have trouble remembering all your password, consider using a password manager that can securely manager your passwords for you. Check with an expert for recommendations on secure password manages. They should encrypt your passwords not only on the screen but they should store them in memory encrypted. This way you only have to remember 1 password to manager. I recommend staying away from offering suggestions on a good password manager.

There are other things you can do like keeping server passwords in a vault and requiring server password changes every 30 days or less. But will save some of the more detailed solutions for the security architects.

You want your password to be as strong as possible and the longer your password is, the stronger it is. Instead of using a single word consider a passphrase like  " Time to eat" . This is only a pretty good password. if you can use a number and lower/upper and then use a symbol in your password you go from good to great. As an example.  Time 2 E@t   this is much harder for  cybercriminals to guess but still easy for you to remember.  You can also make unique easy to remember passwords buy using a few simple tricks like. Always start the password with the first 5 characters of  the site you are visiting. for example if you are visting amazon.com your unique password that is easy to remember could be      amazo Time 2 e@t    or you could replace any part of your phrase with the site name. This helps with the next tip below.

Tell your shoppers to Never share a password with anyone else. Not their family, friends, or even clergy. IF you accidently do then change your password immediately.

Recommend that your shoppers not use public computers to login to your site, These could have easily been infected with software that will capture their login information and send it back to cyber criminals without you ever knowing.

If you did give out your password or if  you think your password was stolen, change it immediately, if you use the same password for several sites change all of them(this is a good time to use a new pass phrase like I mention above).

2 step verification

Some sites offer two factor authentication or 2 step verification, Like a code sent to your smart phone....this is a good way to stay safe.  If your site offers this then suggest to your shoppers they use this.  

If you are no longer using an account delete it or disable that account. Left over dead accounts can get breached and your data retrieved and use on other sites.

While we are at it there are a few things you as the vendor can do to help safeguard your customers data. It is also good to tell your customers you take these steps if you have the real estate.
First use HTTPS yes S for secure. Group all personal info and credit info so the code that executes that is housed on a different server than your standard application. THis entire separate server should be encrypted from the network connections down to the data on the disk. many financial institutions may require  this but even if they dont. Do it for your customers only if you want to keep them safe.
Split your application into 2, 3 or more parts. First layer could be UI(web or mobile), the second should be  application logic and rules, the third could be data. Put fire walls between each layer but also see if they can be on different networks or at least subnets. Sure this can sometime cost a little more but it can also speed up your application and help load balance surges in traffic. Beside did you ever hear a customer complain that your site is too fast? Again i suggest using a security architect for your applications including mobile, IOT, and web.

If you have other password or security tips post them in the comments, help keep your customers, your site and applications safe and keep your customers coming back.

January 2015 Ecommerce calendar #ecommcal

Ecommcal January 2015

By Mike Ferretti

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NOTE: Hopefully your are counting the rewards from your peak selling season because you followed some of tips from this blog. If you are new, we hope that while some of these tips and times may be common sense they just might help you work on the items that add even greater value to your community rather than spending valuable resources just keeping up with the basics.
Are your ready to plan or implement your strategy for this year? Does your social media strategy work with your ecomm strategy to build a funnel of prospects? Or to engage loyal buyers at a deeper level so they become an added marketing channel? Well follow my blog now and see if your ideas align with the work my clients are doing on their sites. Also submit your comments on what and why you may be doing something different or how these tips helped your site.

Jan1
New VAT rules go into effect for your European sites. We mentioned this back in Oct of last year that while your production site should not receive any changes during your peak selling season, start you updates and testing to make sure you are ready for returns and new sales VAT calculations.

Jan X
Things to do in Jan for your ecommerce and social media ,

Jan 28 

Starts. Are your marketing, sales, fullfilment, and delivery teams integrated or do you have critical hand-offs along the way? Find out how an integrated approach can help your expenses and your bottom line.

Jan 30 - Register for Magento's Imagine 2015 conference in Las Vegas

December 2014 Ecommerce calendar #ecommcal

Ecommcal December 2014

By Mike Ferretti

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Note: : Your ‘Top 10’ for 2014! Channel Advisors ranked their customers’ top e-commerce shopping days of the 2013 holiday season using GMV data to help project which days in 2014 would be the highest selling for you. I would love to hear how you did on each of these days and I will be posting a summary of my results on my G+ page.

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December 1 (Cyber Monday) #1
Need we say more?

Dec 2   #5
Update shipping deadlines on your eBay Stores, e.g., “Order by X date in order to get shipping Cyber Monday by X date. You may also be updating social media, your website etc.

Dec3

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Using this Calendar can help you through the holiday season with the confidence that your campaigns continue to produce. Dont forget to subscribe to our Jan 2015 calendar.



Feel free to post your Dec tasks in the comments below. Feel free to add an industry hashtag.