Climate Friendly Wordpress

Free Mad Sky Texure (unedited) Creative CommonsAs I am watching James Bond skiing with Elektra King in mountains covered in snow only a few days before the UN Climate Change Conference (COP15) just next door, I can’t help wonder for how long for how long those views will be available in this world.

Fortunately, there is a lot of awareness on climate change and increasing efforts to do something about it. Read more…

Competing with Yourself in Personal Branding

When for a number of reasons, I decided to change the name of this blog, I hadn’t calculated the implications in SEO efforts needed to compete with myself. Now using Calle Hunefalk (note the link for a little SEO value), I am up against about 85.000 search results in Google, compared to some 400+ for “Calle Hunefalk” (Google).

This does pose an interesting challenge, although I’d love to hear some feedback on best practices and (ethical) shortcuts to achieve a better ranking for my own personal “brand name” Calle Hunefalk.

I would love to get your comments below.

What’s in a Name?

I just changed the URL for this blog from http://carl-johan.hunefalk.com/ to the more manageable http://callehunefalk.com/.

The reason? It’s a lot easier to communicate URLs without dashes and periods. My full name is Carl-Johan Hunefalk, but as is the custom in Sweden (where I am from), I’ve had the nickname Calle my whole life.

When I started my career, I used the more formal Carl-Johan in business contexts. When I moved to New York, I ran into my first hurdle with that name – people could not pronounce it, or select half or it (”Carl” or “Johan”) to call me. We all identify ourselves with our name (or names), and for me, it was an important issue not to have my name “halved”. Of course, Americans tend to be as happy about nicknames as Swedes, so Carl-Johan was shortened to “CJ” – or “C” to those who felt even that was too long to pronouce.

I’ve been back in Europe for 8 years since moving back from New York, and have used both variations of my name, perhaps to the slight confusion for people I’ve been in contact with. You will probably see my name online in both variations if you do a search – but now it’s time to simplify.

Calle – [Ka - leh] pronounced like ‘Ca’ in Capacity and ‘Le’ in Leverage.

Carl-Johan Hunefalk = Calle Hunefalk

You can read more details about naming in my upcoming posts on creating a Personal Business Plan.

Balanced Leadership in Global Online Marketing & Technology

The title of this post is the phrase that I use as a Motivational Slogan in my Personal Business Plan.

Why use a Motivational Slogan?

In a sense, the name speaks for itself – a catch phrase to use for motivation as well as marketing. A business plan normally includes a Vision statement as well as a Mission statement – but a slogan? Well, I needed a phrase to use both for my own motivation and for my marketing – a phrase based on a story – so I came up with the Motivational Slogan. I use it anywhere I focus on marketing – from business cards to social media.

Unlike a slogan used by businesses, this is slightly longer, and could be used as a Vision statement if I didn’t have one already.

What does it stand for?

Each word in my Motivational Slogan is carefully selected to match my skills, interests and objectives. Each individual has his or her own interpretation of the meaning of the words, which is why I am describing my selected interpretation here.

Balanced Leadership

Balanced Leadership involves a focus on creating a sustainable business model (for me as a person) with a long term focus on ethics and social responsibility. Balancing Rights and Responsibilities is important to me.

Balanced

Balanced means a strategic focus on a division of efforts so that each gets a strategically selected share, based on business objectives and needs and interests of individuals performing tasks. This includes balancing my own tasks as well as those that work for and with me. Additionally, my goal is to achieve a balance between areas of life, including work and private/family life, health and spiritual needs, and social life.

Balance also signifies a healthy living for myself and my stakeholders (all the people I’m in contact with). Finally, balance also involves techniques for staying focused, based on the belief that you need to relax to focus and be creative (and thus learn and evolve).

Leadership

Leadership includes the focus of leading others in business and in life. To lead, you do not necessarily need to be a manager or have formal authority. This focus includes transformational leadership (as I understand as separate from Change Management), innovation and motivation.

From my skills perspective, Leadership also involves Management of Projects and Outsourcing, including planning and processes.

Global

The Global aspect is a focus on cross-cultural, international (as opposed to multi-national) and localized (culturally and lingually) communication, challenges and opportunities.

Marketing

In my Personal Business Plan, Marketing is exclusively Online Marketing, and activities impacting online marketing. It involves the entire marketing process, including the classical AIDAS model, spanning from advertising and PR, through sales, to customer service and retention. Part of online marketing is also tracking and results measurement.

Technology

As with Marketing, Technology only includes Web Technology in my Personal Business Plan. My technology focus has two subparts – innovative development along with tasks effectiveness and automation. Combined with Leadership, Technology involves IT Management, as relevant to Online Business.

The Motivational Slogan

It is important to clearly define your slogan, for a couple of reasons. One, it sets you apart from your competitors – only you have the unique definition of the Motivational Slogan you have written. Also, it limits your playing field (as long as you stay within your own defined boundaries) to focus on areas that match your skills, interests and objectives.

Defining your Motivational Slogan shouldn’t be taken too lightly – a really good one can really keep you motivated – but don’t spend more time on planning than you do on actions that follow your plan.

Affiliate Marketing Best Practice

At a station

The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) Affiliate Marketing Council launched its guidelines for best practice in affiliate marketing at the end of November, 2008. Recently, they revised the best practice guidelines, to now include the voucher sector as well. Read more…

Social Media 2.0: Conversational Interfaces

As social media spreads, web applications need to get smarter. They have to strike up a conversation with each visitor – and become sociable.

Part of the next evolution of the web – Web 3.0 to some – is claimed to be the Semantic Web, which enables websites to provide information about what information and functionality they have, and to communicate with other websites. It is a way to make information “understandable” by computers, so that they can perform tasks that humans would normally do. Read more…

Please leave your €1 at the sidebar

Like many professional marketers, I glance at what Seth Godin has to say, once in a while. Mostly, it’s high-level words of wisdom for any business, with the view that marketing is part of every contact anyone has with the business. Read more…

Illness causes a blog’s near death

It’s been over two months since I posted to this blog. Not because of laziness or lack of motivation, but because I have come down with an illness. It’s called Thyroid, and it is thoroughly unpleasant.

Not that blogging is the cause of this illness, but theoretically stress could be a contributing factor. I had not gotten far with the renewed effort on this blog, but I am still determined to get it rolling again.

Despite my illness, I am working hard to deliver SEO projects and Reputation Management work, and when I have recovered enough to continue with this blog, I will post about some interesting findings there.

Thank you all who are so supportive – I appreciate it more than I can tell you!

Four Focus Areas for Improved SEO

Search Engine OptimizationSearch Engine Optimization (SEO) is not rocket science. However, it’s something that you need to actively keep working on, to reach results. I have recently worked with a client on an SEO project, and I have created a process for them in four main parts, to improve their search engine rankings. I’ll share the structure of that process here.

Read more…

New affiliate networks in a down period

Überhang, surplomb, strapiombo.I haven’t been able to post much to this blog lately, since I am busy working on a consulting project. However, I’d just like to mention that this blog is still alive, and will be kept alive in the foreseeable future.

I have just added two new affiliate networks in Denmark to complete that list. If you have any updates to affiliate networks in Sweden or the UK, please write a comment here. Read more…