Opposite the hotel was a Costa Cafe, with good coffee, nice staff and free wifi. So I wandered across the road, ordered a large latte and used wifi there.

So why couldn’t the hotel provide free wifi? I pondered this as I sipped my coffee. To start with I was a bit annoyed and was working up to a good rant, but on reflection it makes sense.

The cafe has a lot of competition, several other cafes in walking distance and a bookstore with wifi. So if providing wifi attract more customers, or encourage customers to stay longer – and order a second cup, it’s well worth the costs. It’s a matter of beating the competition.

Hotels with a large proportion of business travels have customers who are less price sensitive since it’s often their company paying, and not funded from their own pocket. The extra charges for wifi will be picked up by expenses.

I predict a change; free wifi is becoming an expectation in any public space and I know one Asian-based businessman who includes it as criteria in selecting a hotel. No free wifi, no booking.

I started playing with it about six months ago, and it really appeals to my visual senses, it’s a way to collect and categorise images. It adds a social element by allowing you to re-pin images from others, or to follow others. I’m using it to collect quotes, design ideas, fantasy homes, and “objects of desire” – for all those wild objects I’d buy if I had more money and another twenty rooms to put them in.

Interest in Pinterest has been growing, and it’s currently the fastest growing social media site out there. Even though it’s not easy to get an account; right now you’ll need an invite from a friend or you’ll be on a waiting list.

Given the high level of growth, and the length of time people spend on this site (the average user spends 88 minutes – third behind facebook and tumblr, and a long way ahead of Google+) it’s inevitable that people would see a business opportunity. In fact it’s already starting to rise as referrer site according to a study by Mashable.

So what are the best professional uses of Pinterest?

Product Catalogue

This is the most obvious use of Pinterest, particularly if your products are visually appealing cupcakes or fashion.

Wholefoods group great images of their products, under some fun headings “Eat your veggies” for example. Samsonite have used some boards to display their products

Education

I found two different approaches here, Savannah College of Art and Design focuses on current and prospective students. Their pinterest boards give a good insight into live on the campus and the achievements of their students.

The University of Pennsylvania Career Services on the other hand provides resources for their graduating students, including where to find a job, tips on job hunting, advice on updating linkedin, and image on appropriate interview wear.

Non-Profit

Unicef has arranged their boards according to the themes of the work they do for the most part, but has separate boards for video and cartoons which I found a bit disruptive to how I like to find things.

A more radical approach is taken by South West Key, they’ve got posters from activist campaigns, books related to their cause, and profiles of some members.

Magazines

There are a number of magazines using Pinterest, often as another channel to display their own content. Women’s Running does something smarter, collecting relevant, funny and inspirational images from around the web.

Beautiful Beaches

Locations

OK, this is a no-brainer, particularly if you’re promoting a place as beautiful as Aruba.

Museums

The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art display some of their catalogue via Pinterest, museums usually can’t display all the artifacts they hold, so tools like Pinterest can increase their exposure.

Take-aways

Pinterest is new, but the most successful boards so far seem to have a few things in common;

1. Be aware of your target audience; the University of Pennsylvania Career Services know who their audience is and match the resources they provide.
2. Choose great images; the photos on the Aruba page had me contemplating travel.
3. Go with themes; Samsonite provide some catalogue styled boards, but also play with the theme of travel.
4. Don’t just reproduce content from your own sources; use the tool to collate relevant content from around the web as Women’s Running did.
5. Have some fun labelling your boards; Wholefoods, the Smithsonian and Women’s Running magazine pulled this off. You’ve got images there to back up whatever labels you choose, this gives you a little extra freedom.

That was the case for me in 2005 when I started working for Theo van der Biessen then head of the New Media Team at ING’s Corporate Communications department. He gave me a long list of things to do and then left me to it.  I don’t mean he was a hands-off manager I mean he literally left me to it – he took the next three months off work to have heart surgery. I sent him hand-written notes every couple of weeks to let him know my progress, and somehow I thrived with the lack of attention.

Don’t get me wrong, Theo was no saint, there were many, many, days when he drove me crazy. He’d organise his day in such away that he had not time to go from one meeting to another – and was therefore always late. He wasn’t very organised around various management tasks – making our lives difficult on occasion. So of course he came in for his fair share of complaints.

In 2008 the team was split, with Theo leading the events team – which was the stuff he really loved, and me leading what became the Web Expert Centre – which is the stuff I really love.  So Theo wasn’t my boss for all that long but he had a deep impact, I learnt a lot about being good at my job and a lot the human side of being a good manager.

I think the biggest lesson I learnt was from seeing how much Theo cared, genuinely cared, for his team. He trusted us, he supported us – even when he didn’t agree 100% with what we were doing, and when we screwed up he was there to help solve the problem. Remarkably I never once heard him say “I told you so”. He was full of creativity and encouragement, he had masses of ideas – not all of them good, but some of them great, and he was always generous to me, and my team.

After that first heart surgery Theo recovered rather well for a few years, and then started to get sicker, eventually undergoing a series of open-heart surgeries, each one piling risk onto his damaged heart. The last surgery proved too much, and on the Saturday after the operation I heard that he had passed away. Despite knowing how sick he had been I was shocked. Theo had so much life and energy in him it seemed utterly impossible news.

I didn’t know it when I signed up for the job back in 2005, but I was extremely lucky to know and work with Theo.

I read the story back in December when I was on the other side of the world with a time difference of 12 hours. Although I was on holiday I was following a couple of issues that needed to be solved by the end of the year that I’d had to delegate. So I was checking my emails first thing in my morning, which was after the close of business back in Amsterdam. My first thought was therefore that it was particularly unhelpful to anyone travelling in different time zones. A colleague pointed out that imposing this limit would mean she’d stay at the office longer, whereas now she has dinner with her kids and then answers emails once they’re in bed.

I think it’s a step backwards; email, blackberries, remote access are all tools to allow us to work more flexibly. Cutting them off seems to defeat the purpose.

I do recognise the problem, it’s really easy to become addicted to the fast response. It’s easy to substitute email for communication. However email is convenient, it’s less disruptive than a phone call – and the employees of Volkswagen can still receive phone calls.

A better solution would be to implement an email charter in your company, setting out how you expect email to be used. If you can’t imagine what that means don’t worry – there’s a handy one already made for you via Chris Anderson of TED fame.

The Charter has rules that are pretty obvious and simple; respect the recipient’s time, promote clarity, don’t cc endlessly.

I’d add one – model the behaviour you want, particularly if you’re a team leader. Respect the recipient’s own personal time, don’t send an email on a day off that doesn’t need urgent attention – or if you do make sure “for Monday” is in the subject line.

We get to use the tools, they don’t rule us.

I couldn’t find an appropriate email address on the site so I turned to twitter,  that fab new tool that companies the world over are embracing to use for the customer contact. It seems that a lot of other people thought that RTL would be the company, and have tweeted questions and comments with @RTL in the tweets, instead it’s someone in fukuoka, with a locked account so I don’t know how active he/she is.

There are loads of tools out there to monitor tweets, so I wondered if perhaps RTL was picking up on these questions and responding somehow. Further digging revealed the offical RTL Netherlands twitter account @RTLNL, with zero tweets.

Why would you expect an answer from this account?

Lots has been said about how companies should set up their twitter accounts, how they should be used, how it’s vitally important to staff them etc, so I won’t go into what RTL could improve. In any case someone managed to get in contact wtih them – because the programme data is back today.

But I’d like to point out that users could also help by checking that the account they’re sending comments to is one that will provide an answer. In this case @RTL is a random person in Japan who’s getting messages in languages he can’t read.

To increase the chances of the company helping you via twitter check;

• does the company have a twitter account?
• are they actively using their account?
• if the company has more than one account, which one is relevant for your question?

I know we’re halfway through January but I’ve had a slow start to the year with a long break visiting family and friends on the other side of the world.

So here I am on my first post of the year, and I’ve been thinking about New Year’s Resolutions. There was a flurry of posts on this subject from Christmas until about 5 January including a timely reminder from HBR that some resolutions might be about stopping ineffective behaviour at work, and the advertising to join a gym/lose weight/stop smoking and generally improve your life has escalated. But it was a quiet comment from a colleague I respect that inspired me to write this.

“I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions,” she said “you can decide any day of the year to make a change in your life”.

I don’t do resolutions either, but there is something healthy about taking some time to look back at what you’ve achieved, and what you’d like to improve and the end of year seems a natural moment to do that. However natural it is to translate that into resolutions it seems we’re not good at keeping them.

Around half of those who set resolutions succeed in keeping them occasionally, only 8% always keep them, compared with 24% who never keep them according to Daily Infographic.

So what goes wrong? Well, we’re too ambitious, making resolutions that are “significantly unrealistic”, according to Psychology Today. We’ll also think that solving one issue – reducing debt or exercising more – will fix our whole life and then then become discouraged when that turns out not to be the case.

There is plenty of advice all over the internet on how to improve your chances of keeping your resolutions the most common items are; focus on one goal, make it specific, make it measurable, take it in small steps, celebrate success – and laugh at failure.

Psychology Today’s list also reflects the advice of my wise colleague “Don’t wait till New Year’s eve to make resolutions. Make it a year long process, every day”

Image from maplemama via flickr

It’s a normal part of service in the US, but it’s less common here in the Netherlands, and there have been times here where I’d have welcomed a little upselling rather than trying to catch a waiter’s eye to order water.

But last week I had a sales experience where upselling almost lost them the sale. I wanted a small item, a nail buffer. I imagined the price would be in the 5-10 euro range. But I couldn’t just buy the buffer, I had to buy a set… I tested the hand cream, it smelt good. I agreed to by the set, my decision helped by it being on sale. At this point I’ve agreed to spend 3.5 times my initial planned spend.

But then they tried to upsell again, for twice what I’d just agreed to spend I could have a body scrub and a moisturiser – telling me that I had “skin discoloration” as part of the sales pitch. I declined politely. Then at the cash register, while I was standing with the money in my hand, I was asked again – I was so tempted to walk.

But on reflection I think the hard sale is one of the reasons this company is being forced to offer big discounts on their products. The Dutch are a bit allergic to this approach.

Image from island vittles via flickr

Access to social media sites is blocked by the IT department of a company, the reasons given are to do with often associated with risk. This is an approach more common in highly regulated industries, where it may not be possible to discuss client service information openly.

But risk isn’t necessarily averted by locking a service out since staff will use it in their own time; eg if linkedin locked down on basis of cybercriminal social engineering attacks then you’ve only moved risk out of 9 to 5.

For some companies locking down social media use could be the right approach. But if you lock down personal use of social media, and don’t have an internal social media platform, it will not be possible to make effective use of social media to promote your company or defend the company’s reputation. You simply won’t have the skill base.

In fact this strategy will introduce risk, eventually you won’t be able to serve your clients – I recently heard of a case where the communications team could not see a facebook complaint that had been emailed to them because facebook was blocked. Even once they’d seen it they stated that their policy was not to respond to complaints made in social media. They’ve missed a simple opportunity to make things right.

The second common reason for blocking social media is out of fears of time wasting. Given the ubiquity of smart phones this isn’t a real solution either.

In this approach companies try to control their employees’ use of social media. Some tools may be blocked, or blocked temporarily, policies and rules will be implemented and monitoring may be in place with strong repercussions for misuse.

I understand the concerns about reputation that lead to a perception that control is the right answer, but it is not possible to control everything that is said about your company, and it’s not possible to monitor every account of every employer.

It’s essential that companies do have policies and do monitor and act, but it’s also reactive – you’re monitoring and acting on issues, not really preventing them from arising. So it’s not enough.

Use is open, there may be policies in place, but they focus on encouraging use and helping employees use it well. There may be good reasons not to follow an open policy for your company – but the top 100 employers are heading in this direction.

JRC have taken this to the extreme, posting just three rules and then leaving them blank. But if you work in a big company, or a highly regulated industry that may not be enough. Companies like TNT have included some “don’t's” in their otherwise encouraging policy.

Whatever form your guidelins take it’s OK to present the possible negative outcome, I like the clarity offered by Best Buy;

Just in case you are forgetful or ignore the guidelines above, here’s what could happen. You could:

• Get fired (and it’s embarrassing to lose your job for something that’s so easily avoided)

• Get Best Buy in legal trouble with customers or investors

• Cost us the ability to get and keep customers

So which is the right approach to take? I would say be open, but then I’m bound to be biased.  Take a hard look at what risks you need to consider, then be as open as you can be.

They’re both entrepreneurs I admire, Michelle Mone for her sheer determination and audacious publicity work, and Richard Reed for building a values-driven business. And one comment from Richard Reed really struck me.

It’s something to apply in business, where you very rarely have 100% perfect information. I have seen projects – and people – stalled by trying to analyse data that just isn’t available.

Something to apply in life, come to think of it.

1) Put your name on every page
Most CVs of professional mid-career people are more than one page, if that’s true of your CV please add a footer with your name and page numbers in it.

Usually CVs get printed out for the assessors to read, it’s easy for papers to be shuffled around and then it’s a pain to sort out the pages. I’ve even resorted to reprinting CVs on occasion just to be sure I have it organised. I do own a stapler-but I’d rather be able to spread papers out and compare them.

2) Add all your contact information
Please add both your email address and your phone number.

In these days of mobiles with voice mail there’s no reason not to add a mobile number. You may want to use a personal email address, but take care – wildsexthing69@mail.com is not going to prove your professionalism in most occupations.

As the recruiter I will want to contact you quickly and easily, by phone is fastest, by email means I can send you more detailed information.

3) Save file as your name
I’m still surprised when applicants don’t do this, it shows a lack of thought regarding how their CV will be handled.

Usually there are several applicants, and I save their files to the same folder. If your name isn’t in the file name it’s harder for me to figure out which is your CV. Of course I can rename the file, but why would you as an applicant want to make me do that.

These might seem obvious, but I’ve just been reviewing a set of CVs, and apparently they’re not.