Landmark Education on Communication
Everyone at some point has experienced an impasse in communication; those frustrating occasions when it all breaks down and people want to get up and walk out. Just look at a sample of recent headlines: “Peace Talks Breakdown” or “Labor Negotiations at a Stalemate” or “Negotiations Fail to Result in an Accord”. When the stakes are high and people are afraid they have something to loose communication becomes strained and people stop listening to one another. Usually this is while claiming that the people on the other side of the table are actually the ones who are not doing the listening. We get so concerned and fearful about getting other people to hear what we have to say, we become unwilling to hear what they have to say.
Indeed, listening seems sometimes as if it is a rare happening among human beings. We can’t really listen to another person speaking if we’re preoccupied, or if we’re trying to decide what we’re going to say when the other stops talking, or if we’re debating about whether what is being spoken is true or relevant or agreeable. Listening, in other words, is being accessible and open to what is being said.
At Landmark Education we contend that listening has an amazing power. It gives life to what is being spoken. You might even say it is with the listener that both the speaker and what is spoken exist and come alive. Think of how inspired and enlivened the elderly can become when you sit down and have an extended conversation with them. Think about what happens when someone is really listening to you. Ever notice that you become funnier and more playful when someone laughs at your jokes? What about when a child recognizes that adults are actually listening to them? Their whole demeanor shifts. In the programs of Landmark Education, you find yourself with a new ability to listen to others. You find yourself inspired by the people you have in your life. When you truly listen to people you discover the best of what they have to offer.
Speaking, meanwhile, can be something more than talking, more than the exchange of symbols or information, more than saying what you really think. In speaking we can share ourselves; we can evoke experience in others. Speaking is where our ideas become clear and possible. It is where others are expanded by our time spent with them. It allows for the futures we create. Speaking lives in poetry, in the appreciation of another, in idle conversations that pass the time, in great theories and books that give rise to wonder and thought.
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Speaking allows for “who” and “how” we “are” in the world. It is what gives voice to all that is possible in being human. In our ability to speak and share we have the ability to shape the world we live in.
In the courses of Landmark Education you find that true communication is creation. It has the power to shape, determine, and alter the course and quality of our lives. It moves people. It generates experience in others. It not only delivers information to others, it actually transforms their ability to hear. True communication transforms both the speaker and listener.
The Landmark Forum suggests that what it is to be human has its own domain and that domain is one of language—of communication, of conversation. Through communication —the realm of language, of conversation—each of us has complete access to ourselves, to others, to the very essence and possibility of what it means to be human.
This is the essence of what Landmark Education is about and what The Landmark Forum provides.
Copyright © 2007 Landmark Education. All rights reserved.
By: Landmark Education
About the Author:
Landmark Education, an international training and development company, offers a wide range of programs. The ideas, insights, and distinctions on which Landmark Education‘s programs are based make Landmark Education a leader and innovator in the field of training and development.
10 Ways to Use Facebook for Increasing Web Traffic to Your Site
Deepak Dutta asked:
More than 115 million people login to Facebook every month. It is the largest social networking tool and a great place in the web for building your brand and driving traffic to your site. However, if you are not familiar with the viral techniques that work in the Facebook platform, soon you will find your brand tarnished. You can gain quick exposure to your businesses using the techniques discussed in this article.
1. Build a Facebook network. Before you start implementing any of the techniques discussed here, you need to develop a network of Facebook friends. To do that, join a few groups that are related to your business and a few groups that you are passionate about.
Ask people in the groups to add you as their friend. Facebook also has nifty tool that suggest people you would like to know. Send request to these people to add you as their friend. Send a short note explaining why you want to be their friend. If send 20 requests a day, you will have a network of more than 1,000 friends in two months.
2. Update your status every day. Login every day and update your status. Don’t use status messages like “I am sleeping now”, “Just came from work”. These types of status messages are not interesting. Use quotes from famous people about a specific niche, for example love, dedication, work ethics, peace, war, etc. You can also use jokes. Your aim is to draw people’s attention to your messages so that they would click on your profile to know more about you.
3. Wish birthday wishes everyday. Facebook also shows upcoming birthdays of all friends in your network. Every day send birthday wishes to friends whose birthdays are due. Read their profiles to know more about them and write a nice personal message on their walls. Don’t use canned birthday messages for everybody.
When you write on a friend’s wall in Facebook, everybody in the network gets updated news feed. You need to write something that get attention. You may craft a 10 to 20 attention grabbing birthday messages and than personalize them slightly for each friend.
4. Create a business page. Besides your personal page, you should also create a business page. Creating a business page is similar to creating a personal page in Facebook. Design a nice logo and use it for your business page picture.
Next, become a fan of your business page. You can use your business page to launch targeted Facebook ad campaign. Promote your Facebook business page using blogs, blog comments, etc. and ask people to become a fan of your business. Use some promotional materials, like free t-shirts, free eBooks etc as incentives for becoming a fan.
5. Tag promotional photos using friends’ names. Upload all promotional photos to your business page. Some people tag these photos with the names of their most influential friends in the network. Your promotional photos will show up in your friends’ news feeds. Once you setup a network of friends, make a list of friends with high number of friends, preferably more than 1000. Setup your mini network to tag each others names in promotional photos.
6. Change your relationship status regularly if it is possible. One of the least frequent activity in Facebook is changing the relationship. Because people don’t change their relationship frequently, Facebook places a great deal of importance to relationship change and send the news feeds to everybody in your network whenever there is a change in your relationship status.
People have explored this loop hole to attract attention to their profiles. They change their relationship almost weekly and try to attract visitors to their profiles. It is up to you to adopt this technique because it may not reflect your true relationship status. If you do adopt this technique, don’t forget to publish some promotional materials in your personal feed.
7. Attend Multiple Events. True to its college root, Facebook is all about friends gathering at some place for an event. Facebook gives high priority to events in the news feed. Your goal is to RSVP all the events in your network even if you miss a few of them.
When your friends see you as a frequent event attendee, they consider you as an event resource. The trick is to show your name in all the places you can. As your friends see your name multiple times, some will be curious to check your profile.
8. Import your blog post. If you have a blog, import your blog’s RSS feed into Facebook. Facebook will publish the articles in the feed as Facebook notes automatically. Encourage your friends to comments on your articles in Facebook notes. You can also tag friends in the articles but don’t overdo it.
9. Post comments on popular groups. Visit popular Facebook groups that you have joined regularly and post comments. Just like blog comments or forum posting, Facebook comments on popular groups will attract attention to your name and profile. Add something valuable or post a link that adds value to the topic under discussions.
10. Start your own events. Events are very popular in Facebook and if you can promote it properly, it will have viral effects and thousands will register for the event. Send invitation to your network friends who have thousands of friends in their networks and also to attractive female friends in your network who may not have a large number of friends.
Twitterpated for Business Success: How To Use Twitter for Business
Teajai Kimsey asked:
From a business perspective, social sites provide an opportunity to get in front of potential customers and influence buying decisions because online social networkers are three times more likely to trust their online community of peers over advertising when making purchase decisions.* And, according to a Nielsen survey, consumer recommendations are the most credible form of advertising with 78% of the respondents.*
So how do you use Twitter, the most celebrated social networking tool of the moment, and generate more business? Here is the formula I use for the clients that are using twitter. These same principles will work for every business because it’s not about the product or service you have, it’s about the people and creating a social buzz that will lead business to you.
Social marketing has grown exponentially especially over the last couple of years. From the beginnings of blogs, MySpace & FaceBook to networking sites like linked in and the newest star: Twitter.
What makes social marketing so popular? Simply put, human nature. We all want to feel like we are a part of a community whether it’s in the local community, like churches, teams etc. or in the online community like Twitter. Thanks to the internet, our sense of community can include people from across the United States and beyond our borders bringing us into the global community.
From a business perspective, social sites provide an opportunity to get in front of potential customers and influence buying decisions because online social networkers are three times more likely to trust their online community of peers over advertising when making purchase decisions.* And, according to a Nielsen survey, consumer recommendations are the most credible form of advertising with 78% of the respondents.*
In other words, if someone is recommended to your business by a co-worker, neighbor, friend or online network member, that person is 78% more likely to buy from your company. Because of this fact, 81% of people in marketing who were surveyed said they would be spending as much, if not more, on social media than they do (or did) on traditional advertising.*
So how do you use Twitter, the most celebrated social networking tool of the moment, and generate more business? Here is the formula I use for the clients that are using twitter. These same principles will work for every business because it’s not about the product or service you have, it’s about the people and creating a social buzz that will lead business to you.
First, of course, you need to set up an account in twitter, if you don’t already have one. When setting up your account be sure to add a photo of yourself or something representative of your business. Since the key to networking on twitter is to have followers, the photo will make people more likely to follow you. Also, add your location (for local searches), a link to your website (http://ideasthatwork.net) and brief information about your business. For a more professional look it’s best to have a custom background created for your twitter site.
Side Note: TweetDeck.com is an awesome tool to help you manage the twitter universe.
Here are some basics you’ll need to know before you start tweeting:
* a follower is someone who is watching your updates.
* following refers to the act of you following other people.
* the @ symbol is placed before a users name within the tweet to reply to another user, and this will show up in the main twitter stream
* the # (hashtag) is used to help you sort by topic. For example you can use #survivor to tweet with other Survivor fans.
* direct messages go only to the user you are messaging
Once you’ve got your account set up start by posting at least 1 tweet so people who see your profile will know what you’re about.
Next you’ll need to look for people to follow. If you are really in this to gain business referrals, I strongly suggest you don’t follow every person on twitter. Instead, do a search for key terms that describe your business. If you want to concentrate on the local market, use the city and state to for search terms. If you are a wedding planner, look for the search term “wedding.” This search can easily be done within twitter by using the search box at the top of your home page.
There are also well respected members of the twitter community that you’ll want to follow based upon your business. For example business owners may want to follow Business Week (@bizweek). If you’re a coffee lover you may want to follow Starbucks (@starbucks). MrTweet.com can help you find people you may want to follow, just remember you don’t have to (nor should you) follow everyone.
Once you are now following people, you’ll see that people will begin to follow you back and you’ll even see people following you that you didn’t follow first. (All these follows can get confusing, hang in there it gets easier with practice) Remember, you want to follow people who are prospective customers or can lead you to prospective customers. You should also follow people in similar businesses as long as they won’t directly compete with you (unless, of course, you want to see what the competition is doing!) And when people follow you, check their profile before following back. There are hundreds of thousands of people on twitter and not everyone is going to be in your target market.
Now that you’re building your list of followers, you need to start tweeting on a regular basis. You can give tips related to your business, some people put out famous quotes or jokes, others are focusing on the day to day events that they are focused on. I trade off between tweeting about optimization tweets, projects I’m working on, this day in history info etc. I also tweet about everyday stuff like having the forces of technology working against me – argh! The more real and transparent you are, the more people will like you and engage you in conversation.
Twitter is also very good for self promotion – to a point. Nothing is worse than following someone who only talks about their products, services or only passes on their own blog material or articles. It’s a good idea to “retweet” or pass along the good information that others post. Within the 140 characters you can post links to specific information located anywhere on the web, including your website. All you need to do is copy the “URL” or web address of the specific page you want to link and paste it into twitter. Many times you’ll find that the web address for the link is too long for twitter, takes up too much space. In that case you’ll need to use a site like tinyurl.com to make the link shorter.
One big part of twitter is getting involved, participating. You can sit there and read the twitter stream but when you start to reply to people you’ll begin engage others and bring them into your world. The next thing you know, people will be checking out your website and referring you (via twitter) to others. When you are truly involved you’ll really reap the benefits. And, if you are running web analytics on your website, you’ll be able to see the traffic that is referred to you from twitter, and how much of that traffic converts into business.
Once you’ve got the hang of “tweeting” you’ll want to use twitter in more ways like integrating twitter with FaceBook and adding the twitter stream to your website.
There is no doubt that the internet has forever changed word-of-mouth. The power of the people is now greater than ever and is a part of everyone’s daily life. By using twitter as a part of your online marketing campaign you’ll be able to influence the buzz about you and your company.
PS… you can follow me on twitter: @tkimsey
*”Social Networking Sites: Defining Advertising Opportunities in a Competitive Landscape,” JupiterResearch, March 2007
*Nielsen, “Word of Mouth the Most Powerful Selling Tool”
*TWI Surveys/Society for New Communications Research, (November 2007)
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This article written by Teajai Kimsey, Interenet Marketing Strategist, Ideas That Work It may be reproduced and reprinted provided the author’s information including web link is kept intact.
I’ll See to the Rest
A guard will signal his train to start when he saw an attractive girl standing on the platform by an open door, talking to another pretty girl inside the carriage.
“Come on, miss!” he shouted. “Shut the door, pls!”
“Oh, I just want to kiss my sister goodbye,” she called back.
“Just shut that door, please,” called the guard, “and I’ll see to the rest.”
Are Friends Happy Being With You?
We all have different style of talking, laughing, smiling, responding and communicating. Some of us are a comfort for others. We enjoy being with some people and we don’t enjoy some people. What is the difference between these persons? Why one persons presence enlivens the gathering an other person dulls it? What are the qualities needed to make one self socially popular?
Smile -The very first quality is smile. When we see some body smiling, we feel pleased. And if the smile is without any malice it is more enchanting. Keep smiling. Keep your problems with yourself and keep your face smiling.
Listening – when we don’t speak but only listen, people love us. All of us have our own problems and need somebody to listen to us. Become a good listener. Ask open ended question such as – and after that? Why? And so on. That will encourage the speaker to pour out all to you.
Have something funny to say – There is enough pain in the world. Bring in some laughter. Have a collection of jokes and make your friends laugh. The more they laugh, the more they will enjoy your company.
Appreciate – have a word of appreciation for everyone. You can appreciate some body clothes, or shoes or what ever. Appreciate. Make friends feel good.
To be friendly and to be charming is not an art. It can be easily developed by all of us. The only need is to pay less attention to our self and more to others. Make friends happy and they will love your presence. Make your presence the life of any gathering. Success is yours.
MOSES & JESUS
A burglar breaks into a house.
He sees a CD player that he wants so he takes it. Then he hears a voice “JESUS is watching you”. He looks around with his flashlight wandering “What The HELL Was That?”. He spots some $ on a table and takes it……Once again he hears a voice ” JESUS is watching you”. He hides in a corner trying to find where the voice came from. He spots a birdcage with a parrot in it! He goes over and asks ” Was that your voice?”. It said “YES”. He then says “What’s your name?”. It says “MOSES”. The burglar says ” What kind of person names his bird moses??” The parrot replys “THE SAME PERSON THAT NAMES HIS Rottweiler ‘JESUS ”.
Always Thirsty
“I had an operation,” said a man to his friend, “and the doctor left a sponge in me.”
“That’s terrible!” said the friend. “Got any pain?”
“No, but I am always thirsty!”
American Soldier
An American soldier, serving in World War II, had just returned from several weeks of intense action on the German front lines. He had finally been granted R&R and was on a train bound for London. The train was very crowded, so the soldier walked the length of the train, looking for an empty seat.
The only unoccupied seat was directly adjacent to a well-dressed middle-aged lady and was being used by her little dog. The war weary soldier asked, “Please, ma’am, may I sit in that seat?” The English woman looked down her nose at the soldier, sniffed and said, “You Americans. You are such a rude class of people. Can’t you see my little Fifi is using that seat?”
The soldier walked away, determined to find a place to rest, but after another trip down to the end of the train, found himself again facing the woman with the dog. Again he asked, “Please, lady. May I sit there? I’m very tired. The English woman wrinkled her nose and snorted, “You Americans! Not only are you rude, you are also arrogant. Imagine!” The soldier didn’t say anything else; he leaned over, picked up the little dog, tossed it out the window of the train and sat down in the empty seat.
The woman shrieked and railed, and demanded that someone defend her and chastise the soldier. An English gentleman sitting across the aisle spoke up, “You know, sir, you Americans do seem to have a penchant for doing the wrong thing. You eat holding the fork in the wrong hand. You drive your autos on the wrong side of the road. And now, sir, you’ve thrown the wrong bitch out the window.”
The Blind and the Blond
A blind man walks into a bar, taps the man next him, and says, “Hey, wanna hear a blond joke?”
The man says back to the blind man, “Look buddy, I’m blond. The man behind me is a 400-pound professional wrestler and he is blond. The bouncer is blond. The man sitting over to your left is also blond. Still wanna tell that blond joke?”
The blind man is silent for a moment and then says, “Nah, I wouldn’t want to have to explain it five times.”
Difference Between Women And Men
- FUTURE A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband. A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.
- NAMES If Laurie, Linda, Elizabeth and Barbara go out for lunch, they will call each other Laurie, Linda, Elizabeth and Barbara. If Mark, Chris, Eric and Tom go out, they will affectionately refer to each other as Fat Boy, Godzilla, Peanut-Head and Scrappy.
- EATING OUT When the bill arrives, Mark, Chris, Eric and Tom will each throw in a $20, even though it’s only for $32.50. None of them will have anything smaller and none will actually admit they want change back. When the women get their bill, out come the pocket calculators.
- MONEY A man will pay $2 for a $1 item he needs. A woman will pay $1 for a $2 item that she doesn’t need, but it’s on sale.
- BATHROOMS A man has five items in his bathroom: a toothbrush, shaving cream, razor, a bar of soap, and a towel. The average number of items in the typical woman’s bathroom is 337. A man would not be able to identify most of these items.
- ARGUMENTS A woman has the last word in any argument. Anything a man says after that… is the beginning of a new argument.
- CATS Women love cats. Men say they love cats, but when women aren’t looking, men kick cats.
- MARRIAGE A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn’t. A man marries a woman expecting that she won’t change! And she does.
- DRESSING UP A woman will dress up to go shopping, water the plants, empty the garbage, answer the phone, read a book, and get the mail. A man will dress up for weddings and funerals.
- NATURAL Men wake up as good-looking as they went to bed. Women somehow deteriorate during the night.