The Invisible Mentor

Posts Tagged ‘Google’

In a very crowded space how do find a job? How do you stand apart from the other job search candidates? How do you know what tips to follow when there are so many experts out there giving advice? Like anything in life, it’s important to weigh the contradictory information. What makes the most sense to you?

Don’t be afraid to try something new because it’s radically different from what you’ve heard or seen before.

Phil Rosenberg a job search consultant shared a few tips on his webinar, Resume Revolution, which made me think carefully about the new “Job Search” era that we find ourselves in. The old ways of doing things simply no longer work.

The cover letter is no longer QUEEN; her reign has come to an end – if your information is not on your resume that means it simply does not exist. It’s also time to bury the Highlights, Objectives, or Summary statements because they occupy Prime Resume Real Estate, and it is about What’s In It For Me.

The new kid in town is What’s In It For Them.

Here are some tips that Rosenberg shared:

1. When you send your electronic resume, send it in a .doc format and not .docx, .pdf or dot, except if you are a designer and want to showcase your talent use .pdf.
2. Employers get flooded with resumes for each available job so they use Applicant Tracking Systems which search for keywords. All the information that candidates once put in their cover letter to demonstrate why they are qualified for the position now goes into the resume. Make sure the main keywords the employer is looking for is on your resume.
3. Heavily customize your resume for each position you apply for to prevent the Applicant Tracking System from screening you out.
4. The average time spent on a resume to decide whether or not to grant an interview is 15 seconds, so you have only 15 seconds to make a great first impression.
5. Demonstrate value don’t list your previous responsibilities. How did you save your previous employers money? How did you increase revenue and by much? What systems did you introduce to increase efficiency and by how much? Always think What’s In It for Them. If you received a prestigious award, why did you receive it, was it because you solved a critical workplace problem?
6. In fiction writing they always advise the writer to show and not tell, so describe why you are the correct fit for the organization.
7. Do not waste your time applying for jobs on job boards because that’s not how the majority of jobs are found. Instead use them for research to determine which industries and organizations are hiring. Use your research findings to build your target list and gather insider information. Find out more about these organizations from your contacts on LinkedIn and Twitter.
8. Brand yourself as a Subject Matter Expert, the days of the generalists are over.
9. Use social tools and networks like Google, LinkedIn and Twitter to make yourself findable.
10. Use your resume to demonstrate that you are the perfect person to fix the organization’s problem. Organizations hire because they have problems.

Phil Rosenberg offers programs to assist his clients to navigate the new job search maze, but I am sure if you use these tips from his webinar, you are much further ahead than other job seekers.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Interviewee Name: Sarah Speake, Strategic Marketing Director

Company Name: Google UK

Website: http://www.google.co.uk/corporate/

Sarah Speake – Your Invisible Mentor & Workshop Leader

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Sarah Speake: I have a significant year this year. This year is my 40^th birthday. I live in London, I’m married and I have two small children, I work full-time and I’ve always worked in the technology sector. Currently and for the past 4 ½ years I have worked for Google. I recently started a new job as Strategic Marketing Director for the UK and Ireland, and prior to that I was our Technology Sales Director.

Avil Beckford: How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

Sarah Speake: I try and separate it in so much as I have two different phones for example, so I have a personal and a work mobile. My work mobile does not come on holiday with me. I separate it in terms of my time allotment. I don’t think I separate it in terms of the person that I am, so I very much integrate the two in terms of the people that I socialize with, and choose to spend my time with. I think it’s important that my colleagues and people that report to me see and meet my family and get to see the other Sarah Speake. And I genuinely believe that if you asked my direct reports or boss, my husband, my girlfriends, anybody that knows me, I’m pretty positive that you would get exactly the same description of who I am as a person. So although I separate it in terms of time allocation, I think the two are integrated in terms of the crossover of introducing people to one another.

Avil Beckford: When you have some down time, how do you spend it?

Sarah Speake: It depends on my mood and the time of year to be honest. I actually schedule in time for me, and time for me can be lying in the bath with a candle and glass of wine reading a very good book, and having the bathroom shut so that my kids can’t get in and I genuinely have peace and quiet. Equally, downtime is spending time with my kids, spending time with my husband on our own. So I guess it depends on a number of different influencing factors, but me-time for me is about zoning off from anything at all work-wise, or related to the charity work that I do, and switching off properly.

Avil Beckford: What process do you use to generate great ideas?

Sarah Speake: Two different ones, so if I’m generating great ideas on my own, I lock myself in a room where no one can find me and I scribble on white boards. Here at Google we have huge rooms full of white boards so I’m able to do that and I personally find it very helpful to get things out visually and then work though how they can be delivered or implemented. White board space for me is absolutely critical and having peace and quiet and thinking time, so my chilling time that you asked me about earlier is also when I try to think about things differently and try and come up with ideas that I couldn’t certainly do if I were surrounded by the normal level of noise.

I also think bouncing ideas off other people is a great way of generating fabulous ideas, so brainstorming whether it’s a brainstorm that’s planned, or whether it’s a conversation with a friend, or mentor or whoever it may be, and certainly with other women in my network, I think is a fabulous way of generating great ideas.

I guess there are two different areas when I’m thinking for myself and on my own and the other is far more about being stimulated by being a part of a group of people bouncing ideas off one another.

Avil Beckford: What’s your favourite quotation and why?

Sarah Speake: “Life is not a rehearsal.” I don’t even know where it came from but it’s something that my father quoted quite a lot during my childhood and I think he is absolutely right. But for me it encourages a real seize the moment mentality and encourages one to take calculated risks. Equally, I hope it minimizes the regrets that people may have down the line in that for example on nobody’s tombstone do ever see, “I wished that I’d worked harder.” So “Life is not a rehearsal,” is my favourite.

Avil Beckford: How do you define success?

Sarah Speake: Success for me can mean a number of things. In essence it’s achieving what you’ve set out to accomplish, whether that’s personally or professionally. It may be in keeping with a particular goal in terms of learning a new skill. It ma be in terms of changing your behaviour because of feedback. It may be in my sales role for example over delivering on target. It can be a whole host of things, but for me it’s achieving whatever you set out for yourself, not necessarily what’s been set by other people for you to accomplish.

Avil Beckford: In your opinion what’s the formula for success?

Sarah Speake: In part it’s about maintaining a sense of perspective, but also as I’ve talked about it’s challenging one’s self on a regular basis to take the time to check whether you are on track. I also think that taking time to reflect is really critical for succeeding. And then definitely asking for feedback so that you are aware of other people’s perception of your ability and your progress because I think women in particular are not great at sharing their successes and one of the other brilliant pieces of advice that I was given by a mentor about 10 years ago was, “People aren’t telepathic, they don’t know what a great job you are doing,” and I think women in particular are often guilty of sort of getting their heads down and working terribly hard and expecting people to notice and that’s just not how things work. I think that factually sharing successes, it doesn’t feel like bragging, it’s a core part of being successful because of the associated recognition.

Avil Beckford: What are the steps you took to succeed in your field?

Sarah Speake: I guess three different things: One was networking and I can’t ever play down how important networking is, and in fact my first boss said to me, and I’m sure he regrets it to this day, we were going to a work event in the evening and he said, “You need to get better at networking,” and I was very early in my career in that stage and I networked so well that I ended up headhunted by a competitor firm, so networking I think is critical because it gives one a perspective of how other organizations work, how other job functions work, what other people think, how they operate, and also give you an ability to potentially further your career by introducing yourself to potential mentors, potential employers, and potential friends as well. So I think networking is really key.

I think over delivery without over effort is really important so I worked hard but I think I’ve learned over the years, and particularly after my daughter’s death to work efficiently and effectively rather than slogging over silly work hours. So I think ensuring that you are constantly delivering if not over delivering is important.

Being authentic, which I talked about earlier, but I think that for me having worked in the tech sector for the majority of my career, I have statistically always have been in the minority and therefore tried different ways of behaving in a male dominated sector, none of which worked because they didn’t fit very comfortably, so I think the piece around authenticity is absolutely important in career success because only then it brings in my view proper self-fulfillment.

Avil Beckford: What advice do you have for someone just starting out in your field?

Sarah Speake: I would give them the three areas that I mentioned above, but I would also encourage them to ask as many questions as possible. I think that particularly early in one’s career there is a feeling that you have to be brilliant immediately and learn the ropes quickly and I think that’s unrealistic. So I would encourage people to ask as many questions as possible, and also work out which behaviours one admires and would want to aspire towards, and which skills you see other people possessing that you don’t necessarily have yourself and if you think that’s appropriate to further your own career, then go for it and find someone who can help you acquire those skills.

Avil Beckford: If trusted friends could introduce you to five people that you’ve always wanted to meet, who would you choose? And what would you say to them?

Sarah Speake: I have to say that I haven’t really put any thought into how I would answer this, because I kind of went off track in thinking about it and it kind of stems back to being in a privileged position of working for an organization like Google, in that many of the people who I have wanted to meet, I have met as a result of being a Google employee. For example, here in the UK there is a famous technology presenter who presented a TV programme called Tomorrow’s World in the 70s and 80s. It was the first technology and science programme that I was ever exposed to as a child, and the woman who presented that is a lady called Maggie Philbin who is now doing a lot of work in encouraging more girls in school level and further down the line to become involved in science and technology courses and subsequent careers. So I’ve been very lucky in being able to meet people like her, and actually asked her the questions I would have wanted to ask, which are questions she couldn’t answer in full like for example, “How do we get women and girls involved in and excited by the field of technology,” which is something that I feel very passionately about. So what came out of that is a joint work project which is really exciting, and she is one very good example.

Equally hearing people like Archbishop Tutu speak live at one of our events has been absolutely inspirational, so in that sense there aren’t five specific people that I would pinpoint at this stage. It’s actually made me look back retrospectively and feel very privileged as I said to have met some of the people that I’ve wanted to meet in person.

Avil Beckford: Which one book had a profound impact on your life? What was it about this book that impacted you so deeply?

Sarah Speake: This might be an odd answer, but it’s actually the book I wrote myself and it’s called Where Did I Go Wrong? and it is the book I wrote after my daughter died. It’s a very harrowing story and is an autobiographical account of what happened to me. And the reason I think it’s the book that had the most profound effect on my life is it was very cathartic to write, and as I reread it over the years it gives me a sense of how I continue to change, and how I continue to grow as somebody at the time of writing was in a very deep, dark place and very grief stricken. So I have been influenced by many books over the years but I think the one that has probably influenced me and had the most impact was the one I wrote myself because of the impact it had on me in terms of my own recovery if you like.

Avil Beckford: What excites you about life?

Sarah Speake: A whole hot of stuff excites me about life. I love being at the top of a mountain in glorious blue sky and skiing down it at high speed surrounded by beautiful scenery. I love being a mother, I love taking risks, calculated risks within the workplace possibly less so outside work, I love spending time with my favourite people, I love very good food and wine, so in some ways I’m very easily excited and I take great pleasure in being alive actually because I nearly wasn’t a few years ago.

Avil Beckford: How do you nurture your soul?

Sarah Speake: That’s about me-time again. And that’s usually about me-time in a very different place geographically, so you asked the question about books earlier and things that have had a profound impact, for me. The best way of nurturing my soul is being in a very isolated place, ideally on a beach in very hot weather with a very good book and I can’t think of anything better than that.

Avil Beckford: If you had a personal genie and she gave you one wish, what would you wish for?

Sarah Speake: To be healthy for the rest of my life and my children’s.

Avil Beckford: Complete the following, I’m happy when…

Sarah Speake: The people around me are really happy.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Interviewee Name: Sarah Speake, Strategic Marketing Director

Company Name: Google UK

Website: http://www.google.co.uk/corporate/

Sarah Speake – Your Invisible Mentor & Workshop Leader

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Sarah Speake: I have a significant year this year. This year is my 40^th birthday. I live in London, I’m married and I have two small children, I work full-time and I’ve always worked in the technology sector. Currently, and for the past 4 ½ years, I have worked for Google. I recently started a new job as Strategic Marketing Director for the UK and Ireland, and prior to that I was our Technology Sales Director.

Avil Beckford: What’s a typical day like for you?

Sarah Speake: Absolutely crazy busy, which is something that gives me a lot of energy and is very much in keeping with my personality. Because I work full-time and have two small kids, I get up at 5:30 am so that I’m at my desk at 7:00 am, which is wonderful because it usually gives me a couple of hours of me time to plough through things before my team arrives. I work through the day till 5:00 pm and then I leave. I let my evening without exception, be my time for family, friends and not anything work-related. So I make a very big and intended distinction between what I do work-wise versus my personal life. And that’s something I think that’s really, really important.

In addition to my Google job, I also do quite a lot of charity work, for two different charities. One is SANDS which stands for Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Society and the other is Platform 51, which has been set up to help disadvantaged women. I’ve never sat around twiddling my thumbs.

Avil Beckford: How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

Sarah Speake: I’m a pretty energetic, motivated person most of the time anyway. Because I’m a natural extrovert, I get a lot of energy and motivation from other people so it gives me huge amounts of pleasure and motivation to see my team develop, to be achieving lots of different things that help various different people. So whether that’s customers in a work context, or whether that’s the women I work with outside work, I think that’s probably one of my key motivators. And I’m always challenging myself to do more, and do things differently. But generally I’m pretty motivated.

Avil Beckford: Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

Sarah Speake: My big break work-wise was when I was headhunted by Google, and I was eight and a half months pregnant at the time. I was referenced by someone who worked for Google at the time that I had worked with previously. I had my first six interviews here a week before I gave birth and was very impressed with Google as an organization, not just in terms of the technology and innovation focus but very much the attitude and the culture, so when I returned from maternity leave I started here at Google rather than returning to my previous employer. I can safely say it’s the most enjoyable, challenging, motivational organization I have ever worked for or with so I will always consider that to be my biggest break so far at least.

Avil Beckford: What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?

Sarah Speake: You asked what SANDS stand for and my first daughter died when she was 11 days old. And the toughest decision undoubtedly that I have ever had to make was to switch off her life support machine. Inevitably it changed me as a person. I can now genuinely look back – and this is six years ago that this happened – at this experience and say that it made me a better person. I also think that the experience meant I put work in a very different perspective so although I’m very passionate about work and as I’ve already said, very motivated by it, I think my experience with Amélie, our daughter allowed me to view it differently and certainly not the be-all-and-end-all of life, that I probably viewed it as certainly in my earlier career in my twenties.

Avil Beckford: What are three events that helped to shape your life?

Sarah Speake:

1. Definitely my daughter’s life and death that I just touched on briefly.
2. Becoming a counsellor for SANDS the charity that I work with, looking after other bereaved parents, which I now do quite a lot of has enabled me to actually consider myself to be very lucky, and as perverse as that may sound, given what I’ve just outlined. I think I’m incredibly lucky. I have an amazing family and now have two living children. I have a job that I adore, I’m fit and healthy and it’s allowed me to see that in comparison to many others, I’m well off and I don’t mean in the financial sense by that.
3. Getting married has shaped my life as well. In that sense I think I’m very lucky to have married someone who I genuinely see as my soul mate, and I certainly couldn’t have the career that I now have without my husband’s unquestioning support.

Avil Beckford: What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

Sarah Speake: Becoming the person I now am in a work sense in that I’m deemed to be a very good inspirational mentor, leader and coach and that’s something that I take great pride in, and something I’ve always aspired to be known for. Now being known for that type of person, that’s a huge accomplishment.

Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?

Sarah Speake: Posing good questions first and foremost so that I challenged myself. And that’s also for formal mentors in he business community that I’ve had. Equally I have a close set of girlfriends, many of whom I have known for over 20 years, and in a less formal sense I see them as my mentors too. The two give me very different sets of advice in a way because they know me in a different context, but they definitely influence my life in a very positive way and allowed me to challenge myself by posing questions that I would probably be a bit reticent to ask of myself without a bit of prodding.

Avil Beckford: What’s one core message you received from your mentors?

Sarah Speake: Be authentic and don’t be afraid to make mistakes. I’m naturally a perfectionist and a bit of a control freak if I’m being brutally honest, and I think the advice around not being scared to make mistakes allowed one to learn more than constantly thinking that I have to do everything perfectly and 200 percent. I think I’ve actually learned as much from my mistakes as my accomplishments.

Avil Beckford: As an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?

Sarah Speake: I’m a huge believer in self-assessment, to constantly strive to better one’s self. I’ve just talked about the idea of being authentic, which is a piece of advice that I have been given on a number of occasions by mentors in the past. I think self-assessment is very difficult to do regularly but I think that by holding the mirror up to one’s self and truly looking at what am I good at, what am I not so good at, does it actually matter if I have a few weaknesses? Probably not, but keeping check of the direction that you are going in and going through that process is really important. And it’s something that I do on a regular basis to keep myself on track, equally, asking people for feedback. I think it’s very difficult to be authentic unless you genuinely understand how you’re viewed by others, and that includes the positive and the negative. So taking feedback and not necessarily seeing it as a personal slight, it’s actually taking it on board and working on it by going through the process of looking through the mirror.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

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Today I’m going to expand on Napoleon Hill‘s Invisible Counselors and my Invisible Mentors technique, but before I do that, I’d like to say that a few weeks ago I attended a networking event where Anna Rossetti, CEO, CPI Card Group was the guest speaker. She told the audience that today, having one mentor is not enough, we need a team of mentors (Personal Board of Directors) to help us get to where we need to go. I smiled when she said that because I have been building my Board of Mentors, and I plan to Build a Board of Invisible Mentors as well.

Image via Wikipedia

We’ve talked in detail about how to choose Invisible Mentors, so today I’d like to deal with the next logical step. Please also read “What Did Napoleon Hill Omit? Invisible Counselors vs. Invisible Mentors” to understand how Napoleon Hill used his Council of Invisible Counselors. This process involves a lot of research so let the Public Library, Google and Yahoo be your friends. Just a reminder, an invisible mentor is a unique leader you can learn things from by observing and studying them from a distance.

For each of your five invisible mentors find all the information that you can on them:

• Identify and secure biographies and autobiographies on your invisible mentors
• Conduct a video search to identify videos by or about them
• Conduct research to identify speeches and presentations given by and about your invisible mentors
• Read all the information that you have collected
• Identify themes that emerge
• Who were their mentors
• Who gave them their big break
• What are their philosophies
• In what way are they similar and dissimilar to you
• What did you discover that was very surprising to you
• What did you discover that wasn’t surprising to you
• How do they solve challenges
• How do they generate ideas
• For each invisible mentor, identify 10 great ideas from the information that you read about them
• Combine the ideas you extracted, among invisible mentors and identify new ideas
• How can you apply the new information to your work and life
• When you feel as if you know your invisible mentors, refer to “What Did Napoleon Hill Omit? Invisible Counselors vs. Invisible Mentors” and try to follow the Invisible Counselor Technique that Napoleon Hill perfected
• Now that you have read the information, processed and played with it, map out a strategy to get to where you need to go
• Implement the strategy and fine tune as necessary

After you have amassed and read all this new information on your five invisible mentors, you will discover that your body of knowledge has expanded tremendously. With your Board of Invisible Mentors in place, or what Napoleon Hill called his Council of Invisible Counselors, whenever you find yourself in difficult situations, you have more information to draw on to solve them. Because you know these people who you have studied, you are able to think like them and anticipate how they would respond in a variety of situations. You can also find invisible mentors on The Mentors page.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the left side) by email or RSS Feed.

For an electronic copy of Think and Grow Rich, please click here.

Resources to Have in Your Library

Books of Famous Speeches
Books about people who have changed the world
Books about the great inventors of our time

Resources to Refer to

Famous People Their Lives
Biography.com
Biography Online
Famous Speeches

Related Articles

What Did Napoleon Hill Omit? Invisible Counselors vs. Invisible Mentors

Adventures in Learning: DIY Mentoring Program (theinvisiblementor.com)

Book links are affiliate links.

Recently I interviewed Diane Danielson for this blog, and during our conversation she revealed that over a period of 10 years, she grew the membership of  the Downtown Women’s Club, which she founded, to over 10,000 members. This level of membership is significant because many association type organizations are struggling, and bleeding their membership at a rapid rate. I was very interested in how she did it, and it turns out that it was done primarily through LinkedIn and Facebook. She recommended that I read Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah from Hubspot.

At 215 pages and large print, it’s a very easy book to read, but it’s filled with a lot of solid content so you can easily get overwhelmed. My advice is that you approach Inbound Marketing the same way you’d approach any large project, and that is to bite off small pieces and implement the recommended strategies that way. The concept of Inbound Marketing is about getting found on the internet using search engines like Google, social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and blogs. It’s about getting your customers to come to you online.

If you are interested in getting found on the Internet, and looking for strategies and tactics, this book is for you because it’s very hands-on with non-technical how-tos. The book is divided into four parts: Inbound Marketing, Get Found by Prospects, Converting Customers, and Make Better Decisions. At the end of the book you’ll have concrete steps to follow.

The authors stress that you find people who are potential clients and start by building relationships with them by serving them. So what would this look like? In the context of StumbleUpon and Digg, friend these potential clients and comment/vote on their articles. I really appreciated this tip because it would never occur to me to look at articles within my area and comment on them. This is something that I do for blogs that I subscribe to.

For Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, start a conversation with potential clients, answer their questions, and post content that you think they would find helpful. Consistently doing this, your potential clients will return the favor. For Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, there are search functions that you can use to zero in on your potential clients. It’s also important to spend some time thinking about the kind of information that would be useful to people in your marketplace.

While reading this book, I felt as if Halligan and Shah were holding my hand, and I appreciated it because I didn’t feel like I was being spoon fed. For instance, while reading the chapter “Get Found Using Social Media,” I was busy taking notes and prioritizing the steps to take, only to discover that at the end of the chapter there is a To-Do List with a summary of the essential steps to take to increase your findability. Examples of some of the steps include:

• If you’ve somehow managed to resist signing up for Facebook, despite requests from your friends and family, go ahead and do it
• Make sure your LinkedIn profile is 100 percent complete. Link your profile to your business website and blog
• Use the group search feature [in LinkedIn] to find the biggest groups in your industry. Join these groups and start participating  in discussions
• Use tools like Twitter Search and the search feature on Twitter Grader (http://twitter.grader.com) to find influential users in your industry. Begin forging connections early
• On Twitter complete your online profile including a brief bio, your location and a link to your website
• When you see an article that you like and that’s relevant to your business, befirend the person that submitted it. If the article is very relevant, review some of the other users that have dugg the article and befriend them too
• When you come across interesting web sites or articles, submit them to StumbleUpon (don’t submit your own yet). Do this by clicking the “Thumbs Up” button in the toolbar when on the page
• Begin befriending those that are submitting sites that you find highly relevant. Start building your friend list

Five + 1 Great Ideas

1. Rewrite the unwritten rules in your industry and don’t be a conformer
2. Create remarkable content
3. Think about the Sacred Cow Rules in your industry and how can you change them – think disruption
4. Pay attention to your customers but do not follow them
5. Think across the traditional boundaries of your marketplace to alternatives or be the world’s best at what you do within your existing market rules
6. Follow the 80/20 Rule – spend 80% of your time getting more visitors and 20% of your time getting higher conversion rates

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is important to many of us and the authors explain that, “It’s about creating content that users would want to find and helping Google deliver great search results. The best way to rank well in Google search results is to create content that is rank-worthy.” (For many of my blog posts I use Scribe, an SEO software you can get from Brian Clark at Copyblogger.com. The software has a list of criteria, which it uses to judge the level of optimization in your article and it makes recommendation for improvements).

Other information that I found useful are:

• 7 Tools to Keep Tabs on Competitors
• Making Your Articles infectious
• Tracking Your Progress
• Compelling Calls to Action
• Tips From the Trenches for Headings

I recommend Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs because it’s the kind of book that you will refer to time and time again. As Halligan and Shah says, you have to be consistent and devote the time to implement the strategies and tactics. Whenever you get the opportunity, visit Hubspot and sign up to receive their blog.

Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the left side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

All book links are Amazon Affiliate Links.