PMA Photo Book Promotion Program Now Includes Videos for Retailers
from Kiplinger
Beginning today, PMA members can add photo book television appearance videos to their own websites to build customer awareness. This is part of a national program to promote consumer awareness of photo books by sponsoring national television appearances and a new consumer website to build awareness of the photo book product category. Jackson, Mich.-based PMA is working with nationally syndicated "Designing Spaces" TV show to promote custom photo products such as greeting cards, calendars, canvas prints, collage posters, and photo books. The first segment, "Taking and Making Holiday Pictures" aired on Nov.14-15 on Women's Entertainment (WE) network and The Learning Channel (TLC), and is now available for PMA members to download and use in their stores and on their websites free of charge. The next segment, "Giving the Gifts That Will Be Treasured for Years", airs Dec. 12-13, on the "Designing Spaces" TV show on the WE and TLC networks, as well as in selected local markets. More

Never Waste a Crisis
from Forbes
Despite all the different issues that top leaders are facing, there is a commonality to great leaders in times like these. It can be summed up in the phrase "Never waste a crisis." When Rahm Emanuel, President-elect Barack Obama's chief of staff, was quoted saying this in The New York Times, he articulated what is on the minds of many of the global business leaders. More

Downturn Has Silver Lining
from The Houston Chronicle
An economic downturn, while fraught with pain and problems for so many small businesses, can also have some upsides for companies. Some are to be expected - a tough economy motivates businesses to find new ways to work more efficiently - while others are serendipitous, coming in the form of opportunities for expansion. More

Doubling Your Strengths
from BusinessWeek
Do you believe, as most of us have been led to, that you have strengths and weaknesses? Psychologist Tommy Thomas believes something quite different: that people have only strengths. He believes that once you get hold of the idea that your weaknesses are actually strengths, you'll have twice as many personal strengths - ones not often recognized - to draw on. More

Ten PowerPoint Tips: Keep Your Audience Awake
from IT World
PowerPoint slides can hold text, data points, charts, tables, photos, videos and sound effects, which you plug in to any of the many available templates. Making a presentation regarding a company event on July 4th? See the fireworks template. Is a video from YouTube essential to your presentation? See the "Insert Movie" functionality. To help you get started, CIO.com asked Ayca Yuksel, the product manager for Microsoft Office PowerPoint, to share five design tips and five technical tricks for those who are new to the application. Here are his 10 best tips as well as instructions on how to get at the functionalities in PowerPoint 2007. More

Keep Your System Safe: Email Security for Business
from MarketWatch
According to Proofpoint, an email security specialist, email is already the primary outlet of data leakage and we are only just seeing the tip of the iceberg. Identification of data leakage, either deliberate or unintentional, will continue to grow. To help companies protect both themselves and their staff from data loss mishaps, Proofpoint has come up with following "Safer Email" top tips for businesses and employees. More

Improving Communication for Managers
from Work911
Research indicates that managers spend somewhere between fifty and eighty percent of their total time communicating in one way or the other. This isn't surprising, since communication is so critical to everything that goes on in an organization. Without effective communication there can be little or no performance management, innovation, understanding of clients, coordination of effort – and without effective communication it is difficult to manage the expectations of those who are in a position to make decisions about your fate. More

How to Supervise Difficult Employees
from AllBusiness
Most employees exercise good judgment, follow company policy and listen to reason. But this is not true of all employees. Some won't change their work habits or behavior without a confrontation. These people are often irrational, unreasonable and practically impossible. A few can be entirely outrageous, boisterous and super aggressive. These are the times supervisors must disagree without being disagreeable. The heavy hand - if it ever worked - doesn't work today. More