About Me

Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Len focuses on helping small and new businesses succeed through developing appropriate marketing and sales strategies. Len enjoys mentoring, relishes in getting both arms and feet wet in addressing technology, marketing and sales issues. He understands the drivers impacting business results for today and tomorrow including time-to-market, time-to-revenue, marketing, sales channels and social media.

Monday, March 29, 2010

An Eco Font Tip - This is not an April Fool's Prank - Century Gothic beats Arial Anytime

The default font for most computer users is Arial. As reported in The Register, Diane Blohowiak, Director of Computing and Information Technology, at University of Wisconsin in Green Bay, in an effort to go green has switched the college's default email font from Arial to Century Gothic.

Why?

Apart from my own preference for Century Gothic over Arial, it appears that it is not just font appearance that makes this an appealing choice. Blohowiak's research showed that when Century Gothic is sent to printers it uses 30% less ink than Arial. With printer ink costing $10,000 per gallon, Blohowiak sees substantial savings in the office supply budget in making this change.

I did a little more research and found another "eco" font solution at of all things Ecofont. Ecofont shoots holes into your print characters to reduce the amount of ink you use by as much as 25% according to their web site.



I'm a great believer in using QuickPrint features on my home ink jet printer because I know it saves ink which saves me money. But it certainly doesn't save paper and the trees that are needed to produce the paper.

Of course we could all dispense with printing paper entirely, the dream of the electronic office finally realized. But it seems that computers have not eliminated hard copy as of yet.

So if I switch to Century Gothic, use Ecofont and select QuickPrint does that mean I'll be using no ink at all? Stay tuned to this channel for more "eco" friendly business advice and have fun with your fonts.
 
"Go green."

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

How Enterprise 2.0 Sales Teams Will Use Social Networks

I invite you to read my latest offering on CMSWire. The subject is the impact of social networking on sales organizations. Sales have undergone a technology revolution over the last two decades as CRM tools have taken hold. Today sales people do funnel management, with leads pouring in the top, and sales coming out the bottom. But social networking brings a whole new perspective to sales organizations, particularly social networking inside the firewall. Suddenly knowledge sharing, mentoring and succession strategies can be deployed to create overall improvements in the entire sales team's performance. Enjoy the article and tell me what you think.

Monday, March 22, 2010

How Can You Maximize the Message in Your Tweets?

I don't do a lot of tweeting but whenever I publish an article I go to Twitter and announce it with the URL. When the URL is a long string it can literally occupy the entire tweet.

There are a number of online application providers that have created ways to shorten a URL. One of them is Tiny.cc.

Here's an example of what using this application does for you:

I created a blog with the following link name:

http://lenrosen4.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/energy-in-the-21st-century-part-1-our-history-and-the-current-global-dilemma/

In Twitter the URL pretty much would occupy the entire message.

With Tiny.cc, however, you can contract the size of the URL to a very tidy number of characters.

http://tiny.cc/42ldf

And you have room for a message as well.

Tiny.cc is not the only application provider offering this service. I found it using a Google search query "short URL names."

You can use Tiny.cc for wall postings in Facebook or for updating your LinkedIn status. It's a great way to maximize your marketing message while minimizing those long strings of gobbledygook that constitute URLs.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Tear Down Knowledge Silos with Enterprise Social Networks

This is the title of my latest article to appear on CMSWire. Silo thinking is a challenge in any organization whether large or small. By creating a social network cross fertilization can begin in an organization to improve processes, to create new products, to build better bridges to suppliers and customers. Hope you enjoy the read.