The different methods depending on if you use comb, coil, wire or unibind, can be a manual or electric punch for heavier projects. Below is a brief explanation of  binding machines’ price points and how they’re used in a business setting. Coil Binding Machines – You have your choice of electric or coil binding machines [...]

The post Our Binding Machines: Always Sized to Suit Your Specific Needs appeared first on The Print Finish Blog. Garry Jonesis President of Lloyds of Indiana, a leading provider of binding machines, laminators, uv coating systems, id badge systems and supplies and service.

Paul Lorinczi is President of Professional Blog Service.

Where Should Social Media Live? Marketing, That’s Where

Amber Naslund recently commented on a post of mine, and said:

As social business becomes more the MO instead of just “doing social media”, we still don’t have an answer for where it lives, and it needs somewhere. I don’t think it’s going to be enough for it just to be dispersed independently in various departments. We have C-suite roles that are holistic and support the entire business. HR and IT do that to an extent, too, because they’re practices that have to carry across and touch all disciplines. I think social business needs to be that way too.

But as it matures – and maybe even after it’s well established as best practice – it needs some kind of alignment in order to thrive. I’ve yet to make up my mind whether that means there’s an executive that’s responsible for ‘social business’ itself or something else, but the reality is that we need someone to be accountable for the purposes, vision, and results of social business initiatives (and things like innovation, organizational design, culture development ) as their purview, not just an aspect of their job description.

This has been an ongoing question, and one that is not easily answered.

Except that I think it’s the Marketing department.

If you look at Marketing as the communication channel between customers and the company, and not just the department that makes brochures, pictures, and websites, it makes sense. Marketing communicates through web, print, broadcast, and even direct communication. How those messages reach their audience depends on the mediums (media) where they’re found.

There are those who would argue that it should belong in PR, because they have to communicate with journalists and industry bloggers who are all using social media. Some will argue that it should be in customer service, because it has become an established customer service communication channel. (I would argue that customer service should be folded into marketing, since they focus on customer retention, but that’s a different blog post.)

But if anything, the responsibility for social media needs to be kept in marketing for the communication aspect, and the other departments need to be allowed to use it as part of their own responsibilities. If anyone is going to decide what the social media strategy will be, that should come from marketing, but in cooperation with PR, Customer Service, and any other departments using it.

As I said in a recent blog post, Social Media Stars Killed Social Media, we’re reaching the point where social media is just going to be another form of communication, like email and the phone, and we’re not going to have dedicated social media professionals.

So when that day comes that social media professionals just turn into regular old professionals, they need to land in the marketing department.

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Paul Lorinczi is President of Professional Blog Service.

With all of the various binding methods available to you, how do you know which one works best for you? Today we are going to explore comb binding, coil binding, wire binding and Unibind system, as well as accompanying items needed for these binding process, like the comb opener, the electric coil inserter, and the [...]

The post Binding Machine Methods: Your Reference Primer appeared first on The Print Finish Blog. Garry Jonesis President of Lloyds of Indiana, a leading provider of binding machines, laminators, uv coating systems, id badge systems and supplies and service.

Paul Lorinczi is President of Professional Blog Service.

Ten iPad Business Apps You Need That Aren’t Evernote or Dropbox

If you’ve got an iPad, you’ve no doubt visited the App Store, and checked out one of the “iPad Essentials” lists for business, productivity, music, or any of the other must-have apps.

You’ve certainly read all the “Five (or Ten) Must-Have iPad Apps for Business Productivity” that all say you need Evernote, Dropbox, and the Kindle Reader. In fact, if those were the only articles you read about your iPad, you’d think there were only five apps ever made for it.

And because I’m tired of the same retreaded crap that appears in most 101-level articles, I tried to come up with ten iPad Business apps that are not Evernote or Dropbox.

Type on PDF: This iOS app lets you open a PDF and type on it or sign it. If you’ve ever received a PDF without any form fields, but have Adobe Acrobat, you can drop in your form fields, fill it out, and send it back. Type on PDF lets you do this without using (or even owning) Acrobat on your laptop. The interface is a little cumbersome, but it sure beats messing around with Acrobat just to fill out a simple form. You can also add photos and draw on your PDFs. Docusign: If you just need to sign PDF documents, like a tax form or contract, use Docusign. I upload contracts and use it to get signatures from new clients. It can import documents from Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, Evernote, and Salesforce, plus many others. Create your saved signature and drag it on to any document that needs it. It works just like Type on PDF in that it also lets you add text boxes, but it’s a little harder to do. Feedly: Now that Google Reader is going away, the big question is what feed reader should people switch to. I like Feedly because it works on my Android, my iPad, and my MacBook. It has a magazine-like layout, which makes it work more like Flipboard, but it imported my entire Google Reader account. Ziin is another possibility if you don’t like Feedly. Chrome: If you’re a serious Chrome user on your Mac or PC, you don’t need to give up the interactivity. Chrome for the iPad has saved my bacon a couple of times. For one thing, it syncs up all the passwords and bookmarks from my MacBook, which means I can use my iPad to access a website when I don’t have my laptop handy. For another, I can sync up open tabs from laptop to iPad too. That way, if I want to read something later, I just leave it open as a tab on my laptop, sync it, read it, and shut it down. Penultimate: Alright, I lied a little. There is something from Evernote on here, but it’s not actually Evernote. Penultimate is the pen-based note taking program. You can handwrite notes (which are searchable both in Penultimate and on your Evernote, regardless of where you use it), sketch ideas, and even color. But if you’re going to whine about it, then I’ll suggest Bamboo Paper from Wacom instead. It does the same exact thing, including sync up with Evernote. Both programs are available inside the Evernote Trunk. Moleskine: Another note taker, especially if you don’t want to use Evernote, or if you’re a Moleskine junkie. This is a typing and handwriting note taker, which lets you merge and upload notes as you take them. It’s especially cool if you don’t like the iPad Note’s yellow legal pad and cousin-to-Comic-Sans font. MindMeister: A great tool for visual thinkers whose ideas and brainstorming spans outside the traditional item-by-item of the list. Sketch out your ideas and create diagrams to illustrate them, then upload them to the MindMeister.com website for further access and sharing. MindMeister has a free version and a paid version. Drafts: A straight up text-only typing program, Drafts uses Markdown language for formatting. Markdown language is the big new formatting and writing language that’s used for cross-platform tablet writing. If you know it — and it’s simple to learn — you can write blog posts and articles on your iPad, and format them by surrounding headlines, bold, and italics with +’s and *’s. You can then upload the articles to your blog or website. I’ve used it to cover WNBA basketball games in the past, and may give it a shot at the Indianapolis 500 this year. Countdown Star: I have to confess a family tie here: my brother-in-law created Countdown Star. It lets you set times and dates of special events, like holidays, conferences, birthdays, and anniversaries, or other important dates like the one I entered, “Pitchers and catchers report.” Countdown is available in a free or paid version, and works on iPad and iPhone. News Republic: If you read a lot of news, you have a couple choices: tap through different news apps like NPR, USA Today, and your local news apps, or scroll through News Republic. This app pulls in news stories from all over in a variety of different topics, including news, politics, sports, science, tech, and entertainment, plus others. It’s a nice alternative to Flipboard because it gathers from news sources I’ve never even heard of.

So how’d we do? Any apps you’ve never heard of? Any good ones we missed? What outstanding iPad business apps do you use that don’t appear on any “Essential Business Apps Everyone Has Already Heard of” list?

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Paul Lorinczi is President of Professional Blog Service.

Social Media Stars Killed Social Media

We’re starting to see the end of social media as a standalone, magical mysterious thing that we do — something every startup embraced, every small business resisted, and every corporation fled from in fear — and we’re seeing acceptance, and even love, from those who previously spurned it.

Amber Naslund’s recent post, The Begrudging Death of the Social Media Superstar, plus a recent Jay Baer podcast episode with Dorie Clark, has got me to thinking that the end is in sight.

Social media will no longer be a viable standalone career path.

In the last six years, I’ve seen positions like Director of Social Media Marketing, Online Community Manager, and even VP of Social Media created to take advantage of this growing communication phenomenon. (I will not dignify positions like Social Media Wizard/Ninja/Guru with any response greater than a sneer.)

But I think we’re going to see those positions pulled into their respective departments, and they’ll become part of the general rabble.

Everyone in marketing and PR is going to be expected to be good at social media, much in the same way you need to stop listing “Proficient at Microsoft Word and Internet Explorer” on your résumé.

It’s always interesting to see what happens to an entrenched communication channel or business method when a new upstart shows up.

Newspaper people panicked when radio showed up, and the radio folks were the stars of the day. Radio panicked when TV showed up, and the TV people were the stars of the day.

Newspapers, radio, and TV all laughed and laughed when the Internet showed up. Then they ran around, screaming like they were on fire when the Internet started playing songs, streaming TV, and posting classified ads.

In the business world:

Every step along the way, the new people were the stars, until everyone calmed down, and they were absorbed into the general landscape.

That’s happening with social media.

The social media people have been rockstars, writing books in a whirlwind of publishing activity, speaking and attending conferences. The ones who were doing it first are now considered the godfathers and grand dames of the industry, and the upstarts aren’t finding any real room to shine. There are no unexplored frontiers.

It won’t happen right away. There are still plenty of companies that aren’t doing social media. Hell, depending on which stats you see, anywhere from 40 – 60% of companies don’t even have a website. That means there are still plenty of people who aren’t adopting the Internet, let alone all the cool stuff it can do.

But when PR and marketing agencies are folding social media into their day-to-day offerings, and not a special add-on, you know things are settling down.

That’s because, thanks to the social media evangelists who preached the gospel of engagement and relationships, everyone started doing it. And we all got good at it.

Eventually the executives who made the decision to create social media departments are going to start wondering, “Even my kids are doing this now, what makes these people so special? Why do they get the rockstar treatment?”

And the decision will be made to fold social media back into the regular marketing department. Or PR. Customer Service. Sales. R&D.

This is good news for people who are already good at marketing, PR, customer service, sales, and R&D.

But if you’re not good at it, you’re going to have a problem.

If you were only good at using the tools — you were “good at Twitter,” “good at Facebook” — you’re going to have a hard time fitting into your new role. If you thought that social media was all about using the tools, you’re in for a shock.

You need to get good at something else too. You need to get better at the departments and functions you were supporting.

You’re going to have to redefine yourself as a content marketer, a marketing strategist, a PR practitioner, a customer service professional. Social media is only going to be a part of what you do, not the actual thing you do.

Just like writers don’t have to be “proficient at Microsoft Word,” being “good at social media” will not be enough.

Photo credit: eat more toast (Flickr, Creative Commons)

Professional Blog Service - Number one business blogging agency

Paul Lorinczi is President of Professional Blog Service.

Once you’ve made the decision to move your binding operations in-house, the next step is making the capital investment in a binding machine. How do you know which machine is the best fit for your unique situation? Here are some things to consider: How many sheets do you need to punch through per lift? How [...]

The post Bringing Your Binding In-House? Four Things to Consider including a Rhin-O-Tuff or Akiles Versamac appeared first on The Print Finish Blog. Garry Jonesis President of Lloyds of Indiana, a leading provider of binding machines, laminators, uv coating systems, id badge systems and supplies and service.

Paul Lorinczi is President of Professional Blog Service.

This is a rant post. Not sure where it is going.

Let’ face it, we continue to live in tough economic times. Since the 1980’s, people are not as comfortable as they once were. Incomes continue to decline for the average American. The rich keep getting richer, the poor keep getting poorer. Now, companies want to keep employee hours below 30 to avoid having to pay into the new Healthcare laws. Unemployment is higher than what is being published in the papers, since many people have stopped looking.

Poor economic conditions breed social issues

President Barack Obama and Warren Buffett in the Oval Office, July 14, 2010. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am not a social issues kind of person. I really don’t care how people live their lives. People need to follow the laws of this country. So, if we collectively agree that stealing is bad, we should not steal. I believe in secular government and do not believe that religious practices have a place in public education. If you want to practice religion, do it at your church, mosque, temple or religious school, whether you are Christian, Muslim or Jew. I don’t care.

It’s still about the economy

All the problems in the world today are the result of our economy of scarcity. As the population grows in the world, resources are being stretched. It is what drives anti-semitism, racism, ethnocentrism, religious extremism. Scarcity breeds the extremism. As individuals, we are victims of some other group who are taking more of their share than what I should be getting. It is so much easier to blame someone else than to look in the mirror.

So, what to do about it?

There are some things we can do. In the United States, we have more going for us than we give ourselves credit. Warren Buffett is bullish on the United States in the long haul. Let’s take a look at some of the tough things we could do right now:

1. Congress needs to seriously consider the Simpson-Bowles recommendations for deficit reduction.

It is a bi-partisan idea that combines new taxes with major spending cuts. It’s all drastic. If we are serious about righting our ship, let’s get serious about doing something about it. The debt issue is a big one for us and needs to be addressed. It even has its own wikipedia page.

Citizens against Government Waste have found 4 easy waysto cut spending. Congress should get on it because they are common sense things.

1. GM pay and GM jobs are not returning

Face it, GM pay and GM jobs are not coming back to the levels they once were. That era is over. We need to come to the realization that in some areas of our economy, we are starting over.

When Flint, Michigan’s lumber industry waned at the end of the last century, some Entrepreneurial guys played around with the horseless carriage. They started a company called Buick. Then, Billy Durant had an idea to build a big automobile company and formed General Motors. While his name is still relevant in Flint, I don’t think people recognize his contribution and guile of what he had really done.

I am sure that the people in the lumber industry lived through tough times while the local economy changed to this new industry that would change the world. They were starting over and the automobile industry led the way. We are starting over and we need to encourage the next wave of Entrepreneurs to find the next big idea to lead the world.

1. We are an Entrepreneurial country!

I am a broken record on this topic. This country was built on the foundation of Entrepreneurship. We always have some winners and we have some losers. It is the core strength of this country that makes it so great. I talked to a prospect who hailed from England. His business targeted small business owners. The US market by far was more attractive than England because the number of companies that incorporate here was 5 times more than England.

Not everyone is born to be an Entrepreneur. It’s a game of winners and losers. That being said, tough economic times requires us to consider alternatives to getting a job. There are still a lot of segments of our economy that need services or could use some improvement. Some services that are being delivered today could be done differently.

Entrepreneurship and not Government is what will help us get out of our mess. Entrepreneurship history should be a part of our educational system. Politics is great, but commerce is what built this country. Our titans in business and entrepreneurship should be the heroes our kids should emulate – not pop stars.

Ok…I am done with my rant.

 

Paul Lorinczi is President of Professional Blog Service.

Four Journalism Techniques To Incorporate Into Your Blog Writing

If you want to be a successful blogger, you need to write like a journalist. In writing style — short words, short sentences, short paragraphs — as well as story flow — important information first, next important, third important, and so on.

But there are a few other journalism techniques you need for your blog if you want it to flow easily, and attract readers’ attention.

My first training as a writer was actually in journalism. It started with my Journalism 101 class at Ball State University, and then being a columnist and reporter for the

Paul Lorinczi is President of Professional Blog Service.

Being Loathsome is a Bad Career Move

I’m worried about a recent Forbes article that encourages people to be assholes as a way to further their careers.

J. Maureen Henderson’s article, Why It’s Better For Your Career To Be Loathed Than To Be Liked thinks that Erika Napoletano’s obscenity-filled presentations and slides of Sarah Palin copulating with a polar bear are to be admired and cheered.

In the article, Napoletano says:

I’m not concerned with being likeable as a brand or person. I’m concerned with not having to put on a meat suit every day when I stand in front of the world around me. Being honest and building the next better version of you? That’s what creates memorable people, brands and experiences. I don’t give a s*** if I’m likeable. I care the most about whether the people who allow me to do what it is I love every day respect me for who I am and know that I respect them the same way.

If this is how you approach your business relationships, is it any wonder people don’t like you?

Shock jocks and sullen teenagers do it, but it gets tiresome after a while, and at the end of the day, no one likes either of them.

These are the same people who say “I’m not afraid to speak my mind. I just say it like it is.”

You know who else speaks their mind and says it like it is?

Three-year-olds.

They don’t have the maturity and tact to think twice about what they’re going to say. How bad does a person have to be when they have the same lack of maturity and tact as a three-year-old? You would think that after 30+ years, they would have figured that out by now.

Whatever happened to being nice and pleasant? Being respectful and kind? I knew a man who ran an entire department, whose daily mantra, both to himself and the people who worked for him, was “be nice.”

It was especially unsettling for the people who worked for him, since many of them were retired military officers, including a colonel who had commanded a tank brigade. Their collective job was to deal with large-scale disasters and emergencies.

But “Be nice” won the day. This guy had the respect and admiration of everyone who worked for him and with him. And they were still able to get the job done and keep people safe.

I know some people who worry that being nice means you have to let people walk all over you, or that people are going to take advantage of you.

That’s not what it means.

Being nice means you don’t belittle someone or try to hurt them. You don’t screw someone out of a business relationship. It means you don’t have a deliberate “screw you” attitude when dealing with people you disagree with.

Being nice means you treat people with kindness and respect. It means you stand firm on your convictions and you speak up — loudly, if necessary — when the situation calls for it. It means you stand up against bullies, and speak for people who don’t have a voice. Being nice doesn’t mean being a wimp, it means being strong, but respectful.

I have never known anyone to be fired or lose a client because they were nice.

“We had to let him go. He did good work, but he was always polite and helpful, and had a kind word for everyone. I hated him.”

There are plenty of people who get fired for being unlikable. For being rude, irksome, boorish, crude, inflammatory, and loathsome. No one was sad to see them go, and some people even got a going away party held in their honor.

After they were gone. And they weren’t invited.

Henderson’s article says, if you’re going to be an asshole — I’m paraphrasing here — you’d better bring your A-game. You can’t just be offensive and be bad at your job, because then you’re just offensive, and you’ll be fired.

Napoletano believes that it’s okay to be loathsome as long as the clients love what you’re doing.

Which is true. But it’s also true that you still have to bring your A-game if you’re nice.

People don’t keep you around because you’re nice if you’re not providing a benefit. They want results. They want success. They want a positive ROI. And it doesn’t matter if you bake cookies for the office every Friday, if you’re not producing, you’ll be let go.

I prefer being the nice guy. I like helping people. I want to see, and help, people accomplish their goals and succeed in their endeavors. The whole reason Kyle Lacy and I wrote Branding Yourself was to help people, because there were a lot of people out of work, under employed, or in a job they hated. We wanted to help them find their way out of that.

Bottom line, your personal brand is yours to define, any way you want. You can be kind and helpful and nice to people, and have people who love to work with you and spend time with you, or you can be pompous, outrageous, and loathsome.

You can be likable and have people who want to work with you, or be loathsome and say you don’t care if you’re liked or not (which is good, because you’re probably not).

You can be successful with either approach, but one is going to bring you — and everyone else around you — more happiness.

Photo credit: B_Heyer (Flickr)

Professional Blog Service - Number one business blogging agency

Paul Lorinczi is President of Professional Blog Service.

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The post Binding Report Covers on Sale for 1 Week at Lloyds of Indiana appeared first on The Print Finish Blog. Garry Jonesis President of Lloyds of Indiana, a leading provider of binding machines, laminators, uv coating systems, id badge systems and supplies and service.

Paul Lorinczi is President of Professional Blog Service.