Advicelet benefit:

Everyone’s heard of Wikipedia – a source of knowledge which, although parts are sometimes questionable, is acknowledged as being the definitive source of knowledge on the planet. Wikipedia is the largest wiki ever produced, however many companies and communities use smaller wikis every day to collaborate, share and manage knowledge.

The definition and origination of the word ‘wiki’ can of course be found on Wikipedia here.

So – in our final session on managing knowledge – what better way to end the course than to show you a way of sharing the knowledge you are now gaining and managing successfully as part of your day. This will now enable you to lead communities within and outside of your business. Firewalls should be no barrier, because there are a number of public wiki services…

The one we’ve tested and will demonstrate is excellent and of course… free!

So we hope you’ve enjoyed the course… and for one last time… click the icon below to view today’s session.

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Advicelet benefits:

CRM – customer relationship management just sounds like something you will need to spend £$000’s on, take a year to implement and involve a whole army of IT people to set up. Indeed, that is often the case – especially in a large corporate environment.

It doesn’t have to be though and today we prove it, with our resident CRM expert, George Bliss, who’s implemented dozens of CRM projects over the last few years.

George talks to us about how to get something implemented… and fast. Admittedly it may take more than an hour to get things up and running properly, but, using a hosted, managed solution, it is indeed possible.

This session is actually taken from an interview which investigates how to best evaluate a provider. We jump in mid-way through with the really practical stuff today – how to get a CRM system up and running, starting with a clean sheet of paper.

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Advicelet benefit:

Bookmarks or favourites (or favorites), depending on the browser and terminology you prefer are for many of us a key string to our knowledge management bow. Some people use them frequently, have developed a complex file structure to keep them in and rely on them heavily, other people have a few which are sometimes used, but are often out of date and unloved.

This advicelet shows you how they can be used successfully to make your life easier and hence more productive, as well as showing you how to ensure they are available to you whichever PC you are working on (yes they don’t just have to be on your home pc). This also means that they are backed up too…

As the majority of users on this course will be Internet Explorer users, we will talk mainly about this browser, however in the follow up, there’s some great tips for Firefox users too, which for those of you who haven’t tried it is a far superior browser (in our opinion).

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Advicelet benefit:

So, RSS… you’ve heard the term before… you vaguely recognise that orange symbol on websites… it sounds like a techy subject – you may think this first lesson isn’t for you because you’re not a geek…?!

Well, you’d be wrong!

If you thought Outlook or PowerPoint was an essential business tool, over the next couple of weeks we guarantee you will be putting RSS right up there with them both.

RSS is a totally different method for getting information to you and your colleagues. Data is pushed to you, as opposed to you pulling it by searching for, or visiting websites. Used correctly it is incredibly powerful and can absolutely give you an edge over your competitors (and colleagues!).

This advicelet introduces you to the concept, shows you how to set up your RSS reader and how to start setting up relevant content flowing into you. Later in the course we take a look at things in more detail. For today though, we want you to get used to this new way of working and hopefully get you to embrace it.

We start with an introduction to ‘push’ technology.

Click the icon below to get started. (Click the button to the left of the volume control to go full screen)

Remember, this is part one of three advicelets on RSS… in the next one, we take a look in more detail at Google Reader. We’ve only had time to scratch the surface today, but at the same time hopefully given you enough to get going and to experiment looking for the sorts of feeds that would help build your knowledge and competitive advantage on a day to day basis.

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Advicelet benefit:

Email is infectious, dangerous, vital, poorly used and essential to business all at the same time. Most people have an inbox with 5,000 emails in it and a triple nested folder structure containing emails that almost certainly haven’t been looked at for 12 months.

Through some simple techniques, gathered from industry experts, we explain how to get things under control. We explain that you don’t need to file emails in one of 100 folders… we explain how to find knowledge contained in an email in a second (and we bet you aren’t doing this at the moment) and we also explain how to save some time too. Days of time over a year in fact.

A word of caution though – it takes discipline and practice to get it right … using this system for just a day or a week will not give you the results you are looking for.

This demonstration uses Outlook 2003. These principles of email management apply to all types of email software.

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Advicelet benefit:

Accessing your PC from the office or from wherever you are turns out to be quite a desirable thing, having done a straw poll around the office here and amongst friends and colleagues. There were two main reasons – accessing files, music, photos and to check personal email.

There are plenty of ways to do all of those things separately without having to access your PC at home… that said it’s still a really useful thing to be able to do.

It seems the barriers to actually doing it are price and technical ability. In today’s advicelet we show you how to do it in 5 mins for free…!

There are a whole host of options available – however once again, we’ve done the analysis and chosen our preferred (FREE) piece of software.

Today’s advicelet is in a downloadable document format, so that you can print it off, take it home and get reading over the weekend perhaps, so that on Monday – you will feel much more in touch with your home life.

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Advicelet benefit: Find what you need faster – saving you time, energy and money

OK – so we’re all expert users of Google Reader now… we all understand the principle and power of RSS and you may have started to regularly read and tag information… so that in a couple of months’ time, you will find yourself with a great personal database starting to emerge.

Today is all about providing you with some ideas for gathering more feeds to make your knowledge channels become even more powerful. Information you currently look at in multiple different formats at present is possibly available in RSS… you just have to figure out how to access it and pull it into your reader.

Hopefully after today, you will add a bunch more feeds to your reader, but also you will be inspired keep watching out for new feeds and adding and deleting them as appropriate. Remember, knowledge is power, and the more knowledge you can pull through with the least amount of effort… the better things will be…

Let’s take a look at something interesting within Linkedin to begin with…

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Advicelet benefit:

For thousands, if not millions of people, their livelihoods literally depend on Google… for millions more of us, it’s just an essential part of our day, yet the majority of knowledge workers do not get the most from their searches, nor do they realise the other things that Google can do for you.

We believe that this is mainly because no one ever really teaches it and Google is incredibly understated about their capabilities.

So, today is all about showing you how to get the most from Google with our session on Google search tips and we’re going to get straight into the learning, starting with some things you may not know about search, which will you can take and use today.

8 top tips are in the video below…

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Advicelet benefit: Beat your competitors (and colleagues) by seeing the information you need first.

At the start of the course, we introduced the concept of RSS as a business tool for getting ahead of your colleagues and competitors when it comes to managing knowledge. When used correctly, information pushed at you can be so much more powerful than going to look for it in the first place.

Today, we are going to look in more detail at Google Reader, the software we briefly introduced to read RSS feeds. It’s incredibly powerful and being updated all the time. So far we’ve looked at setting up feeds. Today we’re going for more of a Reader tour.

If you get into the habit of reading and organising your feeds, then over time you will build up a potentially huge database of knowledge, which is instantly searchable from wherever you are.

Knowledge is power – so let’s take a look at how to harness it.

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Day 1: RSS is the most powerful free tool in business. We bet you don’t use it! Here’s what it is

This advicelet introduces you to the concept of RSS, shows you how to set up your RSS reader and how to start setting up relevant content flowing into you. Later in the course we take a look at things in more detail. For today though, we want you to get used to this new way of working and hopefully get you to embrace it.

Day 2: Managing knowledge by being ruthless with email management

Through some simple techniques, gathered from industry experts, we explain how to get things under control. We explain that you don’t need to file emails in one of 100 folders… we explain how to find knowledge contained in an email in a second (and we bet you aren’t doing this at the moment) and we also explain how to save some time too. Days of time over a year in fact.

Day 3: How to remember everything – method 1

So what if we could recommend a system which answers the question of “How to remember everything?“Imagine a system where you collected everything in one place… A system which made information taggable, searchable and editable? Imagine if that information was always with you (or on the end of an Internet connection at least) and it was free to use? That would be cool wouldn’t it?

Day 4: Google search tips – managing knowledge can be made easy

For thousands, if not millions of people, their livelihoods literally depend on Google… for millions more of us, it’s just an essential part of our day, yet the majority of knowledge workers do not get the most from their searches, nor do they realise the other things that Google can do for you.

Day 5: Now you’re hooked on RSS… here’s some Google Reader tips for you

Today, we are going to look in more detail at Google Reader, the software we briefly introduced to read RSS feeds. It’s incredibly powerful and being updated all the time. So far we’ve looked at setting up feeds. Today we’re going for more of a Reader tour.

Day 6: Access your home pc from work for free (or vice versa!)

Accessing your PC from the office or from wherever you are turns out to be quite a desirable thing, having done a straw poll around the office here and amongst friends and colleagues. There were two main reasons – accessing files, music, photos and to check personal email. It seems the barriers to actually doing it are price and technical ability. In today’s advicelet we show you how to do it in 5 mins for free…!

Day 7: Bookmark management is a great way of managing knowledge

This advicelet shows you how bookmarks can be used successfully to make your life easier and hence more productive, as well as showing you how to ensure they are available to you whichever PC you are working on (yes they don’t just have to be on your home pc). This also means that they are backed up too…

Day 8: Day How to implement a CRM system (in an hour!)

CRM just sounds like something you will need to spend £$000’s on, take a year to implement and involve a whole army of IT people to set up. Indeed, that is often the case – especially in a large corporate environment. It doesn’t have to be though and today we prove it. Admittedly it may take more than an hour to get things up and running properly, but, using a hosted, managed solution, it is indeed possible.

Day 9: How to remember everything – method 2

Imagine a system where you collected everything in one place… made it taggable, searchable and editable? Imagine if that information was always with you (or on the end of an Internet connection at least) and it was free to use? Today we’re covering an alternative method – a familiar alternative – Google Reader. There are many features we didn’t get a chance to cover at the start of the course – and it makes sense to examine the power of the application by covering some of its more advanced features today.

Day 10: Improve Outlook and make it a valuable tool for managing knowledge

So, almost everyone uses Outlook don’t they? Well in our experience, most knowledge workers spend many hours a day using it to create and manipulate emails. It’s a great program – but it could be so much better – and there’s been a plug-in developed over the last few years which today we are show you how it can be used to manage knowledge more effectively.

Day 11: RSS feeds to make your life easier

Today is all about providing you with some ideas for gathering more feeds to make your knowledge channels become even more powerful. Information you currently look at in multiple different formats at present is possibly available in RSS… you just have to figure out how to access it and pull it into your reader.

Day 12: How to set up a wiki (in an hour!)

In our final session on managing knowledge – what better way to end the course than to show you a way of sharing the knowledge you are now gaining and managing successfully as part of your day. This will now enable you to lead communities within and outside of your business. Firewalls should be no barrier, because there are a number of public wiki services…

Like what you see? Click here to register today!