Displaying All Posts by Georgiana Cohen

5 Resources for Crowdsourcing Creatives

If you’ve ever been the position of needing a logo, a brochure or even a name for your new product, you know the value of having a sharp, creative mind at your disposal. But what if you had thousands? By the same token, what if you’re the person who always wins accolades for doodling logos and thinking up taglines on the fly, but you have no clue how to parlay your talents into work?

The answer is crowdsourcing. Read More

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A Beginner’s Guide to Web Video

Georgiana Cohen 7th September Communication 4 Comments

Web video is hot. From YouTube to Skype video chat and all that falls in between, it’s everywhere. You may be wondering if video can help you do your job — or even find a job. But you may also find it daunting. Don’t you need to have a film degree to do video on the web? Don’t you need to spend thousands of dollars on cameras, lights and microphones to make anything worth sharing? Luckily, the answer to both of those questions is “no.”

All you really need is a good idea and a goal. Read More

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The Best Professional Advice You Ever Received

Georgiana Cohen 3rd August Career 20 Comments

Throughout our careers, we accumulate a wealth of professional advice. These are the words that echo in our heads during our most challenging moments and help shape us into the professionals we want to be. They are the reminders we tack to our wall to glance at when we need inspiration or a push over the finish line. They are the signposts we turn to when faced with a tough decision about what to do or where to go next.

This wisdom can come from unexpected sources—a mentor (like a manager or professor), a relative, a friend, maybe even a client or an employee. Maybe it’s a reminder to trust your gut, or a warning against making promises you can’t keep. Perhaps it’s a charge to always put family first, or to always hire someone smarter than you.

What is the best professional advice you ever received? And where did it come from? Read More

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4 Reasons to Take Public Transportation to Work

Georgiana Cohen 1st August General 7 Comments

Are you tired of driving to work or relying on a carpool? If you live in or near a city, there are several reasons why public transportation may be a great option for getting to work. Here are four good reasons to get out from behind the wheel:

Found Time

Public transportation is a great way to get more hours in the day. The time spent sitting on a bus, subway or commuter train can be time spent reading, working and even napping. If you have a long commute and you’re able to work while doing so, try to convince your boss to build that time into your workday.

Save the Earth—and Some Cash

By taking public transit, you’ll know that you are doing your part to cut down on CO2 emissions and the dependence on foreign oil. According to the American Public Transportation Association, public transit use saves the U.S. 4.2 billion gallons of gas and 37 million metric tons of CO2 annually. Plus, households that use public transit save more than $8,000 a year.

Employer Benefits

Many employers partially (or even fully) reimburse for transit passes, or offer a pre-tax deduction for the cost of a transit pass. Some employers are also going green and finding additional ways to incentivize or celebrate using public transit to get to work. It may earn you some brownie points – or green ones!

Market Research

One of the unique opportunities of taking public transit is the people watching. You may just find that the people milling around you on the platform or sitting next to you on the bus fit a demographic for something you are working on. Observe, take notes, perhaps even chat them up. You just may learn something. Read More

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Monday Morning Anthems

Georgiana Cohen 26th July Office Life 8 Comments

The alarm rings on Monday morning and you groan. It doesn’t matter whether or not you love your job—waking up and getting a move on at the beginning of a new work week after two days off is no small feat. But one thing that can help get us geared up to return to the office is music. (Just be mindful when it comes to actually playing it in the office.)

What songs do you find yourself turning up in the car or on your iPod as you head into the office to start the week? Maybe Elvis Costello’s “Welcome to the Working Week”, “Let’s Go” by the Cars or “Manic Monday” by the Bangles? How about the classic R.E.M. tunes “Get Up” or “Finest Worksong”? Does Iggy Pop help you rock out and find a “Lust for Life”?

Maybe you need to throw yourself a dance party to really get motivated—a little Lady Gaga, M.I.A. or Justin Timberlake, perhaps? Or maybe you seek productivity inspiration from that inveterate hustler, Jay-Z.

(By the way, we already know you listen to MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” to get pumped for a big presentation. Don’t worry, we won’t tell anyone.)

What songs get you motivated for the workweek? Read More

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Managing Your Personal Brand Online

Georgiana Cohen 22nd July Career 11 Comments

No matter your field, there are several advantages to establishing a presence online. You can connect with colleagues and customers, learn new things and help others learn, as well. But as you establish your online identity, it’s important to think about your personal branding.

Just like Pepsi and Starbucks, we each have a brand. It represents how people perceive us—who we are, what we stand for, what we do and how and why we do it. On the web, it can be distributed across a range of platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook and maybe our own website or blog. This puts the burden on you to make sure your online personal branding is up-to-date, accurate and presented to your satisfaction. Read More

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What is Coworking?

Georgiana Cohen 19th July Office Life 4 Comments

Many of us yearn to have the flexibility to work from wherever we choose, but what options do we have? After all, not all of us want to spend the day loitering around the coffee shop. And if we work from home, we face distractions (like laundry) and a lack of office amenities.

To address this issue, coworking facilities are popping up in many cities. These are spaces where freelancers, remote workers and other independent professionals can come to work in a shared office space and take advantage of resources such as internet access, conference rooms, fax machines and, of course, coffee makers. One coworking center may cater to professionals in a specific field, such as designers. Another may double as startup incubator. Most are set up to accommodate a general range of professionals. Read More

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How to Create an Engaging and Effective Bio Page

Georgiana Cohen 7th July Communication 16 Comments

When building out your website or blog, one of the most important—and frustrating—tasks at hand is creating your bio page. We can write for days about our topic of expertise, but when it comes to writing about ourselves, it’s tempting to cower under the desk and hope the need will pass.

Your bio page, however, is arguably the most important page of your site. It’s where you define and contextualize yourself to an audience of strangers in a concise and accessible format—it’s your landing page, and it’s where a big chunk of your traffic will end up. Understandably, the fear of not getting it right can be paralyzing. But rather than being daunted by the blank page with no idea how to proceed, here are some questions and tips to help structure the creation of your bio page. Read More

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Blog Reading and Sharing: Power Tips for Google Reader

Georgiana Cohen 27th June Productivity 9 Comments

If you’re an avid blog reader, chances are you manage your reading through Google Reader. If you don’t, you probably should (we even advised you as much in our feed reading tips). It’s one of the most popular RSS feed readers around, in part because of its ubiquity, but also because it’s a powerful application that is easy to configure. But Google Reader is more than just a blog repository. It’s a powerful tool for sharing, monitoring, networking, researching and even publishing. Here are some ways to make the most out of what Google Reader has to offer.

(Note: other feed readers like Netvibes may offer comparable functionality, but this post is written in the context of Google Reader.) Read More

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The Value of an Unpublished Blog Post

Georgiana Cohen 19th June Communication 4 Comments

It’s happened to all of us. You’re in the shower, at an event or reading a book when an insight strikes. A brilliant insight, at that. Quick, you must inform the Internet immediately!

So you settle in at your computer to peck out your brilliance in the form of a blog post that will surely be read by thousands of people, retweeted dozens of times and lead to your book deal. That’s how it works, right? I mean, that’s what your English degree is for…isn’t it?

Yet what begins as a quick and steady flow of typing soon slows to a trickle. Your hands feel leaden, your mind bound. What you do type is either deleted moments later or left on the page to fester. When you re-read what you’ve written, your points feel weak and unsupported. You begin to panic. This blog post might not come to fruition after all.

Believe it or not, that may be the best thing that could happen to your brilliant idea. Read More

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How to Find More Hours in the Day

Georgiana Cohen 11th June Productivity 3 Comments

We’ve all wished for more than 24 hours in a day, but short of developing the powers to bend the laws of space and time, that’s not going to happen. But one thing we can do is bend the ways we use the hours at our disposal. If you look hard enough, you can discover time you didn’t know you had. Read More

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