Freelance Consultant's Diary

There will be occasions when your website might be thrown out of a search engine (or banned or blaclisted) for no reason at all. Actually you may not even have done anything wrong at all and you may still be thrown out. Why would that be? If you follow standard web design practices and a substantial number of websites start to employ the same tricks, it is not uncommon for search engines to penalize all websites so that they can control search engine manipulation - so common among SEO firms. In other words, you are simply a victim of search engine algorithm change. What can you do if a search engine blacklists your website? You can write to them. However, except for Google , do not even expect that your email will be read by a human being. You might simply receive an automated response. With the huge number of websites on the Internet and the number of emails that the search engine staff might receive, it is unreasonable for you to expect that someone will actually read that email. Mos...

What is common (and of interest to businesspeople) among Brangelina (the relationship of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie), TomKat (the relationship of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes), Revenge of the Sith, Paris Hilton & Paris Latsis , and Carrie Underwood (the latest American Idol)? Well, these popular culture "events" can actually throw your business planning into chaos due to the enormity of their impact. While businesses can plan for certain events, for instance, release of a movie or the finale of a TV program, but the divorce of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston was totally unexpected and no one could predict when Paris Hilton would accept a proposal from Paris Latsis? While people are affected by political and economic events, the engagement is less powerful than cultural events. President Bush would love to get the kind of audience Michael Jackson received the day of his verdict for his proposal to privative Social Security . What does it mean for you? Have a contingenc...

In terms of an effective product recall strategy , I have argued that there need to be two fundamental elements: Development of a strategy at the same time the product is launched so that in case of a problem, everyone knows what to do. Be proactive in recalling rather than dragging your feet. Guidant Corporation did neither of the two. When first report came out that that the company continued to sell defective cardiac defbillators, the process of delays and denials started. Only now the company has finally decided to recall a series of devices (Ventak Prizm, Contak Renewal, Vitality AVT, etc.). There is a very important reason why we at iProceed insist that our clients have a product recall strategy in place and always demonstrate the highest ethical values - the impact of lawsuits. A few recent examples of drugs like Vioxx, Bextra , Tysabri , Adderall , etc. show that when companies delayed their recall process, they were hit with more class action lawsuits and attorneys find it ea...

In March this year, I had a chance to have lunch with Sanjay Behl (at the conference on India and its neighbors at the Harvard Business School ), the head of marketing at Nokia India. It was quite exciting to hear about the rapid growth of mobile phones in a poor country like India and how Nokia has been creative in customize its offering to the local situation. In other words, Nokia is an excellent case study for all those companies that have huge businesses in the developed world but are struggling to grow because of the mature nature of the market. Countries in Latin America, South East Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Central and Eastern Europe are among the fastest growing new markets for mobile services, according to new consumer research by Nokia. The study found that brand, handset quality, and network service quality are strong market drivers in New Growth Markets that sometimes outweigh the cost factors that industry watchers typically expect. I have even come across studie...

When I had argued that our healthcare system is ready for structural changes (as a result of a collapse due to it being totally dysfunctional), I did not know that the problem was even worse. Apart from 45 million uninsured Americans (US is the richest country in the world), there are as many as 16 million adults that were underinsured in 2003, meaning they did not have enough financial protection to cover their health care expenses. (Related article: Business opportunity in providing healthcare to uninsured Americans ) In a study, "Insured But Not Protected: How Many Adults Are Underinsured?" The Commonwealth Fund's Cathy Schoen, Michelle Doty, Sara Collins, and Alyssa Holmgren find that inadequate coverage — much like no coverage at all — creates obstacles to care and other burdens. Underinsured adults are almost as likely as the uninsured to go without needed medical care and to incur medical debt. Lower-income and sicker adults are most at risk of having inadequate c...