You surf to the online home of the New York Times every morning. You scan your Twitter account for messages from friends, family members, professional athletes, and celebrities. You read the gossip and news at the Huffington Post daily. And before you turn out for the night, you check out the antics of your favorite celebrities at TMZ.com.

Many companies employ workers across the globe. These workers – separated in some cases by thousands of miles – must at times collaborate to create mission statements, marketing plans, and other important work documents.

This can lead to headaches.

Smartphones are wonderful tools. They let you watch movies while you're taking the train to work. They let you make reservations at that hot new French restaurant, map out the quickest route to the theater in the next city, and give you access to the hottest online games.

These days everyone knows that social media isn’t an option, but a necessity, but on the other hand many aren’t sure how to do it with any degree of effectiveness.

Social media is amazing in its ability to extend your reach beyond what you might be able to generate on your own, but that is also the same way that it could hurt you.

Words matter, and nowhere is that more obvious than when it comes to the words you choose to close your sales with. Often a single word or phrase will kill the deal, and you’re left holding the bag. (Literally!)

The words we select to create our sales messages need to create a mindset that is conducive to persuading the prospect to click the buy button.

You know the routine: you opt-in to someone’s list, and soon you receive a confirmation email from them, welcoming you to the list, newsletter or whatever you just signed up for. The fact that we are expecting these emails is a major reason why they are commonly opened.

All of us want our web pages to rank well, and many times we think that just putting up a wealth of great content should do the trick, but we’re here to let you know that there is a little more to the recipe than just adding words and images.

Google loves to reward pages that are technically well done with high rankings, as they feel that while you may have great content, if your user experience is less than wonderful, they’ll say no thank you and look elsewhere.

These days companies are creation visual content at an incredible rate, and the question soon arises, how and where to manage these assets? The sheer quantities of images, infographics, videos and creative web art bring into play the need for a cohesive strategy for keeping it all organized should and when you need it.

Everyone loves free, other than the people who have to pay for it. This is the unsaid truth that hides behind any “free” marketing method or campaign. There is normally, though not always, a real cost in terms of time and money.

So when you find yourself tempted to offer something for free, be sure and count the cost in each and every way you need to, in order to make sure your free content, bonus gift or other promotional label you chose to give is affordable.

LinkedIn has become a social media giant among professional and business people. The days of it being simply a place to dump your resume are long over, as LinkedIn now drives four times as many visitors to your home page as Facebook and Twitter combined.