career

Eat lunch with others—share a meal with colleagues. Eating alone at your desk might seem productive, but it won’t expand your career-advancing network. Make good use of the lunch hour with people inside and outside your organization.
Seek high-profit areas—low-margins equal dead ends. Most of the praise and promotions go to people who work in high profit areas of companies. Learn the high performing (and high potential) parts of your business. Focus on getting a position in one of those areas.
Develop your elevator speech—your brand travels by word-of-mouth. Decide what you would want people to know about you in a sentence or two. Maybe it’s that you have an MBA from a prestigious school or an in-demand skill. What makes you different in a positive way?
Be the answer—figure out how to get things done. Your boss has enough on his or her plate without having to walk you through solutions. If you get an assignment, find a way to deliver the right response without wasting your boss’s time.
Make the big play—assume some risk. Playing it safe won’t likely take you very far. You don’t need to constantly put yourself out on a limb, but you do need to be an aggressive change agent. In the end, it’s really the only way that you and your organization will prosper.
Loosen the reins—recognize others’ skills and potential. Being a control freak won’t help you develop the strong people you need around you. Set goals and provide resources as well as reasonable oversight, but give others the freedom to find their own way of accomplishing it.
Play to your strengths—get in the right seat on the bus. You always want to be open to learning new skills, but you also need to understand what you really love to do and what you’re really good at doing. The faster you identify this, the more quickly your career will advance.
Learn to measure—metrics will get you everywhere. Like it or not, senior executives are increasingly demanding marketing metrics. Don’t abandon creative thinking or softer measurements like customer feedback, but also make a point to improve your analytic proficiency.
Know the right people—invest your limited time wisely. Right or wrong, whom you know means a lot. Choose people who are successful themselves, appreciate your accomplishments, demonstrate a sincere interest in you and have a strong circle of influence that would benefit your career.
Have some fun—lighten up now and then. There’s some truth to the “all work and no play” adage. You certainly don’t want to be the office clown, but finding humor in situations and being an enjoyable colleague will make you and everyone around you happier and more productive.

Successful Marketing Campaigns Won’t Hurt Either.

To help you along, we recently published a series of tip books titled The Little Book of Marketing Do’s & Don’ts. It’s a collection of the most viewed “Do’s & Don’ts” published by our MondoBeat newsletter. We’ve made digital versions available via SlideShare, topics include: