Dana asked:
Clifinar competition as a tool
As a part of a team in a medium sized Search Engine Marketing and Optimization (SEO) firm I have just started to take part in a very effective exercise on how to raise the staff’s motivation and at the same time refresh and improve their skills.
Yesterday, during a staff meeting, a competition was announced. Its goal: to be the first on the Google results page for the search term “Clifinar”. Of course there is a prize at the end, apart from the joy of knowing you have won.
Clifinar introduction
Clifinar is a made up word used in our company when we want to refer to a small seminar about an hour long that our resident SEO expert Clifton is giving on a weekly basis. Because it is a made up term it had no occurrences in Google when we tried a search for the term.
Why Clifinar?
We used the term Clifinar as a measurable goal for our competition but it can be anything. The Clifinar was just an example that was perfect for our company as it is relevant to our field of work and really does have an added value to us all. You can choose anything you want as long as it’s relevant to your company.
The competition is supposed to be a month long at the end of which a winner will be declared.
The downside to this exercise/competition is that we might loose a few working hours on this competition, during the month. The upside however, is that we exercise and improve our knowledge and get a chance to try new ideas and see how effective they really are, before we implement them on our real projects and clients. And most importantly, the motivation levels are up and so is the fun.
The Clifinar competition in action
We can already see some sneaky smiles on each other’s faces as we try a new strategy to win the Clifinar competition. Every one is involved and every one wants to win. The prize is good and so is the boost to one’s ego.
The Clifinar competition is a great way to make us all start to think “outside of the box” and experiment with new ideas, to open discussions amongst the team members and to have some fun.
As part of the competition, blogs were started (www.clifinar.wordpress.com), posts made in various long existing blogs, web pages and even a few articles such as this one will be written about the Clifinars and the Clifinar competition.
Eventually, we expect many more creative ideas to come alive this month and maybe even after that, as more activities will take place.
If you want to keep track of the outcome of this exercise all you have to do is search Google for the term “Clifinar” and watch the results. You can also monitor the blogs and the articles related to the Clifinar competition.