It seems like social media is accused of ruining the world on an almost daily basis in news and blogs across the web, for a multiplicity of reasons: it's causing the breakdown of relationships, breeding a culture of narcissistic and parasitic youths and shrinking our attention spans to the point that we can barely even finish a senten...

Awful joke aside, this is a serious barrage of allegations to be levelled against what is arguably one of the biggest communication technology developments there has ever been.

And it's just plain wrong. Social media is not ruining your life, my life or the world.

In a lot of ways, it's doing the exact opposite - it's making everything a whole lot better.

Although our Social Media Training focusses on the potential business and marketing uses of social media, it can be used for a whole lot more.

So let's take a look at some of the most often quoted reasons that social media is Satan in technological form and try to debunk these myths.

Could Lean Six Sigma be used to create the perfect sportsman/woman?

This is a topic of much debate across forums, blogs, books and in lecture halls around the world.

Lean Six Sigma has had unprecedented success in reducing waste and improving quality, not only in the manufacturing industry in which it originated, but in other branches of business from Advertising to HR, which is why we don't only focus on its manufacturing roots on our Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Training.

In fact we've written recently about how it can be used outside of business - for cooking, solving crimes faster and even controlling diabetes - but could it go so far as to work for sport?

Six Sigma Tennis

After recovering from a traumatic brain injury, former Tennis professional Steven Falk wrote "Six Sigma Tennis" in which he outlined his methodology for using Six Sigma to improve the coaching and training of players to the point where they reach their maximum potential ability (or at least 99.7% of it!).

Using the DMAIC method he argues that a coach or player themselves can pinpoint weaknesses and improve on them.

So let's take tennis as the example as Falk does: imagine a player who is of the highest quality but still loses about 40% of points when returning a serve. Using DMAIC you can pinpoint exactly where the deficiency is.

Let's imagine that they win 80% of points when using the forehand shot; this must mean they only win 40% of points when using a backhand. This is clearly the weakness and so can be identified as the shot that needs most work and training.

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The decision to upgrade to a new version of Office doesn't come lightly. It's not just the monetary cost to consider it's also the time spent training staff on the new software, compatibility issues and potential bugs if you're an early adopter.

We run most of our Office courses on Office 2010 because very few businesses have taken the leap of faith and upgraded to Office 13. A lot of them actually can't; Office 2013 is incompatible with XP, Vista and early versions of Windows - making it unavailable for more than half of Windows users.

However, we know that some businesses are thinking about making the switch so we've put together this list of Office 2013 guides to help you decide whether it's worth upgrading and what you need to know if you decide to.

If you would like more in depth training then contact us about a bespoke Office 2013 upgrade course - including Excel, Access and MS Project.

Update 09/07: Search Engine Land have reported that Google's John Mueller has twice stated that if you are guest blogging for links, then those links should be nofollowed. This is stronger proof than ever that Google considers guest post links a violation of their Webmaster Guidelines and it's a matter of time until we see some sort of 'guest post link penalty'. I think this should be taken with a pinch of salt so you shouldn't rush out and nofollow all your posts, but you should definitely think about the kinds of sites you are writing for and the quality of your content.

Nearly two years since we wrote about guest blogging as the next big thing for SEO and link building, it's time to look at how guest posting has changed, the impact of scaling and whether it's still a valuable SEO technique.

It's important to remember that content marketing is not just guest blogging. Find out exactly what it is on our Content Marketing Course or read our Content Marketing Guide.

We decided that PRINCE2® diagrams could do with a freshen up so we've created an easy to read, standardised set of diagrams covering the 7 PRINCE2 processes to help learn PRINCE2.

Starting with the PRINCE2 Process Model and then breaking it down into each of the 7 processes.

If you've ever searched Google for 'PRINCE2 diagrams' you will know that it's not a pretty sight, and a lot of those diagrams are either too plain or impossible to decipher.

Our set of diagrams makes the PRINCE2 processes easier to understand by complimenting your PRINCE2 pre-course work and manual when preparing for your PRINCE2 Practitioner Exam.

PRINCE2 Process Model

PRINCE2 describes the steps of project management in seven processes. Any PRINCE2 project will need to address each of the processes but the extent of the application of a process should be decided on a project by project basis.

The PRINCE2 Process Model below describes the relationship between the seven processes:

Last week, Google published updated guidelines for Mobile SEO, essentially that if your mobile site is configured incorrectly then you won't rank in mobile search results. In the wake of this announcement, SEO blogs have rushed to claim that if you don't have a mobile friendly site then you won't rank in mobile search results. Notice the difference?

How did they jump to this conclusion? Is it based on fact or fiction? In this post I'm going to take a look at how an SEO rumour gets started, and hopefully show that even respected industry bloggers can get things wrong sometimes.

By its very nature, SEO relies on the sharing of industry information. Those new to SEO or those without the time to test themselves rely on bloggers and industry experts to share their findings so they know what to spend their time on.

This word of mouth sharing is what makes things so interesting - you hear a titbit here and give it try, read an article there and experiment on your own site.

The problem is, this industry has a serious case of the Chinese Whispers.

What often begins as a harmless experiment or some words of advice can soon become "the next big thing" or a "shocking revelation".

And in an industry that, let's face it, has its fair share of navel gazers, when a rumour enters the mill, it gets ground up (or whatever it is mills do) for days and weeks on each and every SEO site, from the very best to the very worst.

Our SEO Workshop is based on facts, not rumours - we will teach you the latest trends but we'll also give you advice on sorting the truth from the guesswork.

Mobile SEO Ranking Factors

Take the latest Mobile SEO "revelation": a recent post on Google's Webmaster Central Blog outlining changes to Google's ranking of mobile sites.

These are pretty simple really: if you have a dedicated mobile site then make sure it is technically set up for mobile crawlers. If your site redirects mobile users to the wrong stuff (i.e. goes to the mobile site homepage instead of the article they want) you'll be devalued. If you serve up 404s instead of redirecting to a mobile friendly page, you'll be devalued.

Among all the other scandals of recent weeks came the revelation that Lloyds PPI complaints handlers were being trained to purposely reject valid claims. An audio recording of an in-company trainer was seized upon by The Times as evidence that the banking group had been engaging in less than ethical practices. The trainer told trainees to flat out deny or refuse claims, as most customers would give up trying to claim after an initial rejection.

Lloyds place the blame on the firm Deloitte who handled the whole program and another firm, Momenta, who was responsible for the hiring and training of the employees dealing with claims.

It shows that just as good training can have an immediate and lasting positive effect on businesses, bad training can have a severely negative one - something we emphasise on our Train the Trainer Course.

So how can businesses and individuals make sure they're getting the best possible training?

The Trainer's Responsibility

Much of the responsibility for quality training falls at the feet of the trainer; after all they're the ones delivering the training! Not only do they need to fully understand the needs of the client, they must find a way to communicate their message in an engaging and memorable way.

They also have a duty to not misinform. In the Lloyds case, it would appear that the trainer either gave false information to delegates or at the very least recommended methods that were in no way best practice.