Rnordman

Generally speaking, borrowing for a house, your education, or perhaps even a vehicle can be beneficial.

Meanwhile, there are some items that you should never borrow money to purchase. Despite the apparent urgency that surrounds a few of these purchases, learning to wait or lower your expectations will undoubtedly save you money, and likely many headaches, in the long run.

Never borrow money for the following purchases:

1. A boat

Spending summer on the lake is a lot of fun for the entire family. Soda, swimsuits, and wakeboarding make for a great afternoon. However, borrowing for a boat can put you back a significant amount — especially once you add the cost of registering, insuring, storing, and launching the boat.

There are many options that can prevent you from needing to borrow to purchase your vessel. If waiting until you have enough money doesn’t sound appealing, considering buying a used boat, buying a boat with friends, renting, or borrowing for your days on the water. Although these options may not seem as exciting as buying new, it will certainly save you money over time.

2. An ATV

Similarly, ATVs, dirt bikes, and other big toys should only be purchased once enough money has been saved up to pay-in-full for the purchase. It can be difficult to wait patiently for something that you really want, but it can be amazing how much more enjoyable something is when you save up for it. Furthermore, while a $5 spontaneous purchase may have little effect on your finances, a $5,000 purchase certainly can. By saving up for a large purchase, you don’t make it until you are absolutely confident that the purchase is the right decision.

3. A wedding

It’s becoming more frequent for brides, grooms, and parents to take out huge loans to pay for extravagant weddings. If you think about it, however, the last way you want to start off your married life is with a mountain of debt. Find creative ways to reduce the cost of your wedding and use your credit to purchase a house. Twenty years down the road you will certainly be happy with your decision to invest in your future rather than in a show that cost you an arm and a leg. Of course, you should make your wedding beautiful — but there are many ways to do this without breaking the bank.

4. An engagement ring

Even worse than borrowing for a wedding is borrowing for an engagement ring! If your girlfriend will only marry you if you spend $10,000 on a ring, then maybe you better take a moment to rethink if she is the girl for you. Love shouldn’t have a price tag — and if it has one from the beginning, you may be in for a lot of trouble. You certainly don’t want to find yourself, five years from now, still paying off an engagement ring for a woman who left you because she found someone with a bigger bank account.

5. A vacation

The need to take the family out to enjoy the summer may make it tempting to borrow for that “perfect” vacation. However, this is a very poor financial decision. Rather than borrowing for this summer’s vacation, keep it simple and start saving the would-be payments for next year’s vacation. You will actually end up with more money for next summer’s vacation, and all future vacations, then you would have if you borrowed for every trip and paid the additional interest fees.

6. Furniture or appliances

Unfortunately, there are many stores that offer financing for everything from couches, to HDTV’s, to washers and dryers. Although the pleasure of immediate gratification can make these purchases tempting, in the long run, most of these purchases will result in a tighter financial position. The only purchase that may be worthwhile would be for a washer and dryer — eliminating the need to spend money at a Laundromat.

Managing your finances can require a lot of discipline. However, learning to patiently save will result in a more secure and comfortable financial future.

SEE ALSO: 15 Things To Stop Paying For Right Now

Join the conversation about this story »

Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk hinted at the company’s shareholder’s meeting last week that Tesla was going to do something “fairly controversial” with Tesla’s patents, leading some to ponder whether it might straight up open-source its IP — which would be almost shocking, given how much technical expertise Tesla has piled up on electric cars, vehicle design and car software in general. But Musk clarified at the launch of the U.K. right-hand drive Model S that Tesla plans, specifically, to open up the designs of its Supercharger network, which could help create a tech standard for charging that other electric car makers could adopt.

So, no. Tesla isn’t going open-source itself, and in my opinion it isn’t doing something all that controversial. The move might be controversial inside Tesla, which has long played by an Apple-like closed rule book, but in a nascent electric car market, it makes sense that Tesla would need to take a more Google-inspired approach to helping build out the overall market for electric cars.

Over the years Google has taken this open strategy in various ways, both to get more broadband access out there and to popularize its platforms. The idea is that if there are more broadband connections (Google’s free city Wi-Fi for example), there are more people using Google products in general. This was particularly important in the earlier days of the internet when Google was ultimately constrained by the amount of users with fast internet connections.

Tesla is now constrained by a couple things, but one of the major hurdles is simply the nascent, small electric car market in general (as well as the high price of its currently available cars). As more and more people buy electric cars from any car company, Tesla’s available market will also grow.

Last year 96,000 plug-in electric cars were sold in the U.S. – just a little bit more than 0.5 percent of the total U.S. vehicle market of 16.5 million. Yes, that’s just the U.S. market, and electric-car-friendly markets like Norway are already eager. But Norway is tiny. The development of the global electric car market will take many years, but Tesla can help push the overall market forward by getting more chargers out there that can support EVs.

Now, who knows if other auto companies will even be interested in Tesla’s idea. Car companies might have to abide by Tesla’s business model (free electricity along with the car) if they use Tesla Supercharger designs.

It will be interesting to see how electric car charging companies will react to this news. In the same way that Google tends to step smack in the middle of a market, putting a half-dozen startups out of business, Tesla giving away its charging designs, could undermine all those companies out there that sell charging infrastructure. But then again, that market doesn’t seem all that great of a place to be anyway.

Related research and analysis from Gigaom Research:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• What happened in mobile in the fourth-quarter 2013
• Why Google Android’s Electric Vehicle Deal With GM Matters
• A market analysis of emerging technology interfaces

Apple is well-known for pricing strategies that keep its products expensive

Apple do not discount and even though they cannot legally control prices charged by resellers, you will not find significant differences in prices if you search for an Apple product. Everyone, it seems, wants to charge a lot for an Apple item.

But Apple’s products are just phones or computers – nothing more. Of course, Apple fans will disagree. They will say, for instance, that the iPhone is “so much more” than a phone. Yet, cold, hard, objective analysis shows that there is diddle-squat difference between an iPhone and similar smartphones. So why do Apple fans think their phone is so much better than the others available?

The answer is – price.

When you pay more for something you appreciate it more. And when the difference is stark – £499 for an iPad compared with £79 for an Android tablet that does the same job – you think your expensive item simply must be brilliant. After all, if it were not better they would not charge so much for it, would they? At least that’s what our subconscious gets to think.

Price equals quality

People equate price with quality, which has been shown again with an experiment involving diners in a New York restaurant. The diners ate the same menu – an anything you can eat Italian buffet – but some were charged $4 and others were charged $8. The diners were asked for their feelings before eating, during eating and after eating. Those who had paid $8 found the meal better and enjoyed the food more with those feelings persisting. Those who had paid $4 found the meal less enjoyable – and their enjoyment tailed off from start to finish.

This confirms other studies which show that when we pay “top dollar” for something, we appreciate it more – even if it is the same quality as something which would cost us less.

Apple’s pricing strategies use this psychological feature well. The company makes us think their products are better simply by charging higher prices than their competitors. And, as the study of New York diners shows, when you are charged a higher price your positive feelings about the product you have bought seem to persist.

Competing on price only makes your customers think that your products and services are less valuable. Not only that, any positive feelings they have for your business fade away simply because of the low price. The reason you may not be getting the business you want or keeping customers for as long as you want could simply be down to your pricing strategies.

So, what does this all mean? It suggests that you need to charge higher prices than your competition – assuming you produce things of comparable quality and functionality. But if you do, then charging higher prices, just like Apple does with its pricing strategies, will make your customers more emotionally attached to your business with positive feelings that persist.

… price of accelerometers since 2008, cloud computing, wireless charging, and Bluetooth capabilities …

Creating great content for your blog is one thing. Getting traffic to your blog posts is another, and it’s something a lot of bloggers do not account for or they are unaware that certain aspects of SEO are required to drive traffic to their site.

One of the biggest misconceptions I see with bloggers is this….. They believe that if they add great content to their blog, then Google will eventually start to rank their articles!

Create great content and people will flock!! Well let me tell you, this simply is not the case and 99% of the time your great content will not be seen!

The second misconeception I see a lot with bloggers is that they think that if they add “regular” content to their blog, it will become an authority site and eventually pick up organic traffic naturally. Now although in most cases you will see a few more visitors to your blog, you won’t get anything that will justify the time and effort you have put into creating the content!

So it’s time to take some action and attract the traffic that your blog deserves!!

The third misconception I see a lot is that bloggers think that SEO is only required on their homepage!!

“Build backlinks to your main URL, your rankings will increase and everybody will see your great content“…. WRONG!!

You need to optimise every new post you publish and perform certain aspects of SEO to bring in an influx of targeted organic traffic!

Sound like a lot of extra work? Don’t worry……..

I will cover the key elements you need to know right here and I’ll show you the exact steps to take which will quickly boost your SEO potential and start increasing your visitors every time you publish a new post!

Here are the 4 steps that I follow every time I publish a new post to get traffic from search engines. Work through each step and you will be well on your way to a ton more traffic to your blog!

Step 1. Start with keyword research ‘AFTER’ you write

Finding keywords to rank for is a vital component to SEO and it’s something you should take seriously. But don’t base your articles around certain keywords!!

I hate it when people do this. They find a few keywords and then try to write a piece of content around it. The problem with this is that the quality of the article will be somewhat lower than if you wrote a piece on a subject that you actually want to discuss and get out there!

You will have a much better flow if you just write it as it is without having to worry about keywords!!

So remember this rule: Great content first, keyword research second!

Once you have completed your article, make a note of the subject and the main topic. Now this will immediately give you a basis for your keywords!

So for example, this article, which you are reading right now, is about doing SEO on your Blog. Now here are a few topics that I could note that briefly describe what this article is about.

• Increase traffic to your blog
• SEO for blog posts
• Boost blog traffic

We now take these topics and convert them into keywords, and here is a very quick and effective way of doing it:

Go to Google and start to type your topic into the search bar. You will notice that Google will start to give you recommendations and predict what you are going to type! Now this is great for us because Google are basically telling us what people are searching for.

Here are a few examples of what happens when I begin to type our topics into Google:

As you can see here, I have typed ‘Increase traffic’ and Google has started to predict some keywords for us.

As I continue to type it becomes more specific…….

A couple of long tail keywords that look interesting here are:

‘Increase traffic to your blog for free’

‘Increase traffic to your WordPress blog’

Now there are hundreds of different combinations you could go at. You could change the word ‘your’ to ‘my’, or you could put ‘How to’ at the beginning!

Again, you can get a good idea of the long tail keywords that people are searching for!!

You should always target long tail keywords rather than 1 or 2 word keywords that are too generic.

Now that we have a few long tail keywords we can now see what kind of traffic they get. There are a few different tools available that predict the traffic that keywords get. You can use Google planner to see past data and search volumes.

Here is an example. I have searched for the keyword ‘Increase traffic to your blog’

Not bad, but look what happens when I put the words ‘How to’ before this keyword.

The average monthly searches have just shot up to 480 from 70, yet the competition seems to be lower!!!

Now I only take information like this with a pinch of salt, but we have certainly uncovered a nice keyword that we can target with our article!!

Interestingly, using the word ‘my’ instead of ‘your’ only showed an average monthly search of 30!!!

More keyword ideas

There are plenty of free tools out there including http://ubersuggest.org/

Simply enter your keyword and the tool will give you a load of suggestions!! I typed the keyword ‘increase blog traffic’ and it produced 147 keyword suggestions.

So finding keywords is really quick and easy and best of all it’s free!

Now that you have your keywords you simply incorporate them into your article, and now I’ll show you exactly how to optimise your post to give you the best opportunity to grab top rankings and drive more traffic to your blog!

Step 2. Optimize each blog post

Here are 7 key elements for optimizing each blog post prior to publishing to give yourself the best opportunity to rank for the keyword you have chosen.

Also I recommend that you target 2 long tail keywords for each post!

1. PAGE TITLE – Make sure you include your keyword or part of your keyword in the page title.

2. FIRST PARAGRAPH – Always include your keyword in the first or 2nd paragraph.

3. HEADINGS – Include your keyword in at least 1 of your headings.

4. SEO TITLE & DESCRIPTION – If you use an SEO plugin such as All in one SEO or Yoast, you can fill out the title and description section. Make sure to include your keywords here as Google will use this to help identify what your page is about. Here is an example of what it should look like.

5. BODY TEXT – It’s important that you don’t overdue it here. Keyword stuffing is not good and may get your page penalised! Luckily we have already written our article before we did the keyword research, so you shouldn’t have any problems here!!

6. IMAGE ALT – Your posts should include a number of images, but it’s important that you optimise these images correctly because Google cannot read an image like we can. Therefore we have to tell Google what the image is about. In the ALT text you should include your keyword and variations of your keyword. Make sure you do this with at least 1 image.

7. INTERLINK YOUR PAGES – This is something you should be doing every time you publish a new post, and that is to interlink between your blogs posts. Not only does this pass link juice between your pages and let it flow through your site, it also makes it easier and quicker for Google to index your pages quicker!!

Ok, now we have a fully optimised blog post for the keywords that we have identified. Doing this alone will see your post shoot up the rankings. But if your keyword is quite competitive then you still may not be visible on page 1, and lets face it, if you want to increase traffic to your blog, you really need to be on page one.

Step 3. Spy on your competitors

This is one of my favourite techniques and it’s something that I do to GUARANTEE my blog posts get on page 1 of Google every time!!

At the minute, the only thing stopping us from grabbing top spot is our competition, and the only reason they are ranking higher than us is because they have more high authority links pointing to their post than we do.

So the simple solution is – Match or Better the backlinks that the sites at the top have. To do this we must create a list of the kind of backlinks that we require. I like to use this simple formula when assessing the quality of the competition!!

Add together the ‘authority’ figure and divide by the number of backlinks. If there are more than 20 backlinks I just take the top 20!!

There are different tools you can use for this but I like to use Ahrefs.

So here is what we do……

Type your keyword into Google:

Notice how the keyword is included in the title and description!!!

Copy/paste the number 1 ranked URL into Ahrefs. (It’s important that you get the full URL and not just the domain).

Now you will see the backlinks in order of authority, as you can see. It is only showing 4 backlinks!!

So to rank well for this keyword probably wouldn’t take to much effort. A few guest post links would do the trick. You can see that the strongest link is from a site with a Domain Rank of 77. This is pretty strong.

Using my formula of adding the rank and dividing by the number of links, the average ‘rank’ figure is 36. So we need to beat this to give ourselves of ranking for this keyword!!

Step 4. Build quality backlinks to boost your rankings

This is the stage that a lot of people totally mess up! And the reason they do that is because they don’t know what they are doing, or they listen to everybody else and get it completely wrong!

Let me tell you this. You do not need a ton of backlinks pointing to your page or blog. In fact, you can do more harm than good by trying to build as many different types of links as possible.

Just look at the example above. The URL has 4 back links and some good content.

Don’t waste your time and money on SEO agencies or dodgy Fiverr services, they won’t work and more times than not, your rankings will drop as you will get hit by a Google penalty.

So what exactly should you do to build quality Google safe links?

Simple……

You need NICHE RELATED, CONTEXTUAL LINKS.

Preferably from high authority sites.

Don’t waste your time on anything else when doing SEO on individual posts. A few social shares are good, and I’ll come to that shortly, but for now we are going to concentrate on getting enough quality links to get us on the first page!

My 4 top tips for building quality backlinks include

1. Guest blogging
2. Private blog network links
3. Outreach
4. Social media

Let’s have a closer look at each one.

1. Guest blogging

Probably the best way to get high authority contextual links is by writing a quality article for somebody else, you get the chance to link back to your site. Matt Cutts recently said that Guest Posting was dead and that it would no longer carry any value, as it would be classed as a spammy way to build links.

Well I can tell you straight, this is a load of rubbish!! There is no way that Google can distinguish between a guest post link and a genuine contextual link to another site. If you provide good content and relevant links then you will be completely fine!

So how do I get my guest posts published?

Getting your post published on a high authority site is not always easy, so listen up because I’m going to show you how to do it!

1. You must create a list of bloggers in your niche.
2. You then need to build a relationship with the bloggers (email them, thank them for their work, offer to help them, do them a favour)
3. Now you can offer to write for them

By building a relationship first, you have just put yourself way ahead of the average Jo that sends them an email asking to guest post. High authority blogs get them all of the time, and to be honest, they get quite fed up of it. So make sure you stand out and build a relationship first.

I know this may sound like a lot of work, but remember; you only need a couple of good guest post opportunities to rank your new blog post!

It’s definitely worth the time and effort because not only are you getting a back link that carries authority, you are getting direct traffic from your guest post as well as building your own brand!

2. Private blog network links

One of the best ways to get some high authority links is to use a private blog network. Many top ranking sites in competitive niches use PBN links. You can buy links from Private Blog Networks, but you are running the risk of them being shut down!

Another option is to build your own private blog network. If you want to learn how to build your own private blog network then this free guide is helpful. Although I wouldn’t recommend doing this for the sake of ranking one of your posts, it is a good idea to build one for the benefit of your whole site and any sites you may make in the future. Having the option to build high authority links at the drop of a hat is golden!!

3. Outreach

Another method of getting links is to ask other bloggers to link to your new post from one of their articles. Now you can’t go around just asking random bloggers to link to you, as you won’t get anywhere. Like before, we need to build a relationship with the bloggers first. You then need to find articles on other blogs that you feel would link in nicely with your new post.

Send an email to the blogger and mention how you latest post would really benefit their readers. Tell them that if they kindly add a link to your post, you will give them a mention on twitter or even link back to them from one of your other pages!

4. Social media

As I mentioned earlier, social media can play a big part in building backlinks. The more people that share your content, the more popular your blog posts become and the more likely that other niche related sites will link to you.

Here are a couple of procedures I follow with each new post

1. Make sure to Tweet every time you publish a new post
2. Mention other influential bloggers in your post and then mention them when you tweet. Chances are they will re-tweet and your content will get shared
3. Use a plugin such as social locker. This allows you to exchange part of your content for a social share!!
4. Post your link on other social platforms such as Facebook, Google+, Linkedin, Tumbler, Pinterest

If you don’t think that social media is that important, take a look at this post on Social media statistics!!

Wrapping it up

So there you have it, my 4-step guide to kick starting SEO for your blog! If you want to get noticed and you want to increase traffic to your blog then you need to put some time and effort into SEO. Here is a quick summary of what you should be doing with each post you publish!

• Make sure you write quality content that offers value.
• Do your keyword research AFTER you have finished your article.
• Optimise your post to incorporate your keywords into your title, headings and first paragraph.
• Add your keywords into your Title and Meta description.
• Check your competitors’ backlinks.
• Go out and build a better back link profile than them.
• Use my techniques to get quality guest posts and high authority links.
• Watch your blog post rise up the search engine results pages and see your traffic increase.

We can’t believe the amount of content shared targeting small business that rhapsodizes about the endless rewards bigger brands are generating with social media marketing like Toms, SAP, Cisco, Intel, SalesForce, et al.

Much of this content is disingenuous at best and the absolute wrong marketing strategy for many small businesses. Many of you do not have the marketing resources, staff and/or technical expertise to create these types of social media campaigns!

We don’t claim to have all the answers – but we’ll try to identify some topics that get bandied about carelessly with some associated recommendations.

Content Hype Meter

• The endless hype about the joys of using Facebook to generate immediate high value return with: A) the “wonder” of on-board tools and apps: B) sharing organic updates and getting significant ROI. It’s a false line on the horizon – Facebook’s go go glory days are in the rear view mirror. Success on Facebook necessitates targeted ads (it’s an Ad Platform) sharing well researched content with a granular understanding of how to drive engagement (shares and likes) on the platform. Requiring some level of sophistication in marketing and related customer service integration. Know your reach will only be about 15% of your Fans with organic status updates.

• Not touching on the importance of having an experienced community manager on staff and ignoring the cost factor (staffing up) for hiring same. Data is exploding across the web and you need a great community manager who can curate content, writes well, can run a Facebook Ad Campaign and with some CRM knowledge as well. Expect to pay a good community manager $40-60K per year, assuming you can find a good one.

• Ignoring how important technical expertise required for social media marketing. Your biz must understand the required technical intricacies on each platform and stay on top of an evolving feature set.

• Standing up a “business page” on Facebook can be done in 60-90 minutes; but, adding plugins, tweaking settings, measuring ROI on Facebook and via other apps, setting up an Ad Campaign can take significantly greater amounts of time.

• No reference to conversion metrics for social media traffic versus organic traffic via content marketing activities. Yes, social traffic does convert well for many consumer facing brands but for most B2B brands social traffic does not convert well, unless via Twitter or LinkedIn. Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and/or Vine traffic drives significantly lower conversion metrics. Attention spans are dropping and today’s smartphone enabled consumers and professionals don’t have a lot of patience.

• Telling brands to jump on multiple social media channels simultaneously to better leverage how fragmented the web is becoming. This is not practical for most businesses: start small on one social platform, make a success of it and go from there.

• Not letting you know barriers to entry are rising: social platforms are noisy and growth has slowed on Twitter and Facebook.

• No recognition of the importance of curating and sharing great content across social media platforms: long and short form, stellar images, ebooks, WhitePapers, videos. Selfies may work for celebrities but not for most SMB brands. Recognize content sharing is platform agnostic: it’s everywhere and anything and has to be well curated.

• Free is not “free” on social media platforms: there are burdened costs for each platform: community management, content development costs, feature sets are evolving and connectivity with cloud apps/services requires some sophistication, contacting customer service can be daunting if not impossible for some of thee platforms like Pinterest.

• One of our favorites: “how to do social media in ten minutes a day” – doable but marketing ROI for most brands is not going to be significant. Yes, it has worked for a very small minority of users on social media networks; but, for most of you it will be an iterative process with fans/followers counts building over time.

Your Best Marketing Strategy

• Ignore the sex and sizzle associated with social media until you stand up a blog that speaks to customers, with 30-50 blog posts in place; then, start on one social channel; for B2B that’s Twitter and LinkedIn for B2C: Facebook (with an associated marketing budget).
• As above, when your content strategy (blog) is in place select one social channel and create an engaged audience. Don’t try to establish a presence on 3-4 channels simultaneously unless you have staffing in place and a marketing budget that matches your “platform reach.”
• A great web site is the core of any social media marketing strategy: well designed, great content, smartphone accessible, integrated calls to action, analytics in place, on-board sales funnel, stellar images and functional menus.
• Email marketing still delivers wonderful returns for small businesses. It may have fallen out of favor but it’s still a great way to connect with and build rapport with customers.
• Be a brand with a solid persona identification (who is your target market?) – every start-up from Dehli to San Francisco knows how to analyze who their customer is and then builds out outbound marketing around this target.
• Stellar syndicated content may generate much better marketing ROI than social. Regardless, you can’t “do social” without great content.

• Don’t get on the wrong channel: Facebook is great for consumer brands; but Twitter and LinkedIn deliver 5-10X times more traffic and leads for B2B brands.
• Create short and long term goals: web site traffic, followers/likes, promote events. Short term are 60-120 days; long term goals: are six months to a year.
• Create great content that resonates with your target community.
• Get everyone on board with the strategy.

• Have some personality but if your on Twitter or LinkedIn your customers aren’t going to care about “selfies” on vacation; save these for your personal account.
• The most important social media marketing strategy is a blog: don’t get on any social channel unless you have a blog in place.
• Start slow and don’t expect to get overnight traction across the social web. It’s gonna take time and sharing great content.
• Authenticity and engagement are success drivers.
• Pay it forward on social channels when/where you can. That’s been part of the “social culture” going back to CompuServe days and still relevant. People on these social channels are paying attention to what you are doing.

Behind Every Great Marketing Campaign Including Social is Identifying your Brand’s Persona

• Where does your user “live” in GEO targeted and digital sense?
• What are income, levels, marital status, likes, dislikes?
• What problem are you solving for them? (B2B and B2C brands)
• Does your content map to their profiles and is it shared on the right social channel(s)?
• Are you creating a meaningful brand experience for your optimum persona? (“I like doing business with……”)
• Have you taken a hard look at your direct competitors to help you identify your competitive position?
• Have you identified who the “super personas” who are influencers in your market are? How do you reach them?

30K Foot Review for Busy Execs

• Great social media campaigns take time, technical expertise and some level of marketing sophistication.
• Creativity with content and images helps your brand stand out in a noisy world.
• Test engagement metrics and retest on a continual basis.
• A small engaged audience is better than a large non-engaged audience: we block 10-15% of our Followers on Twitter based on zero engagement via their accounts. Just broadcasting!
• We love Facebook and its inherent ability to deliver great marketing ROI. But know it’s a Ad Platform disguised as a social network.
• Not all traffic is created equally: social traffic can vary significantly. B2B: Twitter & LinkedIn & maybe G+ B2C: Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Vine and/or SnapChat
• Make sure someone on staff is technically competent or you have an outsourcing partner or agency to help with some of the back end tech heavy lifting.

We don’t have all the answers but hope this post helped to fill in some of the gaps. Got questions let us know on Twitter or comments. Deeper dive check out our Newsletter.

I was speaking to a group of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and Managing Directors (MDs) of various companies in the United Kingdom recently. We were talking about value and how to effectively grow your business. One of the MDs shared that in his case, they sold through partners. He complained “All my partners care about is margin!”

My Response Might Surprise You

The Managing Director saw this as a negative. I asked if he was one of his partners, what would be his focus. After a few moments, he lowered his head and said “margin.” Reaching this conclusion, I asked 1) Did he need and value this partner and others like them, or 2) could he grow without them? He confirmed that he needed the partners to educate the marketplace. Based on that, I asked “So now that you know that you’d be motivated the same way, what are you doing to help them protect their margin so that you stay top of mind?”

You can easily get frustrated with requests from your customers or partners. But, in many cases, just listening to them and putting yourself in their shoes might tell you that the lack of alignment might be rooted in your outdated view of your market. Basically, what used to matter in your industry, might not matter anymore. If you address the needs of your customer or partner ahead of the competition, you might gain a fair amount of market share.

What Could He Do?

The executive who raised the question above was selling through brick-and-mortar partners. As a group, we suggested several ideas that could help his partners maintain more margin.

1) Create Bundles: The retailers could create bundles that are offered only in physical stores. It might even mean that you tell them they can include a complementary product with each of the main product that sells. This allows you to not create additional SKUs, but you can allow them to offer a superior bundle than those who do not display the product or obtain certifications or training.

2) Offer Marketing Rebates: The retailers might get marketing rebates for in-store promotions that provide for demonstrations and showcases for your products and the stores. Make the rebate be a percentage of sales for a specific category of what you want them to sell. Essentially, if they sell your products, you help promote their business and drive customers to their store.

3) Establish Certifications: In order to become a platinum reseller, you might need to have your products displayed at a physical location, have certified staff who can educate consumers, and in exchange for that investment, you might get additional margin or products that are only offered by Platinum resellers.

Be Careful…

You may have to ask questions to confirm that your customer or business partner really wants what they say they want. For example, everyone will say that they want a lower price. Most in the business-to-business space will acknowledge that they really want to know they are getting a better return per investment with you than with another option. If someone said “We want a lower price.” You might respond with “Some people say they want a cheap price. Others tell us they want to know they will get more value per investment with us than with others. Which one matters most to you?”

You need to be in touch with what motivates your customers or your partners. The good news for this executive is that he knew exactly what motivated his partner. But what if you don’t know? In the case of a customer, you might simply ask “What are we missing from our offering that would make it more valuable for your organization?” By asking this way, you are shifting the conversation from a potential focus on price, to one of value.

It’s Your Turn

What do your customers or partners request that you could deliver and use as a basis to grow your business?

What are reviews worth to your business? Cambridge mathematician William Hartston has developed a formula… watch our animation and try it yourself! When you buy online – be it a holiday, a washing machine or contact lenses – do you look at ratings and reviews? Do you check if anyone reported delivery trouble, criticised the product or mentioned fraud? Well, so do your customers! It’s natural to look for reassurance from other shoppers before you share your credit card details. The online retailers which understand this, and make the effort to respond to reviewers’ questions, complaints and comments, will be the ones which succeed. Business leaders have long believed in the power of customer feedback. But now, for the first time, you can find out what reviews are really worth to your business

What sets your organisation apart from all the other companies that are competing for your prospect’s attention and – ultimately – their budget? If I may offer a suggestion, it’s probably not your latest clever feature or function, even if that can make some modest contribution to the story.

No: it’s your ability to help your customer solve a problem that they cannot afford to ignore, better than any other option available to them. This is your unique value position. And if you can nail it, it will dramatically amplify the power of your marketing messages and your sales conversations.

It’s a simple idea, but often deceptively hard to put into practice. Here’s how you can craft one for for your organisation that enables you to stand out from the crowd…

Note that I have intentionally used the word position, not proposition. According to the dictionary, a proposition is merely a “statement of opinion” – something that can stand (and fall) in isolation. A position, on the other hand, describes your relationship to other things that are important to your prospects.

Ultimately, positioning happens in the minds of your audiences, supported or distorted by how you communicate with them. It helps them relate what you do to the things they want to achieve, and against other approaches they may be considering. And it can help them to decide between action and inaction.

In “Crossing the Chasm”, Geoffrey Moore shared an approach that I’ve used with only minor modifications. My preferred unique value position formula is based on two short sentences that succinctly describe what you do, who you do it for, why they need to do anything, and what sets your solution apart

“For [primary target customers] and others who are dissatisfied with [their current situation], [solution name] is a [category name] that [compelling reason to buy]. Unlike [their primary alternative options] what really sets [company name]’s solution apart is [your primary differentiation].”

The statement is intended to define the centre of your target market, rather than the boundaries. It focuses on the critical problems that you are best at solving for your most promising potential customers. You may never quote it verbatim in your marketing messages. But it should serve as the foundation for everything you seek to communicate.

If you have multiple target customer clusters, you will probably want to develop subtly different value positions for each of them. For example, the current situation, compelling reason to buy and primary alternative option to buy may vary from one target customer cluster to another.

The structure is merely a guide: you may find that your value position comes across more naturally or clearly if you use a different sequence or form of words. But every element of the formula has an intentional and has a specific role to play in positioning your offering.

Now let’s break this Unique Value Position formula down into its key component parts:

Primary target customers: this describes the common characteristics of the ideal customer for your solution. This may describe the type of organisation, the type of role, or a combination of the two. This section is important, because it enables you to target your marketing messages and your sales conversations on your most promising customers.

Current situation: this describes a key point of dissatisfaction with your primary target customer’s current situation. This defined issue may be a goal or problem, or an existing but unsatisfactory solution that they are compelled to do something about. This section is important, because it identifies a reason for them to act.

Solution name: this defines the name you market your solution under.

Category name: this describes the market category within which your solution can be found. When prospects go searching for answers to their defined issues, they often tend to think in terms of well-recognised solution categories. This section is important because customers tend to think in terms of categories of solution, and can struggle to position you if they can’t work out what type of thing you are offering.

Compelling reason to buy: this defines the key benefit of using your solution – normally related to your role in addressing the defined point of dissatisfaction with their current situation. This section is important, because without a compelling reason to buy, they are likely to stick with the status quo.

Primary alternative options: this defines the primary alternative options for addressing the defined issue – this may include in-house solutions, obvious competitors, or radically alternative ways of solving the problem. This section is important, because it defines your point of competitive comparison.

Company name: your company name.

Primary differentiation: this defines what uniquely sets your offering apart from the other options open to them. Your distinctive approach to solving the problem is usually far more powerful than a single product feature. This section is important, because it memorably nails why the customer should do business with you.

One of the most common challenges in developing a unique value position lies in deciding what to leave out. Lengthy value positions serve to confuse, rather than clarify. Great value positions reflect simple memorable themes, rather than lengthy lists – that’s why focusing on the centre of your target market is so important.

Simplicity is hard work as Blaise Pascal, Mark Twain, T.S. Eliot, Cicero and a raft of other talented writers have long recognised (“forgive me for writing such a long letter, but I did not have the time to write a short one”) but the effort is worth it: simplicity resonates and complexity confuses. It’s absolutely worth putting in the time to get this right.

So – what’s your unique value position? And is it reflected in every marketing message and sales conversation?

Being a successful strategic negotiator requires calculated self-interest, along with a heavy dose of dissembling. Or so go the usual assumptions about negotiating. People sense that to win, they must play a certain role— like good cop/bad cop — or simply be the title after their name (manager, entrepreneur, salesperson). But, what if you could create better results, increase value, and strengthen relationships just by being yourself?

Breaking down the walls between the roles you think you should and shouldn’t play in business means integrating the myriad roles — the professional and the personal — you take on in life: executive, entrepreneur, lawyer, parent, spouse, athlete, friend, and countless others. This approach isn’t just about making you more comfortable when you negotiate (although that happens too); it’s about tapping into an abundance of resources and generating greater value. By negotiating genuinely:

You’ll enhance your creativity. In being genuine, you have access to a broader repertoire of knowledge and wisdom. Combining and integrating your various roles sparks new patterns of thoughts, feelings, and perspectives. This fuels your creativity and ability to find innovative solutions, because you’re no longer constrained by the experience of a single role. Perhaps the solution to a challenging merger isn’t found in your executive toolbox but in, say, your experience as an engineer, waiting tables as a student, or a situation you encountered on a travel adventure.

You’ll demonstrate unique and powerful strengths. Every role you play in life brings out different strengths and abilities. You may be overlooking these when you’re in a business setting. For example, as a soccer coach, you may be patient with a child when she makes a mistake, but at work you may assume that such patience and understanding would portray you as too soft a leader. Turn this on its head: your strengths of patience and understanding may be exactly what you need to successfully negotiate with someone who wants a raise, or to bring someone around who has failed to meet a project deadline. Negotiating from what I call the inside out, you are simultaneously the soccer coach and the boss. Now you can access and leverage your unique combination of roles, not only to play to your strengths, but to integrate them in the most appropriate way.

You’ll align with your moral compass. Your values prevail in and out of work. In a negotiation, you may feel pressured to make a particular decision because it is how people “play the game.” However, the decision and its outcomes might conflict with your ethics. One way to think about it is whether you are the same person Monday morning at work as you were over the weekend at your neighborhood barbecue. This kind of reflection can protect and empower you. By staying tuned to all of your values, you’ll recognize when conflicts arise. Then you’ll be able to reassess and renew your confidence in framing a response that you believe in.

You’ll be able to achieve your goals and build key relationships. When you enter a negotiation, either representing yourself or your organization, you have a goal; so, of course, does your counterpart. And you need one another to achieve your goals. In its essence, negotiation is as much about cooperation as it is about competition. Intuitively, people think of these as mutually exclusive — either you cooperate or you compete — or at most as sequential strategies: first you cooperate; then you compete. Negotiating genuinely allows you to accept the inherent tension in simultaneously cooperating and competing. For example, you and I link the price of a product you are selling to me (where a dollar you gain is a dollar I lose) to an action that brings more value to one of us (painting the white product blue may incur a slight cost to you, but have tremendous value to me). If together we go blue, I am sharing some of that value by paying you a higher price. We are cooperating to go blue while competing on how to divide the relative profits blue generates. And acknowledging our competition while seeing each other as genuine partners strengthens our relationship.

Being your genuine, integrated self while negotiating is not easy. You are conditioned to be one person at your morning team meeting, another with your board of directors, and yet another at home. Like most valuable pursuits in life, integrating your roles at work and in your personal life takes discipline and has emotional underpinnings. These emotions can work for you when you negotiate from the inside out. Being genuine means you get to be the best you, realizing greater success on all levels — financial, personal, and professional.

“We think we can be a platform where corporations become more human.”

No, that wasn’t Mitt Romney. The man who told me this is Penry Price, LinkedIn’s Global VP of Sales–Marketing Solutions, in my pre-interview with him before we went on stage at Integrated Marketing Week on Tuesday for his keynote interview. When we confronted the packed crowd at New York City’s Metropolitan Pavilion, he added some more color to his statement:

Last month, he explained, Target CMO Jeff Jones had been named in a Gawker post by a Target employee who slammed the company’s internal culture. This was on the heels of a data breach that had exposed millions of Target customers’ data. The executive team was nigh freaking out. However, instead of rallying a bunch of crisis management publicists for damage control, Jones wrote a very personal blog post on LinkedIn, expressing remorse, admitting faults, and vowing to make things better.

300,000 people shared it. A bunch of news outlets reported on it. Jones wrote, “The truth hurts,” and the Internet applauded him for his honesty.

“This is one example of how a company using content can actually humanize itself and be really approachable,” Price said. “…when you have executives who are really engaged and writing thoughtful commentary about what they believe.”

(Full-disclosure: Contently is a Content Partner of LinkedIn)

Price predicts, “We’re going to expect a lot more of that behavior.”

Since they’ve existed, corporations have been spin machines. Our job as business owners has been to convince people that we are impenetrable, infallible, perfect. It’s what we’re educated to do in marketing class. And it’s phony.

People aren’t inclined to believe anything companies say because companies front like they’re perfect—which everyone knows they’re not. The thing that makes Superman likable is Kryptonite. It forces him acknowledge his vulnerability.

The best thing that Ford did for its floundering brand in 2006 was make a documentary series called Bold Moves, showing the hard working people on the ground inside of the company—factory workers and engineers who were trying to make things better. The company pulled back the curtain on its own problems, acknowledged its challenges, and kept observers updated on the things it was doing to make things better.

No company is perfect. No product is perfect. And no person is perfect. But we love companies, products, and people anyway. Why?

For start, we’re willing to overlook a lot of flaws if we share values. And even if we don’t, studies show that simply getting to know each other through their stories helps break down barriers. Research from the University of Wisconsin has found that “The activity of storytelling has an impact on participants’ interpersonal relationships, empathy, and sense of connectedness.”

“I want to work with companies that are actually authentic and stand for something,” Price said. Data shows that he’s not alone. Companies with higher purposes than profits tend to beat the market. They have an easier time hiring the best talent, who like consumers, are willing to make economically irrational decisions when choosing the companies they’ll do business with based on the values that company espouses.

How can a company really convey what it values beyond its value proposition? By having the human beings inside the company speak up, open up the doors, and share the stories about those values. It’s not about a sales or PR pitch; it’s about building a personal connection.

The 300 million of us on LinkedIn all have knowledge and values to share. We all have stories that can make us more human. Says Price, “We have an obligation to do something impactful with that.”

 

Last month, we talked about the difficulties mobile payment systems have experienced in breaking into emerging markets, and why the challenge for Bitcoin penetration would thus seem to be even greater. Despite a seemingly massive opportunity, customers or bank regulators in Africa and Asia have thrown up resistance to tools that would upend at-times centuries-old transaction practices. 

Now, Tim Swanson of the Of Numbers blog has posted a chart that further demonstrates Bitcoin's sluggish adoption. It shows worldwide transaction volumes of the digital currency compared with those in M-Pesa, Kenya's cellphone-based banking system and the so-far lone success story among emerging-market mobile payments processors.

Despite its global reach, Bitcoin flows now pale in comparison to those among Kenya's 45 million people over the course of their six-odd years in existence.

You could argue this is not a fair comparison. Bitcoin was started in the functional equivalent of a guy's basement, with angel and VC investment only taking off in the past year. M-Pesa had from Day 1 the backing of a telecom conglomerate, Vodafone.

Even so, M-Pesa had about a 12-month period of growing pains, yet is now the medium through which 43% of Kenyan GDP passes.

Swanson says he's not suggesting Bitcoin is dead in the water. Instead, he writes, "I think that once the hype and hyperbole is dispensed of, the underlying tech (especially the “2.0” variety) is clever and potentially transformative later this decade for certain segments."

But he still goes in hard. "Bitcoins are not currently fulfilling the role of both a store of value and a medium of exchange...If one builds a tool that has few immediate uses besides gambling then it should not be surprising that mostly gamblers use it," Swanson writes.  

The Bitcoin community likes to say it is playing a very long game. But it sure could use a jolt from somewhere. 

Join the conversation about this story »

China's ghost cities aren't going away. Even as Beijing wants local governments to move away from GDP targeting and is more focused on developing social housing, wasteful construction still plagues China.

A report from CLSA's Nicole Wong, cited by The Wall Street Journal, found that the problem lies in the excess supply in China's third-tier cities. Vacancy rates for homes constructed in the past five years stand at 15% but are projected to rise over 20% in 2016-17, according to Wong.

Rob Schmitz, China correspondent for Marketplace/American Public Media, recently ran a story titled "China's economic boom leaves a trail of ghost cities." We reached out to Schmitz to get an update on Kangbashi and Yujiapu.

Schmitz points out that one of the key differences between visiting Ordos now and back in October 2010 was people's attitudes. Back in 2010, residents of Kangbashi (new city of Ordos) were defensive when the place was dubbed a ghost city, but now many had come to accept it.

Schmitz said that many people had abandoned these ghost cities and moved back home. He also points out what China bulls like Stephen Roach have got wrong when they argue that these cities tie into China's urbanization plan.

Here is an excerpt from our email interview with Schmitz:

Business Insider: How has Ordos changed now from when it first started making headlines a few years ago?

Rob Schmitz: I first visited Ordos in October 2010, the same year many other Western journalists had reported on the city. When I returned this year, there were a lot of interesting differences. Back in 2010, the few people who lived there seemed defensive about the Western media labeling the place a ghost city. This time, everyone I spoke to had come to an acceptance that Kangbashi (the proposed new city of Ordos) was most likely going to remain mostly vacant, and many seemed OK with that.  I spoke to one of the largest developers while I was there and he told me that Kangbashi had a population density similar more to a city in Canada or the U.S. than of a city in China, and he thought this was a draw for the city. But my conversations with folks didn't confirm this. I've never seen a city of similar physical size in Canada nor in the U.S. as empty as Kangbashi is today, and most of the people I spoke to during my latest visit didn't seem very happy to be living in a place where most of the buildings were empty.

I met dozens of migrant workers who were renting vacant office spaces as apartments for as low as $65 a month.

Another big difference between this time and last was that the Ordos government has moved its headquarters to Kangbashi, so there are more people there during the day around the city's civic center. That said, the government of Ordos has actually increased the size of the city since 2010 by building more skyscrapers and infrastructure including a park with a large lake, three sports stadiums, and a skyscraper office park on the banks of the lake which are under construction.

I walked through a development of more than a dozen 20-story high-rises built adjacent to this office park, and there were no signs of life. The same developer I mentioned above also expressed concern over the fate of three gigantic sports stadiums built specifically for China's 'Ethnic Minority Traditional Sports Games' of 2015 outside of Kangbashi. It was surprising that after being admonished by China's own state-run press, Ordos' government has continued to build at the same rate as it had done before.

The last difference from last time is that real estate prices in Kangbashi have plummeted since my visit in 2010, and I met dozens of migrant workers who were renting vacant office spaces as apartments for as low as $65 a month. These spaces weren't built to house people, but one office building I visited was full of migrant workers at night, living in windowless office spaces and using an office bathroom down the hall to bathe.

I also visited a government office in charge of mediating disputes between shadow bankers and those who couldn't afford to repay their loans. This is a very big problem in Ordos, as most businesses there would never qualify for a loan from a state bank, and now that the local economy is doing so poorly, many businesses have gone bankrupt. The office was in charge of repossessing whatever assets they could get from those who owed money. Their storage room was full of refrigerators, flat-screen TVs, and shelves full of dozens of bottles of high-priced Baijiu (Rice Wine) which they had seized.

BI: Do the people that you meet in these ghost cities have any plans of returning to their hometowns or are they optimistic?

RS: Many have already returned home. Those who are left are looking to make a little money and then leave when the economy finally fizzles out for good. Keep in mind that nearly twenty miles away from Kangbashi (the largely empty city) is Dongsheng, which is known as the old city, and actually has a functioning economy and population, so many people are watching this unfold from there.

BI: Some, like Stephen Roach, have argued that these ghost cities can be explained away as part of China's urbanization plan. In your experience, does this add up?

RS: Perhaps some of them can, but for the most part, I don't agree with this statement. While it is true that some cities are filling up – the outskirts of Zhengzhou, which the TV program "60 Minutes" profiled a couple of years ago as a ghost town is a good example of a city that has defied early criticisms – other cities like Ordos do not fit neatly into China's urbanization plan.

Roach uses the Pudong district of Shanghai as an example of a place that was built, stood empty for a while, and then filled up, the message being other empty cities like Ordos just need time. It's important to remember that 1. Pudong was built in the 1990s, before China had even entered the WTO and was on the cusp of more than a decade of double-digit GDP growth. China's economy today is very different. It's slowing down and China's economic planners are taking the first steps to rebalance the economy from one built on investment-led growth to one built on consumer growth. That's not an easy transition to make, especially for an economy of this size, and it's going to require years of slower economic growth. 2. Pudong is in Shanghai, which is strategically located and is home to one of the world's largest ports. Ordos is in the middle of the desert and is running out of groundwater.

If all of these ghost cities and ghost suburbs were part of a master plan hatched in Beijing by the central government, I'd imagine we'd see more affordable housing, as that's what is needed in China. Instead, most of the housing that's been built in these empty districts are luxury condos and villas. I have a hard time believing people will eventually move into these empty complexes in the next five years, especially in the scenario of a cooling economy. The other thing to keep in mind is that many of this new housing isn't built well, and it's hard to imagine them retaining their value over the time it may take for China's economy to return to its glory days. I think another danger is that once housing prices begin to plummet – which we are already seeing initial signs of in second tier cities in China – it'll devastate the financial stability of cities like Ordos. 

I think it's important to remember, too, that the ghost city phenomenon in China is partially due to how local governments are forced to finance themselves. Local governments in China are in a perpetual cash squeeze because they have to hand over a bulk of their tax revenue to the central government and because the central government often orders localities to build all sorts of infrastructure projects but Beijing often neglects to help with funding. Because the Party owns all of the land in China, local governments solve their funding problems by seizing land from their poorest residents, giving them a paltry sum in return, and then they sell the land to developers, essentially flipping real estate on a massive scale. Of course this has the added benefit of raising GDP figures, increasing the chance that local leaders will be promoted within the Party.

BI: Do you see more Chinese ghost cities propping up? Is it possible that some ghost cities are worse than others? 

It was a Chinese version of Simon and Garfunkel's 'Sound of Silence' played with a Chinese erhu.

RS: I think each ghost city/ghost suburb should be treated differently – each of them has its own unique background and circumstances. Some of them will survive – we've already seen that happen in places like Zhengzhou and even in some of the exurbs of Shanghai that have filled out – but many won't. I was talking with Arthur Kroeber at GK Dragonomics a couple of months ago, in my mind one of the best experts on China's economy, and he was telling me about the city of Guiyang and how the province it belongs to, Guizhou, has an 80% debt-to-GDP ratio, which is incredibly dangerous. Arthur's usually pretty bullish on China's prospects, but he threw his optimism out the window when talking about the empty suburbs of that city, where hundreds of thousands of apartments sit, empty, while the largely mountainous province continues to plod along as one of China's poorest. The FT's (moving to The Economist soon) Simon Rabinovitch did a great story about all of Guiyang's empty housing, and what's happened there looks pretty scary. 

I think whether we see more ghost cities popping up depends on whether the central government is serious about promises to overhaul the GDP-based local official evaluation system and the way that local governments finance themselves.

BI: What's the most bizarre experience you've had in China's ghost cities?

RS: My first morning in Kangbashi, I woke up and walked through the empty hotel lobby to take a look outside onto the public square. There wasn't a soul in sight, and the first birds of spring were singing outside. The only other sound was Muzak pumping through the speakers from the hotel. As I looked around for any signs of life, I suddenly recognized the song. It was a Chinese version of Simon and Garfunkel's "Sound of Silence" played with a Chinese erhu.

Click here for Schmitz's full story »

Note: Photos and captions reproduced with permission from Marketplace.

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Compare strengths and weaknesses of all the World Cup 2014 teams according to the players transfer value

GUEST POST

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Apple’s recent announcement of Dropbox/Box competitor iCloud Drive underscores what most of us already know: storage is rapidly becoming a commodity.

Hundreds of millions in venture capital money has been poured into what was once considered a hot market. But with recent events (e.g. iCloud Drive) foreshadowing a decline, what is to become of the online file-sharing space? And more importantly, how can vendors such as Dropbox and Box — and their investors — find opportunities for growth while building a successful monetization strategy that leads to a liquidity event?

Allow me to explain.

The reason for these cloud storage services to pivot is not just due to Apple’s new iCloud Drive. That news, in a vacuum, would be interesting enough to perhaps spur a sideshow where bloggers, pundits, and social media icons give you a brain freeze by discussing hypothetical moves like it’s the NFL draft.

But the Apple news is not in a vacuum. It comes on the heels of nearly a year’s worth of events signally a potential decline within the file-sharing and -storage market. Apple’s iCloud Drive is simply the last straw for file-sharing vendors who have failed to figure out how to monetize their services or failed to successfully play on the business-to-business (B2B) side.

It’s time to move in a new direction. If you’re not convinced, examine the evidence.

First, let’s go back to Box’s SEC filings that showed a significant cash burn, and a repositioning as a cloud platform vendor -– a move that was likely based on the desire to recreate Salesforce’s success.

The problem with this strategy? Salesforce has always had one critically different mechanism that Box doesn’t: a workflow-based application that makes Salesforce both indispensable to businesses and easy to use. Storage by itself is not a workflow application. It is not ERP, CRM, or any kind of technology that directly impacts cost or revenue generation. It is a necessary evil. Yet, that’s Box’s main focus.

Turning attention to Dropbox, with over $1 billion in funding in its coffers, the case is a bit different. The company has a massive consumer footprint.

Dropbox is everywhere. For business use, employees adopted it as a workaround because enterprise file sharing solutions were slow to gain adoption, and usually pretty awful to use. Dropbox, however, has become the bane of IT’s existence. Its service is lacking in security controls and increased the potential risk for data breaches and lack of compliance. Dropbox has tried to go after the enterprise file sharing market with Dropbox for Teams, followed by Dropbox for Business. It failed, and continues to fail primarily because it lacks security controls. Secondly, Dropbox as a company is focused on gaining consumers of commoditized storage.

And there’s the problem.

So, what can Box and Dropbox do to escape a declining, increasingly commoditized market? The key for success — or escape, if you will — is to figure out how to add new features that will help the online file-sharing vendors plug their security and workflow holes. This will provide a true business solution, where storage is just one commoditized component.

Should companies like Box and Dropbox heed these early warnings to pivot, here’s what it might look like:

1) Focus on the technology gaps in the file-sharing space

This is where true innovation comes in. Security and digital rights management (DRM) remain primary concerns among online file-sharing users, particularly in the enterprise. Value-added security services, developed either organically or provided from growing, third-party developers, that enable users to easily control who accesses files and via which devices are key capabilities that are lacking in current file sharing solutions. Add in analytics and controlled distribution that plugs into SharePoint and other enterprise collaboration systems, and Dropbox and Box have something of higher value.

2) Acquire smaller players

There are little-known players in the file sharing space with unique capabilities such as DRM and content analytics that make them good targets for acquisition. The purpose of these acquisitions is to truly transition from storage player to a business collaboration platform. The right acquisition could elevate the profile of a file-sharing provider and make them stand out from the crowd. Partner stores like those designed after the SalesforceAppExchange may plug some holes, but can also put the file-sharing vendor in peril of losing one of its partners to a competitor (as recently happened when Intralinks snagged DocTrackr from Box’s portfolio).

3) Make security a priority

The near-constant reports of security breaches underscore the need for richer security capabilities among file-sharing providers. These added security layers need to be simple, seamless and plug in with easy APIs. Because file-sharing security requires user buy-in, any additional security capabilities should work within the existing user workflow.

In closing…

The online file-sharing players and their investors are at quite a crossroads. Only the future will tell if Apple is as committed at winning the consumer storage market as much as it was focused on the mobile device space (and the subsequent demise of BlackBerry). While the file-sharing vendors still have time, and room, to make a change, big decisions need to be made.

Nick Pappas is a Vice President with MassVentures and an investor in Content Raven, a leading DRM solution. Nick has been working with early-stage technology companies for more than 15 years, advising management teams and boards of directors on market expansion, capital raising and merger and acquisition strategies. Since joining MassVentures in 2009, Nick has been responsible for identifying investment opportunities and working closely with MassVentures’ portfolio companies. Nick sits on the board of Content Raven and TerraTherm, and is a board observer at OwnerIQ.

In a world in which content is clearly king, one of your most valuable business assets are stories that validate its capabilities.

Stories can not only express how your business can help potential customers, but also the vital human qualities that differentiate it from look alike competitors. Consider that your business made a considerable investment to earn its stories. In fact, sometimes the best stories are the result of persevering through costly circumstances to ultimately prevail in the end.

“Look at the bright side; you’ll have a great story to tell.” You’ve heard this expression, right?

So, the question for business owners is this: Knowing that stories are invaluable for differentiating a business, why are most companies not taking the time to mine the value of the investment they have already made?

The following three steps will help you to accomplish this.

#1 – Inventory and Care for Your Stories

The stories that every business needs to capture are its beginnings, core beliefs or values, and unique capabilities. Ideally, this information is summarized on the company website.

This may earn the initial attention of a prospective buyer; but then what?

To engage buyers and move them through the sequence of getting to know, like, and ultimately trust your business, there has to be a whole lot more.

The solution is to inventory your stories by categories, such as the type of buyer, product or service solution, and customer challenge or pain point, to name just a few.

If a business does not hold sufficient inventory to serve new customers, they go elsewhere. The same holds true when responding to social media and direct sales inquiries.

The idea is to have the stories for successfully serving your current customers ready for the next similar opportunity when it comes along.

#2 – Use Stories to Educate and Engage Buyers

If you have founded a business you know that getting that first customer is crucial, because then you have a result to point to when the next inquiry comes along, and the one after that, and so on.

However, not all customers are alike, so it helps to organize your stories to share the right ones with the right prospects. For example, a small project is not going to resonate with a high-end buyer that needs a complex solution.

Conversely, the entry-level buyer will be put off by grandiose projects. They may rightfully assume your business will not give them the attention they deserve; or they may reason your business is only interested in more lucrative projects.

Thus, you need stories in your back pocket to handle these concerns and objections. For example, when I owned my landscape design and construction business we were often asked to justify our prices. Here is the formula we used to handle that, and every other objection.

1. Identify the pain point
2. Offer a solution
3. Back it up with a story

We explained that roughly 50% of what a landscape customer pays for is hidden underground. This includes the root system to a locally grown tree, the proper base for patios and walls, quality valves for the irrigation system that will last for decades, as opposed to years, etc.

Then we would share the story of one of our many clients that wished that had come to us first, because the investment they made with another company was lost after most of it failed to perform as promised.

Here is the story lesson: You cannot evaluate pricing without fully understanding all of the hidden qualities that contribute to the integrity of a project.

Pulling back the curtain to educate buyers builds trust, plain and simple.

#3 – Stories Cut Through the Competitive Clutter

In my opinion, there is no better way to differentiate a business than with stories that are the result of direct experience with real customers.

There are many reasons for this.

• Real stories are credible
• They can be validated with names, places, and dates
• Stories make emotional connections with buyers
• They are personal, often memorable, and tend to build trust
• A story lesson is easily shared
• The challenge is to inventory your stories, practice, test, and refine them, and always be ready to use them well.

Traditional marketing is being replaced by social selling and relationship marketing, with stories being the cornerstone for executing both well.

Is your business ready?

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What Will it Take to Get Where You Want to Be?

Let’s not sugar coat it, okay?  Macro data aside, things are not great in the American economy right now, especially for people over 40.  There are not as many good jobs for older workers.  Careers are more tracked than ever, with hiring managers wanting people with a long history of perfecting a narrow discipline. What, you don’t have 15 years of sequential promotions in partner marketing?  Good bye…  Many skills that we once got recognized for doing well, such as being good on the phone, aren’t given much value these days.  At the same time, new skills, some of them quite technical, are highly prized. Worst, though, is the apparent lack of employer loyalty.  You’re a “human resource,” not a “human being.”  When it suits the business, you’re gone.  This is the “New Normal” of today’s job market.

But, let’s not get discouraged.  The truth is, you can earn more money in your work life. (Notice I didn’t say “job” or even “career.”) You can earn more if you want to.  You can earn more if you work on yourself.  While the reality is that we are more or less on our own, we are not alone.  Yes, we are all essentially self-employed, even if we have a job that pays us a salary. We work for ourselves.  This can either be depressing or liberating.  What will you choose it to be?  In this post, I will share seven steps you can take to get yourself ready to thrive in the difficult new normal.

#1 Understand What’s Really Happening to You

You can’t solve a problem you can’t define.  Every person’s situation is unique, a mix of workplace issues, personality, background, family, economic realities.  There are many reasons that we may be under-earning our potential or struggling in our careers. However, in reality, there are two secret reasons why it’s happening:

1 – We’re in the wrong job/career/line of business. This may seem like a crazy idea but it is true for most of us. We struggle because we’re in the wrong job or industry.  We’re in management when we should be in sales. We’re working with our minds when we should be working with your hands. We are working alone when we should be working with other people, and so on.  We need to find the right fit for our best success.

2 – The approaches to career that worked before don’t work anymore.  So many things have changed.  The old wisdom about trying to find a steady job at a big company doesn’t hold up today.  The idea that we need to prepare an amazing resume and submit it to as many jobs as possible is less and less relevant today.  We need to adapt to the new way that things work.

#2 Embrace Setbacks

Failure can be a gift.  Many successful people have made this point.  If we are able to work on ourselves, we can learn a lot from a setback.  It’s also important to give ourselves permission to feel bad about it.  It’s going to hurt, but it’s an opportunity.

#3 Understand Your Leverage

We are only going to make decent money if our employer is profitable. This sounds pretty obvious but it’s incredible how often we fail to see this basic connection.  How profitable is your employer? What is their outlook in their industry? What do you bring to the table?  Your pay, and raise potential depends on three very important factors:

• The profitability of your employer – are they making money? (Cash flow, not paper earnings.)
• Your employer’s competitive advantage in its industry – can they sustain profits long -term and grow?
• Your personal leverage against the employer – what makes it hard to replace you? That will drive your raise potential, assuming they have the money.

#4 Understand Your Behavior, Energy, and Attitude.

Your behavior.  Your energy. Your attitude.  These are affecting your work life and your earning potential.  You may need to ask someone else to help you figure out how you really come across to others. Are you projecting negativity and hostility? These will negate your efforts to improve.

#5 Set a Goal: the True You.

There is a job or business that’s right for you. It’s where you will earn the most. It’s where you will be the happiest. It’s the True You.

• What kind of salary and lifestyle do you want? (Think carefully)
• Consider the tradeoffs: Life satisfaction vs. status and money – you may not be able to have it all.
• What does You 2.0 look like?
• Visualize it.  Visualization leads to realization.

Marc Miller of Career Pivot has a great approach to thinking this through in Repurpose Your Career. I highly recommend it.

#6 Believe in Yourself

It’s going to take work. It’s going to take time, but, you can do it.

• Find mentors – people who can help you do a better job and figure out your path. (It might be more than one person.)
• Make intelligent mistakes – if you know where you’re heading, you can mess up and learn about yourself, improving your odds of success as you move forward.
• Easier said than done: but switch off those old tapes.
• Don’t worry about not being something that you’re not.  You were NOT meant to be that person.

#7 Be a Part of Others’ Success

This is not about being altruistic.  It’s a strategy to help yourself.  Bank favors with others who can help you later.  Engage in useful networking, where you can add real value to others’ businesses and careers. You will definitely see it come back to you in the form of job referrals and gigs.  You can also learn valuable business skills and insights while you’re getting to know new people

Advertising is useless unless it points prospects toward information that leads them to convert. An effective landing page can bridge the gap between advertisements and salespeople, delivering warm leads and providing information for interested visitors.

B2B businesses have caught on to this effective technique. Sixty-eight percent of B2B businesses use landing pages to earn new business, Marketing Sherpa reports. Holdouts of this popular trend usually send prospects directly to their Web sites, but those prospects are less likely to convert than if they’d been set to an informative, well-designed landing page.

1. Design a Fresh Page

Landing pages and Web sites may look similar, but they serve different purposes. A landing page is essentially sales content designed to get viewers interested in your products or services. Like any effective advertisement, a landing page has a clear message and persuasive content to support that message. Design your landing page around a singular idea.

Whether your service or product is the best, the cheapest or the only one around, use typographic hierarchy to direct viewers toward the takeaway. A typical landing page includes a logo, information that expands on the advertisement and a link or lead form for more information.

As you launch new campaigns, design new pages. Companies with 30 or more landing pages generate seven times more leads than those with fewer than 10, Hubspot reports.

2. Encapsulate the Call to Action

A landing page is about what’s next. As you design your page, focus the reader’s attention on what he or she needs to do to continue down the sales path. Your call-to-action is crucial for conversions, and it needs be a heavily researched.

Encapsulation focuses a page on the most important information. Highlighting the CTA by enclosing it in a circle for instance, forces the readers eye to see it. When the reader clicks through to  the page, he is directed toward the next step.

3. Move Important Information Above the Fold

Web designers often consider the blink test, the three to five seconds when a visitor first lands on your page in which he or she judges it and decides whether to stay. Landing pages are especially prone to the blink test, so all important information must be above the fold.

That may mean paring down the copy or reducing line width to conserve space, but it’s necessary to keep visitors on your page long enough to consume the content. Write landing page copy in the second person using you and your. Visitors want to feel like you’re speaking directly to them,  and this direct language will attract their attention.

4. Get Creative With Copywriting

All the graphics and effects in the world can’t replace great copy. Your message needs to be made clear with you words. Copy that is written for everyone can often do more damage than good. For instance, if you’re selling POS software aimed at small and micro business owners, the words may include “affordable” and “focus on what you love” while large businesses have different goals.

Stay away from all caps or exclamation marks; these are spam triggers that scare customers. Another common sense, but overlooked, tactic is readability. Flashy fonts can be great for leaving a mental mark, but hard-to-read text is frustrating, especially on a mobile device.

5. Test For Success

Think of testing your landing page as practicing a craft. You can’t get better without striving to do so.Test from a data and analytic standpoint and for usability. Test multiple aspects of your page  for quality  A/B split testing. This includes the headline, copy, call-to-action and the positioning of  links, buttons and objects.

You can calculate results with tools from sites such as SEMrush.com. Those sites track organic  positions for domains and landing URLs, search volumes, CPC, competition, number of results and more. Place your call to action in different locations of the page and track the results. A centered CTA might work  better if there are few images yet a large centered image can guide the reader to an off-center CTA.

Test load times. A sluggish page can hurt your conversions and your SEO. An impatient customer might leave your page even though they were ready to buy. Although the results are not definitive, Google has said slow loading websites will have their rankings penalized. Pingdom.com and other similar sites test site speed to analyze it and find bottlenecks.

6. Bring Video Into The Mix

Attention spans are like the dinosaurs of the digital age. In a world where they’re on the brink of extinction, you need something that captures a user’s attention and keeps it. Video can serve as an  equalizer for visitors just looking to pass by. A step-by-step tutorial to show the simple and easy-to-use nature of a product is a great B2B tool. A message from the CEO is often used by startups looking to connect with customers. If you create a great landing page video, don’t be satisfied without testing different taglines to get the best results.

7. Remove Navigation

One of the main principles that separates a landing page from a Web site is navigation. The best landing pages don’t have navigation bars because it forces the visitor to take in the content on the page. Instead of navigation, focus on directional cues to guide the reader.

Tweaking the angle of an image can get the user to naturally read over a pitch or message before leaving the page. The absence of navigation means you will want to have large identifiable buttons heading toward important pages

8. Show Off With Social

Your social media strategy is nothing without a share-friendly landing page. Social media is obviously an integral part of growing a business, but there is a psychological advantage to showing shares and likes.

Social proof, or informational social influence means people will naturally be inclined to imitate a popular action. There are plenty of options like Facebook sharing and follow buttons, embedded tweets or just number of subscribers/customers.

You can find step-by-step embedding instructions with resources like Moz and WordPress. Case studies and testimonials also gain the trust of potential customers. focus on generating conversation, engagement and interest no matter the social route you decide to take. Use Socialcrawlytics.com to learn about your and your competitors social metrics.

Myth Number One: Cold Calling is Dead:

A few years ago, when social media and social selling came out (sales 2.0 they called it), there was an almost euphoric sense that spread among the sales community because everyone suddenly hoped (and, some still hold out the hope), that the worse part of their job was now a thing of the past – cold calling.  With the thousands of potential connections and message boards, and leadership groups, etc. available, it was prophesized that no more would you have to dial endlessly to find the right person, and that by just joining the right group, you would instantly have the key to the corporate suite. 

Suddenly, sales gurus came out with elaborate systems and programs that showed you how you could eliminate the dreaded cold call from your daily life and how, by just crafting the right marketing campaigns or emails, or voice mails or posts, you could generate hundreds of qualified leads who would actually reach out to you.  Life would be grand! 

[Learn how to Combine the New Rules of Social Media, with the Old Rules of Proven Selling Techniques to Maximize Sales!  Join Us for “Sales 2.5” the Webinar Event of 2014!]

Unfortunately, anyone still in sales can tell you that while social selling has changed things, one thing it hasn’t changed is the need to still pick up the phone and have a conversation with a prospect.  O.K., just to show all the sales trainers and blogs, and companies that I’m not still in the dark ages, while many of the outbound calls you have to make may not be completely cold (you may not still be calling from the yellow pages – remember those?), what IS true is that you still have to make calls to people who either don’t know you, or don’t necessarily want to be sold to. 

So, let’s reframe the term cold calling and call it something else.  Since you still have to make outbound calls to sales prospects, you can now call them: Warm Calls, or Introduction Calls, or Follow Up Calls, or Exploratory Calls, or Call Backs, etc..  The bottom line is that if you don’t already have an established relationship with someone, and you have to pick up the phone and qualify and set up a demo or presentation of your product or service, then you have to make a, a…(cold call!). 

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about the most effective way of making those calls.  Since you still need to 1) Get past the gatekeeper, 2) Find a way to instantly build rapport and not sound like everyone else calling your prospect, 3) Qualify your prospect so you’re not wasting your time, 4) Set up a successful demo, etc…

Myth Number Two: Nobody Returns Emails Anymore:

It may seem as if getting a response from an email is as impossible as getting a response from a voice mail, but that’s not true, IF you know how to use the New Rules of email.  Here are two resources for you:

One: If you would like to know how to stand out from your competition, accelerate relationships, Wake-Up silent prospects and actually get clients excited to work with you, then you’ll want to Join Us on Wednesday, June 18^th as Andy Horner shares with you the New Tool of Email in the Age of Social Media!  This could be the most important hour you spend This Year! 

Two: If you’d like a guaranteed email to get over 65% of prospects who haven’t been getting back to you to finally respond to your email, then use this proven email technique:

Subject line: “Should I Stay or Should I Go?”

Dear _________,

I haven't heard back from you and that tells me one of three things:

 

1.  You've filled the position or you've already chosen another company for this.
2. You're still interested but haven't had the time to get back to me yet.
3. You've fallen and can't get up, and in that case please let me know and I'll call 911 for you...

 

Please let me know which one it is because I'm starting to worry.

Honestly, all kidding aside, I understand you're a very busy individual and the last thing I want to do is be pain in the neck once a week. Whether you've just been busy or you've gone another direction, I would appreciate it if you would take a second to let me know so I can follow up accordingly.

Thank you in advance and I look forward to hearing back from you.

Kind Regards,

If this made you smile, then it’ll make your prospects smile, too.  But don’t take my word for how effective this is!  Adjust it to fit your product or service and see for yourself…

Myth Number Three: LinkedIn is Just a Glorified Place to Put a Resume:

Question for you: How many deals, actual sales, have you gotten from LinkedIn?  If your answer is, “Not many,” then you are probably making the mistakes MOST of your competition is making…  For example: If you’re trying to join groups and participate like everyone else, then you’ll get lost just like everyone else.  If you’re building your profile like a resume, then it will get treated like a resume (thrown away!).

If you’d like to learn the REAL way to get leads and sales using LinkedIn, then you absolutely MUST attend Erik Luhrs’ session on LinkedIn in the Webinar Series Event of the Year – Sales 2.5.  Erik will be addressing all these issues and a whole lot more on Tuesday, June 17^th.  Click Here to learn more.

Myth Number Four: Webinars are for Big Companies Only:

Social Media is all about putting you in front of your target audience and positioning you as a subject matter expert.  And webinars are one of the best ways to do this.  So, the question is: How many webinars have you, as a sales professional, put together and successfully run?  Once again, if your answer is, “Not many,” then once again, I’ve got good news for you!

Once you learn the right technology (easy, fast and inexpensive), you can create what is known as “evergreen” webinars that run on demand and still have the look and feel of a new and live webinar.  This means you can be in front of hundreds of potential clients 24/7 without having to do anything (except creating it to begin with). 

If you’d like to know how your competition is using the power of webinars to introduce, educate and win new clients, then you MUST attend Joel Peterson’s powerful and career changing webinar: “How To Leverage The Power Of Webinars To Increase Sales, Attract New Loyal Customers, And Save Time,” on Thursday, June 19^th at 1pm Eastern.  Register Here

I have collected the top experts in their fields to help you Maximize Sales by combining the New Rules (of social media) with the Old Rules (traditional, proven sales and marketing techniques) to help finally make more sales in today’s sales environment. 

So join us the week of June 16^th, for “Sales 2.5: Combining the New Tools with the Old Rules to Maximize Sales.”  After these four webinars, you will finally have the pieces you need to solve the Social Media Selling puzzle.

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan

When you speak at as many events as I have over the past 3 decades, you come to expect certain things.  As you consider each of the following scenarios, try to make a comparison as to how it might compare with the sales calls and presentations you make to groups:

Scenario 1: When I am the keynote speaker at an event, people have much higher expectations of me as a speaker, the entertainment factor, and the potential take-aways from my topic.  It's my job to exceed those expectations.  Compare this scenario to a customer or client whose business you already have, but it's yours to lose...

Scenario 2: When I am one of many speakers at a conference without breakout sessions, I know that people are not there to hear me per se, may have little interest in my topic, and might skip or, if they attend, tune out.  Compare this scenario to presentation day; you are one of many salespeople who will be paraded in and out of a conference room to present to a group of influencers and decision makers - some of whom couldn't care any less about you...

Scenario 3: When I am leading a breakout session, the people in that audience are there specifically to hear me and/or learn more about my topic.  I must first listen to them, let them share what's on their mind, and assure that they get what they came for.  Compare this to a sales call where you have a champion who brought you in, talked highly of you to everyone in the meeting, and you are favored to get the business...

Scenario 4: When I speak to a group who is old school (an industry that is slow to change or a demographic who missed the opportunities to change), I know I'll get a lot of pushback because it's not the way they do things in their world.  Compare this to the sales presentation where the group assembled is currently doing business with someone else and, despite your presence, is reluctant to change...

Do you know what the common denominator is in all four of these scenarios?

Hint: It's not you or me.

Answer: It's your ability to do the following 10 things effectively:

1. Get their attention.
2. Develop some rapport.
3. Ask questions.
4. Listen. 
5. Connect.  Watch this 1-minute video that explains the listen-connect concept.
   
   
    
6. Challenge their thinking.
7. Help them believe in you and your ideas.
8. Get them to agree with an idea, initiative or concept.
9. Get them to agree on a next step.
10. Get them to commit to something.

The only difference between speaking to dozens, hundreds or thousands, and presenting to groups on a sales call, are the number of believers.  It's our job to find a way to get as many people as possible to believe in us, our ideas, our capabilities, our value and the impact we can have on them and their business.

Image Copyright: flynt / 123RF Stock Photo

(c) Copyright 2014 Dave Kurlan

As a community manager, I know that people working in social media are always searching for the ultimate tweet: 140 characters of pure perfection that encourages engagement from their carefully nurtured following.

Sometimes you may just stumble upon a tweet that really captures the imagination of your audience. Sometimes, however, you could spend a seriously long time crafting an update which fails to attract the interests of anyone at all.

You don’t want to end up like the ‘45 day tweet’ that has now become infamous in the Twitter sphere for its lack of engagement after its exhaustive creative process.

You want an Ellen or Barak Obama tweet – well, with a pinch of reality!

But how do you go about creating a tweet with the best chance of engagement success?

A group of scientists from Cornell University and Google believe they have identified the recipe for social success.

Chenhao Tan and his gang of geniuses have analyzed hundreds of tweets, stripping them back to identify the key traits that have helped to generate retweets.

They claim that by incorporating these key features you are optimizing your tweets and encouraging engagement.

We’ve breezed through the research and attempted to present some of the most insightful findings here.

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Ask People to Share

Don’t ask, don’t get. This is a phrase that also applies to tweets.

It sounds obvious, but people are more likely to share if you have promoted them with the use of imploring language.

Using words such as ‘RT’, ‘retweet’, ‘spread’ and ‘please’ to capture specific requests such as “please retweet” can be instrumental in upping RT numbers . Sometimes being blunt will get you the results that you want.

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Be Informative

Tweets that give your audience information that they will find useful have an ‘increased social exchange value’. This means that they have more social importance due to their content providing unknown or new knowledge.

People wish to share tweets that are fundamentally interesting to them and their followers.

There are different theories relating to whether the length of a tweet indicates how informative and retweetable it will be.

For instance, a tweet that has more text is more likely to be shared due to it containing more information than a shorter tweet. But, there are also arguments that support short and concise tweets can have a powerful influence, so striking a balance between the two can be incredibly difficult.

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Echo Your Community

 

Mirroring the wording and style of your community will lead to greater recognition.

You wouldn’t start speaking informally or using colloquialisms to those working in legislation or financial services when meeting them in real life, so why try that approach online?

Understanding your audience and their preferred tone will help you will conform to expectations. If you manage to mirror it accurately, it means that your ideas will be accepted and in turn shared by your followers.

Argoshelpers responded in a hilarious fashion to a tweet by echoing the language of the frustrated customer. This earned them the respect of their community as well as over 9,500 RTs.

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Imitate Newspaper Headlines

Newspapers grab your attention through the power of headlines. They quickly summarize the key point of a story in a way which deliberately entices you to read on.

Using a contained sentence such as this with a link should persuade people to click through, as well as sharing your article with others.

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Include Positive and/or Negative Words

 

By using emotive language, which can either be positive or negative, you will garner a reaction from your audience.

Being vanilla in your approach and having no emotions will result in an audience losing focus.

Nobody would want to retweet something that is just blergh… they want a chocolate fudge sundae with all the toppings!

They need to feel a connection to the tweet to be driven to share it with their community.

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Be General

Using cultural references is a way to connect with your community that is not provocative, but instead focuses on being relatable.

Quotes from movies, books or pop songs are more likely to be retweeted as they can be interpreted in different ways. For instance, this is a quote from the film ‘Love Story’.

“Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”

People who have watched the movie will instantly connect to the tweet. But, those who have never seen it can still relate to the concept behind tweet, potentially making it sharable for all. Bingo!

So, now you know the tricks for creating that perfect tweet! You’re ready to be the next Ellen. You can also read our report on Twitter conversations and its ever changing landscape here: Download Me Please!

High human capital productivity — one key to great financial results — requires hiring the right people, teaming them effectively, and eliminating organizational barriers to high performance. It also requires paying close attention to how people in the organization interact. At many companies, they’re spending way too much time answering emails and attending unproductive meetings.

Why should this be? Blame Metcalfe’s Law.

Robert Metcalfe’s famous dictum states that the value of a network increases geometrically with the number of connected devices. One fax machine is worthless; a million fax machines create a valuable network. But the law has a dark side: as the cost of one-to-one and one-to-many interactions declines, the number of these interactions increases dramatically. And people are interacting more than ever. They are sending scores of emails every day. They are copying many of their colleagues, whether or not those individuals really need to see the message.

Worst of all, they are calling meetings. In the past, organizing a meeting of executives was time-consuming and therefore expensive; assistants had to spend hours on the phone finding times that worked for attendees. Now all they need to do is check Outlook or a similar program and send a quick email. As a result, most executives are spending 20 hours or more every week in meetings. And one meeting usually spawns many more. For example, my colleagues and I found that a single weekly executive committee meeting at a large company generated about 300,000 hours of preparation time each year (the equivalent of nearly 150 full-time-equivalent employees).

But meetings don’t have to get the best of you. You can manage them as closely as you manage every investment. There are four keys:

1. Don’t hold a meeting for the sake of holding a meeting. Meetings are great for some tasks, like gathering input and coming to a group decision. They aren’t so good for other tasks, such as drafting a strategy document. Before calling a meeting, decide whether it’s really the best way to get the job done.

2. Manage the invite list. In many companies it’s bad form not to invite lots of people to a meeting. What people don’t realize is that every additional attendee adds cost. Unnecessary attendees also get in the way. Remember the Rule of 7, which states that every attendee over seven reduces the likelihood of making a good, quick, executable decision by 10%. Once you hit 16 or 17, your decision effectiveness is close to zero.

3. Change the default time on meetings. Not too long ago, most companies called 30-minute meetings. Now the typical default time has grown to 60 minutes, even though every additional minute generates more cost. As my colleagues and I recently noted in HBR, one company established a rule: if a meeting was to last more than 90 minutes, it required approval by an executive two layers up from the convener. This rule quickly cut meeting time.

4. Improve the effectiveness of every meeting minute. You can boost meeting effectiveness through some simple disciplines. Clarify the purpose of every meeting. Spell out people’s roles in decisions. Create a decision log that captures every decision made in a meeting. (If the log is blank, you’ll find that people begin questioning why the meeting was held at all.)

Recently, my colleagues and I heard a story about a U.S. undersecretary of defense who was managing procurement. She came to her first meeting with contractors and saw some 60 people in the room. So she said, “Let’s first create a big circle. We’ll go around the room, and everyone can say who they are and why they’re here.” Participants rolled their eyes  — did they really have to do something this gimmicky? — but did as she asked.

After the first two had identified themselves, the undersecretary said, “Thanks for your interest, but we won’t need you here. You can excuse yourself.” Others met a similar fate. By the time she got to the 10th person in the circle, people all over the room were getting up to leave, knowing they had no real reason to be there. Eventually the group got down to around 12 members — and the human capital productivity of that meeting rose about fivefold.

So Metcalfe’s Law cuts both ways. Capitalize on its value, by all means, but watch out for the costs hidden in its dark side.

Due to the influx of technology and a highly competitive workforce, the nature of the tech job market is fundamentally changing, migrating away from full-time generalists into part-time specialists.

The ability to be an "expert" in a particular area is increasingly valuable. For companies, contracting out to specialists can provide a competitive advantage at a fraction of the cost of hiring full-time employees. In response to this shift, many MBA and undergraduate programs over the past 5-10 years have embraced specialization by offering degrees in a variety of specialized industries.

If you want to create value and kick start a successful career in the tech sector, my advice is to specialize, specialize, specialize! When you're a generalist in something, you may have wide horizontal opportunities — meaning you can bounce from company to company doing the same thing and receiving the same pay — but if you want greater opportunities for advancement, specialization is key. Read more...

More about Seo, Job Search Series, Big Data, Business, and Jobs

The most successful, visionary entrepreneurs dream not of millions of dollars, but of a world where their products change culture. But in technology startups, particularly venture-backed technology startups, the current investment climate does not always support that vision. Conventional wisdom suggests that there are only two ways to exit a company: either it grows such that it can hold an initial public offering, or it gets acquired by or merges with a strategic partner. For as long as it has been an industry, these have been the only two ways for a venture capital-backed company to succeed. There has to be a better way.

It is incredibly hard to hold an IPO. The conventional wisdom on Wall Street for the last 20 years, with notable exception of the technology bubble at the turn of the century, is that to do so, a company needs around $100 million of annualized revenue and a couple of consecutive profitable quarters. Lately, some companies have been able to sneak by with lower valuations, because of sufficiently impressive growth. But analysts are judging EBITDA, P/E ratios, quarterly growth, and cashflows – which don’t always correlate with long-term value creation. And, too often, our obsession with these short-term metrics has the opposite effect. This can lead to bad outcomes for entrepreneurs who hope to create lasting value.

Meanwhile, strategic acquisitions sometime work well, but often don’t. Big acquirers cash out founders, management teams get folded into big organizations, cashflows disappoint, and visions flounder.

We need to find a better way to support small and mid-sized businesses, a key element of our economic infrastructure. With a structure that returns the agency to the founder, that focuses on the true, fully realized vision of the business, rather than short-term profit optimization, one might imagine a different class of company could be created.

There is a nascent but growing community of financial backers, both institutional and individual, who have taken the long view: whose investments look more like mezzanine debt, in the stable case, or like common equity, in the growth case. In either case, a dividend allows an investor to see a return without a traditional “exit” on the part of the company.

Debt capital, from family offices to institutions, provides an alternative route, and an increasingly attractive pathway for companies. If a company has enough cash flow to service it, debt capital offers an opportunity for them to borrow from investors, in a form of venture debt that allows them to continue to grow while staying independent. Patient capital sources have taken note of the increased access to information about private businesses, which has been a primary barrier preventing them from investing directly. As a result, these investors have taken to bypassing fund-of-funds and other financial middle men who trade on information asymmetries. This means that pension money, endowment money, and foundation money is increasingly going straight into startup companies. Most of the capital tends toward the lending platforms today, because they are providing returns at a time when U.S. Treasury yields are barely at 3%. And as the shift away from the industrial economy continues, a wider percentage of this institutional capital will go towards innovation startups through a rise in speculative investing, which has been predicted by a number of Silicon Valley venture capitalists.

Ultimately, high-risk venture capital investors need to be rewarded, ideally with high returns, for an ecosystem of innovation to be sustainable. But venture capitalists have focused on specific markets and business models, because of the constraints of the exit, which is how investors have made their returns to-date. By creating a different type of liquidity opportunity at later stages of a company’s life, with an orientation towards the long-term, perhaps the market of companies worth investing in will evolve, and grow.

Some of the most important social and cultural infrastructure — including schools, networks of the Red Cross, churches, mosques and temples — in our society today has taken a very long time to achieve meaningful scale, and thus, required patient, purposeful supporters. We need to be more ambitious about our innovative businesses: not only that they create millions of dollars in the short and medium term, but that they last in the long term. And the “exit,” at least in its current incarnation, is the best place to start brainstorming solutions.

Can you generate sales on social media?

If you ask a professional agency or an expert, they would say, social media is mainly for creating brand identity. But you can expect sales from social media if you are aware of some basic factors.

First of all, social media cannot help you meeting your sales target overnight. It takes hard work and is pretty time-consuming. But when it starts paying back, there is no looking back. Next up is, your goal to attain on the space. No matter what it is, be sure to establish yourself as a reliable brand first, else your presence will be as good as a useless armchair. Last, but not the least, you need to accept the fact that social media marketing is not free, even though social networks are.

Now let’s move on to the main segment, namely sales generation on social media.

Here are some pointers you need to keep in mind in order to generate sales on the digital space.

Know your audience: Your audience wants to be entertained, on the first hand. So, if you want them to buy your services or products, you need to provide them with some good reasons. For this, you need to figure out what may allure your audience and at the same time what you can do to attract them.

Let’s presume, you own a Thai restaurant. So, you need to figure out the reasons why people would visit your restaurant and what can you offer to make them visit. The best way to get ever more footfalls to your business is, be different. Experiment with your contests, offers, discounts and events.

Have a clear understanding: There are a hundreds ways to meet your sales target, but you must have a clear idea of your path and goal. If you know what you want to achieve and how, half the job is done.

For example, if you are a blogger and want greater traffic to your blog, you need to create a logical and addressable roadmap. So, you must have a comprehensible strategy for your niche, target audience and things to offers.

Create a sense of emergency: For sales generation, we often offer discounts, freebies and deals. If you offer anything similar, make sure you create a sense of emergency with them, else your strategy will not work.

You need to make your audience understand that if they don’t avail the offer now, they will never ever get it. Even if this is not the case, you must project it this way, because people don’t get attracted towards an easily available deal. A sense of urgency will help you take more and more people on board. It’s a common human psychology that always works for marketing.

Add clear call-to-actions: With all your offers and deals, add clear calls to action. Your audience should have a succinct idea of the required action, when they would visit your posts. Be it an ad or an offer, double check if you have mentioned all the required clauses and terms.

For example, if you want people to sign up for your webinar, make it clear in the promotion. Many social media marketing campaigns don’t get the desired results because they fail to project a clear call to action. Don’t be one of them.

Have an email list: Create an email list of your potential buyers. They may belong to your social media community but make sure whoever you add in the list is interested in your offerings; else your email will be counted as spam.

First, you need to create a demand for your product. So you ought to offer free stuff at first. Once your product gets huge popularity and helps you get enough enquiry, move on to the next level and start charging for it.

Spend money on promotion: In order to make sure that your social media promotions are reaching your potential buyers, you need to spend. Social media ads are here to help you. However, if you want to use social media to its utmost potential, use different channels.

Let’s assume that you want to run a Soccer World Cup 2014 discount offer at your food joint. You can create a Facebook page post ad targeting soccer lovers and foodies in your locality. You can run a Soccer quiz on Twitter, offering a 50% discount on the ongoing offer for the winners. The results will be overwhelming. You will not only get a huge footfalls but also new followers and fans.

Measure results: Last but not the least, make sure you track each one of your social media campaigns, only to figure out what works for your audience the best. You can also compare between several campaigns. The data will be extremely helpful for your future campaigns.

It’s often seen that not all of them, who claim your offer on social media, turn up in your storefront. Tracking different campaign results will help you know what the better ways are to prompt your audience to visit your store or to make a purchase decision.

Social media is all about sending your message across and reaching your target audience. Explore and create, you will generate sales too.

Editor’s note: Today’s post is from Erika Goldwater, a veteran in demand generation strategy for early stage companies. Leadspace has been getting buzz lately, I wanted a “how-to” on them and Erika delivered. Enjoy.

Imagine how great it would be to build a profile of your ideal customer, and then find plenty of prospects that match that profile, all in just four easy steps? And what if your sales and marketing teams could easily “vote” on those leads, ensuring only the best of the best make it into your virtual lead database?

That’s exactly what you can do with Leadspace, the leading B2B social demand gen solution. Leadspace uses semantic search technologies, so you can tap into social, internal and external data in real time to discover, enrich and enhance prospect data. What’s more, Leadspace incorporates subjective input as well, using a Pandora-like interface that allows your team to score and prioritize each lead.

The result: You maximize marketing effectiveness and sales conversion, by generating hyper-targeted, accurate, highly relevant lists.

This entire process takes a few minutes. For example, let’s put a quick hypothetical campaign together right now.

Our Campaign Objective: Invite 50 marketing buyers in the Boston area to an exclusive event with key thought-leaders. We’re targeting midsize to large enterprise organizations (based on revenue) in the biotechnology industry. This is an invitation-only event, and space is very limited – so there is no room for error in inviting the wrong person, it could cost a sales opportunity. The list needs to be impeccably targeted to support a comprehensive campaign including multi-touch email, direct mail and tele-prospecting.

Here we go:

Step 1 – Define our Ideal Buyer Profile

We can leverage Leadspace to automatically generate an Ideal Buyer Profile by incorporating explicit user input as well as analyzing existing customers and pulling relevant profiles or companies into the Leadspace virtual database using key titles, industries, verticals, products and technologies information–while simultaneously searching the social web for both structured and unstructured data.

Step 2 – Refine our Ideal Buyer Profile

We can add additional criteria or select more information to build a more detailed profile, one that will tighten the focus of our search. Our Profile can go far beyond title and basic keywords. Every job function, product and technology associated with the lead receives a ranking which can be easily tweaked on the fly to perfectly reflect our preferences. Leadspace will use our live “Pandora-like” feedback on prospects to suggest additional criteria to improve relevance, helping to build an optimal profile.

Leadspace provides a wealth of accurate data on every lead to aid our prospecting efforts. Notice the simple, Pandora-esque thumbs-up, thumbs-down rating capability.

Step 3 – Build our list

Now it’s time to set the parameters of the lead list. We can have Leadspace search for leads in our own list of companies, companies we already do business with, and/or find some new ones using unique “social” indicators such as which technology the company is using. We would then select the Ideal Buyer Profile for this list and add other qualifiers we’d like, such as company revenue, number of employees, and location. We can also suppress the list against our CRM or against a list of existing leads; a very important feature when it comes to the overall efficacy of our list.

Searching for new companies to target? Leadspace makes it easy through both firmographic and “social” indicators.

Done. Targeted list generated.

4 – Review our list and add it to our Marketing Automation or CRM system

And that’s it. Four easy steps, just a few minutes of time, and an instant real-time search of the entire web that generates targeted, accurate and segmented information on prospects that closely match our Ideal Buyer Profile.

If you want to learn more, check out Leadspace.

 

Erika Goldwater is a 15 + year marketing veteran specializing in demand generation strategy for early stage companies. She focuses on maximizing marketing ROI and driving revenue for companies like Leadspace, ANNUITAS and Eloqua.

Ever wondered how good you are at marketing? Of course you have. At some point in our lives, we’ve all wondered how good we are at marketing. With the advent of social media marketing, things got a little more complicated. Social media and digital marketers often boast about how many followers their pages and accounts have, how many retweets they get, the amount of sales leads that they’re able to generate – and more.

But are those truly the metrics that measure how good a marketer is? Is that the best we can do when coming up with trying to quantify how good a marketer is? 10,000 likes and 5,000 followers? Surely there has to be a better way.

As a marketer, I’ve often thought about this. I’ve tried hard not to measure my worth based on a single campaign’s execution, or on vanity metrics such as likes, shares and follows – but instead, on what people say about my work and the kind of feedback I get. The problem with that source of measurement is that I’m unable to quantify it.

According to the Social Marketer’s Quiz, a 10-round quiz aimed at marketers that has been taken by more than 1,000 people so far, a marketer should be judged based on the following 10 broad areas:

• How well they engage with their audience.
• How good the content they create is.
• Their level of experise in Facebook marketing.
• Their general grasp of Marketing and Advertising.
• How ethical they are as a marketer.
• Their ability to handle a crisis.
• Their level of expertise in Twitter marketing.
• Their understanding and grasp on analytics.
• A mastery of Search Engine Optimization.
• General knowledge around social media.

It’s hard to give marketers a level playing field – a platform where they simply answer questions or are given scenarios to react to.

For example, consider this question:

There are a million ways to respond to this (well, maybe 5) – and it would depend on the marketer on how to respond to this situation.

Some would flat out go ahead and delete the comment from the competitor, some would reply to the comment treating the competitor as a customer (sneaky, sneaky!) and some would ignore it. Some would react based on company guidelines – but everyone would have some kind of a response, even if it’s passive.

And I feel that – is where a marketer’s true worth comes out. In reacting to real life situations. It doesn’t matter if the CTR on your ad is 1.04% or 1.98% – what really matters is how you swing a story in your favor, what kind of an idea you come up with to get your next product launch make some waves (no, I won’t say viral) and how you react to bad customer feedback.

Marketing is a heavily qualitative game, but with the advent of digital media, analytics is freely and easily available, thereby giving us a very interesting and informative analytical aspect as well.

Ever wondered how good you are at marketing? How did you measure it?