How to sell anything using social media
This article by John Jantsch first appeared on Duct Tape Marketing. Any opinions expressed are his own.
One of my predictions for 2012 is that more people will come to understand that you can indeed do business using social networks and, frankly, I’m already seeing it.
First off, people are getting more comfortable with social media and social behavior. The idea is fading that social media is a pure engagement temple mentality.
More importantly, however, is that smart marketers are testing, tweaking and trying lots of things and figuring out how to build know, like and trust – the path to selling anything, anywhere – on social networks.
In my own experimenting I can tell you that generating and converting leads using social media takes a more patient approach, but once you find the right path, it’s actually a better way to sell in any environment.
The reason I see many people’s social media marketing efforts fail is that they are still simply broadcasting sales messages. This approach still works to some degree in an advertising setting because people often stumble upon your ads with a buying intent. It still works to some degree in email marketing efforts because people have asked to get your messages and you can easily earn the right to sell in that relationship.
However, most people don’t participate in social networks to shop so any sales message can feel sort of harsh and in the snack sized, feverish world of tweets, shares and likes any and all messages are very easy to ignore.
2012: The year of the artist-entrepreneur
(This article by Michael Wolf originally appeared in GigaOm.)
(GigaOm) – While 2011 was a big year for political unrest, another uprising was afoot in the world of content creators and artists. Everywhere you look, artists are taking more control over their own economic well being, in large part because the Internet has enabled them to do so. You see it in all forms of content, from books, to video to music.
A few examples from this year:
e-books: Probably the most active area in large part because there is huge shifts taking place in digital publishing. From former mid-list writers like Barry Eisler to superstars like JK Rowling, writers are increasingly making waves in digital publishing.
Video: The story of the year for artists-as-entrepreneur came at the tail-end, with Louis CK saying no thank you to corporate middlemen and putting his new concert video online for $5 a pop.
Radio/Music: All sorts of independent entrepreneurs are putting audio entertainment online, from the rise of podcast kings like Leo Laporte to a huge number of independents like Adam Carolla and Marc Maron. Music artists are being given freedom too, through new platforms to create and share their music like Soundcloud.
I hope you become a pioneer entrepreneur in time of crisis as to day,to be able to create employment opportunities in your country at least.
Small business defense against cybercrime
Small businesses can innocently expose themselves to cybercrime when an employee opens an email that appears to be from the CEO, not updating the anti-virus program or having a laptop lost or stolen.
Eduard Goodman, Chief Privacy Officer for Identity Theft 911 has seen an increase in small businesses being targeted for cybercrime within the last five to seven years. Highly desirable data include customer information lists and personally identifiable information such as social security numbers, dates of birth and account numbers.
A recent survey by Symantec and the National Cyber Security Alliance shows 85 percent of small business owners believe their company is safe from hackers, viruses, malware or a cyber-security breach. Sixty-nine percent rely on Internet security for their business’s success.
Yet, the same survey shows 77 percent don’t have a formal Internet security policy for employees and 49 percent don’t even have an informal policy.
So how can small businesses protect themselves?
Ensuring your business has the latest anti-virus, spyware and firewall programs is one method of protection, according to Goodman. Training on how to recognize phishing emails is essential as fraudsters will send emails from someone like the CEO of a company so employees think they have to open the email.
“Question what you’re clicking on, question where it’s coming from,” says Goodman. Have an awareness to take that extra 10 seconds to ask ‘Hey did you send me something? Is it legit?’”
Interesting article. Small business owners often don’t recognize the real threat fraud poses to their companies. Whether it’s cybercrime, check fraud, employee theft or customer shoplifting, small businesses need to be proactive in equipping themselves to avoid fraud. Thanks for illustrating how important it is for business owners to identify weaknesses in security and find the correct resources to help protect their businesses.
Camille Sobalvarro, Intuit Fraud Center
Website: http://intuitmarket.intuit.com/fpc/fpc.a spx
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Intuit-Fra ud-Center/310653812284116?sk=info
Twitter: @Fraud_Center
Building a bridge to the life you want
The average worker spends about 100,000 hours of his/her life working. In Rich Horwath’s experience most people work at jobs they don’t like. Making a plan though can help one have the “greatest days of their lives” according to Horwath, a business strategist.
In his book Strategy for You: Building a bridge to the life you want (to be published in January 2012) Horwath outlines a five-step plan for building a bridge to the life you want. Entrepreneurial spoke with Horwath about how one can create a successful life for themselves.
What does the bridge symbolize in your book?
The bridge symbolizes how you get from where you are today to the goals and objectives that one sets for themselves. In the real world a bridge spans obstacles or barriers. Strategy helps you span or overcome the obstacles you might face.
Step one: Discover
Uncover your process through insight. How is our career? How are our finances, relationships? How is our health? It demands understanding where we are today, where we want to go and then building a bridge to get there.
Step two: Differentiation
A new lifeline for inner city businesses
Reuters spoke to Mary Kay Leonard, CEO of the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, a Boston-based national non-profit that educates investment-ready inner-city businesses about growth capital. The group last week held its seventh annual Inner City Capital Connections Program to match companies with capital providers in conjunction with Bank of America and Fortune magazine.
Q: What is ICIC?
A: ICIC is a national non-profit based in Boston. We’re basically a research and strategy firm focused on growing jobs in the most economically distressed areas in our cities. One of the issues we know that businesses in the inner cities face, especially smaller businesses, is the ability to access capital.
Q: Describe the Inner City Capital Connections Program.
A: We’ve tweaked it over the years, but essentially it finds strong and growing inner-city businesses that could grow more, but for capital. We bring them together for a full day of executive education that helps them understand what their capital needs are, and what’s the best source of capital. We do some coaching for them around how do you pitch for capital, because debt is very different from equity.
Q: What sources of capital are represented?
How small businesses can hire the right people
Doug and Polly White have seen small businesses use all kinds of questionable hiring practices. There was the entrepreneur who hired anyone looking for work. Then there was the woman who hired and fired her sister twice. The list goes on.
In their book, Let Go to GROW: why some businesses thrive and others fail to reach their potential , the Whites found from their business consulting that entrepreneurs often don’t know how to hire employees.
“No one is born knowing how to hire and manage people,” said Polly. “You come into this with no clue how to hire and manage people. So entrepreneurs often end up hiring friends and family. While your friends and family may be right for a job in your organization it’s not always the right way to go.”
Entrepreneurial interviewed the Whites about the five steps businesses can follow in order to hire the right people.
1. Know what you need
Hire someone based on their behaviors and cognitive capabilities.
I think these are very good suggestions. However, good communication skills can be taught and there are extremely cost effective resources that can teach the entire staff to communicate more effectively.
Often, people with high levels of communication skills will not be priced for the small business person to hire. They will be picked up by larger companies with more attractive offers.
So, it is important for the small business owner to understand where cost effective resources are.
Yes, you can screen for skils and attitudes. But probably more important is for the small business owner to decide the type of culture they are operating from and the values and behaviors that support this.
The small business owner, for example, that is very command and control oriented when the rubber meets the road will be out of step with the idea of building cooperation, for example. And, again, these skills can also be taught when the small business ower is self reflective and willing to grow, too.
Dianne Crampton
corevalues.com
from MediaFile:
So you want to be a space entrepreneur…
What's cooler than being an Internet entrepreneur? Making a living as a space entrepreneur.
A handful of space-age capitalists convened at the Techonomy conference in Tucson, Arizona this week to discuss the opportunities and challenges of the burgeoning field of intergalactic commerce.
Among the promising business opportunities waiting in the heavens: new and plentiful sources of energy, resource extraction, zero-gravity manufacturing, real estate and tourism.
“Going after an asteroid that’s the size of this room, that literally is a 30-meter long asteroid that has $15 billion worth of platinum rare metals, that’s going to happen someday,” said one of the panelists.
Within five years, predicted another, tourists will be able to take a voyage all the way around the moon.
The space entrepreneurs, from companies including Virgin Galactic, Arkyd Astronautics and Planetary Power, grumbled about many of the same types of day-to-day problems that bedevil their terrestrial counterparts, from access to funding to the pace of technological innovation. Regulations in space are murky and another potential trouble spot.
“There’s things like if I was going to go to a defunct satellite and claim it’s mine. Well I can’t, because whoever put it up there in the first place… But then there’s, 'Who’s to say that I can’t go the moon and start my own country'? Who has the jurisdiction over that?” asked another panelist. “It’s kind of what you can get away with.”.
Startup BitGym aims to inspire geeks to work out with iPads, iPhones
– Alastair Goldfisher is a contributor for PE Hub and acting Editor-in-Charge at Venture Capital Journal, both Thomson Reuters publications. This article originally appeared here. Any views expressed are his own. –
With more and more VC-backed personal health and fitness companies targeting the hardcore exercise fanatic, it was only a matter of time before a startup emerged to go after the less enthusiastic cardio burner.
Witness BitGym, a startup being launched out of the Rock Health accelerator in San Francisco that says it has raised “some” seed funding.
The aim of the company’s technology is to make exercise seem more like a video game rather than a workout. “Running sucks now. That’s where we come in,” the company says on its website.
Users put their iPhone or iPad on the rack of any treadmill, elliptical machine or stationary bike and the BitGym app syncs with the machine to portray, for instance, a car driving on a race track. With a forward-facing camera, the BitGym app could track the eye so that the user can steer the game with head movements.
When I told the co-founders how much I run and bike and that I don’t use treadmills, they said I’m not part of the target market.
from MediaFile:
Confused about media and ad technologies? There’s a Lab for that.
Between the bazillion ad technology companies all claiming to revolutionize online advertising and an explosion of devices and services that promise to deliver movies straight from the Internet to the TV, it's a full time job keeping tabs on what can do what.
That's why Interpublic Group's Mediabrands launched Media Lab last Thursday, a 5,000 square foot space dedicated to learning and figuring out which end is up with various technologies available to marketers.
IPG vets technology before it can even make it to the front door of the Lab -- meaning just because it's out there doesn't mean it makes the cut for testing. More than 500 companies are in its database and the Lab keeps in radio contact with venture capital firms and emerging media and tech related companies both large and small to stay on top of trends.
During a recent tour of the Lab in mid-town Manhattan -- it targets high level chief marketing officers who usually make the rounds in a four hour stint -- this reporter was greeted by a television screen that switched its programming based on gender facial recognition.
There was the room with a nice comfy sofa in front of several flat screen TVs that had just about every kind of over-the-top service, including Google TV and its one very confusing remote. There was a mock retail store that showed off technology that helped clerks stock popular items (and those less popular). And a mock store-front window that showed off the latest collections inside and allowed people to order clothes right off the window -- even if the shop was closed for the day.
The Lab isn't just there to show off. It's also expected to pull its weight within IPG and help make money for the colossal ad holding company, Matt Seiler, global CEO of Mediabrands, explained. For instance, the Lab is very much a VAR (tech parlance for "value added retailer') selling the technology to marketers as a third party vendor. It also makes money by consulting with brands.
from MediaFile:
The Life of Jack: Twitter/Square co-founder details his grueling workweek
Managing a fast-growing tech start-up is not a job that everyone is cut out for.
Managing two of today’s hottest start-ups simultaneously? That’s a feat that could overwhelm even some of the corporate world's biggest egos.
Somehow, Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of microblogging service Twitter and mobile payment company Square, is managing to pull it off, putting in 8 hour days at each of the two companies every day, without collapsing into a pile of jello.
How does he do it?
Dorsey, who serves as Chairman of Twitter and CEO at Square, shed some light on his double-duty worklife during a talk at the Techonomy conference in Tucson, Arizona on Sunday.
The key, Dorsey explained, is to “theme” his workdays, with each day of the week dedicated to specific matters. Below is the schedule of Dorsey’s grueling workweek, as explained at the conference:
