7 Myths About Social Selling That You Probably Believe

Here are the myths and the opposing ideas:

1. Social selling takes a lot of time.

Actually, you can get enough done to see results with just 30 minutes a day.

2. You have to know a lot about social media to do social selling right.

If you wait until you’re a master at social media, you may never get started. Basic skills and some common sense are all you need to do well. The whole social selling thing is far less technically challenging that it appears.

3. Social selling is all about the data.

In part, that’s true. But the data is useless without all your well-tested sales experience. You’re not anywhere near being obsolete.

4. Social selling can be automated.

Again, some parts can be automated – like content sharing, and some email marketing. But you must reach out to contacts with customized messages that show you’ve done some research on them. Nobody likes automated social media messages.

5. All content is shared via social media.

Email is a more active sharing channel than social is. There’s actually more sharing going on via “dark social” than on any social platform.

6. It’s okay to stick with cold calling.

Not if you want to be competitive.

7. Social selling means LinkedIn marketing.

Surprisingly, Facebook and Twitter outperform LinkedIn for some social sellers. It depends on your business and your particular social selling techniques.

Want all that in a nutshell? Here it is:

Don’t get spooked by social selling. You’ve already got all the essential skills you need to do it well. Learn a bit about the different messaging tactics and the etiquette of different platforms, and you’ll do fine.

  Source: http://bit.ly/1RQ6oHK

9 Crazy Tips to Become a Successful Entrepreneur in Half the Time

Being a successful entrepreneur means constantly learning new skills along the way. These tips are what makes the most successful entrepreneurs and can be lessons for any new entrepreneur to follow to ensure their own success.

1. EFFECTIVE PLANNING

Effective planning is an essential skill in all-successful entrepreneurs. Setting strategic goals will allow you to progress and develop any business. Planning means to plan your day effectively as well as being able to set goals that you want to achieve.

2. EXPAND BUSINESS

A one-man business can only do so much. Expand your business beyond your comfortably level; the problem with most businesses is they play it to safe. How can you scale your business?

3. WAKE UP EARLY

Successful entrepreneurs are people who are able to start their day early in order to plan their time effectively to get things done. The most important trait with any successful entrepreneur is showing up and when working for yourself this is a skill that is even more important to learn.

4. EXERCISE

Being your own boss can be stressful in itself. Look to exercise not only to keep yourself fit but also as a way to relief stress. Balance between fitness and business is an essential skill for success.

5. BELIEVE IN YOURSELF

Positive thinking always brings you one step closer to success. If you believe you will fail, then your mind begins to think of ways to make you fail. Don’t be afraid to think big but above all else it starts with believing in yourself first and then others will also gain confidence in you as well.

6. LEARN…LEARN…LEARN

Being successful means that you need to always find new ways of achieving goals. As you progress in your own business you will find that you gain a new set of skills and its extremely important that you not only sharpen your skills but continue to learn new things on a daily basis…success means that you are always learning.

7. LOOK FOR SOLUTIONS NOT OBSTACLES

Obstacles are a natural phenomenon when starting your own business. The most successful entrepreneurs look at obstacles as challenges that need to be overcome. When you face an obstacle, punch through it and don’t allow it to slow you down.

8. LEARN FROM FEEDBACK

Feedback is essential. This will teach you where your strengths and weaknesses lie. Even the most critical feedback will show you how you can improve and become better.

9. LEARN TO SAY NO

One of the most difficult things is to learn to say no. The most successful entrepreneurs are the people who are able to say no to those tasks that take up too much time or projects that don’t align with their purpose.

How many of these tips are you following on a consistent basis? The key is to create habits that produce success, it doesn’t happen over night but through practicing what other successful entrepreneurs are doing you will reach your own success.

If I can be of any help, please don’t hesitate to reach out!

Source : http://bit.ly/1VuVMvf

FIVE RULES FOR CONTENT MARKETERS IN 2016

It’s the most wonderful time of the year: 2016 planning. With the New Year around the corner, we know content marketers are looking for insights and trends that will shape the year ahead and help their content stand out.

This morning, we released findings from one of the industry’s largest and broadest global surveys of consumer views on digital content. We surveyed more than 12,000 consumers across six countries to get a deeper understanding of evolving consumer expectations and how they are fueling marketers’ challenge. The report, titled “State of Content: Rules of Engagement for 2016” sheds light on five rules for content marketers to follow in optimizing engagement with their target audiences.

Design for the Multiscreen Reality

Consumers report using five different devices and, on average, 83 percent use 2.23 devices at the same time. While the majority of consumers report feeling good about it (81 percent entertained, 80 percent connected, 76 percent productive), nearly half (47 percent) say they are distracted. As attention spans shrink, good design and optimization are paramount. Consumers ranked display (65 percent) as the most important aspect when it comes to content experience in their personal life, and 54 percent listed overall good design, such as appealing layout and photography as important. Content marketers can’t attempt to “get away with” a one-size-fits all approach to content distribution: content must be well-designed and optimized for each viewing device.

Don’t Fall Victim to #TLDR (Too Long, Didn’t Read)

Consumers report lower patience for sub-par content experiences – with length a key factor. Nearly 9 out of 10 digital device users would switch devices or stop viewing content altogether if it fails to meet their quality, length and formatting expectations. Sixty seven percent of consumers would stop engaging if content is too long, and 79 percent would do the same if the content doesn’t display well on their device. Marketers need to deliver content in the right format, get to the point and optimize or consumers might say #unsubscribe.

Humor Makes Brands More Relatable

Seventy percent of global consumers agree that humor makes companies more relatable, but just 14 percent rate company-created content as entertaining. Globally, “making people laugh” was identified as the top personal motivator for sharing content. Content marketers should work to create authentic activations that entertain to help drive brand engagement.

In Our Relationships We Trust

In an era of high skepticism, authenticity and trust are critical. Consumers are more likely to engage with content they trust, but many are highly skeptical of most content they view online: 50 percent of consumers question whether negative comments or reviews have been removed, 49 percent wonder if an author was paid or incented to write a positive review, and 48 percent question whether a news article is biased. However, consumer trust in content increases as their relationship with the source grows stronger. Only 23 percent of consumers trust content from companies whose products they don’t buy, but if the source is a company from whom they do purchase products and have a relationship, that number nearly doubles to 43 percent. Brands need to work on building trusted relationships with their audience, which includes disclosing any endorsements, sponsorships and affiliations.

Don’t Show Up Uninvited

The majority of consumers understand the value of predictive recommendations, with 73 percent noting they are willing to share at least one piece of information about themselves and 71 percent reporting they are open to predictive recommendations from brands based on past behavior. Among consumers not willing to share their information, 40 percent believe companies could do something to ease their concern and 25 percent suggested “asking permission to access data” would make them more comfortable. This maps back to trust; consumers are most comfortable sharing information with brands they trust.

In addition to these insights shaping content marketing in 2016, the study also unveiled interesting findings about online engagement and behavior. For instance, there’s a rising fear of digital footprints. Twenty-six percent of U.S. consumers have cleared their browser history to hide content they viewed from a friend or loved one, and 17 percent have hid or embellished the truth about the content they regularly consume.

Source : http://adobe.ly/1OYCQGA

What Can I Learn By Using Marketing Automation Software?

Ideally, marketing automation software allows companies to track, analyze, and nurture prospects with highly personalized, useful content that helps convert prospects to customers and turn customers into brand advocates. Marketing automation software introduces precision and process to both lead generation and lead nurturing campaigns through its ability to track, score, and assign leads efficiently.

To further illustrate these concepts, I’ve taken the liberty of breaking down the knowledge that can be gained from marketing automation software into three major areas of emphasis.

1. Lead Quality

Most prospects visiting your company’s website and consuming your content have not yet entered a purchase-ready mentality. As such, sending and assigning leads near the top of the sales funnel to the sales team annoys prospects and wastes sales representatives’ valuable time. Instead, marketers should offer educational content to advance the prospect down the sales funnel before assigning them to a sales rep. Marketing automation software makes this process easy by utilizing lead scoring.

Lead scoring is a practice of attributing point values to certain attributes or actions taken by leads to measure their fit for your products/services and readiness to make a purchase. Examples include:

• The company they work for
• The industry they work in
• Demographic information
• Volume of website visits
• Specific forms submitted (downloads and/or requests)
• Specific pages visited

When leads reach a certain score, they are automatically shared with a sales rep, and the rep can immediately see the contact’s history of interactions with your brand. In essence, the higher the score, the higher the priority for a sales touchpoint. This allows sales reps to use their time wisely, concentrating their efforts on highly qualified sales leads rather than wasting time on low-quality leads unlikely to convert. Oh, and it’s worth mentioning again this entire process is completely automated.

2. Buyer Journey

Another area of emphasis is the buyer journey. Marketing automation software also gives marketers the ability to understand a buyer’s journey from the very first encounter with the brand to the purchase (and beyond). This knowledge is critical to decreasing the sales cycle by presenting prospects with relevant content that will hasten the path to the purchase.

For example, ABC Company notices, through marketing automation, that 90% of their customers visit the company website at least three times, visit the pricing page, and request a consultation before making a purchase. Wouldn’t it be wise, then, for ABC Company to make it a goal to have every lead go through this journey? I know I would if I were them. Specifically, I would use lead nurturing emails to make sure they make it back to my website at least three times, obviously using the pricing page and consultation landing page as my featured email links. I may even redesign my website with this information in mind; if not my entire website, at least the homepage.

Tip: I would also encourage ABC Company to assign a significant point value to each of the proven high-conversion actions—i.e. three web visits, a visit to the pricing page, and a consultation request—when setting up their lead scoring.

The goal here is to use marketing automation software and tactics to discover trends that will shorten the sales cycle and convert more customers by using information relevant to the purchasing process identified through analytics. Say that five times fast…

3. ROI

Return. On. Investment. Every marketer and business executive seeks a clearer understanding of ROI, and it is not difficult to understand why. In its simplest form, the ROI metric is asking the question “Is it working?” With marketing automation software, that question is easy to answer. You can analyze a particular campaign as a whole and/or by each sub-element (ebook, blog post, social post, ad, etc.) to understand how many leads generated or nurtured by the campaign became customers. You can also determine whether the aggregate customer purchases stemming from the campaign outweighed the price of the campaign’s execution. Easy as pie.

There you have it! I hope this gives you a clearer understanding of the various things you can learn by using marketing automation software.

Source : http://bit.ly/1IcQdQA

5 Things Tech Entrepreneurs Should Do Instead of Learning to Code

There’s a prevalent train of thought running amuck through the tech startup world: Entrepreneurs believe learning to code will boost their credibility, provide them with a deeper understanding of their businesses, and transform their abilities to lead their troops. Many will run to Codecademy, take a few courses, and expect to be able to write an enterprise app. This is comparable to taking a few guitar lessons and challenging Jimmy Page to a face-off; it’s not going to end well for you.

While understanding code could certainly be helpful, it’s a far cry from being acritical skill for most tech entrepreneurs. If you have at least one developer and you’re still coding, you are ignoring your core responsibilities. That’s why I’m going against the grain here and discouraging tech entrepreneurs from learning to code. There are way more important things you should be doing with your time.

Why Leaders Shouldn’t Learn to Code

If you’re starting out by yourself, there’s some merit in learning to code. Most entrepreneurs are great idea people. Knowing how to actually implement ideas could separate you from the endless line of people hoping to create the “next Facebook.”

However, as soon as you hire a single capable engineer, whatever coding skills you have are no longer necessary. One solid engineer could implement more in two weeks than you could in six months — and it would likely be more robust and scalable.

Every minute you spend in the trenches learning a programming language from the ground up is time your customers are being ignored, your marketing isn’t being executed, and your company is running without direction.

You’re the leader — focus on the overall vision of your company. Leave the code to the competent, career-oriented coders.

Instead of wasting time gaining skills your team already has, you should be coaching and guiding your team toward stardom. These five actions will provide much more value to your brand than teaching your computer a for-loop operation to ask your name and repeat it back to you:

1. Draft a Spec Doc

Even if you can code, taking the time to think through and map out actual customer needs, user flows, and interactions is essential to creating a successful company. Having a more detailed product plan with specifics will not only improve your company, but it will also greatly help in product development (as well as hiring great talent).

2. Evaluate Customers

The single most important thing a leader can bring to the team is a clear understanding of customer and market need. Although most leaders would probably claim to have a good understanding of their target customers, it is rare to find one who actually spends enough time studying and interacting with them. If you don’t fully understand the situations, stories, and users of your product, what (or who) are you even designing it for? Anyone can make up a target customer, but real people in the real world rarely act how you think they will.

3. Recruit Actual Software Engineers

If you were to spend a year learning the foundations of computer programming, you’ll likely end up with a crap junior coder (you) who has no real understanding of what they’re doing. Instead, you should hire an experienced engineer, place your clearly developed vision in his hands, and tell him to put the pedal to the metal. Now that is a winning formula.

4. Sell Your Product

Sales are the lifeblood of any company. Without them, you have nothing. So get out and pitch your product to customers, and then assess the ensuing feedback loop. These early pitches will teach you an immense amount about the needs and wants of your target audience. Imagine how helpful this information will be when you’re training your first sales hires!

5. Pitch to Investors

Nearly every business reaches a point where it needs outside funding to grow beyond being an experiment. If this is the path you’re going to go down, you — as the face of the company — need to be able to speak convincingly to potential investors. This takes a lot of practice, but it’s your job to draw interest in your project and get people to sign on the dotted line.

Coding is a valuable skill, but it’s definitely not a necessary one for a leader just because it’s a tech-based business. Leading a company is a skill in itself, and nobody expects a CEO to understand how to code any more than a software engineer is expected to know how to run a successful company. Instead, stick to your strengths, and hire all-star coders to make your vision a reality.

Source : http://bit.ly/1NG8RT7

THE 5 QUESTIONS SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE ROUTINELY ASK THEMSELVES

BEN FRANKLIN BEGAN AND ENDED HIS DAY BY ASKING HIMSELF QUESTIONS ABOUT THE GOOD HE WOULD DO THAT DAY. HERE ARE FIVE QUESTIONS THAT WILL HELP YOU TAKE STOCK OF YOUR GOALS, FEARS, AND FAILURES TO BECOME A BETTER VERSION OF YOURSELF.

While everyone has a different definition of professional success, the one thing all successful people share in common is a drive to be better than the day before.

Whether you’re looking for a new job, looking to make your company a success, or just reaching for the next rung on the career ladder, forward momentum is key.

In the hustle and bustle, we can often skip asking ourselves the big questions. These questions are necessary to ensure we’re keeping our goals in sight and moving in the right direction.

Once upon a time, another entrepreneur, leader, and inventor asked himself the tough questions. His name was Benjamin Franklin.

In the book, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, author Mason Currey took a look at the daily rituals of some of the most successful and artistic people throughout history. Franklin, for instance, started and ended his day by asking two self-improvement questions: In the morning he asked himself, "What good shall I do this day?" In the evening, he wrapped up by asking, "What good have I done today?"

Bookending his day with these simple questions helped Franklin focus on his goals and point his efforts in the right direction. Similarly, the most successful people never stop questioning and never stop seeking answers.

Here are five questions successful people ask themselves in order to reach their goals:

1. AM I IN THE RIGHT NICHE?

Sometimes the career trajectory we chose years ago just doesn’t fit as well today. Often times we lose the passion we once felt for our business, job, or career path in general. It’s possible you haven’t even considered in quite some time whether you’re in the correct niche or following the right path.

Knowing your niche can help you set successful goals in your professional life. It can help you determine what niche job boards might hold your next big opportunity, what networking events you should attend, and even whom you should retweet on Twitter. Diving deep into your niche means you have sincere passion for your industry, and this passion will shine through everything you do.

2. AM I FAILING BETTER?

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better," said writer Samuel Beckett. When it comes to accomplishing your goals and getting where you need to be in your career, this is good advice to follow.

You cannot be so afraid to make mistakes that you never truly take risks in your career. However, you should also be learning from the mistakes you do make and the times you’ve failed. Look critically at your mistakes and see if you’re failing better, or just failing.

Write down three of your biggest career mistakes, and then come up with a plan to address these errors and turn your negatives into positives. Take a class, do some reading, or ask advice from a mentor. Mistakes are teachable moments in disguise; so don’t let these learning opportunities pass you by.

3. AM I DOING SOMETHING THAT SCARES ME EVERY DAY?

Without risk, there’s no reward. Only by facing your fears can you overcome them. In your professional life, you should be constantly challenging yourself and pushing beyond the limits of what you thought was possible.

Otherwise, you’re likely to become complacent in your job and disengaged with your career. If you’ve fallen into the 70% of the American workforce disengaged on the job, it’s time to tune back into your professional life, and this means facing your fears. Asking for a professional challenge is rarely a mistake, and can give you a new goal to strive for.

4. DO I HAVE A GAME PLAN TO REACH MY GOALS?

You wouldn’t try to climb Mount Everest without a map, right? So why do so many of us rush into battle with our career without devising a strategy to ensure victory? Before starting a job search, a business, or even a negotiation for a new deal, you need to sit with yourself and ask the tough questions.

What do you really want? Why do you deserve it? And, most importantly, what steps do you need to take to achieve your goal? Your goals might initially seem too big to conquer, so your game plan should be all about breaking it down into manageable pieces. 

Starting your own business might seem like a big goal, and you might feel overwhelmed before you even start. Instead, break it into more manageable pieces focusing on developing a vision for your company, putting together a business plan, and finding investors and sources of funding.

Now instead of one hugely insurmountable goal, you have plenty of smaller goals you know you can achieve. No one ever climbed Everest in a single bound, so carefully plan out the steps you’ll need to get to the top of your professional mountain.

5. DO I STILL BELIEVE IN MYSELF?

Before you can achieve your goals, you need to believe in your own abilities. You’ll never reach the finish line if you don’t believe you can run the distance. If you’ve lost the belief in your own talents and abilities, it might be time to take a look in the mirror.

Why don’t you like what you see? Have your skills gotten rusty? Have you become complacent in your job? Or are you just not having fun in your industry anymore? You have to be your own cheerleader if you want to get ahead in your career, which means you need to believe in your ability to get things done.

To reach our goals and succeed, sometimes we have to take a hard look at ourselves. The most successful people aren’t happy with the status quo and understand asking tough questions is a life-long process helping them to achieve more.

What questions do you ask yourself in order to reach your goals? Share in the comments!

Source : http://bit.ly/1Q4G2hU

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6 TRAITS SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEURS ALL SHARE

RESEARCHERS HAVE FOUND THAT SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEURS ACTUALLY HAVE SEVERAL TRAITS IN COMMON.

Entrepreneurs are the 21st century's superheroes. They develop products that make our lives easier and better, create jobs, and inspire us to follow our dreams. But it can be hard getting past the mythology around successful entrepreneurs to see what traits they actually share. That's where empirical evidence comes in handy. Here are six factors researchers say go into the entrepreneurial makeup.

1. MANY DON'T HAVE PRIOR EXPERIENCE

Few top entrepreneurs were experts in their fields when they first launched their ventures. In fact, up to half of all startup founders knew nothing about what they were getting into. Jack Ma, the billionaire founder of the e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, falls into that camp. "I have never written one code," he's said, "Never made one sale to a customer."

2. THEY HAVE BOTH COMMON SENSE AND A WILLINGNESS TO BREAK RULES

So if expertise isn't essential for leaders like Ma, what is? According to Dr. J. Robert Baum, director of entrepreneurship research at the University of Maryland, one key factor is an "experience-based accumulation of skills and explicit knowledge, as well as the ability to apply that knowledge to solve every day problems." In other words, know-how and common sense. Research suggests that although there are many kinds of intelligence that can determine success, practical intelligence is especially critical in the business world.

But being smart only goes so far. You also have to be willing to do some mischief. Researchers at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and the London School of Economics found that successful entrepreneurs have tended to get into trouble as teenagers. According to Ross Levine, who co-authored that study, many future business leaders were keen on "breaking the rules and taking things by force" in their youths.

For example, Dean Kamen, a successful entrepreneur with over 150 patents to his name, often challenged his teachers and refused to show them his math calculations because he didn’t see the point. That resistance to doing what you’re told seems to serve entrepreneurs well in challenging the status quo.

3. THEY HAVE A KNACK FOR TAKING RISKS

A knack for taking risks is a third factor. However, the Berkeley-LSE study found that entrepreneurs are driven less by their love of risk-taking than by aversion to losing. The researchers defined loss aversion as a fear of losing one’s salary and prestige at a full-time job. The larger the loss aversion, the more effort an entrepreneur will put into succeeding.

Entrepreneurs also share confidence in the face of risk, a trait that usually comes in two varieties—general and task-specific. A blend of the two is a strong indicator of entrepreneurial success, as business leaders need to be able to step into the unknown, believing they can turn an idea into something of widespread value despite the challenges that stand in their way.

Take Elon Musk, for example, an entrepreneur whose confidence never seems to flag as he launches one bold new venture after another. "Starting a company is like eating glass and staring into the abyss," he said at the New York Times Dealbook conference in 2013. "If you feel like you are up for that, then start a company."

4. THEY LEARN FROM THEIR MISTAKES

Lest confidence shade into hubris, though, entrepreneurs have to stay humble enough to learn from their experiences—including failure. Some researchers have found that overconfidence can actually be a liability, clouding judgment and creating an illusion of control. That can lead to poor choices. For instance, in 2012 in a statement about the management shakeup, Blackberry CEO Thornsten Heins stated: "At the very core of RIM—at its DNA—is the innovation. We always think ahead. We always think forward. We sometimes think the unthinkable." In the years since, Blackberry hasn't lived up to those words. Although the company is still holding on today, you can be sure the thought of Blackberry dropping from 20% market share in 2009 to 1% market share in 2014 was unthinkable then, too.

5. THEY HAVE THE PASSION TO PERSIST

And then there's passion. According to researchers at the University of Maryland,passion is a key ingredient in growing a successful new business. It's the reason entrepreneurs inspire the rest of us in the first place. Many of us dream of getting paid for doing what we love, just like entrepreneurs do. And their deep commitment in their undertakings keeps them forging ahead in the face of obstacles.

6. THEY ARE RESILIENT IN THE FACE OF FAILURE

Finally, there's resilience. Passionate entrepreneurs bounce back from unexpected challenges and failures in order to push onward. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg point out that "learning from failure is an important characteristic, particularly for entrepreneurs, and there are multiple case reports on how failures and the ability to rebuild after failure have formed successful entrepreneurs." It's well known how Steve Jobs built a project from his garage into a company with 4,000 employees, only to be fired by the very CEO he had hired. Yet Jobs chose to see it as a chance to recreate himself, later describing it as one of the most creative periods of his life.

So what does all this empirical evidence point to? Perhaps that entrepreneurs' quasi-mythical stature in popular culture is something of a fallacy. Few possess superhuman abilities at all. Instead, the most admirable business leaders simply share qualities we all do. As more research continues, those patterns will get more distinct.

But something else might happen, too: As more entrepreneurs burst on to the scene, they might disrupt what we thought we knew about those that came before. It's something they're pretty good at, after all.

Source : http://bit.ly/1GqEEEB

Five social media hacks to make you a better boss

Social media can be a tool to help you better manage your employees.

When the words 'social media' and 'work' are used in the same sentence, it is usually in relation to one of two activities – self-promotion and time wasting. Either you're the one watching the cat video, or you're the one who filmed it (in the hope it will make you and your feline a viral sensation).

But, can social media also make you a better manager? I believe that it can if you're calm, calculated and compassionate when posting, pinning, liking and lurking.

Do you want to boost team morale, exert your authority or just spruce up the office? Then follow my top tips:

Show your trust

​I remember at the dawn of Twitter, many employers banned their employees from mentioning who they worked for in their social media bios. Or, if they did say they worked at [insert company name] they had to put a disclaimer saying, "views are my own". I take the opposite tack with my team members. Not only am I happy for them to proudly say they work for The Collective, but I encourage them to have strong opinions, because I trust their ethics and morals. Imagine sending a staff member to a party in the real world, but banning them from telling anyone where they worked.

Track their overtime

I've written before about the downsides of over-dedication in staff members. Although I applaud passion and adore anyone who goes the extra mile, I am also extremely aware of the dangers of burnout. Is a star employee uploading Facebook posts at 9pm on a Wednesday ("Location: the office")?

Are they posting Instagram snaps from their desk when everyone else is tucked up in bed? If you start to notice patterns that a staff member is neglecting rest and restoration, it could be time to sit them down and check they're not burning the candle at both ends.

Find a virtual mentor

Social media isn't just a way of boosting staff morale, but also your own. On Twitter I follow an inspiring army of business leaders and managers, including Sheryl Sandberg, Sir Richard Branson and Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos. They share wise words and insightful articles and what it's really like to run a company.

I also use social media to peek behind the scenes at other people's offices. No, I'm not just nosy! Pinterest boards like The Muse and Instagram accounts like Todd Selby (@theselby) give me ideas for how to design a creative and productive office space for my own team.

Give out gold stars

Do you name an 'employee of the month'? No, me neither. My employees are no longer 15-year-olds working in a burger joint. But I do think it's important to give credit where credit's due, publicly, and social media offers a subtle way to do this. I recently posted a picture on Instagram which just read, "Thankyou".

I gave a shout-out to my extraordinary team who make my big vision a reality. I also tagged all of them in the picture. It not only (hopefully) gave them a happy glow, but also reminded me how much I appreciate them all.

Send a postcard home

As a manager, you might travel – a lot. I am personally on a plane at least once a week, travelling to an event, speaking gig or far-flung meeting. As I head to another airport, I never want my team to think I'm just jetting off on a frivolous vacation. That's why I use social media like a postcard from my working holiday, to prove it's not all play.

Although I will sometimes post a photo taken by a hotel pool, I always try to make the point that I just had a quick dip before a conference or to unwind after a long day of negotiations. When you're remote-managing a team, don't let social media undermine how much work you're really doing.

Source : http://bit.ly/1LfHpsp