7 Simple Tips to Boost Your Personal Brand On LinkedIn

Your personal brand is your image. The right image can get you that job, attract people to your business, and win over connections that you would have never stood a chance with otherwise. Boosting your personal brand on LinkedIn should be a priority whether you are the manager of a large firm or launching your first startup.

Boosting your personal brand requires time and effort. You have to commit to using LinkedIn if you are going to make your mark on 400 million users. These simple tips will show you how to use LinkedIn.

Tip #1 – LinkedIn is Not X Social Network

It’s easy to treat all social media networks the same. And that’s because most of them are the same. What you post on Instagram may be transferred to Pinterest. What you post on Facebook can be shortened to go on Twitter. You don’t have to put much thought into what you post.

LinkedIn is different. The best thing you can do for your personal brand is to publish unique content on LinkedIn. It’s worthwhile to link it to your other social media networks, but this isn’t the same as simply copying your Facebook update for LinkedIn.

Tip #2 – Fill Out Your Profile

This is the simplest tip of them all, and yet people fail to do it time and time again. It’s a time-consuming process to completely fill out your LinkedIn profile, and yet if you put the effort in it can make such a difference.

Many people will view your profile before they consider formally connecting with you. Make your profile public and allow people to find out about you first. This will encourage people to find out about who you are as a brand.

Tip #3 – A Professional Tone

It’s good to innovate and to think outside the box. But that doesn’t mean you should go against what everyone else is doing. LinkedIn is different to every other social media network because it’s the one network that adopts a professional manner. Whenever you are filling out your profile or writing to someone, make sure you adopt at least a semi-formal tone.

Tip #4 – Can the Default Messages

LinkedIn has a default message for everything. Whether you’re connecting with someone or just asking to be invited to join a group, you will notice default text populating your window. It’s tempting to save time by sending this, but this is really a huge mistake.

Anyone who has used LinkedIn for a certain length of time is well aware of what the default text says. If you send it, you are sending the message that you don’t really care about that person. They are not worth a personalized message. You are not serious about forming a relationship with them.

Cancel these default messages and write something personal. It can be a rewritten version of the default message if you like, but the point is you have done something different. You have gone out of your way to respect that person.

Tip #5 – Participate in Group Chats

The easiest way to spread your reputation as an authority in your field is to participate in group chats. Give people the benefit of your wisdom by answering questions and posting opinions on current topics.

This is where LinkedIn can become time-consuming because it can take many hours out of your working week to get this done. But it’s what most people don’t do so that fact alone is going to make you stand out from the crowd. Choose only relevant group chats. For an added bonus, you should target the groups that your prospects are members of. To build authority is a great way to create connections.

Tip #6 – Take the Relationship Away from LinkedIn

Building your personal brand is one thing, but it doesn’t mean anything unless you can make that personal brand work for you. Whenever you connect with a lead on LinkedIn, offer a face-to-face meeting or the chance to exchange email addresses. Get the relationship away from LinkedIn so you can advance the relationship early.

This is a statement of intent and this statement could make all the difference with your ability to turn that lead into a customer or something more.

Tip #7 – Recommendations

Finally, wherever you can, have people recommend you for certain skills. Repay the favor and this will help you to craft a profile filled with skills that other members can vouch for. These are essentially brand testimonials.

  Source :http://bit.ly/23bc29w

4 Things Successful Change Leaders Do Well

We know that two-thirds of large scale transformation efforts fail. But that’s not a terribly helpful piece of information―unless we’re looking for confirmation that this is hard, really hard. What is useful is to understand what leaders can do to substantially increase the odds that their companies won’t be among the two-thirds of those that fail. From my research and work with companies around the world leading large-scale transformation initiatives, here are the four things I’ve found that virtually all successful change leaders do really well:

Recognize embedded tensions and paradoxes

Smart, capable, solid professionals most often perform well in their roles until they reach a level in their organizations at which they are confronted with a series of embedded tensions and paradoxes that make leading effectively much more complicated. The most common paradoxes leaders face when driving a transformation effort are:

1. Revitalization vs. Normalization. At the core of every change initiative is the desire to breathe new life into the organization―to revitalize ways of thinking, behaving and working. But one change initiative often morphs into many, and before long employees become “change weary.” Thus, we find ourselves in the conflicted situation of needing revitalization but desiring normalization.
2. Globalization vs. Simplification. Doing business today means doing business globally, but the complexities brought on by globalization are often in conflict with the need for organizations to make it simple for customers to do business with them. Leaders struggle with creating organizational responses that address the need to master globalization while offering customers and employees optimal simplification.
3. Innovation vs. Regulation. Many organizations, particularly in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, are saddled with trying to do business, let along innovate, under increasingly crushing regulatory environments. This is a stifling tax on a company’s capacity to find creative approaches to solving unmet customers’ needs. As such we struggle with the tension between the desire to boost innovation and the need to operate under increasing regulation.
4. Optimization vs. Rationalization. Customers not only have more power today―in some industries, they seem to have all of the power. Organizations are struggling to provide solutions that are better, faster, cheaper and increasingly customized. Leaders are caught in a seemingly endless struggle to reconcile the tension between optimizing benefits to customers while rationalizing their costs of doing business.
5. Digitization vs. Humanization. Advanced technology is at the core of virtually every company’s business model today. Entire value chains are being digitized. Yet, the onset of ubiquitous digitization is occurring at the same time that individuals are yearning for a sense of meaning in their organizations. Leaders are struggling with how to reconcile the increasing need for the digitization of their business models while trying to create organizational climates that have an authentic sense of humanization―creating an overarching sense of purpose and collective ambition.

Successful transformation leaders embrace these tensions even though they make the challenge more complex. There are no easy answers; however, the leader’s bedrock commitment to helping to reconcile these tensions is paramount. That means above all committing to an on-going communications and listening campaign so people know what’s going on and know how they might contribute to the transformation effort―and know that they are invited to do so. This process starts by the CEO and top team telling powerful and compelling stories of where the company has been, where it is now and where it needs to go―and why. But it doesn’t end there. Senior leaders must be ready to open up the flood gates so managers and employees closest to the client interface can surface these tensions and discuss them openly. While this might not resolve the tensions and paradoxes, it enables people to at least acknowledge that they exist, have their concerns heard, and discuss proactive ways forward together.

Hold everyone accountable

The leadership of the change effort can’t end with the top team, the top 100 managers, or the top 1,000 managers. It has to be an all-hands-on-deck engagement. The change leader must signal that enterprise-wide transformation will be a collective effort, with accountability distributed throughout the organization.

But it is far easier to say this than to do this, so change leaders must be ready to back up their statements with real world initiatives that will strengthen engagement. For example, when Hess Corporation launched its 2020 Change Initiative, CEO John Hess challenged his entire leadership team to come up with solutions that would make the company more agile, cost conscience, and faster at decision making. And to minimize change weariness brought on by needless duplication of effort, he created a champions team responsible for coordinating the variety of efforts underway.

Invest in new organizational capabilities

Change leaders must go beyond storytelling, motivation, and mobilization efforts―they need to provide resources so that the organization has what it needs to win in the new environment. This might include capital improvements, process improvements, and building new talent capabilities.

For example, for three decades leading up to 2010, HSBC had successfully pursued a growth strategy and organizational capability that was founded upon acquisitions. However, with acquisition upon acquisition, the leaders within HSBC failed to develop a one-company culture, which made it difficult to integrate its offerings to an increasingly demanding customer base. As such, Stephen Green, HSBC’s Chairman at the time, set the company on a course that called for a dramatic slowdown of acquisitions, at least until the current portfolio of companies was integrated and a culture of what Green referred to as Collective Management was cemented. This meant nothing short of building new organizational capabilities based upon collaboration and client-first thinking, which not only meant developing new systems and processes but building a collective mindset that would make aspiring to being a one-company culture a reality.

Emphasize continuous learning

It’s far easier to talk about revitalization and renewal than to actually do it. The companies that pull it off have transformation leaders that commit to a relentless learning process.

Perhaps the best example I know of a remarkably successful transformation leader is Alan Mulally, who not only led the transformation effort for Boeing Commercial Airlines, but also the stunning turnaround of Ford Motor Company. Mulally would be the first to insist that Ford’s transformation was not his achievement but rather the collective achievement of thousands of stakeholders, including employees, suppliers, dealers, unions, financial institutions, Board members and others. Mulally believed deeply in his “leading together” philosophy from his Boeing experience, but this became even more critical at Ford, due to the multitude of stakeholders and a political infighting culture that had become toxic. Mulally would have none of that. He brought his top managers together weekly to assess problems and progress, through his implementation process called the Creating Value Roadmap. Met with heavy resistance at first due to fear of admitting problems, Mulally pursued this course and built trust that those who were brave enough to acknowledge that they needed help were actually showcased as exactly the kind of leader that Mulally was looking for in Ford’s future. At every meeting, managers were asked: what have we learned by airing concerns, making course corrections, and especially, fixing problems together? By combining his relentless focus on implementation and making tough calls with an equally important focus on continuous learning, Mulally transformed Ford from a moribund company on the verge of bankruptcy to one of today’s most successful automobile companies in the world.

Leveraging these four activities, while framing the transformation effort as a collective challenge to be embraced together, fuels positive change over the long haul—which is important since the transformation journey is a never-ending one for most companies today. Ultimately, these practices create a culture of agility and resiliency that will pay dividends out into the future, as large-scale change becomes an organizational capability and not a recipe for management failure.

Source : http://bit.ly/1SlSxH1

7 Marketing Trends You Need to Know for 2016

Here are seven marketing trends to budget for in 2016 and to set up your team for success.

Mobile, video, and other marketing tactics that have been on the rise for years aren't really "trends" anymore. So, how many more trend articles do marketers have to read through that really just tell us what we already know?

Now, just because they're not current trends doesn't make them unimportant. Optimizing for mobile and including high-quality visual content and video in your strategy are still good practices. But to keep yourself and your company ahead of the competition, you need to analyze what's happening now, review your strategy from different perspectives, and prepare for what's to come.

To help, here are seven marketing trends to budget for in 2016 and to set up your team for success.

1. Writing skills and experience will be critical.

When the industry started shifting from print to digital, there was fear among English and journalism students that their craft was dying and no one with a degree in those fields would have jobs. And now with the rise in content, these research, writing, and editing skills are becoming increasingly important, especially when high-quality content is becoming the new SEO.

However, in its 2016 B2B Content Marketing report, the Content Marketing Institute found that only 19 percent of marketers would prioritize becoming stronger writers in the coming year. To keep up with other top content creators and publishers in your industry, encourage your HR team to recruit employees with these game-changing skill sets to build a successful content team, or start investing in education to help your existing team strengthen its writing.

2. Content marketing will enhance other areas of business.

Many people view marketing as the department that works solely to promote your company to your external audience, and while this is one of its key functions, it's not the only one. Content the marketing team produces will become an increasingly necessary asset to many other departments at modern companies, because those resources the team creates for external audiences are just as helpful for internal audiences.

For example, marketing team publishes a piece of content, our entire team is alerted. Because the content is created for your audience, including clients and prospective customers, your client-facing and production team members can use it to fuel their efforts, our sales team can send it to address common objections or questions, and your HR team can use it to train new team members about your processes. 

3. Personalization will prevail.

One of my favorite keynote speakers at this year's BOLO digital marketing conference was my friend and marketing trend expert Rohit Bhargava. During his speech, he talked about the growing importance of personalization and providing opportunities for clients and customers to feel like VIPs, and he used Disney's MagicBands as an example.

Instead of every visitor receiving the same band, each Disney MagicBand is personalized to that visitor's vacation experience. These simple gestures of personalization show that your brand cares about individual customers, and they're effective. In fact, my daughter didn't want to take off her band when we left Disney because it made her feel so special. Avoid generic templates and find ways-from simply targeting your messaging to sending personalized emails and gifts-to make each individual customer feel that special.

4. Industry authority positioning will become a must.

 Companies without thought leaders who provide voices and contribute to industry conversations are taking harder hits to their credibility than ever before. Executive branding and leadership positioning are no longer just nice to execute-they're becoming increasingly necessary. People want a connection to your brand, and they want to trust your leadership. The best way to establish this connection and trust is to create content that showcases your authority.

To effectively position your company, start taking advantage of your team's unique insights and expertise, and craft your messages into thought leadership content that establishes your company as the industry leader.

5. Add value for your audience and stop selling to them all the time.

Stop focusing only on making the sale, and start focusing also on delivering true value to your customers and potential clients. Whether this value is found in the quality of your content or in the experiences you provide, it's becoming more and more important for marketers to ensure that value is delivered to those who interact with their brands.

For example, on a recent call with Mura Experience Platform, a member of its team mentioned to me that a custom Cards Against Humanity deck designed for attendees of the Content Marketing World event with the Mura Experience Platform brand was one of their most successful marketing campaigns. This campaign was successful because it was original and delivered direct value to Mura Experience Platform's target audience. To keep up with competition, it will be important for marketers to take advantage of the rise in content to create and deliver value to customers.

6. Thought leadership is a new SEO driver.

Traditional SEO-using link building and keyword optimization to increase your pages' search results-is no longer your ticket to high rankings on Google. After Google's continued algorithm updates throughout the year, the search giant has begun rewarding higher-quality content with higher search rankings. Despite efforts by some companies and content creators to cheat their ways to the top of results pages, high-quality content prevails over the old keyword-stuffing tactics of the past.

For example, in my own writing during the past year or so, I've seen a dramatic difference in traffic to my own articles because my team and I have continued to perfect our content-creation processes to align with exactly what our target audience is searching for. Now when you search terms like "thought leadership speakers," you can easily find the article I published to my Forbes column. Because Google's updated algorithm recognizes that this piece of content was created to provide specific value to my individual readership, it rewards the article with a higher ranking to make it easier for readers to find.

As a marketer moving into 2016, your priority should be to provide the best possible content to your audience, not to publish junk content in hopes that it'll land you on page one. Trust me, when you create truly engaging, valuable, and relevant content crafted to serve members of your audience and what they're looking for, you'll earn that sweet spot at the top of the results page.

7. Full-service won't solve all your problems.

The best thing you can say to make someone lose faith in your company's credibility is "My company is great at everything." No single company is great at everything, and that's why full-service firms are becoming a thing of the past.

As the industry becomes more specialized, we'll see fewer full-service, best-at-everything marketing companies in 2016. Instead, focus your efforts on the one thing your company is truly great at and what your customers need and want most from you, and become the absolute best at whatever that is. You'll need to live and breathe that area, develop technology to support your efforts, and consistently innovate your products and services, but you'll ultimately serve your team and your customers better if you focus your efforts on the one thing that separates you from your competitors.

As this year draws to a close and your marketing team starts determining what initiatives will be valuable investments in 2016, a variety of content resources,marketing speakers, and other thought leadership resources will help point you in the right direction. Take the time over the holiday season to do the research and plan where your focus should be in 2016.

Source : http://bit.ly/21olt5h

Marketing and Social Media News

5 Pinterest Demographics Facts Marketers Should Know

Last week Pinterest announced that they have reached a whopping 100 million monthly active users. To put that into perspective these are the most recent user stats for other popular social media networks:

While Pinterest may not be the most popular social network , it is amongst the top 5 in the world. Pinterest is also the biggest social site being predominantly used by women.

Some marketers ignore its importance because their business is not targeted toward the female demographic. This is a big mistake. The social network has grown in popularity amongst other demographics, and is proving a valuable resource in many industries.

Here are 5 reasons to monitor Pinterest demographics so you can make an educated decision on whether Pinterest data is important for your market research:

Fact #1: Men Are Now Pinterest’s Fastest-Growing Demographic

In November 2014 Pinterest announced that men were their fastest-growing demographic. In fact, in emerging markets sign ups are an even gender split of 50% men and 50% women. (Techcrunch)

Fact #2: Pinterest Attracts Users From All Income Levels

In 2014 there was a significant increase in Pinterest users whose income levels were below $30,000 and above $75,000. The easy-to-use social media platform caters to people of all income levels. (PEW Research Center)

Fact #3: Pinterest User Numbers Have Doubled Since 2012

We  Pinterest had hit a 100 million user milestone. But did you know that in 2013 they had only 70 million? Alongside Instagram, Pinterest has doubled its usage since 2012, and now counts 31% of online adults amongst its user base.

Fact #4: Half of Pinterest’s Users Are International

According to an article published by Venture Beat, 45% of Pinterest users come from outside of the United States.

Fact #5: Popularity Boom Amongst Older Generation

Pinterest is extremely popular amongst young people. 34% of online 18-29 year olds, and 28% of 30-49 year olds use Pinterest. But it is the older generation of internet users who have most recently taken to using Pinterest. Between 2013 and 2014 Pinterest saw a growth of 14% in users aged 50-64. This places Pinterest behind just Facebook and LinkedIn for social media usage within the 50-64 year age group.

Want to know more about Pinterest?

Knowing Pinterest demographics gives you the power to target the right market during advertising campaigns. 

Source : http://bit.ly/1FLrNwo

iPhone 6s: The 9 best new features

Apple fans, the wait is finally over: Apple’s next-generation iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus are finally a reality. Months of leaks and rumors didn’t leave many surprises for Apple during its big press conference on Wednesday, but the event was still packed full of action and now it’s time to step back and take a deeper dive into Apple’s new iPhones.

DON’T MISS: The 5 worst things about the iPhone 6s

2015 is an “S” year, of course, so we know we were in store for next-generation iPhones that looked almost exactly like their predecessors. We also knew that inside, the new iPhones would feature some huge upgrades in order to put Apple in its best possible position to continue growing its iPhone sales each year.

What’s new in Apple’s just-announced iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus? Here are the best new features you can look forward to:

3D Touch

As we were all expecting, the star of the show this year is Force Touch, though it has been rebranded on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. Using a combination of new display hardware and some smart software, Apple’s new iPhones are able to recognize three levels of touch pressure. This allows the user to perform different actions based on the amount of pressure applied with a tap.

The new peek and pop gestures are two examples. Press lightly on a tap target in an app and you’ll get a peek at whatever it leads to. Press harder and the app will pop open a new screen. Firmer touches and swipes also trigger various gestures — for example, a firm swipe in from the left edge of the screen will swipe the current app away and switch back to the previous app.

Alongside the new screen, the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus will also include Apple’s taptic engine for more precise vibration feedback, just like the Apple Watch.

Is 3D Touch enough to sell you on Apple’s new iPhones? If not, don’t worry… there’s plenty more for you to lust after.

Motion Wallpapers

Last but not least where the display is concerned, Apple’s new iPhones will support Motion Wallpapers. Animated wallpapers are hardly something new on smartphones, but Apple’s are far more complex than anything we’ve seen on other platforms.

Bye-bye Bendgate

What will this year’s scandal be for the iPhone 6s launch? There’s always at least one, but only time will tell. What we do know though, is that it won’t be a repeat of last year’s “Bendgate.”

Apple’s new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus are constructed from the same harder 7000 Series aluminum as the Apple Watch, and they’re much harder to bend than last year’s models. Of course, that won’t stop idiots from trying, so get ready for a flurry of “will the iPhone 6s bend?!” videos.

A new color

Some Apple fans were skeptical of Apple’s decision to introduce a gold color option last year, but now you see gold iPhones everywhere. This year, Apple is keeping the same gold tone from the iPhone 6, but also adding a new rose gold color for the iPhone 6s.

Better cameras

The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus focused on improving photo quality rather than bumping up the megapixel count. In 2016, Apple is doing both.

Apple’s new rear camera on the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus is a 12-megapixel unit that Apple says is a big improvement over last year’s model. The new unit features better optics and it can record 4K video as well.

The front-facing camera has been upped to 5 megapixels, and it supports full HD video as well as selfie panoramas.

Both new cameras include a new software-based flash feature that should improve low-light photography.

Live Photos

When the iPhone 6s captures a standard photo, it also records a brief video automatically in the background. Simply force touch on any photo in your camera roll and you’ll see the brief animation play. Pretty awesome…

Performance improvements

Last year’s iPhones “only” had a dual-core A8 processor, and they “only” had 1GB of RAM. Of course, they still managed to crush the competition in most key performance tests.

This year, Apple’s new A9 processor is based on a newer process and it features unique tri-core architecture that’s 70% faster than the A8, with a 90% faster GPU. Beyond that, the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus will get 2GB of RAM, giving performance an even bigger boost.

New Touch ID

Apple’s new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus include a brand new Touch ID sensor that Apple says is twice as fast as the scanner in the iPhone 6. Apple’s first-generation fingerprint scanner is already leaps and bounds better than any other sensors out there, so we can’t wait to see how fast the second-generation version is.

Hey Siri

Falling squarely in the “new to iOS but not really new” category is the iPhone 6s’ new Hey Siri feature. With a new setting enabled, Siri will always be listening for the “hey Siri” trigger, even when the iPhone’s display is off. Earlier iPhone models have a similar feature, but the phone needs to be plugged in for Siri to listen while the screen is off.

Anytime the user wants to ask a question, open an app, set a reminder or do anything else Siri is capable of on the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, all he or she needs to do is say “hey Siri” and then speak the command, and Siri will abide.

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Apple’s new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus will launch on Friday, September 18th. They will start at $199 and $299 on contract, respectively


Source : http://bit.ly/1Mc3gCP