5 Social Media Marketing Rules You Should Live By

With the explosion of social media, any business owner who wants to cultivate a stronger relationship with their customers and earn more clients in the process should utilize social media marketing. With millions of people using social networking sites and apps like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram on a daily basis, using social media can give your business more exposure.

Things to Remember with Social Media Marketing

Before you launch a social media campaign, here are some of the most important things you must know to help ensure the success of your social media strategy,

1. Post on a regular basis

When it comes to social media, how often you post is very important. After all, the more your audience hears from you, the more likely they are to trust you. Also, it helps you stay relevant. Therefore, make it a point to post regularly on your social media accounts so you won’t easily fade from your audience’s consciousness.

2. Post relevant content

While it is true that posting regularly is important, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you should post just anything that catches your fancy. Remember, what you post matters, too. For better customer engagement, post content that is relevant to the products or services that you’re offering and can help solve your audience’s problems. Always consider your audience’s welfare and interest when choosing which type of content to post.

3. Share and retweet

A great way to expand your audience reach is to show that you’re a thought leader or an influencer in your market. One effective way to do that is to share and retweet relevant content produced by other people in your niche or industry.

4. Respond and engage

Social media won’t be fun if1 you’re the only one who gets to do the “talking.” To have a better and bigger social media presence, take the time to engage your audience or followers. Respond to their questions and comments. If you legitimately know a solution to one of their problems, be a darling and share it with them.

5. Learn from your mistakes

As with anything in life, learning from your mistake is one way to improve your social media presence. To determine what works and what doesn’t, take a look at your previous posts and see what makes them a success or a failure. Once you have a clear grasp of what sort of content your audience likes, make sure you refrain from posting content most of your followers don’t care about.

Source: http://bit.ly/29VcTHU

Avoid These 4 Startup Marketing Mistakes

There are many things on your plate while growing your company. You have a team to manage, a product to develop and deals to close. You may or may not have already hired a marketing manager, but you know marketing is crucial for your company’s growth. You also want to make sure you don’t throw away valuable marketing money.

Making mistakes is normal and as Joseph Conrad said, “it’s only those who do nothing that make no mistakes.” Working with entrepreneurs and startups, I’ve learned you can’t avoid all mistakes. But you can avoid some.

Here are the top 4 growth-stage startup marketing mistakes and how to avoid them.

1. You don’t have a fixed marketing budget.

Just like your general budget planning, you should work with a detailed marketing plan. Creating such a plan makes it easier to understand where your marketing money is going and when. For example, if you’re looking to launch your blog mid-year, your marketing plan should take into consideration the time and budget needed to build the blog and create the initial content.

Growing your company and showing growth in your forecasts is nice and all but it has to be backed with a growing marketing budget. SEO work is another example for a marketing initiative that spans through a period of time and needs allocation of funds throughout the budget timeframe (there’s no such a thing as an “SEO campaign”). Setting a fixed marketing budget can be okay for the first couple of months, but if you want to grow, you need to take into consideration a growing budget.

2. You don’t keep track of the competition.

Some startups mistakenly operate thinking that they don’t have competitors. Even if you don’t have direct ones, it’s crucial to look at the nearest ones. Being an entrepreneur, it’s impossible to operate in a bubble (on a side note – telling potential investors you don’t have competitors is probably in their top three things they hate to hear).

Knowing who your competitors are and following their work can help your business and marketing strategies as well. By signing up to your competitors’ newsletters, and using alert tools such as Mention or IFTTT, you can stay on top of what’s going on in your field.

3. Your tracking tools are not in place.

Having tracking tools, such as Google Analytics in place is crucial, as otherwise you’ll be operating like a blind person. Google Analytics is the most popular tracking tool, 100 percent free, well-known, and reliable. If you don’t like using Google for tracking, there are other tools such as Piwik or Clicky that are just as good (and free) as well, or for both a web and mobile presence, Mixpanel.

If you haven’t done so already, set your tracking and make sure that you know how to create goals, funnels and read reports. Having the majority of your traffic marked as “unknown” in Analytics is terrible as you’re spending money on marketing but cannot calculate the ROI. If you are unsure of how to set analytics and connect them correctly yourself, hire a freelancer to do this small project for you.

4. You’re not where your audience is.

If your product is an innovative baby sensor that is sold directly to customers on your site, a LinkedIn campaign may not be the best use of your marketing money. Plan your marketing according to where your audience is. If you are a B2B cyber startup and your target audience are CIOs and CISOs of large enterprises, meet them in industry events, publish in blogs and newspapers they read, and re-target them on LinkedIn. If your product on the other hand targets millennials, you have to be very active on social media and mostly these days, Snapchat.

Source: http://bit.ly/25P5xxN

7 Habits of highly effective people

1. Be proactive

Start small by first being conscious of your thoughts, values, and actions. Every day, see how controlling your responses to situations will affect your circle of influence. Don’t rush, but, be more mindful on how you process your thoughts and feelings in every situation you face.

2. Begin with the end in mind

Focus your energy on your desired outcome. Then, make a plan and as much as you can, stick to it. Yes, there may be times you may need to be flexible and make changes, but never lose sight of what you want to happen. Remember, it’s always about changing your ways to get to your goals, not changing your goals itself.

3. First things first

Everyone has the same 24 hours in a day, so why do some people seem to get more things done than others? Priorities. Be absolutely critical of how you spend your time and make sure you organize your activities to the goals you want to achieve. Concentrate only on tasks that will bring you closer to achieving them.  

4. Think win-win

The world is full of great opportunities, more than enough for everybody. Always aim to have a win-win approach to your strategy, whereby both or more parties get the best-desired results. That way, the task is motivating and are the definite success for all.

5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood

Having great interpersonal and communication skills go a long way. Just think of all successful people — Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Tony Fernandes — they are master communicators. Their strong ability to effectively articulate their vision, engage their consumers, as well as convince their stakeholders and partners, all require some good communication skills. Remember that building good relationships mean being a good listener and being able to read the ‘body language’ as well.

6. Synergise

I’m sure you’ve heard of the paradox of 1+1=3, but how’s that possible? Simple, the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. Great talents with different strengths coming together with a shared vision can achieve remarkable results, compared to even the most efficient person alone.

7. Sharpen the saw

This involves forming a habit of reflecting and evaluating yourself. This should cover four aspects of your life: physical, spiritual, mental and social/emotional. Be equally honest and critical about yourself and take daily steps to make the changes needed to achieve what you want.  

  Source : http://bit.ly/1T3AYOK

Entrepreneurs, Here’s What You Need to Stop Doing

It can ruin your business.

Some of the most successful entrepreneurs in today’s business world started at a young age. Silicon Valley is filled with 20-something founders hoping to grow their startups into the next global phenomenon.

Here are nine common mistakes that any entrepreneur should avoid in starting a new business:

Failure to plan

When an entrepreneur sets out to start a business, but doesn’t even have an idea yet, he’s already committing his first fatal mistake. The idea should come first, followed by the determination to form a business around it. Merely starting a business for the sake of being known as a “startup founder” is usually a direct route to failure.

All talk, no action

Many people know someone who seems to have great business ideas, but never follows through on any of them. You’ve possibly been stuck talking to a person like that at a networking event. Don’t be that guy. Instead of putting your energy into telling the world about your great idea, use it to actually make a business out of that idea.

Never asking for help

Even the most hard-working entrepreneur needs help getting his idea off the ground. Whether it means outsourcing administrative tasks to online freelancers or seeking the advice of a mentor, it’s important that founders get help while building their businesses. Trying to do it all alone means you’ll spend far too much time on activities that aren’t as effective in helping the company grow.

Impatience
Building a successful business takes time and, along the way, there will likely be instances when failure seems certain. Entrepreneurs who succeed have the patience necessary to keep pushing through those long periods of non-growth and eventually find success. Experienced business owners realize that it may take several failures before a product change helps it find an audience and achieve success.

Hiring friends

Some of the best startups began as a joint venture between friends. As inspiring as those stories are, when an entrepreneur hires his friends, he often overlooks necessary skillsets in favor of working with someone he already knows. Friend or stranger, entrepreneurs should carefully review resumes and choose new team members based objectively on factors like skills, abilities, and culture fit.

Forgetting about the customer

It’s all about the customer. Whatever product or service you’re working hard to bring to market, if you forget that fact, you lose sight of what’s important. A successful entrepreneur always puts the customer first, developing and refining his product based on the feedback he gets from customers in his target demographic.

Fearing theft
In today’s competitive marketplace, ideas can often seem like hot commodities. Many founders are paranoid about letting others know what they’re planning because they’re sure someone will steal the idea and use it to form a competing business. This fear can hold a young entrepreneur back from essential steps in early-stage startup efforts, including testing the product or seeking funding. Chances are, your business partners, potential investors, and friends won’t want to put the effort into starting a business based on your idea, so don’t let fear keep you from telling others about your great new venture.

Lacking sales ability

You can have the best product or service on the market, but if you can’t convince others of that fact, you won’t get far. The ability to pitch your ideas and conduct interesting, effective presentations is essential to growing your business. If you’re uncomfortable with this aspect of business ownership, consider joining a group like Toastmasters or taking a college course in public speaking.

Perfectionism

No matter how much time and effort you put into your business, it will never be perfect. There will always be small improvements you can make or bugs you need to fix. Instead of spending years refining your product, set a hard-and-fast launch date and force yourself to stick to it. Conduct thorough user testing to make sure your offerings are ready to launch and accept the fact that you’ll likely spend the days following your launch making slight tweaks.

For young entrepreneurs, the market is wide open for great business ideas and innovations. By avoiding common mistakes and pursuing your goals passionately, you can form a successful startup at any age.

Source : http://for.tn/1Nklptf

6 New Rules of Business for the Next Industrial Revolution

The world is in the midst of a new industrial revolution.

This morning, we release several important stories from the November issue ofFortune magazine, which provides an in-depth look at The 21st Century Corporation. It is our belief that the world is in the midst of a new industrial revolution, driven by technology that is connecting everyone and everything, everywhere and all the time, in a vast and intelligent network of interactive data that is creating an economic dynamic increasingly characterized by low or zero marginal costs, massive returns to scale and platform economics.

Fortune's Geoff Colvin has a fascinating piece here that lays out what this means for modern companies. I strongly recommend it. But for the time-pressed, here are my six big takeaways:

1. You don't need a lot of physical capital. You've probably heard it before, but it's true: Alibaba BABA -2.10% is the world's most valuable retailer and holds no inventory; Airbnb is the largest provider of accommodations but owns no real estate; Uber is the world's largest car service but owns no cars.

2. Human capital will matter more than ever. With less physical capital, employees become more important. You need to identify the ones critical to the company, and recognize that increasingly, they are the company.

3. The nature of employment will change. For the rest of your employees, gig work will grow. Former Cisco CSCO -0.11% CEO John Chambers predicts: "soon you'll see huge companies with just two employees -- the CEO and the CIO." An exaggeration, perhaps, but not by much.

4. Winners will win bigger, and the rest will fight harder for the remains.New business models often make fortunes for their creators, but destroy whole industries in the process. Or as the McKinsey Global Institute puts it: "tech and tech-enabled firms destroy more value for incumbents than they create for themselves."

5. Corporations will have shorter lives. The average life span of companies in the S&P 500 has already fallen from 61 years in 1958 to 20 years today. It will fall further.

6. Intellectual property knows no natural boundaries. A must-read this morning is a fascinating story by Brian O'Keefe and Marty Jones about Uber's "double dutch" corporate tax structure, which you can read here. As more of the value of modern corporations comes from intellectual property, income can easily be shifted to tax havens (...at least until authorities wise up and fix the global tax system).

Source : http://huff.to/1P7l9lD

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5 Steps to Build Your Personal Brand

Your personal brand is how you appear to the world. Therefore, it serves to reason that a strong brand is preferable to one that is unpolished and uninteresting.

Once people know who you are and begin to identify you with a specific area of understanding or expertise, you'll be well on your way to becoming the go-to person in your niche or industry.

The question is, how do you become more recognized? How do you build your authority and your following? If you're looking to build your personal brand, here are five ways to go about it.

1. Understand and be your authentic self.

Imagine how hard it would be to build a brand around your "fake" self. You would have to act a certain way, appear a certain way, and say certain things, regardless of how you felt about it. Some professionals suggest going about building a personal brand by shaping and molding what others see, but this is exhausting to maintain in the long run.

Your brand should be a reflection of who you are. Do you know what you believe? What you stand for? What your strengths and weaknesses are?

Never forget -- people connect with other people. If you don't appear to be a real person, or if it just looks like you're faking it, how likely do you think others are to trust you? Even if they do buy into your fake persona for a while, the slightest bit of inconsistency could prove problematic.

Building a personal brand is first and foremost developing an understanding of your true self, and then sharing that with the world. Take your masks off and don't be afraid of being vulnerable.

2. Speaking engagements.

If you're looking to build your brand, then you should be speaking on a regular basis. Naturally, this will mean developing your communication skills. If you speak in exactly the same manner others do, you will never stand out from the crowd.

Speak from a place of knowledge and power. Show that you know what you're talking about, and answer questions in a way that serves your audience.

Show that you are confident. Some may criticize or disagree with you. The important thing is to remain open to feedback. Thank others for sharing their views, and if the points they raised were legitimate, determine how you can improve and do better next time.

Speaking engagements are opportunities to be seen and heard. Start small, and keep building. You may not land high-quality speaking engagements off the bat, but if you keep swinging, you'll build your following and get invited to speak at bigger, more notable events and conferences. Buckle down and offer the greatest amount of value you possibly can everywhere you go.

3. Write thought leadership articles and participate in interviews.

Thought leadership articles and interviews establish your credibility. As with speaking engagements, landing the best opportunities takes time and effort, but if you remain open to what comes your way, pretty soon you'll be showing up everywhere.

Take a look at the press coverage we've received to date. Anybody who regularly hangs out online should be aware of many of the brands listed there, but even if they aren't, they probably know about publications and media outlets like Fox News and Time. This shows that others see you as an authority.

In addition to that, here's an example of an interview I’ve done, covering one of the topics FE International is most known for; selling websites.

Getting an "in" with the media, online publishers and publications can prove challenging. However, it is a powerful way to show that you know what you're talking about. Every outlet you build a connection with increases your brand authority.

4. Build your online presence.

Do you know how you're appearing and coming across online? This is something you're going to want to monitor on an ongoing basis, and improve upon whenever and wherever possible.

 - Do you have social media profiles? 

- If so, are they fully fleshed out with all of your information? 

- Do they present you in the best light possible, and make you look professional? Are you using high-quality professional photography? 

- Are you interacting with others and sharing their content?

Do you have a website for your personal brand? One of the best ways to rank in search for your name is to build a website. This gives you considerably more control over your online presence than social media. It can't hurt to add new content to your site on a regular basis, either. You can get a domain with this GoDaddy coupon for just 99 cents – so there’s no excuse to delay. Try to buy your own name if you can.

Don't forget to Google yourself regularly to see how you're coming across, how others might be perceiving you, and what they're saying about you. You'll have a tough time building a great personal brand without making a real effort to monitor and tweak it.

5. Remain a student of your industry.

No matter how well you know your industry or area of expertise, it would be wise to remember that things are changing at a faster rate than ever before, and you have to stay up-to-date with the latest changes and trends.

It takes time to build your personal brand. If you fail to stay relevant, all of your effort will be wasted. If you don't want to be discredited, then you'll want to keep a steady supply of articles, trade journals, blogs, and books on hand.

It also pays to learn new things, develop new skills, and to expand your knowledge. If you're not growing, then you're stagnating, and that's the last thing you want to do as an entrepreneur.

Odds are you already know how important it is to stay on top of your game, but a friendly reminder never hurt anyone.

As you begin to sharpen your personal brand, the right opportunities will start coming your way. People will begin to see that you're know what you're taking about, and they'll invite you to be a part of their stories or news pieces.

However, don't forget how important it is for you to have accomplished something yourself. You can't talk about what you haven't done, because that will take away from your personal brand. Be open about your shortcomings and weaknesses. This will make you all the more human and relatable.

Source : http://entm.ag/1VDZaIs

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How to Hire Content Marketers Who Think Like Entrepreneurs

You’ve seen the stats, you’ve heard the success stories – content marketing is an effective way to grow and market your business. In fact, 82% of consumers feel more positive about a company after reading custom content.

You want consumers to have positive feelings about your brand, and you know it’s time to bring in some help to ramp up your content marketing, but you’re not sure where to start. Hiring a content marketer who thinks like an entrepreneur could be just the answer for you. Why, you ask?

Start-ups are often more successful at content marketing than large companies are. Knowing this, Joe Pulizzi, author of Content Inc., and Clare McDermott, editor of Chief Content Officermagazine, interviewed dozens of entrepreneurs about their content marketing strategies. From this, they discovered two main commonalities – entrepreneurs tend to:

• Take a content-first approach to business – They identify a content niche, build a loyal audience around that niche, and then develop products and services to sell.

• Use passion and patience (not big budgets) to drive content marketing success

Successful content marketers also share other entrepreneurial qualities, such as drive, goal-oriented behavior, an analytical mindset, curiosity, creativity, agility, leadership, empathy, transparency, and project management skills.

If for no other reason, you should hire content marketers who think like entrepreneurs because they know how to get stuff done, effectively, and with purpose.

If you’re a content marketer, this probably makes total sense. If you’re new to the field, you may wonder why a blogger should have these qualities. You see, content marketing is far more than blogging. At the bare minimum, a successful full-stack content marketer needs to:

• Understand the audience and develop personas
• Define goals and objectives that align with overall business goals
• Develop a strategy to meet these goals
• Execute on the strategy
• Identify relevant channels to promote the business’ content
• Measure the effectiveness of content efforts
• Communicate their findings
• Iterate, improve, and measure again

Here’s how to tell if a candidate possesses entrepreneurial qualities and knows how to apply them to content marketing.

Ask them to present fresh ideas

When screening candidates, ask them less about what they’ve done in the past, and more about what they will do for you. Ask them what they think about your existing content and strategy and how they’d improve on it. It’s even better if they offer suggestions on their own accord. This shows initiative, expertise, and that they’ve done their research.

A content marketer who thinks like an entrepreneur will approach an interview like it’s an investor pitch – they have a story to tell, growth projections to present, and reports on past experience.

Test if they’re growth-minded

Your ideal candidate treats content like a tool to grow and sustain your business. Candidates who are growth-minded will ask about your existing business, content growth goals, and the tactics you’re using to achieve them. You can ask how they’ve grown audiences and/or communities, or how they’ve converted customers with content in the past.

To be growth-minded also means to think about retention. Content marketers should understand that content exists for multiple reasons. Ask the candidate what role they see content playing for your business, and look for them to identify at least one of these purposes:

• Educating on topics relevant to your offering, adding value to drive conversions
• Increasing engagement with thought-provoking content
• Educating and informing on your offering and company/product updates
• Building community by connecting with your audience through personal stories and highlights

Determine if they’re data-driven

By now, you should have discussed numbers enough to know whether a candidate is comfortable with metrics. One of the best ways to determine if candidates have an analyticalmindset is to ask what tools they use. If they mention Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Kissmetrics, or HubSpot, it’s likely that they know the importance of measuring the effectiveness of a strategy and have experience in reporting findings.

Get to know their management skills

Just like entrepreneurs, content marketers are always juggling several projects and smaller tasks at once. It could be that they’re launching a content-based academy, but still have to write a blog post and a contributed post, and edit three guest posts. Not to mention, they must publish a newsletter and promote all of these things to the right audience.

Ask the candidates how they stay organized. If they mention processes they’ve established then they’ve likely got a solid grip on what it takes to manage a content marketing strategy. Ask them what tools they use to stay organized. The more focus they put on organization, the more likely they are focused on getting things done and meeting deadlines.

Their management responsibilities don’t stop at tasks and deadlines. Content marketers often are required to manage writers – paid and volunteer – and sometimes social media managers as well. This is where empathy and communication skills come into play.

A good content manager knows how to communicate expectations, guidelines, and processes clearly. They need to ensure work is being delivered to them on time, while keeping their own workload in check. Ask your candidates to give an example of when they had to manage a project end-to-end with a team and to describe the results.

Determine how visionary and creative they are

Throughout the interview, listen for cues that indicate whether your candidates think about the big picture. Have they only mentioned results on a month-to-month basis? Or have they said that content takes time to provide results and explained the role it plays in the bigger picture? Yes, you want someone who’s going to help your company grow today, but you also want someone who’s invested in the long-term success and sustainability of your business.

Today’s digital environment is crazy-crowded with people competing for your audience’s attention. You need a content marketer who is going to think creatively to cut through – someone who’s going to come up with campaign ideas that you never heard and can draw attention. You need someone who has a handle on trends, but always thinks one step further. Ask them what they read, how they keep up with trends, who they follow. This is a good indicator of their industry know-how.

Why you should consider a freelance content marketer

Freelancers are entrepreneurs in many aspects. They may not be growing a start-up, but they are growing and running a business. They’re constantly challenged to make changes and iterate to help clients achieve success in order to attract more business for themselves. They’re competitive, a characteristic that often drives creativity. Freelancers have to think of creative, new ways to attract new clients while keeping their clients happy. They have to produce the best work to support themselves.

Because they work with so many clients, they should already have the content experience you want and the ability to both drive the strategy and execute it. Give it a try. Another benefit of hiring a freelancer is that if it’s not working out, you can end the contract without all the messy paperwork of a full-time employee.

Source : http://bit.ly/1hbBFUe

The Real Unicorns Are Female Angel Investors

Despite the attention over the past year, the lack of diversity in tech — both in race and gender — has not markedly changed. Only 3 percent of tech CEOs are women, and just 15 percent of startups have at least one female founder.

Most agree that something needs to be done, but much of the attention is misplaced into a caricature. You see the issue raised on SNL and the other late-night shows — and then there is the hyperbole that penetrates into pop culture (see HBO’s Silicon Valley).

To be fair, programs have popped up to teach women how to code, while others drive awareness of the developer career path for adolescent teen girls. Even some VCs have developed funds for women or minority-owned startups — Golden Seeds and 500 Startups among them.

What’s missing in these solutions? The role of women as angel investors — not just founders or developers.

Women make up just 4 percent of venture capital partners. And though the University of New Hampshire’s Center for Venture Research said there are more than 50,000 female angel investors, my experience from raising $1.2 million in seed funding in Chicago suggests otherwise. I sought a female angel — but could not find her. I asked all of the contacts I met for a recommendation. They all said, “I’ll think about it,” but never got back to me. I do have one female investor, who I am thankful for, but even she backed us alongside her husband.

To get more women in tech today, we need women investors.

Women investors are important because they signal to women You belong here. In a study co-authored by MIT economist Esther Duflo, she saw that an increased presence and visibility of female politicians in local government raises the academic performance and career aspirations of young women in India. “[MM1] We think this is due to a role-model effect: Seeing women in charge persuaded parents and teens that women can run things, and increased their ambitions,” said Duflo, a co-founder of MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab.

To get more women in tech today, we need women investors — and we need them early in the process. That means female angel investors.

Progress is being made. Over the past decade, women have begun taking more leadership roles in business. As a result, women are excelling financially. The number of wealthy women in the U.S. is growing twice as fast as the number of wealthy men. And by the next generation (or perhaps sooner), more families will be supported by woman than men.

But more wealth will not automatically translate to more angel investors. Women tend to be more conservative investors that may even lack confidence, a critical element in becoming an angel.

We haven’t yet tapped into that next wave of female angels.

That’s why groups like 37 Angels andBroadway Angels — groups of women angel investors who fund early stage startups regardless of the founder’s gender — are critical. 37 Angels, for example, requires its members to be active investors, making at least one $25,000 investment each year from the 35 to 50 companies it finalizes as candidates each year.

But as great as those networks are, they don’t do much to drive awareness of angel investing and teach women to make the leap from investing in stocks and mutual funds to investing in early stage startups. The Pipeline Fellowship is one group that is trying to make a difference with a six-month angel investing bootcamp. And in four years, Pipeline boasts more than 100 graduates — it’s a start, but not nearly enough to make a dent in the deficit of women angel investors.

We haven’t yet tapped into that next wave of female angels — the ones currently succeeding in Corporate America. If that happened, we would see more female founders.

Source : http://tcrn.ch/1FbJpRW