Mar 1, 2023
Our business analytics services help companies gain deep visibility into their business processes and advance their decision-making capabili
seen from Mexico
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from South Korea
seen from Canada
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Belarus
seen from Germany
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
Our business analytics services help companies gain deep visibility into their business processes and advance their decision-making capabili
Entrepreneurs: 10 Things to Do When You Feel Like Quiting
1) Go ahead and quit! It's only for a day or two. Sometimes you have to just surrender what you think should be happening today. Let go... There is is so much freedom to be found in the releasing of all your "shoulds."
2) Reach out for support from like-minded people. These people can be your spouse, best friend, religious groups, or Facebook groups. You'll be surprised how strangers can sometimes understand and encourage you better than people you've known all your life. The point is, reach out for encouragement from people who get where you are, but have the right words to push you forward, because they have been there themselves, 1,000 times.
3) Go to bed. Your body needs to heal from the stress life is applying. Plus everything looks better in the morning.
4) Keep your rituals. Exercise, gratitude, affirmations, visualizations are what got you this far. They will carry you to the finish line. Examine how these rituals are working for you: see number five.
5) Recount your victories. When David (in the Bible) got ready to fight Goliath, he reminded himself that he had already slain a lion and a bear. This gave him the reassurance he could defeat the giant at hand. What life or business giants have you already defeated? You are well able.
6) Clean your physical space. When I get stressed or overwhelmed, I clean. I used to close the shades and go to bed for days (before I had a baby). So this is an improvement. Cleaning gives you back control over your environment. Clear work space clutter. Wash up those few nagging dishes, etc. Clean till you feel free again. That's a good time to talk on the phone to a buddy too. Helps with the crazy need for multitasking.
7) Tell yourself the truth. What false beliefs made you quit? Were you telling yourself, "You can't, you'll never get there, there's too much to do, if other people only knew what a failure I am, I should be able to contribute financially to my family, no money means I'm a failure, or I can never learn it all." Wow! We are so rough on ourselves. Lighten up! Feel your feelings. But tell yourself the truth for every lie. Review number five.
8) Revisit your teaching or business philosophies. Make sure they are still true for you. Do you believe in Magic or is it just all hard work? Good question. The goal is to become more and more authentic every day.
9 )Set some goals that you can accomplish tomorrow without much effort. This restores the feeling of success.
10) Laugh. Dance. Grab a raft and ride the wave. This too will pass.
Source : http://huff.to/1N1q57h
from Blogger http://ift.tt/1PWcwvP
Socializing Your Brand is Not an Option but a Must
With the increasing popularity of Facebook and Twitter, almost every single company that has a website is on social media. For some people, social media marketing is just a fad that can provide advantage while it lasts. And then there are others who think it’s a lot of hype around something that holds no advantage. However, socializing your brand has become more important than ever before.
Is Social Really Important?
Almost a decade ago, marketers were pondering over the same question, thinking that it’s just a fad and will fade away in a few months or a couple of years. It didn’t. Social media is here to stay and has become even more powerful as more and more people network on it. If you’re looking for one good reason to get social media services for your website, we have a reference list for you.
1. Two-way Immediate Communication
If your customers are upset over something, they don’t want to wait for 30 minutes while their call is put on hold. And they don’t want a 24 hour waiting period for your email. They want a quick response. Your social media service should be active on the network and reply to complaints as soon as possible. This lets other people see how helpful you are, and thus it increases your sales.
2. Transparent Communication
When a customer brings up a complaint regarding your products or services, others can read that. And when your team replies to their concerns, your fans can see how you replied to the comment. This builds a positive brand image. When communication is transparent, it helps both sides. While you build a positive image, customers get their complaints resolved quickly – so it’s a win-win situation.
3. More Conversions
You can’t make new customers with each new post, but when you solve a customer’s complaint, other people will start liking your brand. Also, your posts and replies will reflect your brand essence. Make sure that no matter what the customers say, you have to reply with a positive tone. This will build a positive aura around your brand that will encourage conversions.
4. More Followers
When a fan experiences positive communication with your brand, they will share this experience with their friends on social media. This is the main reason this platform is called social – people discuss their good and bad experiences. If a person had a bad experience with your company, they will discuss it with their friends, and this will not be good for your brand image. When you get social media marketing services from a good company, you can turn all customer communications into positive experiences and gain more followers.
Remember, being on social media isn’t just about posting content, but also about resolving customer issues. As you answer their questions and resolve their issues, your business will be a bit more vulnerable, but if you have the right social media services, this risk is certainly worth taking.
Source : http://bit.ly/1KFfL33
from Blogger http://ift.tt/1jR2dwq
Quote of the day.
from Blogger http://ift.tt/1jGdTSl
How To Win The Attention Of Potential Investors
If your goal is to build a world-changing product (or to create one of those unicorns everyone is talking about), at some point you’re probably going to need the help and resources of outside investors. But pitching investors can be a painful process.
So how do you make sure your startup is one of the few companies that pique interest? What can you do to capture the attention of top-tier investors?
To address this problem, I’ve compiled a list of things you should and should not do in order to get the attention of investors. This list is based on my psychological research in attention, my personal experience as an investor, and the experience of other great venture capitalists and angels.
Here are a few tips if you’re looking to get on the radar of investors:
What To Do
Establish your credibility up front. Journalists are taught to never bury the lede; smart entrepreneurs follow the same advice. Investor time and attention is limited, so lead your emails and sit-down meetings with the best aspects of your pitch. This gives you the best shot of getting an investment.
“Tell me the sexy stuff up front,” says Boost VC founder Adam Draper. “Do you have an all-star team? Do you have traction that makes a hockey stick? Did you cure cancer? Get the attention of the investor early, and you should be able to keep it for the rest of the meeting.”
Get an introduction through someone trustworthy. You’ve probably heard this one before, but there’s a reason this is the golden rule for approaching investors. The best investors simply have way more inbound emails and pitches than they know what to do with. Because their attention is so scarce, they build filters to protect their time and attention.
One key filter investors use is their network of trusted friends and experts. If a person has already vetted the entrepreneur and/or the idea, it’s much more likely to result in a quality meeting.
“Always, always always get an intro through a trusted source,” says Jon Soberg, co-founder and managing partner of Expansive Ventures. “Never ever send a cold email or LinkedIn request.”
Show you can sell. Josh Felser of Freestyle VC has a simple piece of advice: “Send me a personalized, thoughtful request to connect that shows that you understand how sales actually works.”
I receive hundreds of impersonal pitches daily. Some entrepreneurs send mass e-mails; others clearly haven’t done their research on my firm; I even get some entrepreneurs who address my firm or me by the wrong names.
The problem is that great entrepreneurs have to be great at sales. You’re going to have to sell a product to users, customers or advertisers at some point. If you can’t show us that you can sell, it’s a major red flag that will threaten the future of your company. Put in some real effort.
What Not To Do
Don’t go after the best-known partner of a fund. The big-name partners of a VC firm – you know, the ones with their last names in the firm’s name – are the ones who are pitched the most. They also have the least amount of time, due to their countless commitments and existing investments. It’s harder to get the attention of these investors.
“Seek out the up-and-coming partner or the one who isn’t in the limelight as much,” says Christine Tsai of 500 Startups.
Stop going after the famous investor of each firm and talk to the other partners of a venture capital firm. In the same vein, don’t ignore principals, associates and assistants in favor of partners. It’s rude, inconsiderate and short-sighted. That’s the kind of behavior that always gets discussed at weekly investment meetings.
Don’t insult your competition. When an entrepreneur trash talks successful tech giants like Uber, Facebook or Airbnb, my attention immediately turns off. Entrepreneurs should have a healthy respect for their competition.
“Facebook and Google are Facebook and Google for a reason,” Adam Draper adds. “It only shows that you don’t know your market as well as you think you do.”
Don’t send a long-winded email. Novice entrepreneurs love to send 10-paragraph emails explaining every aspect of their startups. But what sane investor has the time to read 10, 100 or 500 multi-paragraph emails every day? Unfortunately, investors don’t have enough time to read all the emails that come to them, so help us by keeping your first email short and sweet.
Lead with you and your team, the core of the idea, why you think the investor you’re pitching is a fit, and ask him or her whether he or she is interested in learning more. Sending a pitch deck is great – if the email intrigues the investor, then he or she will dig deeper. If it doesn’t excite them, then you’ve saved yourself hours and hours of time that can be spent pitching other investors.
Source : http://tcrn.ch/1i3fCzn
from Blogger http://ift.tt/1R3F44e
Content marketing probably won't help you acquire customers
For digital marketers, content is now part of the furniture. Content is everywhere and every brand owner has invested in content marketing at some point.
According to 2014 figures from the US-based Content Marketing Institute, 71% of B2C marketers use content for acquisition, the second highest score. Top was brand awareness on 79%.
Acquisition means getting something from a consumer, from a sale down to an email address. This is what starts a relationship.
But what if much of the budget spent on content was wasted, if consumers are at best only marginally interested in it? New research by the marketing organisationDMA, my employer, and The Media Octopus suggests this is the case.
The Customer Acquisition Barometer (CAB) is in its second year, looking at how, why and where consumers turn into customers. The research comes from responses from Beautiful Insights’ demographically representative YouSay panel of 1,072 people.
According to these responses, only a minority of consumers, 10%, had exchanged information with a brand in exchange for “exclusive content” over the past year, and that’s for brands they know. For brands they don’t know, this dropped to 9%.
Much more popular were loyalty schemes (46% had exchanged information with brands over the past year, down to 21% for unknown brands), competitions (33% for known brands, 23% for unknown brands), coupons (31% for known brands, 20% for unknown brands), and free products or services (27% for known brands, 17% for unknown brands).
Content barely made an impact against these more traditional forms of acquisition, and backs up our Consumer Attitudes to Privacy research, published in June, where content rated bottom in a list of inducements to share data. This automatically raises one big question: do paywalls work if customers are reluctant to exchange data for content? For acquisition, is content futile?
Now before you abandon your content marketing, a quick disclaimer. This new research focuses solely on acquisition, not retention, not engagement, not brand building.
One side-effect of the fragmenting media pie is the changing way people interact with these new media. For example, last year’s research showed social media to be somewhere only 4% of people would want to be contacted by a brand they are interested in. This year, that number rose significantly to a more respectable 13%.
Look closer and you see that for the 18–24 age group, this figure increases again to 30%. Our relationship with new media is changing.
The same may be true for content. For 18- to 24-year-olds, the proportion who shared their data in exchange for content over the past year almost doubled to 19%, and for those aged 25–34 it’s 20%.
But if content is to have a hope of persuading consumers to part with their data or money, then they need to trust that brand.
The CAB research suggests that marketers are actually retreating here, putting up barriers to consumer trust. Last year marketers were conscientious about giving customers control where possible: 93% gave clear opt-outs at every stage of their marketing, the same proportion clearly stated how customer data would be used (one of the principles of the Data Protection Act). This year those proportions fell to 56% and 62% respectively.
Finally, and this is the elephant in the room for content marketing, nobody will give anything for bad content. Those 10% of people who chose to exchange something for content – it must have been worth it.
So what should marketers do?
Trust would be a good place to start. Consumers want control over their data and their personal information, so give it to them. Content may not be a reliable way to acquire customers now, but as our relationship with content changes, so may consumer attitudes. But if those consumers don’t trust you, it’s a non-starter.
Source : http://bit.ly/1NktlgI
from Blogger http://ift.tt/1M0I0dp
5 Ways Entrepreneurs Escape the Daily Grind
Even entrepreneurs have to take an occasional break.
While the life of an entrepreneur is anything but routine, sometimes we get caught in a nonstop cycle of work, work, and more work. It's exciting, important, and at times, all-consuming, and that's exactly why we have to take a step back on occasion and clear our minds. Let's step out of the norm and escape the daily grind.
1. Hone a Skill
It's true; entrepreneurs are learning every day. However, this typically means improving in one area or industry. Sure, we work in a lot if different fields, but that's no substitute for honing a skill that's independent of work. Activities like these can open an individual up to a more creative perspective and even boost entrepreneurial skills. Plus, creative activities give the mind a break from work, so this serves a way to relax and unwind.
There are a number of ways to find these opportunities. Organize a painting class with your friends or staff. Find a local dance class and invite a friend or partner. You can even sign up for an online writing or language course. Local class platform Dabble CEO Jay Swoboda suggests, "Drop your to-do list and pick up your bucket list. The opportunity to re-invent yourself and find creative inspiration can be found by supporting other entrepreneurs sharing and monetizing their skills. Go take a class." Whatever it may be, make sure it happens.
2. Get Out of the Office at the End of the Day
At some point each day, everyone needs to physically leave the office. If you're just heading home to eat and sleep before another day of work, your mind will have a hard time shutting down. There are plenty of ways to mentally leave the office and take a break from hard work. Attend a sporting event, meet friends for a happy hour at a new bar or restaurant - just get out and enjoy your evening. If you're concerned about still being productive, networking events are everywhere, and they're more entertaining than the stereotypically bad events we've heard about.
3. Cook Healthy Meals and Exercise
Take care of yourself! By getting regular exercise and eating healthy meals, professionals can accomplish more at work. Plus, client meetings over meals are rapidly becoming the norm for entrepreneurs. A home-cooked meal is a welcome break from this. "Cooking is therapeutic and the perfect solution for putting life's hectic challenges on hold," says Home Chef Founder and CEO Pat Vihtelic. "That's why we want our customers to focus on the fun part - cooking the actual dish."
Mix up your exercise routine. Try spinning if you're usually a distance runner. Take a cardio class instead of lifting alone. This shift in routine will keep you inspired and motivated without disrupting a healthy habit.
4. Collaborate and Network With Other Entrepreneurs
Invite business leaders and entrepreneurs to join you at lunch or industry events. Working with other leaders and motivators provides an opportunity to explore new ideas and get feedback on current projects or issues. There are plenty of conferences and workshops to learn new trends and meet new people in any industry, like TechWeek or Chicago Ideas Week. Block out time on your calendar each week (or even month) to attend events like these. Even easier, you can just grab coffee with a mentor or business partner to catch up and make new connections.
5. Take a Vacation--For Real
It's difficult to put work aside and take a real vacation from a business that has become your heart and soul. However, a good leader should trust the talent of their team. Leave them to run the business for a week or two and truly remove yourself from the stress and chaos. A good vacation has benefits beyond the initial escape, and having faith in your team to hold down the fort will make them and the company that much stronger.
Source : http://bit.ly/1LUNeNW
from Blogger http://ift.tt/1GLMkM8