When customers shop for goods and services, they don’t always know details about quality and value. They think they do, though, based on what they believe about a particular brand. The marketplace is ruled by customers’ mental and psychological associations with brand identity. This is why it’s so important to build a brand that resonates [...]
I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who thought they didn’t have a full load.
I bet you think you have a slammed schedule, with no room for one more thing. We all think that way. And though we may sometimes want to take on “busy schedules” competitively and see who has the busier schedule, the fact is we’re all busy, relatively speaking.
That goes triple for a director with a team of people to oversee. You’re schedule might be busy, but when you’re managing teams of five, ten, twenty people, it gets downright hairy pretty quickly.
I know I struggle with it. Rarely a day ends that I’m not sick of emails, sick of phone calls, sick of meetings, sick of people. It doesn’t always last too long, but it’s inevitable, nonetheless. And with so many people depending on you to check this, approve that, meet here, etc., you can make it through a whole day doing everything everyone else wanted you to do and not a thing you wanted to accomplish.
We all see that technology evolves. Just look at the iPhone. That one piece of technology has gone through many different evolutions, and it’s changed the way we use phones. So, as technology evolves, your business must also evolve. This isn’t about making your business look cool (though, if we look at companies like Facebook, it certainly doesn’t hurt to look cool); the real goal of keeping up with technology is to make sure you are always keeping up and pushing the envelope.
Technology, at the same time, isn’t something to be feared. Even as a marketer, keeping up with the latest technology trends isn’t a necessity to your job title, but it certainly makes you much more efficient, as you’ll see in this article.
There are two social media networks that I have found to be very helpful in building my direct sales business. The first is of course, Facebook which many of you may already be using on some level. The second is Pinterest. I hope to do another guest post on Pinterest but for now let’s focus on Facebook.
I’ve found that Facebook allows me to accomplish a lot while making it easy on me. Some of the things I use Facebook for are:
As far as content management systems go, there is no shortage of free, open source solutions available. From Drupal to the world renowned Joomla, these applications are helping organizations accommodate a wide variety of content management needs. The free route is attractive for obvious reasons, but for some businesses, an open source CMS just won’t do.
Why a Commercial CMS?
The main reason to choose a commercial CMS all boils down to support. Platforms like Joomla have massive communities and tons of resources, but no official form of support means you could be waiting days to have your issues resolved. And since they are projects being worked on by developers of varying skill levels all over the world, bugs tend to be a common problem.
A commercial system is the best bet for getting support you can depend on, but being able to get help doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have a smooth ride. Here are some tip you can use to find the right CMS for your enterprise requirements.
For some reason, small business owners seem to ignore search engine optimization (SEO) techniques for their websites, if they even have a website at all. The thought seems to be that companies competing on a national scale need to worry about SEO because they get most of their customers through web traffic, while a local store can attract customers with ads, a physical storefront, and word of mouth. The truth of the matter is that more and more people are using search engines (primarily Google) to search for local businesses. Consumers search for the best Thai food in Dallas, or the cheapest dry cleaners in Fort Worth, or an infinite amount of parameters. Utilizing local SEO tactics works for any business, and is often less competitive.
I remember the first time I heard the term “content marketing.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“They’re calling it WHAT?!?”
“Do they really think I’m gonna get all hyper about it cuz they’ve come up with a fancy, albeit goofy, name for it?”
“Seriously?”
That all happened just a few years ago. Since then, everyone has been doing everything with content marketing except laughing about it. Seems the only thing I was kidding was myself.
Content marketing hasn’t just become an important part of marketing today; it is marketing today. In a world where consumers look to Facebook and Google to show them the way, content has become critically synonymous with success.
I haven’t posted a dang there here since January 3rd.
I’ve gone through dry spells before since launching this site back in 2007, but this one certainly takes the cake.
It wasn’t on purpose. I’ve just been entirely too busy. Busy to the point that you figure you must be doing something wrong, cuz no one should be this busy. Busy to the point that the last thing you want to see is a computer screen when you have some down time.
We strategic thinkers so easily get our hopes up sometimes.
Haven’t you been in those sessions before where you just know you can drive the group to truly selling out to some key objectives and committing together to make it all happen? Things are going well, you’ve got your tight list of objectives and goals, and it feels like some real barriers have been knocked down.
Then someone points out that there’s one small initiative that hasn’t been addressed in the objectives.
Then another someone points out there’s a small vocal minority that hasn’t been addressed in the objectives.
Then a couple folks realize John and Jane Doe, who have been around forever, aren’t going to think the objectives address an area they’re interested in.
And the snowball builds and builds and builds. And that demon known as consensus creeps in and starts turning tight, focused, strategic objectives into generic, limp, scattered corporate nonsense.
You’ve been there, haven’t you?
Ken Robinson on how school is killing creativity
