Posted 1 week ago

Across the Social Media Universe: Marketing Your Super Powers

Marketing Your Super Powers

From R.E.M.’s hit song, “Superman”, to the much adored, Oh the Places You’ll Go!, we are constantly reminded of how much impact each of us can make on others. Marketing streamlines this thought pattern and gives a reason to make our interactions with others more meaningful.


Effective Marketing is like having a superpowerIt’s not just about what you know. Knowledge without being shared is just useless information ready to be forgotten. Marketing is a reflection of how our actions we make the world a better place.

Marketing focuses on your strengths, personally and professionally. Each of us possesses a special talent. Sometimes we know it well, and sometimes it’s hidden from us just waiting to be discovered. Either way, once we are in touch with our inner strengths, we can apply them as key motivators for our marketing success.

Practice Transparent Marketing. Marketing isn’t about what you have done or where you are now. It’s about where you are going, as a person and as a business. Sure, we take what we know and we apply it, but we also have a responsibility to grow and, in turn, help others grow. Our super powers must then be used for the Social Good, and our marketing has to reflect this.

Find Marketing guidance from the Scientific MethodIn Marketing, we think, we act, and we grow just as we hypothesize, research, and test to find appropriate Marketing strategies. And, just like the ever inward and the ever outward studies of scientific thought, we should always analyze and research new ways to improve upon our methods.

Marketing has a steady gaze toward the horizon, always read to put the future in focus. And just like entrepreneurship, innovation, and technology, Marketing revolves around forward thinking. It changes the world we live in and makes it a better place.

Set your sights on your future. Where is your marketing taking you?

Posted 4 weeks ago

Across the Social Media Universe: Encouraging Employees to be Your Brand Stewards

Encouraging Employees to be Your Brand Stewards

Marketing a business can be a daunting task. This is especially true when you are a small business and don’t have a dedicated marketing person or team to lead the charge. However, the strongest brand steward a business has for marketing and getting the branded product or service message out is it’s team - the whole team.
If you look at your business like a megaphone, with your voice at the mouthpiece, you can really let the public hear your passion through your words and actions. Now, take that megaphone, enlarge it, fill it with the voices of all of your staff shouting the same brand message, and really get the message out.

The following are a few good considerations. Some may seem obvious and some may just be reminders, but as a whole, it’s better to prepared:

Passion
If you don’t share your passion with your staff, it certainly won’t be conveyed well to your customers, potential customers, and industry partners.

Drive
Finding the drive to support your passion is key to marketing success and will be noticed - even when you feel it’s not.

Motivation
Ideally, staff members don’t just depend on an employer for a paycheck, so if you’re motivating your staff constantly & consistently, they’ll appreciate you all that much more.

No matter how you spin it, employees should never be forced to blare a message they feel is not their own. A business’ employees are brand stewards, not soldiers. This is even true when you are working with contracted or outsourced partners.

Each person on a business’ staff brings as much marketing potential as a dedicated marketing team member. When you encourage employees to be your brand steward, your marketing voice will be exponentially amplified no matter what your market or industry may be.

Posted 4 weeks ago

Earth Day Network | Earth Day 2013

Celebrate the Earth: here before us, we are all stewards to this planet we evolved from.

Posted 1 month ago

WHO | World Health Day 2013

Celebrate World Health Day and treat yourself and your loved ones just a little (or a lot ;) ) better today and everyday!

Posted 1 month ago

pennyfournasa:

Universe is frighteningly big and we only know less than 4.9% of it. In fact according to the Planck mission team the universe is made up of 4.9% ordinary matter, 26.8% dark matter, and 68.3% dark energy.

News broke out recently about an instrument onboard the ISS, called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), could possibly have detected dark matter. We are completely ignorant on dark matter and dark energy.

This instrument had recently picked up traces of dark matter, which made many scientists excited as well as skeptical on the results. The AMS measures cosmic rays, which are subatomic particles that fly all around space. They come from many different sources such as black holes, quasars, supernovas, and our favorite mystery dark matter.

Once we have figure out that dark matter does in fact exist we can finally start testing and experimenting with the particles. This could be huge news. However, it’s also been said that the instrument may have misleading results so this new report is controversial and the data is still being analyzed as well as other astronomers such as Phil Plait are throwing their two cents in on what the results could mean or if they are even valid.

So let’s keep exciting instruments like this alive and double NASA’s budget today. You can start taking ACTION here: http://www.penny4nasa.org/take-action/

Source: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/04/03/dark_matter_experiment_on_the_space_station_hints_at_wimpy_dark_matter.html

Posted 2 months ago

International Day of Happiness - 20 March

“Compassion promotes happiness and will help build the future we want.” Today is the International Day of Happiness :)

Posted 2 months ago

Across the Social Media Universe: Business Development: The Bridge Between Marketing & Sales

Business Development: The Bridge Between Marketing & Sales

How do you define Business Development?

Whenever I talk or write about Business Development with small (or even medium sized) business owners and representatives, they frequently ask: what is business development? It’s amazing to me how many business folks, from owners to managers to sales & marketing representatives, have varying opinions on what it is and what it means.

The term has been explored by the always insightful marketing guru, Seth Godin, and even Forbes over the last few years, but even they refer to it as business puzzle yet to be fully realized. Perhaps it’s because Business Development is a relatively newer term. Or maybe it’s that there are few books or college courses that even address what it can mean to any business in any given market or industry. What is certain is that Business Development has moved beyond just being the latest buzz term. It has planted itself firmly in Marketing efforts, Sales Cycles and, ultimately, Business Plans regardless of the unsolved mystery of what it really means.

In it it’s simplest form, Business Development is the bridge between Marketing & Sales. Most of this transition has been made easier with our online communications and especially CRM(Customer Relationship Management) resources. With CRMs - even the free options - Sales representatives can record their activities as leads migrate from traceable Marketing & Advertising efforts.

It’s not enough just to record your Marketing & Sales efforts. Businesses, large and small, have to monitor their Business Development activities, analyze the data, and provide reports with meaningful information for Continuous Improvement (another fashionable buzz term.) Continuous Improvement is the underlying link between creating improved customer relations, employee satisfaction and work habits, and Business & Marketing Plan development. Or in simpler terms, Business Development on the front end and continuous improvement on the back end.

Implementing Business Development strategies is a key to maintaining an effective revenue. It is the gateway transitional element carried forward from your initial Marketing & Advertising efforts to give purpose, meaning, and structure to the Sales Cycle. It is because of Business Development that successful businesses are able to move and think beyond the Business Plan for purposeful Continuous Improvement.

What Business Development strategies have worked best for you?

Posted 2 months ago

inhabitat.com

Developing Robobees To Pollinate Flowers Should Bees Become Extinct - Sustainable Design Innovation #biomimicry http://inhabitat.com/scientists-develop-flying-robobees-to-pollinate-flowers-as-bee-populations-decline/

Posted 2 months ago
I will make a difference.
Posted 2 months ago

An opportunity to do business better | LinkedIn

There’s always a better way