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LIFE’S A PITCH. AAI Toolkit

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Sourced from Association of Advertisers in Ireland

We are delighted to be hosting a very exciting in-person Toolkit session on Tuesday, 25th October.

LIFE’S A PITCH.

A client and agency discussion on why it doesn’t have to be this way, and how to minimise business disruption for your organisation in the creative agency pitch process, with tips on how to get the best partner.

Date: 25th October
Time: Tea and light refreshments – 8:45am
Seminar – 10am

Location:
Dentsu Ireland
Two Haddington Buildings
20-38 Haddington Road
Dublin 4
DO4 HE94

Registration: Here. 

AAI Tuesdays Nuts and Bolts of Advertising brings a fresh look at everyday topics and includes inputs from across the industry. These seminars are part of the AAI Advertisers’ Toolkit, an initiative to help advertisers and marketers keep up to date on important advertising topics and useful marketing questions.

The panel includes:

Sandra McGarry, Procurement, Three Ireland

Jeanne McGann, Head of Marketing, Nissan Ireland

Pat Stephenson, Founder, Chief Relationship Officer, Boys & Girls

Damian Hanley, Creative Director, In the Company of Huskies

Catrióna Campbell, Partner & Managing Director, The Public House

Moderated by Chloe Hanratty, Head of Strategic Planning, Publicis Dublin

Register Now

Sourced from Association of Advertisers in Ireland

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Developing a Data Strategy Roadmap

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By Keith D. Foote

A Data Strategy roadmap is a step-by-step guide to transform a business from its current state into the desired business organization. It is a more detailed, researched version of the Data Strategy and communicates when and how to implement specific advances to develop and upgrade a business’s data processes. A Data Strategy roadmap acts as a useful tool for aligning the organization’s processes with its desired business goals.

A successful roadmap will align the different solutions used to upgrade an organization and help to build a strong foundation for the business.

A significant advantage in using a Data Strategy roadmap is the elimination of chaos and confusion. Time, money, and resources will be saved during the transformation process. The roadmap can also be used as a communication tool to convey the plans to stakeholders, staff, and management. A good roadmap should include:

  • The specific goals: A list of what should be accomplished at the end of this project.
  • The people: A description of who will be responsible for each step of the process.
  • Timeline: A schedule for implementing each phase or project. There should be an understanding of what needs to be done first.
  • The finances: The budget needed for each phase of the Data Strategy.
  • The software: A description of software needed to achieve the specific goals listed on the Data Strategy roadmap.

The Key Phases for Developing a Data Strategy Roadmap

The first phase involves mapping the current data environment, defining business and data terms, and determining the business’s goals. It is important to develop a big-picture understanding of the data you have, where and how it’s stored, how the data moves through the organization, who is using it, and why.

Multiple graphs and charts should be used to provide a visual understanding. One chart within the Data Strategy roadmap should show the various pathways the data follows as it enters, is processed, and stored (and in some cases, where it exits). Knowing what you have makes it easier to understand and communicate what is needed. (Global Data Strategy offers a fairly good basic chart that can be used as a base, and expanded upon, here.)

Phase two involves identifying the basic components needed for the organization’s “future data usage.” (This could be a list rather than a chart.) The organization’s specific goals should be considered when planning data usage in the future. These components usually fall into four general categories:

  • Analytics and business intelligence: A term that describes the applications, tools, and infrastructure used to access and analyze data. After the data has been analyzed, it should provide insights and useful business information for making better decisions. Artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions can be used to translate overwhelming amounts of raw data into usable business intelligence.
  • Data storage: The three most popular data storage systems are databases, data warehouses, and data lakes. A database stores limited amounts of structured data that can be accessed quickly and efficiently. A data warehouse stores large amounts of filtered, structured data that is normally used for research purposes. A data lake stores large amounts of raw data, in its original format, until it is needed. Data lakehouses are a fairly new concept – a merging of data warehouses and data lakes with the goal of combining their strengths – and are worth investigating.
  • Data sources: The sources you choose should support the business goals defined in the first phase. All modern data strategies include some mixture of the four basic kinds of data sources:
  • Internal structured data: Examples include a business’s or customer’s name, email address, and other useful information.
  • Internal unstructured data: Typically inhouse data that is difficult to integrate, such as contracts, which may exist in many versions, formats, and locations.
  • External structured data: Data from outside sources that is made up of data types with patterns that make them easy to search and reformat. (PDFs, for example.)
  • External unstructured data: Typically collected from a variety of sources, such as social media, studies, news items, photographs, etc.
  • Providing access to customers and potential customers: This component is the interface layer to the website that is accessed by customers and visitors. When researching this component, consider specialized tools that will provide dashboards, making it easier to perform analytics, pull automated reports, and perform other self-service tasks.

Phase three places an emphasis on increasing overall efficiency, and supports the details needed for success. The following suggestions/goals should be incorporated into the Data Strategy roadmap to maximize efficiency:

  • Excellent data quality: Accurate, high-quality data is essential for gaining real-time insights. (If a Master Data Management platform and a Data Governance program are not yet in place, it’s time to make the investment. They are both necessary to guarantee high-quality data. Oh, and make sure the Master Data Management and Data Governance software are compatible.)
  • Good communications: Educating investors, stakeholders, management, and staff (and meeting the expectations you have created) will help in developing trust. As trust is gained, resistance to change is lowered. By delivering improvements on schedule, enthusiasm for the changes can be maintained.
  • Getting the right cloud/software: In these modern times, chances are high the desired software will be accessed from a cloud. While this will significantly increase the chances software packages are compatible, do not automatically assume this is true of all software within a cloud. As the software needs of the organization are identified and evaluated, consider the following when seeking solutions:
  • Maturity of the solution: Software (or a cloud) that has been available for less than a year has an increased probability of bugs and kinks. Clouds and software that have been around for a while tend to have worked out their issues.
  • Availability of resources: A cloud with a broad array of tools and resources will be useful for generalized business. (Some clouds are tightly focused on apps development and have limited resources.)
  • Strength of the user community: A number of clouds and websites have begun the practice of having experienced customers answer complaints and provide solutions. A larger user-community will have more answers readily available, and a greater number of people responding to new questions.
  • Incremental development: A cloud that offers the ability to develop incrementally will be useful to a business that is deliberately evolving. A cloud that charges fines for adding services after a contract has been signed is not a partner you want to work with.
  • Use proven approaches: Rather than creating a brand-new system, it might be wiser to use an established architectural model, and adjust it to suit the organization’s purposes. Using proven architectures, frameworks, and processes will reduce the risk of failure and boost the probability of positive outcomes.
  • Security: Tedious as it might be, security is a crucial feature in any modern business. It is necessary to protect the business and its customers. Research any cloud or software that will be used for security weaknesses.

The fourth phase focuses more on business and the ROI, or the “return on investment.” Stakeholders and investors will want to know the money is being used wisely. To maximize the returns on software and cloud investments, the following characteristics should be built into the Data Strategy roadmap:

  • Education: A necessary step in the transformation process is educating staff, management, stakeholders, and investors. Using a newsletter to inform and update everyone on a monthly or weekly basis can be remarkably useful. New vocabulary words and phrases that are appropriate for the transformed business should be included in the newsletter, with staff and management being encouraged to learn and use them.
  • Repetitive processes: Some actions, perhaps several, supporting the transformation process, are repetitive. These processes should be standardized, speeding up development, completion, and rollout. The Data Strategy roadmap should include scheduled meetings with department heads and analysts to decide which processes are necessary, and which will no longer be needed.
  • Automation: Data automation reduces human error and accomplishes tasks much more quickly than human beings can. It’s a good idea to automate whenever possible. Be sure to consider the organization’s automation maturity at present, and list areas and services that should be automated on the Data Strategy roadmap. (This might include repetitive processes.)
  • Modularity: Breaking the Data Strategy roadmap’s phases and goals into smaller, logical projects will help to streamline the organization’s transformation process. The Agile philosophy and a DevOps approach should be included in the process to increase flexibility and speed up the process. The Agile and DevOps methods should be incorporated permanently and included in the “new words and phrases” vocabulary section of the newsletter.
  • Effective staffing: There is an extremely high probability new staff with specialized skills will need to be hired to handle some of the new software and technologies. This should be included in the Data Strategy roadmap. In some cases, the business may provide additional training to current staff and add new responsibilities to their job description. The skills and resources of staff and management should be reviewed, with people being trained and/or hired, as needed.

In Closing

Developing a Data Strategy roadmap provides a valuable tool for implementing a Data Strategy and transforming the business into an effective and efficient organization. It will communicate a clear plan of the organization’s direction, and its expectations. Having these expectations outlined in the roadmap will help bring all members of the organization on this evolutionary journey.

The Data Strategy roadmap keeps the business’s management and staff focused on the upcoming changes.

By Keith D. Foote

Sourced from DATAVERSITY

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Want to Be Remarkably Successful? Focus on Creating Your Own Venn Diagram of Success

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By Jeff Haden,

HubSpot co-founder Dharmesh Shah calls it the Trillion Dollar Venn Diagram of Success. But it applies no matter how you define ‘success.’

I’m acquainted with a lawyer who is arguably the country’s leading authority on estate planning. Legal theory, scholarship, practice… she’s who the experts call for advice. She’s also extremely fit, often finishing triathlons near the top of her age group. And for good measure, she’s a gifted pianist.

Yet she’s often frustrated; while she’s one of the top handful of people in her area of legal expertise, the time and effort spent acquiring those skills has failed to pay off in what she considers to be a commensurate financial return.

Why?

Because the circles in her Venn diagram of success, as described here by HubSpot co-founder Dharmesh Shah, don’t intersect.

Now consider Troy Aikman, the Hall of Fame quarterback who won three Super Bowls. In the universe of all people with some degree of football knowledge, Aikman is in the top .001 (or however many zeros you want to add) percent.

He then worked to add another circle. After significant time and effort, Aikman developed elite skills as an analyst and television broadcaster.

As a result, two of the circles in his Venn diagram of success intersected.

null inline image

The result isn’t addition; it’s multiplication. A subset of people have elite-level football knowledge. A subset of people are elite broadcasters. People with both skills make up an extremely small subset; there are only four lead NFL football analysts, all of whom, unsurprisingly, are former players.

Their financial success is commensurate to that rarity not just because the intersection of their set of skills is rare, but also because — unlike my lawyer friend — the market places significant value on that intersection.

But Aikman didn’t stop there. He also worked to acquire business skills. He’s owned car dealerships. He’s co-owned a NASCAR team. He’s invested in startups. He recently launched Eight, a beer for health-conscious people who don’t want to consume empty calories.

As a result, his Venn diagram of skills looks like this.

null inline image

Notice I didn’t rate Aikman’s business skills. In part that’s because in spite of his obvious success, assigning an objective rating is difficult. Yet that’s also because where business is concerned, Aikman downplays his skills.

“I don’t feel like I have great strengths,” Aikman says. “When I objectively evaluate myself, I don’t think I’m great at many things.”

And here’s the thing: Because three of the circles in his Venn diagram of skills intersect, he doesn’t need to be a .001-percenter as a businessperson. My lawyer friend? She has multiple skills, but they don’t intersect. They’re unrelated. They don’t compound.

Aikman’s football knowledge, broadcasting skill, and business skills compound. Think of his Venn diagram of skills as his version of the Amazon flywheel, where feeding one area helps fuel and accelerate other areas.

His business skills help him take advantage of opportunities created by his financial success and public profile. His years spent as a formal and informal leader, both on and off the field, help him better build relationships, better manage people, better assess and evaluate skills, have a keen sense of when to lead and when to follow….

That intersection means Aikman doesn’t need to be a .001-percentile businessperson, because his extremely rare intersection of skills and experiences more than offsets any perceived lack of skill. (“Perceived” because he’s extremely business savvy.)

And that’s the beauty of working to build your own Venn diagram of related skills.

You don’t have to be the best in any one area. In fact, time spent working to be in the top 1 percent, rather than “just” the top 5 or 10 percent, is arguably a waste of time. You can become the best coder in the world, but if you aren’t at least somewhat skilled at leading and managing people, your company is much less likely to be as successful as you hope. You can become a truly world-class chef, but if you aren’t at least somewhat skilled at the business of running a restaurant, your venture is much less likely to be as successful as you hope.

A skilled coder or chef who has solid leadership skills, solid financial knowledge, and a decent sense of of how to market and sell, is much more likely to be successful. (Think Bill Gates, for example.)

The premise applies to nearly every pursuit. The best surgeons in the world will always trade their time for money.

Unless they gain leadership skills, and business skills, and leverage that intersection to build a practice group with multiple physicians.

While exceptions exist, working to gain three or four solid, interconnected, and self-reinforcing skills will almost always be more likely to pay off — at least financially — than focusing solely on achieving one exceptional skill.

And if you do manage to acquire two or three world-class skills that interconnect? Like Aikman, or like Adam Grant, whose intersection of outstanding teaching, research, writing, speaking, and coaching skills puts him in a category of one? So much the better.

But you don’t have to, as long as you make sure the skills you seek to acquire relate to and reinforce each other. And as long as you make sure those skills set you apart in a meaningful way.

And, most importantly, that you make sure that intersection of skills sets you up to achieve success in whatever way you choose to define “success.”

Because that’s what really matters.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Jeff Haden,

Sourced from Inc.

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Digital Advertising Is Overwhelming. Where to Look Next?

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By Anton Volovyk

The rapid start-up of new businesses has led to oversaturation and excessive competition in media buying and digital traffic. In this overwhelming digital landscape, it seems like only ad empires like Google and Amazon are benefiting. Despite Facebook plateauing, and the worst spring for stocks since 2008, new platforms like TikTok are readily taking up market share and consolidating profits, and the ad industry is booming.

It’s no secret that digital advertising is an attention game. However, time spent on social media and on screens has not only peaked but has generally been plateauing since the pandemic. Unfortunately, the reduction of digital traffic isn’t reducing digital advertising, it is having the opposite effect. The digital ad space is becoming even more saturated.

Even though traffic is down, and saturation is up, there are three universal ways for brands to work with their audience, product, and business models to lead the market.

#1 Growing the community

The cheapest and the most effective way to improve your business performance.

Customer retention and loyalty should be primary areas of focus. Depending on the industry, acquiring a new customer may cost 5-25 times more than retaining an existing one. The solution is to retain current customers by building a community around your brand.

The community represents the core of customers who are most interested in your product, are brand ambassadors, and communicate with each other. Communities help foster repeat purchases, improve retention, fix product bugs in real time using direct feedback, distribute brand messages for free, and can offer even more:

  • Communities produce UGC, which may go viral.
  • New customers are more likely to make decisions based on feedback from other users versus marketing messages directly from a company.
  • Communities help people establish strong social bonds based on common interests.
  • Community makes customers feel good, social interaction produces dopamine.
  • Community members are generally very profitable for a company given that they usually have higher LTV (Lifetime Value).

Harley-Davidson and the British cycling brand Rapha are good examples of building a strong community around a product. Both brands have managed to create a club of dedicated and loyal members with a subscription model and benefits like club memberships, sharing experiences, organizing meetings with cycling and motorcycle enthusiasts using the app, drinking coffee at partner points, and even offering bike rentals from their stores.

#2 Integrating growth loops into your product and business model

Marketing tricks that help businesses grow organically.

Since the late 2000s, many innovative companies have been launched (Uber, Airbnb, Spotify, and many others) that soon became leaders in their niches. All of these companies utilized a non-standard marketing approach. They didn’t reject the traditional AARRR Pirate framework (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue). In addition to this more traditional sales funnel, they incorporated growth loops into their business models.

The logic behind a growth loop is that the contribution of each new user should lead to a particular action that positively affects the likelihood of user acquisition. Thus, without additional marketing efforts, the client’s community constantly grows and each client brings in a new one.

The neo banking company Revolut claims to have acquired 4M users through viral growth loops, and the first 1.5 million users were reportedly acquired without spending on advertising. How? Revolut’s Head of Growth for UK/IE calls it an Offline → Online → Offline acquisition loop. Users receive their Revolut card delivery at home, they share the unboxing experience on social media, complete registration, and get rewarded for signing up new users. It is simple but effective.

#3 Analysing and catching global trends ahead of the competition

It’s hard, but it works all the time.

Do you remember the first ad banner? In 1994, at the dawn of digital advertising a little rectangle purchased by AT&T on HotWired hit a record 44% click through rate. Today, the best banners boast much lower rates, generally from 0.39% in Tech to 1.08% in Real Estate for example.

Social media marketing indicators, which performed actively in the mid-2000s, are not representative today. Despite Apple’s iOS privacy changes, US advertisers are estimated to spend over $58B on Facebook advertising in 2022, up 15.5% from last year. But most web users find digital ads too intrusive and annoying.

To catch user attention, brands are hunting for their audience in places where people spend most of their time. According to State of Mobile 2022 data, people are still spending their time on social media with global time spent on social apps reaching 412 billion hours in 2021 (up to 35% from 2018).

In the last few years, advertisers have been using a mobile-first approach in which companies start product design from the mobile end, which is fitting, as mobile has become the priority.

TikTok remains the most downloaded app in the world, allowing users to scroll through a feed of short videos without tapping any buttons. The company has made a breakthrough in mobile consumption, allowing advertisers to get effective campaign results without taking users out of the app.

Trends run out of steam. What’s next?

Today, the web is becoming more interactive. Many tech experts believe we are smoothly moving into the Web 3 phase — the next Internet generation. In the 90s, we just “read” the Internet in its Web 1 form. With the rise of the first social networks in Web 2, users gained more online opportunities. Web 3 heralds the invention of new tools for interaction, and the Metaverse is one of its upcoming trends. A huge number of companies, big and small are now developing tools and technologies that will accelerate web decentralization and allow the introduction of more sales and distribution channels. The creator economy will reach the next level as soon as users, endowed with rights to content, get to the centre of the new web infrastructure.

Thanks to new technologies, the Internet will change, as will advertising.

The full-scale penetration of Metaverse-like experiences and the massive rollout of AR/VR has not yet happened. Still, many tech companies are already working on creating ad opportunities in virtual environments, launching digital clothing brands, hosting virtual shows and exhibitions, and more. For example, this July, India’s largest Food Delivery presented a hyper-localized video campaign on YouTube. This ad featured an actor mentioning the name of the dish, restaurant, and city, which vary from viewer to viewer based on their phone’s GPS.

If there is one thing we can expect from the digital landscape, it is change. No one knows exactly what the future of the Internet will look like, but it will certainly be more immersive and personalized. The new web will affect the whole of advertising, but brands can continue to thrive if they build community, integrate growth loops and keep an eye on the next emergent trend.

Feature Image Credit: Joe Yates

By Anton Volovyk

Anton Volovyk holds an MBA degree from Harvard Business School and a Master in Finance degree from IE Business School. Anton is an expert in app-monetization, business development, and leadership. Before Reface, he worked at the Boston Consulting Group, a global strategy consulting company working with clients across consumer, tech, and media. Prior to BCG, Anton worked in investment banking in the M&A department and Private Equity as a tech and consumer investor.

Sourced from BM

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4 Reasons Why You Need to Hire a Digital Marketing Agency to Level Up Your Brand Power

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If you are not an expert, outsourcing your marketing efforts to a digital marketing agency is a great solution. With remote work flourishing, outsourcing your digital marketing to a specialized agency with talent and resources in place is a great way to propel your business growth without having to grow your team first.

Finding the right people to help you grow your business might be a challenge. That is why I recommend looking outside of your company for talent. Outsourcing important tasks to experts might be the push your business needs to grow quickly. One of the key tasks you can outsource to experts is marketing.

You might feel hiring a marketing agency is a risk. It’s understandable to feel hesitant at first when first engaging with a team outside your organization. But certain risks are worth it when the benefits outweigh them.

1. Not hiring a digital marketing agency could be costing you more

The number one reason companies shy away from hiring a marketing agency is they think it’s expensive. Often a marketing agency can be a cost-effective strategy when you take into consideration a full-time employee’s salary, benefits, taxes and PTO time.

Hesitating in hiring experts might delay your company’s growth unnecessarily. A marketing agency can help your business grow quicker and start generating revenue faster. It will free you up to focus on working with your clients and running your business effectively.

2. You get to decide what marketing efforts you’d like to outsource to a marketing agency

A digital marketing agency would typically have a menu of services. The advantage of contracting a marketing agency is it would have resources you would need that would take much time and effort to build up in-house.

Instead of wasting your time gaining expertise in digital marketing, you can access an agency’s experience and resources. Since marketing is its bread and butter, the agency will have people and tools in place to start executing your vision as soon as possible.

Talk to the agency representatives so you can agree on what services and resources would be best for you to leverage, given the stage of your business development. For example, you might want to outsource specialized aspects of digital marketing such as SEO, media buying or email marketing campaigns.

Shop around for a digital marketing agency to see what each can do for you and negotiate the budget.

3. Help them help you reach your marketing goals

For a digital marketing agency team to be most helpful to you, they need to understand your vision. If they don’t get what you are about, your values, your brand image and your goals for marketing, their efforts won’t produce the results you are looking for.

Ensure the hired team has enough material to learn about your brand so they can design campaigns in your voice. Develop branding guidelines for them to follow, reflecting the look and feel of your brand. This way, no matter who joins their team, they all have the same understanding of your brand.

The agency will also need to understand your tech stack and the tools you use to collect and analyze your company’s performance. They will need access to your ways of reporting and your data. Establishing clear channels of access, sharing and communication will decrease friction, increasing efficiency and speed of execution of your vision on their end.

4. Collaborate and connect via project management tools

The project management tools, such as Trello, Slack, Asana, Monday or Clickup, don’t just serve as tools of efficiency. They also provide your team and your marketing agency with a unified place to work in, creating a sense of a teamwork environment.

Trello, for example, serves my team as a central hub for communication and collaboration. My team can communicate and work together efficiently through comments and tags on specific tasks, and everyone can track progress.

A sense of cohesion among the team, aided by the digital tools, will help create a sense of common purpose. This way, each member of your team and the team you are outsourcing to will be invested in helping you achieve your goals and committed to the bigger picture, not just their assigned tasks.

It’s rewarding and gratifying to have your whole team working in unison and collaborating with an outside agency smoothly.

Level up your brand power

Growth requires more people power. Sometimes, that power can be found in outside agencies. Hiring a digital marketing agency might feel uneasy at first. Once you make the first step, however, you will find that outsourcing allows you to free up your time to work on scaling your business.

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Sourced from Entrepreneur

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Social Media for business: STILL a tale of two extremes?

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By Dom Hawes

While some businesses seem to find social media a doddle, others struggle. Many consumer businesses have found that social media allows a very personal kind of brand experience that is more effective, lower cost and more human than the dreaded call centres that social service centres replaced. But, many business-to-business organisations don’t love social media. They avoid it hoping it isn’t relevant to them. Wrong.

Lauren Irwin argued on this site that business do really need social media. She made that argument during the pandemic. That’s over two years ago, yet here we still are.

During the pandemic and immediately afterwards, we tracked tens of thousands of business’s search activity online. We were seeking to identify the most searched subjects related to marketing. Our premise was that – as an integrated marketing group – people searching for information probably had an itch that we could help scratch.

Most searched social media terms by marketers

More effective use of social media was a top five enquiry month after month. The most searched topics were;

  • social media advertising
  • social strategy
  • content
  • social influencers

It struck me as odd that while businesses were searching tactical issues like advertising, content and influencers, many hadn’t got to grip with the two most fundamental building blocks of social media: social service (including social listening) and social selling.

So… I took to social media to find out why. In this case, I chose LinkedIn as my platform as it seemed the best to elicit strong B2B responses and I posted a slightly provocative post about social being a cess pit of an echo chamber. The post performed so well, I invited the best commenters onto one of my podcast, Marketing Trek. One guest in particular fascinated me so I turned his story into a bonus edition.

Social media is an essential service and sales channel

I’ve pasted a player for both the main episode and the bonus below, but you can find the pod on all good platforms too. In the intro, I think I said something like “From a business perspective, social media offers many opportunities”. That might be the understatement of the century?

Social is an essential service and sales channel for every business. If you’re not already embracing it, you’re not seizing an opportunity that’s staring you in the face.

Jeff Watt, MD of city-based communications consultancy Greentarget agrees. “B2B have been slower than perhaps their consumer facing peers to respond to and manage and engage with channels like that.” He said, referring to social channels. “But there are lots of examples that we have seen more recently where reputational damage appears very, very quickly. It spreads very quickly on social media channels”, he added.

And there’s the rub. If you’re not already in it, how are you going to handle things when crisis hits? And who’s going to handle it?

Who guards your brand reputation?

Andy Sutherden is a seasoned marketer and communicator who was on the London 2012 bid and organising team and has worked for giant global brands all his life. He spoke to me about social media and reputation particularly around who is responsible for a business’s reputation on social.

“Communications and reputation should always sits at the board table”, he explained. “It strikes me that when I’m asked about the importance of enhancing a reputation, the [emergency] blue [rescue] light arrives when reputation has been damaged, or it’s in tatters and you’re there to fix it. I’d much rather be an expert that elevates the importance of getting and keeping a good reputation rather than waiting for something horrible to go wrong, then trying to fix it.”

So maybe now, almost two decades after social changed everything it’s time to look in the mirror and ask “are we really doing everything we can to extract value from social?

Episode 13: Into the Echo Chamber

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Episode 13 BONUS: Alex’s Story

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

By Dom Hawes

Sourced from State of Digital

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USB SuperSpeed branding meets its demise, but may still appear on some products

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USB is somehow both the simplest thing in the world, streamlining how we charge our devices, transfer data, and connect accessories, yet also an impenetrably confusing mess of inscrutable standards — who knows if you’ll need a new cable to charge your phone at full speed? Thankfully, the powers that be (the USB Implementers Forum, or USB-IF) aren’t unsympathetic to our plight and following efforts last year to clean up power rating logos, the group’s rebranding effort is now looking to simplify the nomenclature for the SuperSpeed and USB4 standards.
Speaking to The Verge, USB-IF President and COO Jeff Ravencraft explains that studies revealed consumers don’t quite understand the meaning of the basic USB branding, let alone any of the more advanced features that can be supported. One of those that hasn’t proven very helpful is the SuperSpeed branding — which doesn’t even immediately communicate what data speeds it supports, nor what charging wattage. In an effort to avoid confusing branding like USB4 Gen3x2 and USB4 Version 2.0, the group instead wants to place the data transfer speed and wattage (where applicable) front and centre.

The big changes you’ll notice as a consequence of this rebrand are the dropping of SuperSpeed and simplifying USB4 to just USB. Legacy USB 1.0 and USB 2.0 (now called USB Hi-Speed) branding remains unaffected — you won’t see the latter changed to USB 480Mbps, because the USB-IF rightly fears customers may equate the higher numerical value to a faster data transfer speed, completely ignoring the difference between MB and GB.

Source: USB-IF

For USB-C cables used to transfer power and data, the maximum rated wattage will now be appended to the USB branding. Products certified before this shift can continue using the older branding, and while manufacturers may breathe a collective sigh of relief, this might only spell more confusion for consumers if it takes years for the new stuff to really penetrate the market.

Source: USB-IF

Of course, companies aren’t forced to undergo USB-IF certification for their products in the first place — although respectable brands will, since they need to in order to feature the USB logo. So, while this may not solve all of our USB headaches, it admittedly sounds like a step in the right direction.

By Chandraveer Mathur

Sourced from Android Police

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12 Ridiculous Job Interview Questions That Should Send You Running

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By Kylie Smith  & Edited By Chris Kissell

Noticing these red flags can save you from a disappointing job change.

You’ve finally scored an interview with your dream company and couldn’t be more excited.

But as visions of making more money dance through your head, you might find that the interviewer has some strange questions to ask.

It sounds bizarre, but some companies ask off-the-wall questions when interviewing potential employees. But is a weird question a red flag, or does it mean you’ve found a fun, quirky company?

You can decide as you dive into the following list of some of the oddest interview questions.

1. If you were an animal, what would you be and why?

Asking you to compare yourself to something else can help an interviewer get a read on your personality. For instance, are you more of a dog person (friendly and collaborative) or a cat person (happiest working on your own)?

It might also be a fun, low-stakes question that helps set a more casual tone for the interview. This odd question is more common than most, and it doesn’t scream “run” too loudly for some folks.

But others might start looking for the exit. If the company is already acting weird during the interview, what kind of weirdness will reveal itself once you start working there?

5. If you were a brand, what would be your motto?

According to reports, interviewers for Boston Consulting Group asked the question above. You can think of it as a spin on a more typical question like, “What are your strengths?” Or “What are you the most proud of in your work life?”

It’s not the best question, but it’s far from the worst. This might not be a red flag if you’re applying at an ad agency or public relations company. But for other types of jobs, this question might be just annoying enough to send you back to the “help wanted” ads.

6. Red or yellow?

This question — or a variation like “Purple or pink?” — is completely open-ended, so bring whatever energy you want to the table here. Strict “this or that” questions don’t give an interviewer much information about you.

An interviewer asking you one offhand question like this isn’t a warning sign. But if you’re only getting arbitrary questions with no obvious link to your work experience, you might want to look elsewhere.

7. If a train leaves Busan at 12 p.m. going 60 mph and another train leaves Seoul at 1 a.m. going 47 mph …

Unless you’re a mathematician or train engineer, you shouldn’t be answering complicated story problems in an interview.

Depending on the job, it might be fair to ask you to show an ability to think on your feet. But again, unless you’re a walking calculator, you can’t come up with the right answer to a question like this off the top of your head.

A company that wants you to do so needs an expectation reset.

8. Do you think I’m a good interviewer?

If you’re asked this question, it’s time to stand up and sprint for the nearest exit.

We’ll make an exception if you’re interviewing for the position of interviewer. Otherwise, this one’s a hard pass.

9. What is your biggest weakness?

This question isn’t an unusual one: It’s simply a bad question with no good answer.

If you say you don’t have any weaknesses, you sound egotistical. On the other hand, if you can’t stop talking about your main problems, you run the risk of making yourself sound like a bad hiring choice.

If your interviewer asks about your weaknesses, feel free to be honest while using specific examples of how you’ve overcome such shortcomings in previous jobs. But definitely weigh whether you would be happy working for a company that asks you to outline flaws before it hires you.

10. What would your current manager say about you?

Far too many companies ask this question, so it’s not necessarily odd. However, it is unfair.

You can’t evaluate yourself from another person’s perspective, which is why companies ask for references.

Additionally, people often leave jobs because they don’t get along with their manager. How are you supposed to evaluate yourself from the perspective of someone who doesn’t like you, or who you don’t like?

By Kylie Smith  & Edited By Chris Kissell

Sourced from Finance Buzz

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Want To Grow Your Ecommerce Brand? Take Advice From This Industry Expert.

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Sourced from Entrepreneur

The Ultimate Guide To Shopify has all the tools you need to start and grow your own online business.

The Ultimate Guide To Shopify by Jason R. Rich from Entrepreneur Press offers all the tools and guidance you need to start and run your own ecommerce business. With proven marketing strategies that will boost sales, tactics to differentiate your website and advice from industry experts, The Ultimate Guide To Shopify sets you up for success when starting an online business. Read on for an excerpted interview from the book with ecommerce veteran Bob Herman, co-founder of Luv To Laugh. Herman discusses the process of building his business and how it evolved and ultimately thrived using Shopify to expand his brand.

Luv To Laugh is a Shopify-based ecommerce website that sells T-shirts and other apparel printed with graphic designs created by Herman’s brother and business partner Scott. Most of the company’s orders are created and fulfilled by print-on-demand services.

In this interview, you’ll learn more about Herman’s experience creating and managing Luv To Laugh using Shopify.

Q: How did the concept for Luv To Laugh evolve into an ecommerce website?

My brother and I wanted to create something to honor the memory of our grandmother, who we called Bubby. She always loved to laugh, and the graphic designs featured on our apparel are based on her adventures. Once we determined what our goals would be for the company, we conducted research to learn about the ecommerce platforms that could best meet our needs. We wound up choosing Shopify because we felt that the admin console for managing the site was the most intuitive and the third-party apps that can be incorporated into the site to add functionality are expansive. The cost to operate an ecommerce business using Shopify is also very affordable, especially considering that website hosting is included. By providing us with the technological tools needed to easily create and manage the website, this allowed us to focus more on creating the products we wanted to launch.

Q: Part of your company’s brand and philosophy includes supporting the charity Feed the Hungry, and you donate 5 percent of your net profits to this organization. What made you decide to do this?

There are many charities out there that support causes around feeding people who are hungry. As we were first coming up with ideas for Luv To Laugh, we knew that we wanted to support some type of charity. We chose a charity that we believed was important to the world and that our bubby would also have supported and believed in. Ultimately, as we learned about Feed the Hungry, we decided that this was a great cause that we wanted to support.

Q: Why did you decide to use a print-on-demand service to imprint your products?

We actually work with several different print-on-demand services, and we love the fact that they integrate seamlessly with Shopify. Choosing to use a print-on-demand service to create our products and fulfill our orders was purely a financial decision. We simply could not afford to initially create and maintain an inventory. As we grow, we plan to begin having our products manufactured in bulk and carrying our own inventory, because ultimately this would allow us to earn higher profits from each sale.

Q: What was the biggest misconception you initially had about starting an ecommerce business?

We had inaccurate expectations for sales volume. When we were telling our friends and family about the business idea, everyone was incredibly supportive, so we thought that quickly getting a bunch of orders would be easy because everyone would just love the idea once they discovered our website. We did not have the initial marketing budget to generate the traffic and sales we initially expected.

Q: What would you say are some of the key skills someone needs to create and manage a successful ecommerce business?

While much of the Shopify platform relies on an intuitive user interface, there’s still an overall learning curve when it comes to understanding how ecommerce, as well as online sales and marketing, actually works. People need to understand the Shopify platform and learn how to use it before they launch their business on the platform. It’s important to understand how everything works and understand things like shipping rates and how the various online ad platforms work. Most of our paid advertising is done through social media and email marketing, and it’s important to learn how to do this properly, or you can easily wind up misspending your money.

Q: From the time you and your brother came up with the idea for Luv To Laugh to the time your website was launched, how long did the process take?

We spent about six months putting everything together, creating the designs for our products, and developing a business plan we were comfortable with. Initially, we chose to launch the business with a specific number of designs, with the plan to continuously launch new designs. We did not want to provide customers with too many choices initially, so the goal was to create four distinct collections, and then have about 10 different products in each collection.

Q: How did the brand for your business evolve?

We wanted to establish our brand first, before ever launching the website. We came up with the business name and Luv To Laugh brand knowing we wanted something that could have a broad focus and that would allow us to expand in the future. A name like Bubby’s Adventures would have been too narrow a focus. After brainstorming the name, we didn’t finalize it till we knew we could get the domain name and had a logo that could be trademarked. The company name and brand project exactly the message we want to convey. I believe it’s important to establish a brand for a company at the very beginning, and the brand should represent something you’re very passionate about that has a definable and reachable target audience—not too broad or too niche.

Q: What type of research did you do about the competition you’d encounter?

We thought a lot about the competition as we were developing the concept for and focus of the business. When creating our products, we were very careful not to create something that would have to compete directly in the already-crowded marketplace for low-priced T-shirts with imprinted funny sayings. Our focus was on creating unique artwork, for which we hoped people would be willing to pay a premium. It’s very tricky coming up with a price for your products that allows you to earn a profit yet stay in line with the competition. A lot depends on what you’re selling, who you’re selling to, and the perceived value you can create for your products. Creating a premium brand that sells higher-quality products and then differentiating your products from the competition are strategies that allow a company like ours to charge higher prices.

Q: On your website, what are some of the strategies you use to quickly establish your company as a premium-priced brand?

We promote that our products are all custom-made using premium-quality materials, inks, and fabrics, and that we use a higher-quality printing process than most of our competitors. Our printing process does not peel or fade over time. We use our product descriptions to communicate this information to the prospective buyer. When creating product titles and descriptions, it’s important to provide a lot of information in a very concise manner. For example, you want to keep your product titles to 65 characters in length or shorter, especially if you’re integrating your website with advertising platforms. You also want to incorporate SEO-appropriate keywords and phrases into your product titles and descriptions. Of course, you absolutely need to proofread everything before publishing it.

Q: Once you decided to use the Shopify platform, how did you choose the theme for your website?

We had a vision in mind for what we wanted the website to look like. We ultimately chose a free theme called Debut, but now that the website is established, we’re looking at changing the theme. Applying a theme and previewing what your entire site will look like is very easy with Shopify. Choosing the right theme for your business is important. Some themes are only appropriate for specific types of businesses. Regardless of which theme you choose, make sure you understand how to customize it. Otherwise, you need to be willing to hire someone to help you with the customization process.

Q: Between you and your brother, you have professional and creative skills that are very conducive to creating and managing an ecommerce business. As you were getting started, did you need to hire any experts to help you accomplish specific tasks?

We have hired a professional photographer on a freelance basis to help us with product photography, although several print-on-demand services we work with provide us with high-quality mock-ups of the products that can be used online. Keep in mind, the photographer you hire should be able and willing to edit the photos as needed, so they can be incorporated directly onto your website in the appropriate file format and size.

Q: You mentioned that you use social media as an advertising and marketing tool. Which social media services have proved most successful for you?

For us, Facebook has worked well. We have a Facebook page for the company, and we use Facebook advertising as well. Right from Day One, get all your friends and family involved with your company’s social media presence, and get those people to invite their online friends to your company’s Facebook page. I have found that paid Facebook advertising works well for us. Shopify makes it easy to use Facebook advertising in an effective and affordable way. When it comes to online advertising, always start off small and perform tests before investing lots of money. Also try experimenting with different target audiences for your ads. With Facebook, you can get very granular in how you target people. Doing this will allow you to see how your products resonate with various niche audiences. One thing I have learned firsthand is that it’s going to take more online advertising dollars than you think to get your brand out there, build momentum, and drive a steady flow of traffic to your site. One marketing strategy we’re currently looking at is how we can attract social media influencers to help promote our products through paid endorsements. I believe this is something that could work well for us, but it has not yet been within our marketing budget. Cameo is a great service for finding affordable B-list celebrities to record short promotional videos for your brand that can be featured on your website and on social media, for example. The approach you take with your product listings, photography, and videography will depend on what you’re selling, who you’re selling to, and what story you want to communicate with the people who visit your website.

The Ultimate Guide To Shopify offers dozens of resources and experts like Herman who have cracked the code to excel in the ecommerce world. The book teaches you how to get started, the different methods of selling, how to promote your brand and ultimately how to thrive and run your own ecommerce business. Read a free preview of the book here, get your copy of The Ultimate Guide to Shopify from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Bookshop.

Sourced from Entrepreneur

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