editor, Author at Mediastreet

In News

Want To Stifle Your Team’s Creativity? Do These Things

July 2, 2019 No Comments

By Danielle Kost

The slate of companies going public this year— Pinterest, Slack Technologies, and Uber, to name a few—should silence anyone who doubts the power of a bold idea.

After all, one seemingly crazy brainstorm can up end an entire industry, keeping innovation top of mind for every executive. Fortunately, you don’t need to be a coding genius in a dorm room to birth a breakthrough, says Harvard Business School Professor Teresa M. Amabile, who has studied the interplay between creativity, productivity, and innovation for more than four decades.

Amabile, who is the Baker Foundation Professor and Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration, Emerita, reflected on her research and its impact in an essay in Perspectives on Psychological Science, Educating Leaders Who Make a Difference in the World (pdf). More recently, she discussed how artificial intelligence might enable creative breakthroughs in an Academy of Management Discoveries article, Creativity, Artificial Intelligence, and a World of Surprises.

Danielle Kost: Every executive is searching for the next big idea or strategy. Are there any techniques or approaches that people can use to stimulate their own creativity at work?

Teresa M. Amabile: Three of the components necessary for creativity reside within the individual, and one component, a conducive work environment, is external. The internal components are:

Expertise. People need expertise to be creative. So, to the extent that you can continue to learn not only in your primary domain, but in other, related domains, you’ll begin to see connections that could lead to a breakthrough.
Creative thinking skills. Some people are naturally able to think outside the box. But we can all learn and improve our creative thinking skills. For example, there are techniques that involve using different kinds of visual stimulation. You could go to an art museum and see what ideas emerge as you look at the art, and then try to make connections to some tricky problem that you’re trying to solve in your work. It’s also very useful to stimulate your thinking by talking to other people—brainstorming or simply getting new input on your ideas.
Intrinsic motivation. This is the drive to do something primarily because you find it interesting, enjoyable, satisfying, or personally challenging. Our research has shown that, unfortunately, a non-conducive work environment can undermine intrinsic motivation. Your immediate manager plays a huge role in establishing your work environment for creativity, the extent to which your creativity will be stimulated or diminished.

Kost: When managers want to inspire more creativity in their teams, what should they not do?

Amabile: Unfortunately, for many managers, behaviors that undermine creativity are more natural than behaviors that stimulate it. Many of the management approaches that people learned through decades of management education—especially in the 1950s and 60s and 70s—can really stifle creativity. These are things that managers should really try to avoid. In fact, to the extent possible, they should try to do the opposite:

Excessive constraint. Among destroyers of creativity, or “creativity killers,” as I call them, excessive constraint is probably number one. When people are supposed to be coming up with new ideas or solving complex problems in new ways, they need to be given a lot of autonomy. But it’s very hard for some managers to change their command-and-control management style, even when it’s creativity and innovation that they’re after.

Meaningless work. People tend to do their most creative work when they find deep meaning in what they’re doing—when they feel that their work really contributes to something that matters. If people lack that meaning, it’s very hard for them to stay intrinsically motivated and creative. Many managers don’t realize how necessary it is to help people understand the importance of their work.

A status quo bias. Some upper managers pay lip service to creativity and innovation, but they’re clearly oriented toward maintaining the status quo. They’re suspicious of new ideas. Sometimes the organization has a culture where new ideas are evaluated harshly, and people see that. It speaks much louder than any corporate mission statement.

Risk aversion. Creative work requires an environment where there’s what my colleague Amy Edmondson would call psychological safety—an environment where people feel free to speak up with new ideas even if those ideas may be far out. They have to feel free to call out mistakes and errors in their own and other people’s work, with the understanding that people are not going to get shot down because they tried something new that failed. When you’re trying to be innovative, you’re going to end up with a lot of failures. And if you don’t, you’re really not trying hard enough.

If you find that you’re in a creativity-stifling environment, you may need to transfer to a team that works under a different manager or has a different set of colleagues. You could look for assignments that you find more intrinsically interesting. You might ultimately think about changing organizations, if you find that the one you’re in is not allowing your creativity to really achieve its potential.

Kost: Artificial intelligence techniques and tools are influencing how companies conduct business and make decisions. How do these technologies affect creativity?

Amabile: It depends on how we use these approaches and technologies. If we view them as a way to support our own limited intelligence, it can be very positive. Each one of us has great brain power, but it’s limited in certain ways. It’s very hard for us to look at massive amounts of data and detect patterns, for example, but machines can, if we tell them what to look for.

So combining a machine’s ability to recognize patterns with our own ability to interpret them should be a tremendous boon to our creativity. However, if we feel threatened by the machines that we’re working with, like they are going to take over the work that we do, that’s likely to stifle that creativity.

Feature Image Credit: Teresa Amabile discusses the roots of creativity, how to achieve more of it, and combining it with artificial intelligence. iStockphoto

By Danielle Kost

Sourced from Forbes

In News

‘Need for fundamental change in way start-up ecosystem works’

July 2, 2019 No Comments

By K V Kurmanath

Stakeholders need to interact to build innovation ecosystem, says Ravi Narayan, new CEO of T-Hub

If you have not met Ravi Narayan, the new Chief Executive Officer of the country’s biggest incubator, T-Hub, earlier, it is easy to miss him at the facility.

He doesn’t have a cabin. He sits ‘somewhere’ out there, among the start-ups housed in the facility. “If I’m not in meetings or travelling, I sit here,” says Ravi Narayan, who pioneered the start-up accelerator space in the country.

Ravi feels there is a need for a fundamental change in the way the start-up ecosystem works. The stakeholders need to interact with another, breaking walls.

He took over as CEO of the incubator from its maiden CEO, Jay Krishnan, about two months ago.

Ravi has helped Microsoft build Accelerator Programmes for China, Israel, Europe, India and the US start-up ecosystems, for later stage start-ups.

Ravi says the focus so far in the country has been on the outcome — how a start-up has performed. “We all look at the organic outcome from start-ups. It is time we look beyond and focus on the innovation ecosystem,” he points out.

He likens it to a play in a theatre. “The start-up on the stage is like an actor. The audience is the customer. But what we need to understand is there needs to be good background work behind the stage to make the play a success,” he says.

Innovation ecosystem

Ravi says the country needs an innovation ecosystem where important players such as academic institutes, government, investors, corporates and start-ups talk to one another.

“When this happens, it creates demand for human resources, funding and for products from start-ups,” he says.

This is the mandate that he has set for himself in the first phase. “We are going to complete the task of these stakeholders, talking to one another by the year-end,” he says.

When you build a vibrant innovation ecosystem with participation from all players, their innovation quotient rises. When you raise the water level, boats all around are lifted, he points out.

On start-up mortality, he says it is part of life. “It is a given in the start-up world. Trying it out is important. More and more people starting up, more and more funds coming in and more and more corporates buying things from start-ups — is more important,” he observes.

What should worry us are issues like wrong constitution of founders, not going for the right technology. The larger issues like business models, human resources and technology need to be addressed.

After graduating the first cohort of start-ups, the incubator is getting ready for its second cohort.

Feature Image Credit: Ravi Narayan, Chief Executive Officer, T-Hub

By K V Kurmanath

Sourced from The Hindu Business Line

In News

Sony and Microsoft Announce ‘Strategic Partnership’ on Various Tech Innovations, Including the Evolution of PlayStation

July 1, 2019 No Comments

By Robert Ramsey

New best friends?

Well here’s an interesting announcement: Sony and Microsoft have revealed that they’re working together on a variety of tech-related ventures. The two companies are obviously competitors in the gaming console space with PlayStation and Xbox, but that hasn’t stopped them from forming what they call a “strategic partnership”.

“The two companies will partner on new innovations to enhance customer experiences in their direct-to-consumer entertainment platforms and AI solutions,” reads the press release. A little vague, but more specific plans are outlined further in.

“The two companies will explore joint development of future cloud solutions in Microsoft Azure to support their respective game and content-streaming services,” the statement continues. “In addition, the two companies will explore the use of current Microsoft Azure datacenter-based solutions for Sony’s game and content-streaming services. By working together, the companies aim to deliver more enhanced entertainment experiences for their worldwide customers,” it adds.

This sounds like it has a lot to do with cloud and streaming-based entertainment — something that both companies have had a hand in over the years. It’ll be interesting to see how far-reaching this stuff is when it comes to gaming in particular.

Beyond that, Sony and Microsoft are even teaming up on the “potential joint development” of “intelligent image sensor solutions”. With Sony’s experience in crafting consumer-friendly products and Microsoft’s expansive software know-how, it could prove to be a strong partnership.

Of course, we’re going to need to see all of this come together at some point in order to determine what kind of partnership this is, but it’s still an intriguing premise.

What really caught our eye, though, is how Sony president CEO Kenichiro Yoshida talks about the partnership: “PlayStation itself came about through the integration of creativity and technology. Our mission is to seamlessly evolve this platform as one that continues to deliver the best and most immersive entertainment experiences, together with a cloud environment that ensures the best possible experience, anytime, anywhere.”

Yoshida continues: “For many years, Microsoft has been a key business partner for us, though of course the two companies have also been competing in some areas. I believe that our joint development of future cloud solutions will contribute greatly to the advancement of interactive content.”

In other words, Microsoft’s advancements in tech may indeed play a part in the future of PlayStation as a platform. Again, we’re going to have to wait and see how this actually unfolds, but right now, it’s clear that the two companies are getting along very well indeed.

Feature Image Credit: Microsoft. Sony president and CEO Kenichiro Yoshida (left) and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (right)

By Robert Ramsey

Sourced from PUSH SQUARE

In News

Rent is so high people are turning their living rooms into coworking spaces

July 1, 2019 No Comments

By Adele Peters

Codi lets people rent out part of their living room to local freelancers who are sick of the coffee shop.

If you work remotely and don’t want to log more hours at your neighborhood coffee shop, a new app connects you with another local option: your neighbor’s living room. Codi, a new startup launching soon in the Bay Area, turns apartments and houses into temporary, affordable coworking spaces during the day.

“I used to work from home, and it’s very isolating,” says Christelle Rohaut, CEO and founder of Codi, who recently completed a masters in urban planning at the University of California-Berkeley. “When you go to coffee shops, they can be very distracting. And there were no working options close by, and downtown coworking spaces are very expensive.”

Rohaut started to work from friends’ homes, and found that she was more productive. It’s not a new idea–more than a decade ago, before WeWork launched, there were projects like Jelly, a loosely organized gathering of people who worked remotely and missed socializing. Rohaut saw the potential to take the idea further. “If we want to make it available for everyone, it needs to be a business,” she says. People who are at work during the day (or who work from home and have extra space) can apply to be hosts, and the company vets each applicant to make sure that they meet certain standards and provide basic amenities, including Wi-Fi, power outlets, and access to a clean restroom. As with Airbnb, hosts are insured against any damage from guests.

For hosts, the concept is a way to help offset some of the expense of Bay Area rent for spaces that are unused during the day. It’s designed to avoid one of the pitfalls of Airbnb: Each host has to prove that they’re a resident of the home, so it doesn’t incentivize owners to use the platform instead of renting to tenants. “The host can just share their unutilized living rooms during the day and then keep enjoying their home at night the same way as before, and there’s no overlap between those two,” says Rohaut. “So it’s not displacing anyone.” A host might make a few hundred dollars a month, or as much as $1,200. But the cost for people using the space (with various plans, starting at $70 for 25 hours a month) is less than a typical coworking membership. In trials of the concept run by the company, users have said they prefer the atmosphere to corporate coworking spaces–a real living room, versus rooms designed to replicate living rooms–and the fact that a smaller, more intimate space made it more likely to form connections with others working in the room. There is, of course, also the chance that they’re not the kind of person you’d like to form any kind of connection with, at which point you’re in a stranger’s living room with them–though Codi says it will do background checks on both the hosts and everyone who uses the service.

With an urban planning background, Rohaut recognized that concept could have broader benefits for cities. Instead of driving to a distant office, or commuting on a crowded train, the startup wants to enable workers to walk a few blocks, or less, to another home. That could reduce congestion, and the company also believes that it will be a benefit for local businesses that have fewer customers during the day. People who are sharing a living room office for the day might go out to lunch at local restaurants with their temporary coworkers. “You end up discovering the neighborhood,” Rohaut says.

As a student, Rohaut was a fellow with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and focused on how the idea of the “circular economy” applies to neighborhoods. Money spent locally, for example, usually circulates throughout neighborhood businesses. “It ends up creating more value for more people locally than if that dollar was spent outside the neighborhood, and that can be applied not only to money but also to other types of assets that are valuable, like spaces,” she says.

The startup, which recently raised a seed round from Coatue Management and NfX, just released beta versions of its iOS and Android apps, and will fully launch in the Bay Area in the coming months before expanding to other cities.

By Adele Peters

Adele Peters is a staff writer at Fast Company who focuses on solutions to some of the world’s largest problems, from climate change to homelessness. Previously, she worked with GOOD, BioLite, and the Sustainable Products and Solutions program at UC Berkeley. More

Sourced from Fast Company

In News

Being creative matters less than you think it does

July 1, 2019 No Comments

By Art Markman

You might conclude that innovative companies must be full of creative people. Here’s why that’s not necessarily true.

I live in Austin, Texas, where there are plenty of startups, each claiming to be more innovative than the last. It’s a good marketing approach: When companies innovate, they have the opportunity to transform markets and poach customers from competitors. So why not broadcast that message far and wide?

Of course, what these companies are really talking about is creativity. Successful companies must have people within them who have interesting new ideas to develop and bring to market.

Logically, you might conclude that truly innovative companies need to be stocked with highly creative people. But that’s just not the case. Most of the work involved in bringing an innovation to market is actually pretty routine. (Remember that famous Thomas Edison quote, “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”? Turns out he was onto something.)

Even at the most innovative companies, most people need to be skilled at getting things done in a more-or-less routine way most of the time.

One of the Big Five personality characteristics is conscientiousness, which reflects how much people are motivated to complete the tasks they start and to follow the rules of an organization. In general, companies function most effectively when they have a lot of conscientious people. However, there is a tendency for people who are highly creative to be moderate in conscientiousness. They may finish what they start, but they are not strongly bound by the rules of how things have been done in the past.

Research on the availability heuristic demonstrates that we judge how frequent and how important something is by how easily it comes to mind. This mental strategy works well when you encounter items roughly with the frequency that they actually appear in the world. But in this case, it can be a little misleading.

This is because, when it comes to getting press, business as usual is not newsworthy. Another solid quarter of earnings from a company that has—once again—run its business model smoothly does not need to be reported. But a novel product, process, or technology grabs headlines. As a result, you encounter many stories about successful (or even unsuccessful) innovations a lot. By availability, then, you can be forgiven for thinking that creativity is a really important skill for people who want to have a successful career.

It isn’t.

If you are able to get your job done by learning procedures that have been laid out by others and executing them well, then there may not be any need to strike out on your own and to do things differently.

Instead, focus your efforts on perfecting your skills and doing your job as well as you can. You may discover that your greatest contribution to your company is to be a steady and reliable contributor who makes things happen.

A lack of creativity need not keep you from taking on leadership roles, either. Sometimes successful leadership requires navigating new situations. But many times, companies just need a steady hand to guide continued growth.

Ultimately, you should pay attention to who really makes things happen within your industry. It may turn out that you have placed more value on creativity than it deserves.

Feature Image Credit: Thomas Edison [Photo: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, [ LC-DIG-cwpbh-04044]

By Art Markman

Art Markman, PhD is a professor of Psychology and Marketing at the University of Texas at Austin and Founding Director of the Program in the Human Dimensions of Organizations. Art is the author of Smart Thinking and Habits of Leadership, Smart Change, and most recently, Brain Briefs, co-authored with his “Two Guys on Your Head” co-host Bob Duke, which focuses on how you can use the science of motivation to change your behavior at work and at home

More

Sourced from Fast Company

In News

Have you got the right personality for Facebook?

June 28, 2019 No Comments

By David Bradley

How do personality traits affect one’s use of the online social networking site, Facebook? That is the question researchers from Greece hope to answer in a paper in the International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising. The team surveyed 367 university students and analysed their answers concerning Facebook with the backdrop of different personality traits: extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, openness, and conscientiousness.

The team report that “agreeable individuals use Facebook to express their orientation to other people rather than to themselves,” whereas “extroverts use Facebook as a relationship building mechanism”. They add that neurotic people strive to bring out the best of themselves. Oddly, the personality traits of openness and conscientiousness do not seem to affect significantly Facebook use.

The bottom line is that extraversion is the main driver for Facebook use. Extroverts are heavy users and have more friends and interact with them and others at a higher rate. But, neurotic people also use it heavily to create a comprehensive and detailed profile of themselves to present to the public. There are limitations to the research in that those surveyed were students and some of them may well be aware of research into personality types and their use of social media, whereas the lay public would perhaps be less aware of such research. The obvious next step is to survey a wider group of people to reduce any inherent bias in the results.

Feature Image Credit: CC0 Public Domain

By David Bradley

Sourced from PHYS ORG

In News

The 6 Mistakes to Avoid When Building a Business Website (and What to Do Instead)

June 28, 2019 No Comments

By Jason Aten

Your website is often your first impression, and getting it right can make all the difference.

For many small businesses, a website is one of the very first things that make their business seem “real.” In fact, for the increasing number of small businesses that don’t have a physical storefront, their website serves as their primary first point of contact for new business.

Even if you have a physical location, more and more potential customers will engage with your business online before they ever do in person. The good news is that your website can help you reach customers you would never be able to reach in person. The bad news is, you’re probably screwing it up.

Here are 5 common ways small businesses mess up their website, and how to avoid them:

1. Not having a website at all.

If you’re not online, you don’t exist to most of your potential clients. A website is maybe your most important engagement point with a potential customer short of a face to face conversation. Even then, you can bet your potential customers are checking out your website before they ever have a conversation with you.

By the way, a Facebook page isn’t a website. There are a lot of reasons why Facebook isn’t an adequate substitute for a website, not the least of which is that you should think long and hard whether or not you really want access to your online presence to be entirely at the mercy of someone else (i.e.: Facebook).

2. Not making it easy for people to connect with you.

When visitors come to your website, there are a few things they’re looking for. They want to know who you are, what you do, and probably most importantly–how they can get in contact with you.

Make it easy for your customers, and potential customers, to reach you by including a contact page with the best way for them to connect with a real person. A lot of companies use contact forms, which is fine, but you’d be surprised how much more accessible you seem when you include your email address and/or a phone number (especially a phone number!).

3. Not keeping it up to date.

There’s nothing worse than a website that’s completely out of date. If the most current entry in your list of “events,” is 4 months old, you’re sending a message that you don’t really care much about anyone who comes to the page. Or, if your blog hasn’t seen a new post for more than a week or so, visitors start to wonder what happened to you.

Make sure your contact info is current (see #2), and if you are a retail establishment, make sure your website includes your current hours of operation. Think like a consumer, and make sure that any of the information they may be trying to find on your site is not only available but up to date.

4. Not knowing your target.

Your website should serve a purpose. For most companies, the purpose is to guide potential customers into a relationship with your business. Think about the things that matter to them and ignore pretty much everything else.

You are not your customer. You already understand your product, or your company, or whatever. Don’t use language that makes sense to insiders, unless your website is only for insiders. Consider every page, graphic, link, and text on your site, and be ruthless about making sure it is geared towards your target.

That means that calls-to-action (CTAs) should be clear and relevant to your potential customers. Remember that everything on your site should serve a purpose – connecting with your potential customers.

5. Designing it yourself.

Unless you’re a web designer it’s a really bad idea to design your own website. Sure, it’s easy–there are literally hundreds of inexpensive options to build websites–but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea for your business.

If your website is really the starting point for the vast majority of your customers, it’s worth investing some time, energy, and money in getting it done right.

If you’re looking for real small business examples of what a professional can do for your website, check these out. I don’t know them, I’m just a big fan of their sites:

Find a partner that can help you evaluate the message you want to communicate, and help you craft a design that represents–and reinforces your brand. There’s a saying, “you can pay now, or you can pay later.” You can pay a designer now, or you can pay later in the hit to your brand. Focus on what you do best, and find someone who can help you communicate that with your target market.

6. Not making it mobile friendly.

Over 52 percent of all web traffic is from mobile devices. If your website design doesn’t adapt to mobile browsers, you’re missing the chance to reach half of your potential customers. At a minimum, you’re telling them you don’t really care about their business because you couldn’t be bothered to use one of the gagillion mobile-responsive themes available from basically every content management platform out there.

If you’re looking for a few examples of great mobile-friendly small business sites, here’s a few I love:

TBX Marketing Agency
Aten & Co Handcrafted Signs – (full disclosure: this is my wife’s site, but I practice what I preach)
Wharton Center for Performing Arts
Clove & Kin

My guiding principle of marketing is, “make it easy for your customer to do business with you.” Just like it’s important to make it easy for them to find the information they want, or contact you, make it easy for them to do both of those things from their mobile device. It’s more likely than not that that’s where they’re finding you anyway.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Jason Aten

Writer and business coach@jasonaten

Sourced from Inc.

In News

The business of the future is ethical, sustainable, and employee-owned

June 28, 2019 No Comments

By Eillie Anzilotti

Companies that lay out strong environmental goals and share ownership with their workers outperform all other businesses on all social impact measurements.

You may not know it, but when you’re buying clothes from Eileen Fisher, you’re buying from an employee-owned company. Fisher founded the company in the early 1980s, but instead of going public, she sold 30% of the company to her own employees in 2006 (they now own 40%). That’s helped her keep the brand’s principles aligned: Eileen Fisher was one of the first clothing companies to offset 100% of its carbon footprint, and it’s become a pioneer in advancing localized, sustainable production, setting itself on a path to use 100% organic cotton and linen by 2020.

In 2015, Eileen Fisher became a Certified B Corporation, completing one of the most stringent assessments of business as a force for ethical and environmental good. Because the company’s employees are partial owners and share the same commitment to ethics and sustainability, Fisher, who’s nearing retirement, feels confident that the brand will continue on in the same way after she leaves.

A new report from the Democracy Collaborative, a nonprofit that advocates for employee ownership structures, explains how the clothing company exemplifies a mission-led, employee-owned company: One in which employees, through their ownership stake, help drive the brand’s ethical commitment to environmental sustainability, social equity, or ideally, both.

According to the Democracy Collaborative’s Fifty by Fifty program, which has a goal of 50 million employee owners in the U.S. by 2050, there are around 45 such companies in the U.S. While big-growth brands, and the conglomerates that buy them up, tend to garner the most attention, the Democracy Collaborative’s new report makes the case that it’s the smaller, steadier companies that should attract the spotlight.

The intersection of a strong sustainability and ethical mission and employee ownership, says Sarah Stranahan, an associate at the Democracy Collaborative, represents the sweet spot for good business–and something more companies should be aiming to achieve. The Democracy Collaborative calls businesses at this intersection “next-generation enterprises” because they proactively address persistent problems, including income and wealth inequality, environmental degradation, worker exploitation, and lack of community accountability.

There are many companies built around one of the elements of a next-gen enterprise. Around 2,945 Certified B Corporations worldwide pass a rigorous assessment that requires them to demonstrate positive impacts across multiple categories, including environmental stewardship, workplace culture, and community benefits. There are also around 5,400 benefit corporations in the U.S., which follow a less stringent criteria. More than 6,000 companies in the U.S. have some kind of employee ownership model, whether that be an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, in which employees own a percent of a company’s stock, or a worker-owned cooperative, in which employees collectively own and govern the company (the former is much more common).

Both–especially compared to more mainstream, investor-owned companies–perform well by ethical standards. But the Democracy Collaborative got interested in measuring if employee-owned companies tended to perform better on environmental metrics overall. “Our hypothesis was that employee-owned companies, if they had a strong environmental mission, would perform better on those metrics than non-employee-owned firms with a strong environmental mission,” Stranahan says. The nonprofit B Lab collects data on the performance, across many metrics including environmental impacts, of B Corporations, so Democracy Collaborative was able to compare the results of employee-owned B Corporations to more traditionally owned B Corporations.

Their hypothesis was born out, Stranahan says, but only marginally. “But as we started doing this, we realized that we should look at their workers’ scores, look at their corporate culture scores, let’s look at their overall B scores and compare them more broadly,” she says. What Democracy Collaborative found was that employee-owned firms with a strong environmental and ethical mission consistently outperform all other businesses on all social impact measurements. In fact, 37 of the 45 employee-owned B Corporations that Democracy Collaborative identified were named in the Best for the World rankings in the past two years. Those firms include the Vermont-based King Arthur Flour, which merges sustainable sourcing with employee ownership; Amicus Solar, a cooperative network that builds out clean energy solutions while creating well-paying jobs and ownership opportunities; and of course, Eileen Fisher.

If we’re going to solve the dual crises of inequality and climate change, Stranahan says, companies have a substantial role to play. The employee-owned, sustainability-driven companies that Democracy Collaborative identified are paving the way, and could be the model for what a next-generation business should look like.

In News

These 3 Trending Tools Help Businesses Create Stunning Images and Video–for Free

June 27, 2019 No Comments

By Amanda Pressner Kreuser

A picture may be worth 1,000 words, but in content marketing, an eye-catching visual could also be worth millions of impressions.

Every day, over 500 million users consume Instagram stories, 1 million users scroll and double-tap and 95 million images are uploaded to the app’s feed.

According to Social Media Today, we only need 1/10 of a second to understand an image, but almost 60 seconds to read 200-250 words. To make your content stand out, you have to create visuals that are engaging, easy to scan and memorable.

Of course, everyone wants gorgeous social images for their feeds, but isn’t that….expensive?

It’s doesn’t have to be. At my content marketing company Masthead Media, we often help clients with smaller marketing budgets tap a powerful set of SaaS tools to create highly engaging images for Instagram, Facebook, and other social channels. These are three of our favorites-;and they’ll cost you next to nothing.

Canva

Canva (which recently became a startup unicorn) makes it easy to create visuals in minutes with very little experience and offers content marketers hundreds of templates, icons, layouts and more.

Need to design an Instagram story to promote your latest podcast? This app has hundreds of pre-sized graphics for every social media platform.

If you’re running a team that’s working on similar visuals for your brand, you can invest in Canva Work (for $10/month). The fee is small, but the reward is huge, giving you the opportunity to save your brand colors, create moving content and resize graphics from one platform to another with ease.

Adobe Spark/Sparkpost

With Instagram and Facebook stories on the rise and video content generating 80% more engagement than other content, Adobe Spark is a tool you need to become familiar with.

An Adobe product, Adobe Spark is its own suite of products – Adobe Spark Post, Adobe Spark Video and Adobe Spark Page – which offers marketers the best of both worlds: all of the tools that Creative Cloud has to offer, with no cost and user tutorial required.

The app is available all in one on the web, or in the three different applications on mobile. Whether you’re putting together a simple Instagram post graphic, creating a custom landing page or animating a short 10-second promo video, it’s effortless to make it happen at the desk or on-the-go with Adobe Spark.

When you create a free account to use the app, you’ll receive weekly newsletters from the platform with inspirational content and tips from the pros on how to make visuals that stand out. You can rely on templates or get creative, but either way, this app will take your graphics to the next level.

Crello

Free visual tools are a major timesaver (leaving more hours for tackling all of your emails!) but they’re only as good as the features they have to offer.

Crello, a less commonly-used platform, not only offers animation, video and image templates, but has an image asset bank of over 60 million choices that marketers can use to create beautiful graphics that fit their brand.

Even without access to a stock image library like Getty or Shutterstock, Crello allows you to create unforgettable visuals to complement your content.

Since four times as many people would rather watch a video about a product than read about it, according to Animoto, using Crello will ensure you reach four times the audience and engage customers with what your brand has to offer.

It can feel like an uphill battle trying to get your customers to engage with blog posts or long-form content, but over 50% of users watch video thoroughly, making visuals an easy way to engage an audience.

With all of these tools, you can increase your engagement without increasing your budget.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Amanda Pressner Kreuser

Co-founder and managing partner, Masthead Media@mastheadmedia

Sourced from Inc.

In News

Using Micro-Influencers to Drive Business in A Local Market

June 27, 2019 No Comments

By marismith

Influencer marketing has evolved rapidly over the last few years. In fact, influencer marketing has become such a key growth strategy for businesses that the industry is estimated to reach up to $10 billion by 2020.

For a long time, influencer marketing was mostly associated with big brands and celebrities. The landscape is changing and, as individuals invest in building niche communities on platforms like Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, businesses are beginning to recognize their value.

We are now seeing a new wave of micro-influencers leading the way, not only for the big brands but for small businesses looking to capitalize on the trend. 2019 Statistics show that 81% of all influencers are micro-influencers.

This has created a level playing field for small businesses with an opportunity to drive sales even in a local market.

In this article, I’m going to show you how you and your business can get started with micro-influencer marketing.

What Is A Micro-Influencer?

Just as it sounds, a micro influencer is a person that may not have the largest following on social media but the following they do have is highly engaged. This person has a lot of influence among their community and, as a result, that community is highly likely to listen and act when a value proposition is presented to them.

Eighty one percent of micro-influencers have between 15k and 100k followers but don’t let this deter you from partnering with audience sizes as little as 5000 followers. A report by Gartner L2 showed there is actually an inverse correlation between the number of followers and the engagement rate in Instagram influencers.

This highlights a critical factor in the success of micro-influencer marketing. It’s not just about the size of an influencer’s audience, the quality of the audience is just as important.

What are the benefits of working with a Micro-Influencer?

It’s A Cost-Effective Marketing Strategy

One of the biggest challenges that businesses face is finding their target audience and earning their attention. To do this exclusively in-house can be costly and extremely time-consuming. It can take months, if not years, to build an engaged audience who buys into your messaging and your product offering.

Micro-influencers have already done all the work. You have instant access to a highly-engaged, targeted audience. That’s hugely valuable especially in a local market.

While some micro-influencers still accept product in exchange for their endorsement, most now require compensation for their work.

The cost of influencer marketing varies greatly based on a number of factors including the influencer’s social reach, the type of sponsored content and the length/ frequency of your arrangement.

A report by Later (2018) stated 66% of businesses paid under $250 per influencer post, while 27% paid between $250 and $1000 per post.

Influencer Marketing Hub created an Instagram Money Calculator to help calculate how much an influencer’s post is worth. Whilst this shouldn’t be used to define an influencer’s compensation plan, it can provide a generalized overview. For the most part, micro-influencers will have their own media kits and pricing structures in place.

As a general guide, you can expect to pay anywhere between $75 and $2000 per post depending on the value that micro-influencer brings.

With that in mind, micro-influencers can be far more cost-effective than if a business were to grow organically by themselves.

Social Proof leads to Sales

Sixty one percent of consumers aged 18 to 34 have, at some point, been swayed in their decision-making by digital influencers.

Micro-influencers have already earned trust among their community. That social proof carries a lot of value when it comes to the follower making a positive buying decision.

Fullscreen, a global leader in social-first entertainment and branded content, partnered with leading social analytics firm Shareablee, to analyze 31,000 influencers. In their report, they discovered 22% of 18-34 year-olds have made a large purchase after seeing an online influencer endorsing the item. With the right micro-influencer(s) working with you, this strategy has the potential to generate large returns on your investment.

Influencer Marketing is Scalable

Micro-influencers act like your own marketing and sales team combined. They have their own audiences and they know what works in terms of engaging and converting that audience into sales. Brand campaigns driven by micro-influencers are estimated to create 60% higher engagement rates.

Micro-influencers don’t require the management of an inhouse team and they already have a community of warm leads. Deploying effective marketing campaigns and consistently generating leads are two of the biggest challenges small business owners face, which makes micro-influencers a huge asset to small businesses especially on a local level.

Influencer marketing is scalable. While it requires a financial investment, the right micro-influencers will quickly generate a return and dramatically build your brand’s awareness and reputation.

How to Get Started Working with Micro-Influencers

Getting started with micro-influencers is simple but not always easy. Here is a basic checklist for you to follow:

1. 1. Create a strategic plan with clear objectives you want to achieve.
  2. Make a list of potential micro-influencers to start exploring.
  3. Reach out to start building a relationship. Make sure your approach is very win/win as the micro-influencer may receive numerous invitations to partner with brands on a regular basis.
  4. Invite the micro-influencer to consider collaborating with your business.
  5. Draw out a written plan with clear terms and conditions to protect both parties.
  6. Set a time period initially to establish success markers.

This sounds straightforward, but it does require a lot of work and there are a few best practices to follow.

Best Practices for Micro-Influencer Marketing

1. Find Relevant Influencers

It’s really important to keep your end goal in mind when it comes to finding influencers with whom you can partner. You’re not looking for just anyone, even if they have an engaged audience. It has to be the right demographics that fit your target audience.

Positioning is key. You are looking for local influencers who have a loyal following that matches your target market.

This way, when the influencer presents your business and call to action, you are going to see some traction and a profitable return on your investment.

The easiest way to find relevant influencers is to spend time researching the platform on which you and your audience is most active. Search locations, hashtags and mentions to find out where the conversations are happening. Once you find potential micro-influencers, monitor their profile and their interactions closely. Look for the quantity but more importantly the quality of engagement on each post.

By investing time up front, you will ensure that you find micro-influencers that are a good fit for your business. Not only will it save you time long-term, it can save you a lot of money working with people who aren’t a fit and perhaps don’t carry the influence you initially thought.

2. Ensure the Authenticity of Micro-Influencers

As influencer marketing has grown, so have the number of companies looking to capitalize on the trend. In 2018, the extent of influencer fraud was exposed as thousands of accounts were found to be buying likes, follows and engagement to appear as though they had gained influencer status.

Captive8 reported that of the $2.1bn spent on influencer-sponsored Instagram posts in 2017, more than 11% of engagement on those posts was generated from fraudulent accounts.

This is a big problem. While technology companies are working to combat this by launching AI-focused tools, influencer marketing fraud still remains a huge issue.

Ninety percent of Marketers believe proving authenticity is critical to the future of Influencer Marketer.

For you, as a reputable business, it’s imperative that you do your research and establish the validity of an influencer before jumping into a relationship with them.

Monitor their account, check the quality of their audience and their engagement. Look for sponsored posts and how the traction gained in quality likes and comments.

When reaching out, ask for case studies and past results that you can cross-check. Also ensure that the micro-influencer is following FTC Guidelines.

It’s important to keep in mind that micro-influencers want to ensure the authenticity of your brand and products. Influencers promote what they trust. Take time to share with them and provide samples when appropriate. Micro-influencers have earned a loyal audience and protecting that audience is their responsibility.

3. Measuring the ROI of Micro-Influencers

One of the biggest challenges for businesses investing in micro-influencers is measuring the return on investment. As a business owner, you want to know that your marketing strategy is working and delivering results.

Eighty five percent of marketers say engagement data is the biggest metric of success for influencer marketing. Forty six percent of marketers are using product sales to measure the success of influencer marketing.

Both are valid measures. These are three key areas you want to track:

1. 1. 1. Engagement:cThis is typically measured in new followers, likes, comments, shares, mentions, and all other forms of engagement with your business as a result of working with a micro-influencer. The return here is in brand awareness and growth. You should see a spike in engagement each time the micro-influencer shares your brand. This is a simple way to visually see the impact your micro-influencer has.
    2. Content: This metric is made up of comments, shares and sentiment of the paid posts. It helps establish whether the content fits with the audience and the objective. This may be an indication to try a different type or style of content that may resonate better.
    3. Sales: You can track this by providing affiliate urls, influencer exclusive discount codes and monitoring google analytics so that you can measure the sales each micro-influencer has brought to your business.

If you’re a small business owner, micro-influencer marketing can offer a lot of value and certainly has the potential to drive big sales in your local market. It just takes the right research, the right influencer, and the right partnership.

By marismith

Often referred to as “the Queen of Facebook,” Mari Smith is considered one of the world’s foremost experts on Facebook marketing and social media. She is a Forbes’ Top Social Media Power Influencer, author of The New Relationship Marketing and coauthor of Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day. Forbes recently described Mari as, “… the preeminent Facebook expert. Even Facebook asks for her help.” She is a recognized Facebook Partner; Facebook headhunted and hired Mari to lead the Boost Your Business series of live events across the US. Mari is an in-demand speaker, and travels the world to keynote and train at major events.

Her digital marketing agency provides professional speaking, training and consulting services on Facebook and Instagram marketing best practices for Fortune 500 companies, brands, SMBs and direct sales organizations. Mari is also an expert webinar and live video broadcast host, and she serves as Brand Ambassador for numerous leading global companies.

Web: Mari Smith or Twitter: @MariSmith

Sourced from Bank of America