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How Important is the Founder’s Educational Pedigree?

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Good educational pedigree often results in numerous downstream benefits in the start-up ecosystem

You’re reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.

I often get asked, how important is the founder’s educational pedigree when judging the overall appeal of a start-up’s team? It’s an important question and while individual opinions vary, I’ve seen a general convergence amongst the VC community on this issue.

I believe that education matters more when the founding team is young (let’s say average age 25 or less) for the simple reason that a lot of what they have achieved in life is at academic institutions. Success in academia is by no means a guarantee of future success, but it is a good proxy of the ability of the team to produce great products, especially in knowledge-driven industries like high tech. I believe academic success is also a good proxy of the ability to put in long, disciplined hours towards achieving ambitious goals.

An interesting spin on this revolves around the advent of acqui-hiring — a trend which is beginning to shape (albeit a very smart part) of M&A in India. The philosophy is simple – all other things equal – a young team of engineers from reputable institutions is more likely to get acqui-hired than a similar team from less prominent institutions. A good example of where academic success actually translates into success in the business world. Again, with the caveat, that this is a very small part of M&A activity – so just don’t start a company if you are from IIT/MIT/Stanford/CMU in hopes of a payout from the start-up world. Nonetheless, the theory stands – acqu-hiring happens when the knowledge and know-how is extremely valuable to the acquirer — and this raw technical horsepower is better honed at reputable technological institutions.

As the median age of the starting team gets higher, say closer to the 30’s then academic qualifications get eclipsed, to a great extent, by success in the business world and other ‘real-world’ experiences. So, if one is comparing two founders – one from IIT (just an example of a good University) and the other from University B, and the latter has had a better career path, post-graduation, worked  in an entrepreneurially minded company, then the scales are balanced or even tilted slightly in favor of the person from University B.

Other ‘Perks’ of Good Educational Pedigree

Good educational pedigree often results in numerous downstream benefits in the start-up ecosystem. Most of these revolve around the kinds of people that one can attract to the ecosystem – investors, employees, interns, business development partners, and more.

The central theme, obviously, being the fact that the strong alumni relationships that exist at these institutions.  Both in terms of sheer size but also (and this is something I notice), is a sense of school pride that arises from graduating from august colleges.  Founders from these colleges, especially the more outgoing ones, are often able to build a good aura around the companies they build – and this tremendously helps in attracting the right team, investors, partners, media attention, and more. This acts as a source of comfort for early-stage investors like us – to know that the founding team has the wherewithal and the resourcefulness to bring together the right set of actors at appropriate phases in the start-up’s evolutions.  An ability that most will agree is the very difference between success and failure in the early stage industry.

So, Why Not Invest Just in Ivy League Graduates?

Lest you be numbed by what seems to be a continuous endorsement of top-rated academic institutions, I want to remind you – founding team pedigree is just one aspect of Team appeal – and Team is just one aspect of the overall appeal of a start-up. Many staggeringly successful companies have been founded and built by entrepreneurs that have actually dropped out of college. In many other cases, entrepreneurs from less-than-stellar colleges have outperformed peers by building better products, superior marketing strategies,  sheer execution finesse and resourcefulness in attracting and charming stakeholders in the ecosystem.

There is also a dark side in investing in ‘Ivy leaguers’ – a sense of entitlement that comes from the academic pedigree – and something which translates directly into demands for higher valuations and other start-up-friendly terms.  I’ve seen situations where investors, mesmerized by educational pedigree, sign off on significantly unfavorable terms than what the situation normally mandates. Clearly a case of misplaced enthusiasm and irrational understanding of a dynamic that should be used to differentiate between teams in marginal situations (all other things being equal). And not, to be the sole deciding factor in deciding which start-up to invest in.

What does all this mean for aspiring founders? If you’ve made it to a reputed institution, make the best of it! Build strong networks within the student community – these will be of tremendous value to you throughout your entrepreneurial journey. And if you did not make it to a top-rated school , there are plentiful opportunities to realize your entrepreneurial goals – go ahead and hone your skills and serendipitous moments will come by!

Feature Image Credit: Shutterstock 

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Partner, Anthill Ventures

Sourced from Entrepreneur

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Same insight, different output: how Pepsi is localising content ideas

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By Charlotte McEleny

Brands are now creating as much content as any publisher but without having consumers interests in mind, it can be a fruitless investment.

For multinational brands, where the pressure to deliver relevance across multiple markets is high, this challenge (and opportunity) is amplified. Speaking at Ad:Tech in New Delhi this week, Pepsico global head of media and content innovation CoE, Atin Kulkarni, said his brands regularly use a strategy that involves focusing on a global insight that is delivered using local, relevant stories.

Kulkarni gave the example of its recent, well known ‘Generations’ campaign for Superbowl which used the insight that Pepsi has been a drink that has been with its customers across generations. The US version of this insight saw the brand refresh old campaigns that tied into key popular culture moments, reminding people of this link.

This insight was then taken to another, vastly different but important Pepsi market, Saudi Arabia. The theme around ‘generations’ was revisited, but instead of tying into pop culture, Pepsi decided that nodding to the change that the Saudi population is going through would connect with its target audience instead.

The recently released campaign follows Saudi men as they get ready for success at the start of a day, it shifts through different men from different generations. In a nod to the change in the country it then also shifts to include women within the story too. Once again the message ties to the insight that Pepsi is along for the ride, across generations.

“When we took it to Saudi Arabia, we used the same insight – that we have been part of the generations. The country is going through somewhat of a change, geopolitical, oil prices and a new Prince with a new vision. We have been part of their lives and been part of society, including when this new generation comes along and the new vision comes along. It is the same idea but a very different context in the life of a nation that is going through a lot of change,” explained Kulkarni.

Kulkarni shared that the film went viral, despite a shift in the strategy around media spend for the content. He said the spend on TV for the ad was significantly dialled down and, with reference to its focus on a ‘new generation’ and change in the country, it instead moved media spend to new channels and digital placements, including the use of influencers.

“Practically speaking, this also impacted how we managed media and delivered the content. We used both TV and digital but in this case the team took a risk in how it planned TV. Rather than putting almost everything on TV, they dialled it down, used all the other modern ways, such as influencers and interesting platforms because it was the best way to leverage this insight,” he added.

According to Kulkarni, the campaign delivered over 4 billion impressions, which he said was a significant level of reach for a campaign in the region. This success, he reasons, was due to the relevance of the ad. “It resonated with what the people were thinking and what they were going through,” he said.

Managing content-led campaigns across multiple markets and cultures is a significant challenge for brands currently and the response varies across different brands and briefs. A campaign launched this week by rival Coca-Cola approached the challenge differently, by taking a neutral geographic approach to working with partners and encouraging diversity in casting.

 

By Charlotte McEleny

Sourced from THEDRUM

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24 Email Marketing Stats Every Business Owner Should Know (Infographic)

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By Kimberly de Silva.

Email marketing is the cornerstone of many marketing programs.

Email marketing is the cornerstone of many marketing programs. It can make engaging with and retaining customers much easier with high-powered tools like automation and personalization. And using mobile-friendly email templates ensures that no matter what device your customer uses to view them, your emails will always look great.

Campaign Monitor has created an infographic, “24 Email Marketing Stats You Need to Know” to help you understand just what value email marketing brings to a small business. For example, for every $1 spent, email marketing brings in $44; for one of the highest ROIs of any marketing tactic.

Personalized messages bring results

A high ROI is fantastic, of course, but with a powerful marketing tool like this, there are even better reasons for email marketing. By using an email service provider, you can create emails that are personalized for each customer, helping them to connect with your business.

The more your customers engage with your business and emails, the more likely they are to purchase from you. Emails with personalized subject lines are 26 percent more likely to be opened. And personalization doesn’t stop at the subject line.

You can add images and content that are specific to each reader to keep them interested in what your business offers. The more you can send emails that your customers want to see, with information that they’re looking for, the more likely they’ll stay your customer. Using data you already have about them can help you to personalize emails a little bit more. Keeping your data updated, by using signup forms or surveys, can help you collect the information you need to do this.

Automation saves time and engages customers

Automation, creating a series of emails once and sending them out automatically when certain criteria are met, can help keep customers coming back for more. Sending out welcome emails, reminder emails, VIP emails or even birthday emails can help to hold your customer’s attention, and lead to sales.

As a matter of fact, automated emails can generate 320 percent more revenue than non-automated ones. Using automation and personalization together can make marketers’ lives a little easier since they need to only create an email once to have each person get the version they need, and sent when they need it.

Since email open rates increased to 68 percent on mobile devices in 2016, it’s important to make sure your email can be read on any device. Just about everyone has a mobile phone and reads their emails on it these days. The easiest way to do this is to use a template that’s already set up to work on mobile devices. This way no special coding is needed and your customers will have an easy-to-read and useful email. Plus, you’ll still be able to use personalization and automation, the end device won’t change how they work.

Email marketing stats worth knowing

From personalization and automation to a high ROI, email marketing can make staying in touch with customers a breeze. And, it will help to not only convert leads to customers but help retain the customers you already have. For more useful and fun email marketing stats and tips, check out the infographic below.

This story originally appeared on Bizness Apps

Feature Image Credit: juststock | Getty Images 

By Kimberly de Silva.

Sourced from Entrepreneur

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Twitter is working on a camera-first feature that could threaten Snap

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  • Twitter is working on a camera-first feature to rival a Snap service that has been popular with advertisers.
  • The company has been aggressively courting advertisers after posting its first-ever quarterly profit.
Jack Dorsey attends the ‘#SheInspiresMe: Twitter celebrates female voices & visionaries’ event in Cannes, France.

Twitter is working on camera-first feature that could change the emphasis on the platform from text to video and images, giving advertisers a competitor to one of Snap’s most popular advertising opportunities, according to three senior agency executives who have either seen a demonstration of the product or are familiar with it.

The new function would combine location-based photos and videos with Twitter Moments around notable events. Companies could sponsor events or place ads in between tweeted real-time photos and videos.

The feature would resemble how Snap collects location-based snaps around certain topics and displays them together as a highlighted post on its Discover tab — a feature that has proven popular with advertisers. For example, on Wednesday Snap featured a Discover story on the national school walkouts in protest of school shootings, with snaps from The Washington Post interspersed throughout. Snap has also featured content posted from select MLB games and awards shows.

It’s unclear when the feature could launch, and it could still be refined significantly or scrapped entirely, but ad executives with knowledge of it believed that it was early in the development process.

A spokesperson for Twitter declined to comment.

Twitter has been aggressively going after new advertising business after posting its first profitable quarter, according to multiple advertising agencies. Last year, it was the sixth largest company in terms of digital advertising revenue, according to eMarketer, and video is generally much more lucrative to advertise against than text.

Since everyone is used to posting on Twitter in real time, a camera-first Twitter Moments idea would be a natural fit for Twitter’s users, said one agency executive.

And there would be demand for the product from advertisers, another agency executive said, since Twitter is often the go-to place for customers who are engaged and passionate around cultural moments. The executives CNBC spoke to called the potential new feature a necessary and natural progression to reach younger consumers sharing events with their friends.

One source — who were not briefed on the new feature — said if it was done right Twitter had the scale and potential to take ad dollars away from Snap. Another said that with Facebook going the direction of ultra-personalized content, Twitter could open up an avenue to reach a bigger audience.

“Despite its struggles, the recent revenue surge suggest Twitter seems poised for a rebound,” said Parker Ray, Chief Digital Strategist for MWWPR.

“Twitter has been hyper-focused on being a home for live video with partnerships to stream NFL games and the launch of a live-streaming news channel with Bloomberg. In addition, Facebook’s tweaking of its news feed, prioritizing personal posts from family and friends over videos and posts from businesses and news media, could make Twitter very appealing to brands. We’re definitely seeing a healthy uptick when it comes to including Twitter in marketing budgets.”

Feature Image Credit: Francois Durand | Getty Images

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12 Simple Tricks For Anyone Who Wants To Feel More Creative

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By Emily Shwake

Stop telling yourself you’re not creative, and start telling yourself you’re the next Picasso.

1.Try working from a café, because a little noise will actually do your imagination good.

The writer in a café is a classic stereotype, but for good reason. Several studies have shown that a moderate level of noise (70–80 decibels, to be specific) is actually really helpful for getting in the creative zone.If you can't get to a café, try listening to white noise or music without lyrics.
buzzfeed.com

The writer in a café is a classic stereotype, but for good reason. Several studies have shown that a moderate level of noise (70–80 decibels, to be specific) is actually really helpful for getting in the creative zone.

If you can’t get to a café, try listening to white noise or music without lyrics.

2. Ignore the little voice that keeps telling you you’re not a true creative, and fake it ’til you make it.

instagram.com

If you feel like you’re too left-brained or logical to be creative, you’re selling yourself short and shooting yourself in the foot. The stereotype you embrace is the one you embody: the educational psychologists that tested out this idea call it the creative stereotype effect. So, if you walk around acting like you’re the next Picasso or Sylvia Plath, you may find that you had more ideas than you originally thought. On the other hand, if you try to write a short story thinking like the Type A mathlete you always thought you were, you’re probably going to have a tough time.

3. Give your mind permission to wander, because you’ll burn out really quickly if you push yourself to focus for hours at a time.

When you're trying really really hard to make yourself focus (like when you plan an eight-hour block of time to spend at the library), you're going to burn yourself out really quickly. It's important to take active periods of unfocus, and deliberately disconnect from the task at hand. Try doing something you find relaxing like taking a walk, doing a puzzle, or doodling. Doing so will allow your mind to wander and might actually spark that creativity that you've been pushing so hard for.
IFC / Via giphy.com

When you’re trying really really hard to make yourself focus (like when you plan an eight-hour block of time to spend at the library), you’re going to burn yourself out really quickly. It’s important to take active periods of unfocus, and deliberately disconnect from the task at hand. Try doing something you find relaxing like taking a walk, doing a puzzle, or doodling. Doing so will allow your mind to wander and might actually spark that creativity that you’ve been pushing so hard for.

4. When creating, dig deeper into your own experiences so you aren’t leaning on cliché, overused tropes.

Let's say you're trying to write a comedy set about a plane trip. You could talk about how ridiculous the security line in the airport is or you could talk about how tiny the seats are, but you won't be telling the audience something they've already heard. Look past that, and think about your specific experience the last time you flew. Maybe you had a really strange conversation you had with your seat mate. Maybe you felt so freakin' awkward trying to get in line for the bathroom because you kept on getting in the way of the flight attendants. (Hey, I'm not a comedian, it's your job to make it funny.) Those are the things that everyone knows are true without realizing it. It's your job to make them pay attention.
Comedy Central / Via giphy.com

Let’s say you’re trying to write a comedy set about a plane trip. You could talk about how ridiculous the security line in the airport is or you could talk about how tiny the seats are, but you won’t be telling the audience something they’ve already heard. Look past that, and think about your specific experience the last time you flew. Maybe you had a really strange conversation you had with your seat mate. Maybe you felt so freakin’ awkward trying to get in line for the bathroom because you kept on getting in the way of the flight attendants. (Hey, I’m not a comedian, it’s your job to make it funny.) Those are the things that everyone knows are true without realizing it. It’s your job to make them pay attention.

5. Write all of your ideas down…and then get them out of your sight so they aren’t distracting you.

Sometimes the hardest part isn't coming up with ideas, it's getting yourself to focus on them. Keep a list somewhere — on a sticky note, a page in your journal, the draft of an email — of all of the ideas that you're so excited about. In a couple of days or weeks, when you've "run out" of ideas, consult it. Find the one that actually still makes sense and has some potential, and get rid of the others. Rest assured: if the ideas are really good, they'll come back to you.
NBC / Via giphy.com

Sometimes the hardest part isn’t coming up with ideas, it’s getting yourself to focus on them. Keep a list somewhere — on a sticky note, a page in your journal, the draft of an email — of all of the ideas that you’re so excited about. In a couple of days or weeks, when you’ve “run out” of ideas, consult it. Find the one that actually still makes sense and has some potential, and get rid of the others. Rest assured: if the ideas are really good, they’ll come back to you.

6. Write a few pages every morning to clear out the cobwebs, and establish a habit of actually getting some writing done.

Morning pages is an old-school trick for clearing out the cobwebs that writers still swear by. It's super simple: just write three pages every morning. Period. That may seem daunting, but you can write literally anything. It doesn't matter. You could write a hundred lines of "I will write my morning pages every day" and it will still count. Eventually, something good will come out. You're creating a routine, an expectation for yourself that you will write every morning when your brain is fresh and the day has just begun.
Rachel Miller

Morning pages is an old-school trick for clearing out the cobwebs that writers still swear by. It’s super simple: just write three pages every morning. Period. That may seem daunting, but you can write literally anything. It doesn’t matter. You could write a hundred lines of “I will write my morning pages every day” and it will still count. Eventually, something good will come out. You’re creating a routine, an expectation for yourself that you will write every morning when your brain is fresh and the day has just begun.

7. Or do it at the end of the day when you’re totally exhausted.

Weirdly enough, we're more creative when we're tired. Your brain isn't as good at filtering out distractions, so you're more likely to have a crazy idea. Work some time into your evening routine (maybe an hour or so) to unpack all of those ideas onto a page. Not a screen — actual paper, please. Putting all of your thoughts down instead of letting them race through your head may actually help you get more sleep.
Warner Bros. / Via giphy.com

Weirdly enough, we’re more creative when we’re tired. Your brain isn’t as good at filtering out distractions, so you’re more likely to have a crazy idea. Work some time into your evening routine (maybe an hour or so) to unpack all of those ideas onto a page. Not a screen — actual paper, please. Putting all of your thoughts down instead of letting them race through your head may actually help you get more sleep.

8. Let yourself get totally bored because that’s when your mind starts to wander into something awesome.

Those five minutes it takes you to walk to the bathroom, ten minutes it takes to grab a cup of coffee, or twenty minutes to commute to work are all healthy boredom breaks for your brain. Instead of scrolling through your Twitter feed or checking your email, do absolutely nothing else. Those little breaks will give you the space to think and imagine, and might even free up a bit more time for your creative endeavors.Listen to Manoush Zomorodi's podcast "Note to Self" or read her book Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self for more ideas like this. Get the book from Amazon for $18.35, from Barnes & Noble for $19.28, or find it at your local bookseller on IndieBound.
ABC / Via giphy.com

Those five minutes it takes you to walk to the bathroom, ten minutes it takes to grab a cup of coffee, or twenty minutes to commute to work are all healthy boredom breaks for your brain. Instead of scrolling through your Twitter feed or checking your email, do absolutely nothing else. Those little breaks will give you the space to think and imagine, and might even free up a bit more time for your creative endeavors.

Listen to Manoush Zomorodi’s podcast “Note to Self” or read her book Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self for more ideas like this. Get the book from Amazon for $18.35, from Barnes & Noble for $19.28, or find it at your local bookseller on IndieBound.

9. Keep your “darlings” in a separate file so you don’t actually have to kill them.

If you've ever created art, written a line, or created a character that you were sure was peak genius, you have darlings. And when someone doesn't understand them, it seems like the most ridiculous, outrageous thing in the world. Throwing out, killing off, or scratching out your darlings is painful. But if they're getting in your way, hide them away in a place you don't see but can dig up later. It'll be less painful to get rid of them later when you've replaced them.
Warner Bros. / Via giphy.com

If you’ve ever created art, written a line, or created a character that you were sure was peak genius, you have darlings. And when someone doesn’t understand them, it seems like the most ridiculous, outrageous thing in the world. Throwing out, killing off, or scratching out your darlings is painful. But if they’re getting in your way, hide them away in a place you don’t see but can dig up later. It’ll be less painful to get rid of them later when you’ve replaced them.

10. Join a team of other creators so you have people to rely on when the going gets tough.

Creating something can be a lonely business...but it doesn't have to be! Create a network or start a monthly meeting with a few people trying to pursue on creative endeavors. You'll hold each other accountable and have people to bounce your ideas off of. If none of your pals are interested, join groups that already exist. Meetup can help you find communities of people in your local area that are doing the same things — writing, drawing, photography, etc. — as you!
NBC / Via giphy.com

Creating something can be a lonely business…but it doesn’t have to be! Create a network or start a monthly meeting with a few people trying to pursue on creative endeavors. You’ll hold each other accountable and have people to bounce your ideas off of.

If none of your pals are interested, join groups that already exist. Meetup can help you find communities of people in your local area that are doing the same things — writing, drawing, photography, etc. — as you!

11. Stop judging yourself and take that first step because imperfect action is better than no action at all.

The hardest part of doing something is doing it. Don't worry about whether it sounds good, looks good, or even makes sense. Start creating and don't look back. You can edit, delete, burn (idk, it's your process) it later.
Killer Films / Via rebloggy.com

The hardest part of doing something is doing it. Don’t worry about whether it sounds good, looks good, or even makes sense. Start creating and don’t look back. You can edit, delete, burn (idk, it’s your process) it later.

12. And remember that you have the skills to get it done, and that the hard work will be worth it in the end.

instagram.com

If you’ve never doubted your creativity or potential, then hats off to you. But for most, it’s one of the most paralyzing parts of the process. It’s so easy to tell yourself the reasons that you can’t do it, that it’s hard to remember the reasons why you can. You’re a creator. Keep telling yourself that. Or get someone else to do it. The Creative Pep Talk podcast will support you through those tough times, and give you the tools to get through it.

Now go create your pants off!

 

By Emily Shwake

Sourced from BuzzFeed

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6 Ways You Can Use YouTube to Reach Your Intended Audience

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By Jason R. Rich

The following excerpt is from Jason Rich’s book Ultimate Guide to YouTube for Business. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | IndieBound

Everyone who uses YouTube to promote themselves or their company has their own goals. The following is information about six popular ways YouTube can be used as part of your overall online strategy to achieve your company’s goals.

1. Promote Yourself as an Online Personality and Entertain Your Audience

One strategy small businesses use effectively to personalize their brand and build a rapport with the audience is to use YouTube videos to introduce their company’s leaders and position these people as spokespeople who appear in videos. Some company spokespeople have even achieved celebrity status from starring in YouTube videos to promote themselves, their products, and/or their companies.

If you’re a small-business owner with a big personality, consider starring in your own YouTube videos to help build your company’s brand, tell its story, and promote its message. Featuring the actual leader of your company can help personalize your business and build its credibility. You could also demonstrate products, speak authoritatively, and boost your company’s brand recognition and reputation.

2. Share Your Knowledge, Commentary, or How-to Information

One reason YouTube has become so popular is that in addition to watching countless hours of entertaining videos, people can quickly find informative and easy-to-understand how-to videos about any topic imaginable. As a business owner, chances are you have expertise that other people could easily benefit from.

YouTube offers an informal yet powerful way to communicate directly with your customers, in your own words, in a forum that gives you absolute control over the content. Using a bit of creativity, chances are you’ll come up with a handful of ideas about how your business could benefit from communicating directly with its customers (or potential customers) using YouTube. For example, you could create a product demonstration or product comparison video. Other options might be to showcase customer testimonials in a video or to create how-to videos that explain how to assemble, operate, or use your products/services.

One popular trend on YouTube is for companies or individuals to produce “unboxing” videos. Basically, someone takes a new (still packaged) product, then films themselves opening and using the product for the first time, as they share their initial impressions. These videos are watched by people interested in the product, but who haven’t yet purchased it.

In addition, many companies have dramatically cut costs associated with offering telephone technical support by supplementing printed product manuals and product assembly instructions (which people hate to read and find difficult to understand) with informative how-to videos that are highly engaging.

3. Introduce a New Product or Service and Direct People to Your Online Store

Showcasing products on YouTube is a low-cost yet highly effective way to demonstrate products to your customers, showcase features, and explain how to best use a product especially if you’re operating an online-based business or there’s an online component to your traditional retail business. In addition to showcasing a product’s features or functions, you can use YouTube videos to answer commonly asked questions.

Keep in mind, people who use YouTube don’t want to watch blatant commercials for your products or services. Consumers are already bombarded with advertising in their everyday lives. While your videos can certainly promote a product or service, and build awareness or demand for it, take a soft-sell approach that’s entertaining as well as informative.

4. Teach People How to Use a Product or Service

Many businesses have discovered that producing YouTube videos as an instructional tool can help improve customer loyalty, reduce returns, and allow a business to enhance its customer service efforts without putting a strain on resources.

How-to videos for a product offer a different approach than a product demo, yet both approaches can benefit businesses looking to promote and sell products. While a how-to video is designed to teach someone how to do something, a product demo simply showcases a product’s features or functions, and gives the viewer a chance to see a product in action. Either type of video can be used as part of a business-to-consumer or business-to-business sales and marketing strategy.

Instructional videos can help to reduce incoming customer service (and tech support) calls. You can produce instructional videos to teach people how to assemble and/or use a product, for example, plus help customers easily discover the true potential of a product, while eliminating their potential frustration. Your videos can also be used to highlight lesser-known features of or uses for a product that your customers might not otherwise consider.

5. Share Video Footage of Business Presentations You’ve Given

If you’ve presented a lecture, workshop, or some type of presentation, consider uploading the edited video footage of it to YouTube for your customers, clients, and the public to see. This will help establish you as an expert or authority, allow you to convey valuable information to potential customers and clients, plus help you build awareness of you and your company.

This information can be supplemented with an animated and narrated digital slide (PowerPoint) presentation that you post on your YouTube channel, and/or include a recorded one-on-one interview with you talking about something in which your (potential) customers or clients would be interested.

6. Provide Background Information about Your Company and Tell Its Story

Every company has a story to tell, as do the founders or current leaders of that business. By telling your story, chances are, you’ll be able to enhance your customer loyalty and brand awareness, while also educating the public about what your company does and its core philosophies.

Any type of behind-the-scenes videos can also be useful. For example, you can produce and publish a video that focuses on how your product(s) are made, provide a tour of your company, and introduce some of the people who work at your company within the video(s). If you’ve invented a product, you can explain where the inspiration for the product came from and why you’re personally passionate about the product.

Feature Image credit: wundervisuals | Getty Images 

By Jason R. Rich

Jason R. Rich, based in Foxboro, Mass., is author of more than 55 books on topics including ecommerce, online marketing, digital photography and interactive entertainment, as well as the Apple iPhone and iPad.

Sourced from Entrepreneur

 

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Relying on Social Marketing? Give Outdoor Advertising Another Look

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Opinion: It’s in the real world, so it’s not prone to click fraud

When I was expansion manager for grocery delivery service Instacart circa 2014, I ran into a problem: declining effectiveness of our social media and online ads.

The market was simply too saturated, with delivery services like Instacart, plus a fast-growing cadre of meal-kit delivery services. It was hard to cut through all the noise.

We also suspected, but couldn’t prove, that a high percentage of our clicks were junk, powered by bots. And this was well before the 2016 election with Russians on Facebook.

So, our team decided to do something really different: We turned to outdoor ads—specifically, billboards and transportation ads, such as bus stop and subway posters. At the time, the ability to definitively measure their impact was sparse, but we did see a boost in subscriptions and had no other campaigns running at the time.

Since that experiment, I’ve left Instacart and started my own company focused on making outdoor advertising easier to book and measurable. And as someone who once relied almost entirely on social media ads, I can tell you that outdoor is now just as quantifiable if you use the right tools and know what you’re doing.

Here are the ways in which outdoor has advantages over social media:

  • It’s in the real world, so it’s not prone to click fraud—at least until someone invents bots that drive past billboards or take the bus and subway.
  • It’s super-high-frequency, with significant exposure and traffic. No other medium reaches consumers with the frequency of outdoor advertising. We all know that one billboard or subway ad that greeted you on your commute for months.
  • It reaches more than 90 percent of the population. Not everyone is online—and in particular online at the social media sites you’ve selected for your campaign—but within a community, chances are that almost everyone will see a local billboard or other outdoor campaign in the course of their daily activity.
  • It’s easily shareable on social media, because it’s so visual.
  • Geographic targeting is unmatched: You can select media right down to the longitude and latitude of the community you want.
  • It drives an outsized share of online searches. Out-of-home advertising is the most effective offline medium in driving online activity, according to Nielsen.

How do you make outdoor measurable? There are a variety of ways. Options include:

  • Campaign integration with Google Analytics to measure lift in site traffic by area. This technique has been proven to increase site traffic by more than 40 percent versus controls.
  • Integration with Google AdWords to measure cost per click and click-through rates by area, in order to quantify performance efficiencies in online advertising. As outdoor advertising drives up a company’s awareness, its online ads perform more efficiently.
  • Social media image recognition, an algorithm to scrape social media images to quantify the number of additional impressions using campaign images or tags. We at AdQuick did this for a campaign for Drake’s OVO fashion brand and found $6,000 worth of Instagram shares in one week from one New York billboard.
  • Shortcodes, which are beneficial for transit and pedestrian-focused campaigns. They give any campaign a call to action and make it more engaging, and results are easily measured simply by tracking shortcode usage.
  • Geo-fenced mobile ads to measure engagement rate by area. This technique involves creating and serving ads on smartphones that mirror the message on outdoor advertising. This gives advertisers another way to measure engagement and provides consumers with a way to learn more about a brand’s offering and quantify the boost OOH drives in other channels. This technique can lead to engagement rates that are 30 percent to 50 percent higher in areas with outdoor ads versus controls.
  • Geographic surveys (based on ZIP code), tracking brand awareness and channel attribution in the areas surrounding the outdoor advertising locations.
  • Movement tracking, to quantify the increase in foot traffic an outdoor ad drives to a brick-and-mortar location.

If you are a digital marketer who hasn’t considered offline ads in recent memory, you need to give outdoor another look. Enough has changed in the past two years to make it a valid alternative to the crowded social media ad landscape.

Feature Image: We all know that one billboard or subway ad that greeted you on your commute for months. Lya_Cattel/iStock

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Matt O’Connor is founder and CEO of AdQuick, a platform that enables brands to buy outdoor advertising.

Sourced from ADWEEK

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Seven Ways to Be More Curious

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By Jonathan Wai Ph.D.

Ian Leslie on how to be more curious

Curiosity, according to Ian Leslie (link is external), is a combination of intelligence, persistence, and hunger for novelty, all wrapped up in one. It is what psychologists might call a trait cluster. Leslie, in his new book Curious: The Desire To Know And Why Your Future Depends On It (link is external) explores the power of curiosity through a combination of entertaining anecdotes and summaries of pertinent research across many fields. He makes a compelling case for why it is more vital than ever, as we grow older and more demands are put on our time, that we stay intellectually curious. In the spirit of that pursuit, I have distilled some insights from his book on how we can all improve our curiosity and wonder.

1. Read widely and follow your interests

John Lloyd was a hugely successful TV producer and director until one day he started to encounter a string of failures. This led him to depression. He dealt with it by taking time off work, going on long walks, and reading voraciously. He read about “Socrates and ancient Athens. He read about light and magnetism. He read about the Renaissance and the French impressionists. He had no method or plan, but simply followed his curiosity, wherever it took him.”  All this reading eventually led to his idea for the BBC quiz show QI, which is loved by millions for its “ability to make anything—from quantum physics to Aztec architecture—entertaining.”

Take away lesson: B. F. Skinner said “When you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.” “The feeling of being interested can act as a kind of neurological signal, directing us to fruitful areas of inquiry.”

2. Polish your mind with the minds of others

On a page from Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks is a to-do list:

  • Calculate the measurement of Milan and its suburbs
  • Find a book that treats of Milan its churches, which is to be had at the stationer’s on the way to Cordusio.
  • Discover the measurement of the Corte Vecchio [courtyard of the duke’s palace].
  • Get the Master of Arithmetic to show you how to square a triangle.
  • Ask Bendetto Portinari [a Florentine merchant] by what means they go on ice at Flanders?
  • Draw Milan.
  • Ask Maestro Antonio how mortars are positioned on bastions by day or night.
  • Examine the crossbow of Maestro Gianetto.
  • Find a Master of Hydraulics and get him to tell you how to repair a lock, canal and mill, in the Lombard manner.
  • Ask about the measurement of the sun, promised me by Maestro Giovanni Francese

Take away lesson: Not only are Leonardo’s interests wide ranging, but out of the fifteen tasks on his list, at least eight involve consulting with others, and two involve others’ books. “Montaigne wrote of how travel to different regions and countries allows us to ‘rub and polish our brains’ against others, and Leonardo seems keen to polish his brain against as many others as possible.”

3. Visit a physical bookstore or library and browse the shelves

In the era of Google searches, we have no problem finding the exact answer to our question, but we may be less likely to serendipitously encounter information that is not specific to our question.  Visiting a bookstore or a library allows us to encounter other information in a way that is not dictated by the structure of the algorithm. “A serendipity deficit makes innovation harder, because innovation relies on unexpected collisions of knowledge and ideas.” Curiosity is also about discrimination. It is about which knowledge we want to explore.

But, “A truly curious person knows that she doesn’t always know what she wants to know about.  Discussing the future of his company, Larry Page described the ‘perfect search engine’ as one that would ‘understand exactly what I mean and give me back exactly what I want.’  But what if I don’t know what I want?”

Take away lesson: Get out from behind your computer and explore. “Economist John Maynard Keynes once offered advice on how to conduct oneself in a bookstore: ‘A bookshop is not like a railway booking-office which one approaches knowing what one wants. One should enter it vaguely, almost in a dream, and allow what is there freely to attract and influence the eye. To walk the rounds of the bookshops, dipping in as curiosity dictates, should be an afternoon’s entertainment.’”

4. Be willing to ask dumb questions

Says Mike Parker, CEO of Dow Chemical:

“A lot of bad leadership comes from an inability or unwillingness to ask questions. I have watched talented people—people with much higher IQs than mine—who have failed as leaders. They can talk brilliantly, with a great breadth of knowledge, but they’re not very good at asking questions. So while they know a lot at a high level, they don’t know what’s going on way down in the system. Sometimes they are afraid of asking questions, but what they don’t realize is that the dumbest questions can be very powerful. They can unlock a conversation.”

Take away lesson: Be willing to ask all sorts of questions, even what may seem to be dumb ones.

5. Put a lot of ideas and facts in your head: Don’t rely on Google

Sir Ken Robinson’s TED video “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” has been viewed over 4 million times.  But Leslie argues that “Robinson has it precisely the wrong way around when he says that a natural appetite for learning begins to dissipate once children start to be educated.” “Progressive educationalists like Robinson frame existing knowledge as the enemy of new ideas. But at the most basic level, all of our new ideas are made up of old ones…to create a smartphone, you need to know about computers and phones.”

“We romanticize the curiosity of children because we love their innocence. But creativity doesn’t happen in a void. Successful innovators and artists amass vast stores of knowledge which they can then draw on unthinkingly. Having mastered the rules of their domain, they can concentrate on rewriting them. They mix and remix ideas and themes, making new analogies and spotting unusual patterns, until a creative breakthrough is achieved.”

“Anyone who stops learning facts for himself because he can Google them later is literally making himself stupid.  Children who aren’t encouraged by adults to commit information to their long-term memories are having their potential damaged and their desire to learn stymied.”

Take away lesson: Facts don’t kill creativity. Rather, they make creativity possible. Human memory may still be better for creativity. “Digital databases cannot yet replicate the kind of serendipity that enables the unconscious human mind to make novel patterns and see powerful new analogies, of the kind that lead to our most creative breakthroughs. The more we outsource our memories to Google, the less we are nourishing the wonderfully accidental creativity of our unconscious.”

6. Be an expert who is interested in everything

“In the marketplace for talent, the people most in demand will always be those who offer an expertise few others possess. But having a breadth of knowledge is increasingly valuable, too.  These two trends exist in tension with each other. Should you focus on learning more about your own niche or on widening your knowledge base?”

“The thinkers best positioned to thrive today and in the future will be a hybrid…In a highly competitive, high-information world, it’s crucial to know one or two big things and to know them in more depth and detail than most of your contemporaries. But to really ignite that knowledge, you need the ability to think about it from a variety of eclectic perspectives and to be able to collaborate fruitfully with people who have different specializations.”

Take away lesson: Leslie writes: “I don’t agree with those who claim the Internet is making us stupid. The only person or thing that can make you stupid, or incurious, is you.” Don’t blame the Internet for your lack of curiosity. Use it in a way that helps you gain both depth and breadth.

7. Don’t just focus on puzzles but on mysteries

“Security and intelligence expert Gregory Treverton once made a very useful distinction between puzzles and mysteries. Puzzles have definite answers…Once the missing information is found, it’s not a puzzle anymore. The frustration you felt when you were searching for the answer is replaced by satisfaction…Mysteries are murkier, less neat. They pose questions that can’t be answered definitively, because the answers often depend on a highly complex and interrelated set of factors, both known and unknown.”

“Puzzles offer us the satisfaction of answering a question even while you’re missing the point completely. A society or organization that thinks only in terms of puzzles is one that is too focused on the goals it has set, rather than on the possibilities it can’t yet see.”

Take away lesson: Leslie argues that mysteries have a longer half-life than puzzles, giving the example of Shakespeare, who commonly adapted story lines to his own ends up until the mid-1590’s. Around this time, his son passed away, and Shakespeare began to remove “crucial planks” from these older narrative structures, which created a greater sense of mystery because not everything in the narrative could be logically explained, in the way a puzzle can. This is also true in science. As Einstein remarked: “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious…It is the source of all true art and science.”

By Jonathan Wai Ph.D.

Sourced from Psychology Today

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How to Get Payback from Instagram?

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By Walter Moore

Choosing Instagram for business provides huge opportunities to reach 700 million potential followers who can positively impact your business fortune. Yes, the number of Instagram users crossed the 700 million mark almost a year ago. The most positive aspect of Instagram is the outlook of Instagrammers towards business. They are eager and ready to engage with it both within the app and beyond.

The business friendliness of the social media platform becomes evident from the fact that numerous business brands enjoy the interaction with 120 million users on the platform. This is great news for SEO because all Instagram business accounts carry links to the business websites that enjoy the patronage of the Instagram traffic. It thus becomes clear that Instagram can reinforce your SEO campaign and make it more effective. That 80 percent Instagram users track (follow) at least one business is the reason that more and more businesses are turning to Instagram as the chosen social media platform.

Connect with real people

Since followers are at the core of your Instagram performance, it is natural that people often go into overdrive to expand their fan base. While you can buy Instagram views that can prop up your business albeit artificially, garnering the attention of viewers organically would ensure that you interact with real people only. Unless you have meaningful interaction with real people, you can never derive the real gains for business. Only when people take an interest in your niche, build a relationship with you and engage with your content that you can develop a band of loyal followers that no bots can match.

For succeeding with Instagram, you must know your target audience and have the means of connecting with them. You must create powerful content that provides a meaningful way of building followers comprising of real people who can contribute to better business results. What you should do to develop real followers that can pay back to your business would become clear on going through the remaining part of this article.

Have a sound strategy for Instagram

To ensure that you can justify the returns on investment, you must have a good plan for using Instagram as a marketing platform. Be clear about what you want to achieve by using the platform, mostly it could be for boosting SEO so that you can devise suitable strategies for implementing the plan. It would point out the audience that you must target to fulfill your business goals.

Know what competitors are doing

By researching on what your competitors are doing, you could know what kind of realistic following you should expect. It would also help to know what kind of content would work for you, the frequency of posting content, what are the key industry hashtags including branded hashtags and more. You would also gain insight into how other businesses interact and engage with the audience that you are trying to reach.

Set goals

Set goals to achieve because it forms the foundation of the Instagram strategy. Consider your overall business and marketing strategy to get leads about how you must frame your Instagram strategy that aligns with the business goals. Whether you want to drive more traffic to websites, build brands or support the SEO and marketing campaign, the platform can support you well.

Give a purpose to your content

Create a compelling story that you can tell by using images that would give a purpose to the content and make it interesting. When there is a purpose behind the content, it creates engagement among the audience you target and would lead to sharing of content that opens the doors for would-be followers. You can share some inside information about your products, uphold how others perceive the brand or present the brand by showing how it has received the wholehearted acceptance of customers.

Engage in cross promotion

Since the purpose of taking your business on Instagram is to acquire high visibility that leads to increased followers, an easy way of doing it is to propagate your Instagram content and account on other social media channels through cross promotion. As you are likely to have business accounts on other social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, etc. you must make those fans aware of your Instagram account. By mentioning your Instagram account on other social media platforms and by incentivizing them to visit your Instagram account, you can drive more followers to your account. You can even publish your Instagram posts on other channels.

Hashtags must be relevant

The hashtags have to be relevant to the industry niche or your business so that potential followers who are keen to engage with photos and content relevant to your business would be able to discover you. This would lead to the enrichment of the follower base. When creating hashtags make sure that you infuse enough originality into it that makes it exclusive for your business. Indeed, you must take a cue from popular hashtags by using the search function of Instagram, but you must add your creativity to it. However, you must avoid the lure of going overboard to create hashtags that can be quite weird. Also, avoid using gimmicks in hashtags that might momentarily seem profitable but would keep you away from engaging with real people meaningfully.

Drive people to your Instagram account from all channels of communication

You must not lose any opportunity to showcase your Instagram account and must use all communication tools at your disposal to drive more traffic to Instagram. Spread the Instagram links on all social media platforms and website as well as in online newsletters and e-mail signature so that whenever people visit those places, they know about your Instagram account. Since these people already know you, they would not hesitate to visit your Instagram account. Even providing Instagram links or hashtags in blog posts would further expand the horizon of followers that originate from the blogs.

How much advantage you get from Instagram depends on your capabilities of using the platform correctly.

By Walter Moore

Sourced from iamWIRE

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