Business Improvement and Social media

Einstein's famous theory of relativity (E=MC2) celebrates its 110th anniversary this year. This elegant formula helped us understand how the world works and has impacted scientists and philosophers alike.

The business world has its own formulas for success. Hard work dedication = results. Power = money influence. Big > Small. Fast > Slow. Fancy degree time = corner office.

The thing is, the world has changed. The old rules of business no longer carry the day as we cope with fist-fighting competition, mind-numbing speed, and exponential complexity. Add in macro trends such as global markets, digitization, cloud computing, millennial workforce shifts, mobile technology, and geopolitical turmoil, and you're wrestling a whole new beast. One that can't be conquered with some long-expired formula.

When I was younger I wanted my own business, but I didn’t know how to begin. Should I buy a franchise, join a multi-level marketing company, or start my own business?

I went to seminars, presentations, and sales pitches on selling everything from milk additives to fuel additives, from soap to jewellery.

A lot of the presentations were very high-pressured. They were designed to get you to buy, sign, and commit. It was all about selling the dream of a life of leisure; you could live like a king and enjoy life without hard work. You could be different from the average Joe—no longer serving the man but living the dream.

Having started and run three successful businesses myself and spoken to hundreds of small business owners I can look back over 35 years and say, “Yep, that was definitely a bunch of crap!”

These are the three great myths:

Digital marketing has become one of the most focused on streams of marketing in the last few years. Three of the biggest digital marketing issues include social network marketing, mobile, SMS marketing, and content marketing. Here’s a brief look at each:

Social Network Marketing

As a marketing, you can rely on social media to connect, engage, and build relationships with current and potential customers.

Mobile / SMS Marketing

Mobile marketing is a term that covers several different methods of marketing through mobile devices. Mobile marketing can take several different shapes but one of the most popular is SMS marketing.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is the development of interesting and helpful materials to engage customers and clients. Examples of content can be blogs, infographics, online tools, YouTube videos etc.

This infographic displays some eye-opening statistics about these 3 digital marketing streams and might get you thinking more about including these streams into your marketing mix.

We all know that marketing strategy is a very important part of any company growth because only great marketing strategy and team can fly the company in the sky.

This infographic of social media marketing will help  to understand the latest social media marketing strategy. Check out the Infographic and share which social media marketing strategy you use the most for your project at the article link.

Ragan has published a survey looking at how companies structure their social media teams. An infographic summarizing the findings is below and the full report can be downloaded here.

In summary:

42% of companies have just one person looking after social media.40% of companies have 2-3 people looking after social media.9% of companies have six or more people managing social media.25% of companies have interns helping with social media.86% of companies measure social media in terms of likes and followers.Of all comms departments, advertising is the least likely to be in charge of social media in 26% of instances – marketing and PR are most likely (70% and 69% respectively).

57% of mobile web users will end up not recommending a website if they had any trouble visiting it on their phones. If a business has a bad website for mobile devices, 34% of visitors will end up going to a competitors’ website.

According to WebpageFX, businesses should use CSS for the layout and not tables. They should code with XML or XHTML, and put all the important information on the top of the landing page. ”Mobile website users are usually busy doing something else like waiting in line, walking through town, or spending time out with friends,” reports WebpageFX. “Their main focus is not necessarily your website so information needs to be quick and easy to access.”

By 2015, mobile sales in the U.S. are expected to reach $31 billion (right now they’re at $6.7 billion). Businesses have to get ready and have a solid mobile site, since that’s where many sales will start taking place...

The 100 people on 2015's Most Creative People in Business list have achieved impressive breakthroughs across a wide swath of industries: finding a possible cure for Ebola, using drone technology to help save endangered animals, modeling jet engines with 3-D printers.

None of these breakthroughs came from resting easy on outdated ideas or settling into familiar ruts. And yet, even this illustrious group admits to getting stuck and actively seeking grist for the mill. So we put the following question to the group: Where or from whom do you seek out inspiration? What do you do when you're in a rut? And most importantly, how do you keep new ideas flowing? Here's what some of them had to say—if you try them out yourself, one each day of the work week, you'll have almost a month of options to help spark some creative new ideas of your own.

There's a lot being said out there about the state of women in this country. The gender gap is alive and well when it comes to salary, confidence, happiness, and the number of women in the C-suite and science. Women aren't as happy as they were in the 1970s, research has shown, and their happiness relative to that of men has taken a nosedive.

But it's not all doom and gloom. A recent study shows there's one career path in which women's perceived happiness is greater than men's: entrepreneurship.

One out of every 10 women in the U.S. today is starting or running her own business, according to a that came out in June. More than a third of those women want to expand their business beyond five employees.

What will be the impact on your business of changing global trends such as: shifting macro economics, social and geopolitical trends, globalization, the increasing influence of the BRIC nations, climate change, food/water and other resource...

When most people think of Pinterest, they think social media marketing, not content marketing. But the truth is Pinterest can be an extremely useful tool for enhancing your content and providing direction for your overall content marketing strategy.

With over 27 million unique visitors and 220 million page views a day, Pinterest is one of the fastest-growing social media sites out there.

Visit the link for 5 ways to use Pinterest to leverage it in all aspects of your online marketing efforts.

Being social (e.g. actively using social media) in industries that are typically viewed as less of a fit for social media can be a great way to stand out, to show thought leadership and to reach new audiences.

To find out what people are doing to connect with their customers, partners and other industry stakeholders on social media in less social industries, take a look at the data in this infographic, where you’ll see:

Why you should be social, even if not everyone in your industry is on boardExamples of companies innovating in social mediaThings to watch out for with social media in non-social industries 

Examples that we used include companies in the following industries:

MedicalPoliceAutomotiveVeterinaryLibraries

A recent study revealed that almost half of companies are not monitoring their online social media communities.

More than one-third said that they only measure Likes, comments and interactions on Facebook, with fewer than one in four actively measuring the ROI of their social media campaigns.

Social media affects your bottom line; brands that are proactively using these tools see numerous benefits. And for those that aren’t, the absence of social media can also impact their bottom lines, albeit in a very different way.

This infographic takes a closer look at why the shift to in-depth social media monitoring is critical for the modern business.

LinkedIn is certainly the best social media platform for the business contacts and network. To be in harmony, it’s important to respect few rules and good sense. This post will give some information about that. [note Martin Gysler]

In his book Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Business, author Ted Prodromou describes how to best to leverage the networking site as a business tool. In this edited excerpt, the author details the two methods of building connections on LinkedIn.

How many connections should you have on LinkedIn? I'm asked that question frequently, and there isn't a magic number that works for everyone. LinkedIn isn't a popularity contest where the person with the most connections wins. LinkedIn is about building relationships and connecting with others, which is very different than the monologue communication of Twitter.

Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/224417