Business Improvement and Social media

Every day millions of people travel for business. In airports around the world, I see suits flying here and there, carrying laptops, reading briefings on planes, or preparing for their next presentation ‘extraordinaire’. We are all working hard to exceed expectations, meet deadlines, make money, surpass profits, and still be alive at the end.

Unfortunately, many of those travelling executives look like they have had less sleep than a Giraffe, who, according to the Smithsonian Institute, sleep for 5 minutes at a time about 6 times a day and even then have one eye open and both ears alert to predators.

Over the last 12 months I have conducted countless productivity experiments on myself, interviewed some of the most productive people in the world, and read a ton of books and academic literature on productivity, all to explore how I could become as productive as possible. This is what I've learned.

Two every second: That's how many people join LinkedIn as new members, many of whom hope to exploit the platform's rich resource for industry contacts. That means that by the time you finish reading this article, you’ll have on average 250 people and counting to compete with for the professional world’s attention.

But before you even consider your strategies for interacting on the popular social media site, you must first look inwards--at the state of your profile.

This infographic from social media agency Link Humans shows you how to stand out from the crowd and put your best profile forward:

Time is seen in a particularly different light by Eastern and Western cultures, and even within these groupings assumes quite dissimilar aspects from country to country. In the Western Hemisphere, the United States and Mexico employ time in such diametrically opposing manners that it causes intense friction between the two peoples. In Western Europe, the Swiss attitude to time bears little relation to that of neighboring Italy. Thais do not evaluate the passing of time in the same way that the Japanese do. In Britain the future stretches out in front of you. In Madagascar it flows into the back of your head from behind.

The chart above compares the contribution of two hypothetical inside sales people with $400,000 quotas to an early-stage startup's finances. In this case, contribution is the 18 month revenue of sold customers tallied cumulatively minus the salary costs of $100k annualized of the sales person. I've modeled a six month linear ramp for the sales person to reach 100% of quota.

What does it mean to become digital? Companies in all industries are building online businesses, enabling new customer experiences, experimenting with “big data,” and seeking advantage in a digitally enabled business environment. They have tried reengineering their practices; they have set up new technological platforms for customer engagement and back-office efficiency. But these efforts have not yet had the impact that they should. Instead of reengineering, they need reimagining. They need to conceive of their business freshly, in line with the capabilities that digital and business technologies can give them, connecting to customers in ways that have not been possible before.