8 Benefits to Being a Socially Responsible Brand

Business leaders act, not react. By nature they are forward-thinking and innovative — a ballast on a ship. But never before has leadership been a more critical tool, with billion-dollar brands being built overnight and distribution trending in ways we never imagined.

It’s the Internet, of course. Consumers are interacting with brands in ways that could never have been done before. 20 years ago, our choices were limited to whatever was on the shelves at our local supermarket or pharmacy. Now, every brand and product is available at anytime and anywhere.
So how do we as leaders distinguish ourselves? The key is to understand how our brands can provide solutions to problems as well as to communities (our own or others). Here are eight reasons that business leaders who incorporate social responsibility into their business models will survive and thrive.

1. Social responsibility is great for business. If the only focus on is the bottom line (and it shouldn’t be), there will be missed opportunities and revenue streams. Over a 15-year period, businesses with a social mission perform 10.5 to 1 over their competitors. This is according to John Mackey’s (co-founder of Whole Foods) book, “Conscious Capitalism.” That would be reason enough for me!
2. What drives consumers to purchase isn’t adverting per se but the belief that their action has a positive reaction. Does this mean that they are willing to pay more? According to Nielsen, yes: on average, 20% more than for a similar brand without a social mission. It’s why we are willing to pay $5 or more for Starbucks when Dunkin’ Donuts offers coffee at a fraction of the price.
3. Here are two more tangible ways that social responsibility drives ROI. The average social business spends 2% of its revenue on advertising. That’s compared to 20% for traditional businesses. I highlight this point in my SmartBlogs article on StorySelling.
4. StorySelling is the idea that because of your purchase, amazing things are possible — and not just for the shareholders. Your purchase is directly linked to a tangible, positive result. Perhaps it’s providing medicine or building schools. My actions cause a positive reaction. Your impact is tangible.
5. According to the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth University, this also results in 10% to 15% more purchasing from existing customers. As we know, it’s much cheaper to acquire an existing customer than a new customer. Why not make it even more desirable that they work with you?
6. Being the leader that you are, you know every objective is driven by the best talent. You might be surprised to learn that the social mission of your business affects them, too. Say what you will about millennials, but 70% (Deloitte) of them are willing to take less compensation to work for a business that is socially responsible.
7. Here is the kicker: employees are also 87% less likely, according to a Gallup study, to leave the job once they get the job.
8. Lastly, leadership is about setting and achieving goals. How can this be done without a social purpose? Henry Ford believed that everyone had the right to own the road. That an automobile wasn’t meant for only the elite but also for the masses. To prove his point, he paid his employees some of the highest hourly wages per hour so they, too, could afford the dream. Everyone in the organization was focused on the mission.

Whole Foods is another amazing example. Their belief in the quality of what we eat is being ineffectively copied by hundreds of competitors. You can’t match what your organization doesn’t understand. Fundamentally, purpose is instilled in every aspect of what they do — from the sourcing to the display. And, Whole Foods has some of the highest margins in the grocery business.

Finding your purpose is what makes you a leader. Think about your community, your constituents or ask your employees. Inspiration will overwhelm and actions will be met with positive ROI.
Provide your customers with a euphoria that can’t be bought!



Zack Rosenberg is a social entrepreneur and founder of DoGoodBuyUs, the marketplace for Goods that Do Good. After a career in advertising working for companies such as BuzzFeed, WebMD, SmartBrief and others, he turned his attention to transforming the world through business.

Lessons From Pat McGovern for Entrepreneurs

Very sad about the passing of Pat McGovern, the Chairman of International Data Group (IDG). He was my mentor and friend for over 30 years, and a giant in the technology, media, market research, and venture capital fields. 

Today, I took some time to reflect on what Pat taught me as an entrepreneur and investor.

Pat McGovern was a global role model for entrepreneurs, constantly traveling around the world, rewiring his brain with the best ideas from every culture.

Here are a few lessons from my experiences with Pat:

1. Focus on the customer. Listen to them intently and help them to be more successful by serving their needs. (Easy to say, hard to do.)

2. Do not dwell on the past. Focus on the future, what you will do next to make a better product or service.

3. Constantly be learning as much as you can from those around you—from your colleagues, your customers, and everyone you meet everywhere.

4. Constantly be thinking of better ways to do things. The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement.

5. Hire the best, smartest people that you can, empower them to serve customers, and get out of their way.

6. Work in small, decentralized business units as close as possible to the customer.

7. Build and maintain long-term relationships with customers, employees, investors, and friends.

8. Never bad-mouth your competition. Focus instead on your business and what you can do for your customers.

9. Think globally, act locally. Great local managers with local knowledge and experience will always outperform managers shipped in from elsewhere.

10. In every organization and in the world at large, show respect for every individual.


[Editor's note: Steve Woit worked with Pat McGovern, Chairman of IDG, for 17 years, beginning as Assistant to the Chairman in 1980 and finishing as General Partner, IDG Ventures in 1997. He is the Founding Publisher of Xconomy, a business that reflects the IDG model of local news coverage and events in top technology clusters.]

Leaders must meet their future selves

Recently, social psychologists discovered a problem most of us have in preparing for the future: we think of our future selves as strangers — as different people altogether. Valuable insight into this problem is provided in research by two university educators — Hal Hershfield, an assistant professor in the marketing department of New York University’s Stern School of Business, and Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University and author of “The Willpower Instinct.”

In experiments with undergraduates, Hershfield discovered that students who were shown a digitally aged image of themselves allocated twice as much to their retirement accounts as those who didn’t see themselves as they aged. Hershfield says that “looking ahead in time and feeling a sense of connection to one’s future self can impact long-term financial decision-making, converting a consumer into a saver.” People with this “future self-continuity” also accumulate more assets than others, including owning their own homes and having bigger bank accounts.

McGonigal has pointed out that connections can also be made along shorter future-oriented timelines. For instance, she suggests writing a post-dated letter from your future self to your present self about specific achievements and successes in the future.

For leaders, it’s especially important to bridge the present and future. Leaders have to define the future not only for themselves but also for their organizations. Still, with the extraordinary demands and difficulties of each present day, it’s easy to let the urgency of today cause you to squander the opportunities of tomorrow.

Odds are, the success of your organization will depend on how well you figure out the future. Here are five strategies to help crystallize the future into the present moment and draw you closer to your future self.

1. See yourself as the leader you could become. Productivity guru Jason W. Womack, author of “Your Best Just Got Better,” advises that to strengthen and build your professional capabilities, you should set a 15-minute timer and then write, in as much detail as possible, about a future ideal day. Apply Womack’s advice to describing your ideal future. Then ask yourself: What will it take to make this happen?
2. Create your future in the here and now. Peter Drucker, the legendary father of modern management, taught that you can deliberately and systematically build your future into the present moment with your thoughts, actions, ideas, decisions and commitments. His work on taking the best approach to constructing your future is illuminated in my book “Create Your Future the Peter Drucker Way: Developing and Applying a Forward-Focused Mindset.”
3.  Design a better tomorrow for others. Joshua David and Robert Hammond were the driving forces behind the development of the High Line elevated park in New York City. Today, the park is a smashing success, attracting more than 4 million visitors annually and boosting real estate values in the surrounding area. It took 10 years for High Line to become a reality, however, and neither David nor Hammond had experience in urban planning or design. But they did have the vision and dedication to save an elevated rail line in danger of demolition. One way you can design a better tomorrow for others is by mentoring, volunteering, or teaching.
4. Resist going only for quick wins. Though change can be difficult, it’s an inevitable facet of the future. A crucial part of change is how we consider our relationship to time—specifically, whether we look at time from a perspective of lack or abundance. Tom Butler-Bowdon, author of “Never Too Late to Be Great: The Power of Thinking Long,” believes that when you have a long-term view of the future, you’re more ready, willing, and able to build things that will unfold over years and decades, rather than going only for easy, short-term results.
5. Think with a beginner’s mind. Shunryu Suzuki, founder of the San Francisco Zen Center and author of the book “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind,” writes: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” In her work coaching and advising business leaders, Bruna Martinuzzi, founder of Clarion Enterprises and author of “Presenting with Credibility,” challenges clients to adopt the beginner’s mind approach. This isn’t easy for most leaders, she says, but it can pave the way for continuous learning and development.

You may not need a digitally aged image of yourself to take action as a leader today. If you practice these five strategies, you can meet your future self.

Bruce Rosenstein is a leading management writer and speaker. A former researcher and writer for USA Today, he is managing editor of Leader to Leader and author of “Create Your Future the Peter Drucker Way” (McGraw-Hill) and “Living in More Than One World” (Berrett-Koehler). For more information, visit BruceRosenstein.com.

Basecamp’s Strategy Offers a Useful Reminder: Less Is More

Unless you follow tech companies, you might have missed the startling announcement by collaboration and communications software maker 37signals that it has decided to refocus the entire company on a single core product.

“Refocusing” might be an understatement.  37signals has developed a dozen different products and services since its founding in 1999. They will now be a “one product company” focused on Basecamp, its popular project management software.  To emphasize the point, the company is also changing its name to Basecamp.  So instead of following the conventional wisdom about growth through diversification, CEO and founder Jason Fried is doubling down on one successful area and putting all of his resources in one basket.

Basecamp is a small company. Even with more than 15 million users, it still has less than 50 people on its payroll.  So it’s somewhat audacious strategy might not be a model for everyone.  But regardless of your company’s size, there’s a lot to be said for the power of pruning and the importance of maintaining focus.  For many companies, in fact, the strategy of “less is more” has been a powerful driver of success.  For example, one of the secrets to Trader Joe’s profitability (which is one of the highest in its industry) is that they only carry 4,000 stock keeping units (SKU’s) per store vs. the typical 50,000 at other grocery chains.  They also open a limited number of stores each year, trading off rapid growth for insuring the quality of their brand.  Similarly, Apple has maintained the dominance of the iPhone partly by resisting the urge to create multiple product variations with different functions and features, in stark contrast to their competitors.

Keeping a business focused on a limited number of products, customers, or capabilities is not a new idea.  In the 1950’s, Peter Drucker emphasized that business strategy needs to include “purposeful abandonment,” i.e. deciding what not to do. Similarly, Peters and Waterman’s 1982 classic, In Search of Excellence, reported that successful companies were those that could “stick to their knitting” and not get sidetracked.

Despite all of this advice, the kind of radical focus exhibited by 37signals (now Basecamp) is difficult for managers who often act like kids in a candy store. Instead of focusing on doing a few things well, they try to go after too many customer segments, too many adjacencies, and too many new technologies.  Witness the struggles of financial services firms that become too big to control effectively; or large pharmaceutical companies that place bets on so many therapeutic areas that they don’t end up winning in any of them.

It’s a natural human tendency to want to do more.  Most of us have trouble walking away from tempting opportunities, whether it’s at the dinner table, or at work.  So we end up with indigestion at home and overload at work.  That’s why it takes a great deal of discipline, and even courage, to slim down, both physically and strategically.

A case in point is Google’s recent sale of Motorola Mobility to Lenovo.  The original purchase was probably a tempting opportunity that was viewed as too good to miss; but when it became clear that the telecommunications hardware business was not in their sweet spot, Google’s senior executives made the tough decision to sell, despite the financial consequences.  And in the long run, avoiding distraction and dilution of focus will probably be worth the cost.

Most of us of course are not in the position to buy and sell companies or even rationalize our product lines.  As managers however, we can make sure that our teams stay focused on the few critical strategies and projects that will make the most difference.  We also can ask Drucker’s question about what we should stop doing; and we can push back on others when we’re asked to do things that might be distractions from the core mission of our group.  None of this is easy in the midst of day-to-day pressures.  But in the long run, it’s very likely that we’ll reap higher rewards by doing less.

Seven Habits of Amazingly Successful Salespeople

More than ever today, all of us are selling. In business, we sell our products and services. In life, we're constantly selling our ideas, our plans and more. Being able to influence others is part of the selling process, and we can all learn from people who are successful in selling.

The best salespeople seem to practice a set of common habits. Here are seven habits of highly successful salespeople.

1. They hustle when others hunker down.

When times get tough, the unsuccessful want to circle the wagons and hunker down into something safe and cozy. Unfortunately for them, life isn't designed to be cozy or safe. It rewards those who take risks and venture forth in hustle mode. Successful people have a sense of urgency about them. They know how to embrace hustle mode when it is necessary.

2. They constantly work at being relationship farmers.

They are not pushy salespeople. Instead they are constantly creating, building and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships. They think of themselves as farmers — constantly nurturing, caring and doing the day-to-day tasks to grow a strong harvest farther down the road.

3. They thoroughly research their prospects.

The best-kept secret of social media is that it is a brilliant tool for research. One ninja-level trick is to start with LinkedIn to get the basics about a person, such as where your prospect went to school and worked. Then move on to Facebook to get more information about what he or she likes, such as restaurants, vacations, pets, kids or quotes. Then they move on to Twitter and track their tweets, their re-tweets and the people they follow. They learn volumes about potential clients this way.

4. They make direct, personal connections.

They deploy social media with pinpoint, precision accuracy. None of this “My cat is sleeping” kind of baloney. They research like crazy (see point No. 3), and then they take massive action to connect with others in a way that is meaningful to the other person. Let your prospects see you as an ally rather than just another pest trying to fake a common interest only to sell your stuff.

5. They are resoundingly resilient.

They know they are going to get knocked down every now and then. But 99 percent of the time they know they can get back up, dust themselves off, and get back in the game. Smart salespeople learn from mistakes and make themselves better after a bruising.

6. They do self-surgery and give themselves a “try-ectomy”.

They don't settle for a lame, “Well, at least I tried,” pity party. They keep going till they get results. Remember Master Yoda from Star Wars. “Do. Or do not. There is no try.” Stop resting just because “you tried.” Successful people know that you don't get paid for trying. You get paid for results.

7. They embrace technology to help people.

Today technology is not a department — it is integrated into everything we do in business. Top salespeople don't get enmeshed in the technology, but always have a mindset to use it to be more productive and help others. They use video tools like Google+ Hangouts, Skype, and Eyejot to connect with more people. As I’ve said for years: It’s not about the e-commerce (electronics), it’s about the r-commerce (relationships).

Terry Brock gives real-world, practical tips on how to generate revenue and increase productivity. He's the former Chief Enterprise Blogger for Skype, former Editor-in-Chief for AT&T's top-rated blog, and is co-author of the best-selling McGraw-Hill book about social media, "Klout Matters." He's also an international Speaker Hall of Fame inductee and travels around the world helping business leaders connect with their customers building relationships and increasing business.                  

How Cherishing Mistakes, Being Clueless and Stress Fests Helped Birchbox's Success

Birchbox founders and co-CEO's Hayley Barna and Katia Beauchamp are revolutionizing how you shop -- and help you discover your favorite quality beauty products by delivering samples right to your door, for just $10 a month.

The duo came up with the concept while attending Harvard business school. Inspired by the luxe beauty finds their friend (and first hire) Mollie Chen would bring home from her job as an editor at Condé Nast, Barna and Beauchamp wanted to bring this sample approach to the masses. Some 400,000 customers, the launch of Birchbox Man, a monthly-digital magazine and men's style guide, and expansions into France, Spain and the UK (thanks to the acquisition of Parisian service JolieBox) later, they've created an enduring brand and growing community. We caught up with Barna and Beauchamp to talk about finding balance and the courage to take the plunge into the unknown.


Q: Knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently when you were first starting up?

KB: Not knowing has had so much to do with our success. Of course Hayley and I had a big dream with Birchbox, but I believe a big reason we are successful is because we did not have the time to obsess about the long-term strategy. On a daily basis, the business was growing so quickly that Hayley and I needed to focus on keeping the customer experience strong and what needed to make that happen tomorrow and next week -- not in 12 months or five years.
HB: In terms of business approach, it's hard to say, because I really do cherish all of our mistakes.  I look back on each of them as a learning experience that helped get us to where we are today. But one thing that I've gained perspective on lately, and I wish I had realized earlier is about balance and knowing that building a business is a marathon and not a sprint. In the early days the intensity and stress level of our work was through the roof -- very little sleep, not much personal time and every little thing felt hugely important. Perhaps that adrenaline level and total commitment are what a young business needs from its founders, but I'm pretty certain that there was a lot of energy that could have been put to better use.

Q: What do you think would have happened if you had that sense of balance then?

KB: I would have slowed down the growth of Birchbox and potentially shifted focus and resources to areas that make sense for a more mature company that we could study. The big problem with that is that there is no clear analog for Hayley and I to model our business after. We need to figure out what works for Birchbox, and not rely past precedent.

HB: If I had truly understood that being a balanced, calm and rested leader was more important than the extra hour of email from 1:00-2:00 AM, I would have been making better decisions and been a better role model for the team. If I had this perspective earlier, we could have avoided some burn out and created the more sustainable culture that we've achieved today.

Q: How did you learn this lesson?

HB: Over time as the business matured and grew, I learned to let go of the little things to trust my team and the momentum of the business. My first vacation post launch proved to me that even if I lost email service for several hours, not only would I be able to relax and have fun, but the business would not fall apart without me. I also remember a Sunday afternoon in the office with Katia when we talked about how much we loved building Birchbox, and if this was going to be our long-term career and a huge part of our waking lives, we better make sure we have fun doing it. When we take a step back, we are lucky to have the privilege of living through our toughest days as business leaders and it's important to remember that.

Q: How do you think young entrepreneurs might benefit from this insight? 

KB: There is a lot of positive in the unknown. You can see it as a positive and as something that frees you, rather than something that prevents you from taking action.

HB: When you're 110 percent committed to making your startup work it's tough to pull away from quantity of work to focus on quality. If young entrepreneurs are able to understand this earlier than I did, I think they could create a more sustainable approach to building their businesses, make better decisions on a day-to-day basis and store up their energy for the times it really matters to push hard.

Q: Besides inventing a time machine, how might they realize this wisdom sooner?

HB: In some ways, learning to create balance is something that must be learned over time. The amount of decisions you need to make on a day-to-day basis starts to feel normal, your confidence builds and the stress level recedes. But having a support network of friends and family outside of the business that can provide feedback and a safe haven from the workplace is important. Mentors can be a sounding board and shed light on unnecessary stress and achieving work-life balance. Also, it doesn't hurt to make rules. For example, choosing one day each weekend to totally unplug and then dedicating a set amount time for work is better than kind of working through the whole weekend. Little things like reminding yourself to get up from your desk and move around make a difference too.

Q: What are you glad you didn’t know then that you know now?

HB: I'm really glad the business unfolded the way it did. If you had told me four years ago that we'd be running a business of this scale and a team of this size I would have been too intimidated to even start. But instead, little by little, Birchbox grew in the way it was meant to, and I was better prepared by my experiences to take on the next challenge as it came.

Q: What's your best advice for aspiring entrepreneurs?

KB: Go from aspiring to being as fast as you can. It is the best way to learn whether your idea has a customer and whether you love dedicating your days to see it come to fruition. Don't worry about realizing the full vision in the beginning but try to build a MVP [minimum-viable product] that allows you to test the key aspects of the model and the questions you have about it's potential.

HB: Don't just start any old business to start a business. Instead, make sure you truly love the concept and the team you're building it with.  It's the best feeling in the world to make an idea a reality, but it's also going to be very hard work. It's the people you work with and the impact your have that make it worthwhile.

Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/231503#ixzz2tPKUML00

Is Delegation a Nasty Word?

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inShRecently, I delivered a leadership seminar to school executives. The focus was on administrative mentorship with a particular emphasis on delegation. I asked the principals in the room as to why they don’t delegate more.

Before sharing their responses, I will share why I asked the question. School leaders, like most executives, are in over their heads in work demands. Not only do we ask more from our schools and their administrators in terms of programming, assessment, communication and accountability, but we expect them to “stay current” in an ever-changing technological and educational landscape that has huge implications not only on core instruction, but also on professional development, budgeting and many other areas.

A research article published by NAIS (Northern Association of Independent Schools, an association that provides services to more than 1,700 schools in the United States and abroad) spoke of the frequently overwhelming demands on the head of school.

In their study, the authors found that school heads identify “big-picture” aspects of their job, such as providing vision, managing their school’s climate and values, and working with their boards, as most demanding. Right behind those on the continuum are such tasks as managing their school’s financial health, fund raising, and strategic planning. And that does not even include such ongoing administrative staples as instructional oversight and student relations.

Knowing this about the stressors of school leadership I turned to the assembled and asked whether they delegate as much as they should. When the majority responded to the negative, I probed further. Using a think-pair-share technique, the participants were asked to complete the following sentence: “I would delegate more if I …”

I received these primary responses:

1. Trusted my colleagues more
2. Wasn’t so controlling
3. Had more time to think about what to delegate
4. Knew how

This feedback was not surprising. Article after article speak about the challenges for leaders and small-business owners to relinquish control and delegate. Why? Delegation is a foreign concept for many who think that they need to hold all of the cards or to have their spoons in every pot. Those who are willing to share responsibility may not invest the time into doing so strategically or may not even know how to go about it.

Trust is one crucial element to effective delegation and teamwork. You have to believe in your people in order to empower them. But it takes more than willingness and trust to delegate effectively. Others important components include:

• Decide what to delegate. Start with a small project or one that doesn’t have to be completed in a specific way. This keeps the temperature low and the end goal in sight.
• Pick the right person or group. Take time to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the members of your team. Select those whom  you’re confident can do the job well. They should be self-motivated and comfortable working without constant supervision.
• Provide clarity about the expected outcome. Include timelines and deliverables and provide a template or guidelines for the project. The more that you can spell out in detail, the less the risk of subsequent confusion or error.
• Grant the necessary authority. Supply the control and leeway for your co-worker to find the best approach on his own. This increases his creativity and initiative while boosting his self-esteem.
• Be prepared to assist. You may need to delegate the task as a whole, but can often still assist here or there. Also, make sure to offer proper training to build skill and efficacy for the task designees.
• Monitor progress. Stay on top of things and correct/redirect when necessary. This motivates colleagues (who don’t feel abandoned) and helps you catch problems early. Obviously, inexperienced colleagues will need tighter control than seasoned veterans.
• Recognize key milestones and celebrate successes. Anything from a simple “thank you” or “well done” to arranging for awards, gifts or bonuses.

A study published in the Gallup Business Journal found that the most cohesive and successful teams possess broader groupings of strengths, rather than one dominant leader who tries to do everything or individuals who all have similar strengths.

The process of building a well-informed and properly trained team allows leaders to harness various talents and perspectives for the collective good. It may be challenging at first, but will pay great dividends over time while also alleviating some of the crushing burden that often sits on a leader’s shoulders.

Naphtali Hoff (@impactfulcoach) served as an educator and school administrator for over 15 years before becoming an executive coach and consultant.

The 5 steps for an effective ‘tradigital’ advertising campaign

"Tradigital" marketing combines traditional advertising such as direct mail and TV, newspaper, magazine and radio ads with digital marketing to create stronger results than either could do on its own.
I outlined the concept in an article a couple of weeks ago, and now I’ll outline the steps necessary for an effective tradigital campaign.

1. Know your audience

It seems obvious, but targeting an advertising campaign to the wrong demographic (or to “everyone”) can be a costly mistake resulting in poor results. With a clearly defined target audience, it is much easier to determine where and how to market your company.

2. Be creative

We use an acronym AIDA – Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. Insuring that this criteria is met will result in a more effective ad that delivers results. A well-crafted ad can often make the difference between a successful or disastrous campaign.

3. Have a ‘vanity URL’

In a tradigital campaign, your goal is drive as much traffic as possible to your digital destination. Many small to mid-sized companies continue to struggle with a website that is less than optimal. Many have a long wish list of how their site should be, but do not have the time or resources to get it there.
Here’s where a landing page or vanity URL can help.

Simply stated, this is a one-page website that has the sole purpose to welcome your visitors, show off your product or service, and allow visitors to quickly and easily find and act on your current promotion. That may or may not be something you have done, but the key here is to come up with a name that is easy to remember and ties in your company.

On average, the conversion rates of landing pages in tradigital campaigns are between 8 percent and 10 percent with one (a golf course) at a high of 32 percent. Can you imagine if a third of your traffic converted into new leads? To put this into perspective, quality traditional websites average a conversion rate of around 3 percent.

4. You need a social media tie-in

A good tradigital strategy allows consumers to respond on their terms. If the landing page does not attract their attention, a custom Facebook tab that serves the same “landing page” function also works well. Of course. the social nature of FB, with the ability to share a page or to simply come across the offer because your friends also participated in it, can quickly multiply your responses.

5. Don’t forget email marketing

With many social media sites now charging you to sponsor an ad to reach a larger portion of your fans, email marketing remains the most effective way to close a prospect who is in the decision making process of buying your product or service. As you collect all of your leads from the landing page, and from the custom tab on your Facebook page, it is essential to have an email marketing strategy set up and ready to go.
This five-step ‘tradigital’ strategy, which uses a well-crafted TV, radio and newspaper ads to raise awareness of your company and add a sense of urgency to your offer, will increase the results of your campaign by 35 percent or more.
In the next series of articles we will drill down into each one of these steps so that you can clearly understand how a tradigital strategy delivers maximum results.

On average, the conversion rates of landing pages in tradigital campaigns are between 8 percent and 10 percent with one (a golf course) at a high of 32 percent. Can you imagine if a third of your traffic converted into new leads? To put this into perspective, quality traditional websites average a conversion rate of around 3 percent.

4. You need a social media tie-in

A good tradigital strategy allows consumers to respond on their terms. If the landing page does not attract their attention, a custom Facebook tab that serves the same “landing page” function also works well. Of course. the social nature of FB, with the ability to share a page or to simply come across the offer because your friends also participated in it, can quickly multiply your responses.

5. Don’t forget email marketing

With many social media sites now charging you to sponsor an ad to reach a larger portion of your fans, email marketing remains the most effective way to close a prospect who is in the decision making process of buying your product or service. As you collect all of your leads from the landing page, and from the custom tab on your Facebook page, it is essential to have an email marketing strategy set up and ready to go.
This five-step ‘tradigital’ strategy, which uses a well-crafted TV, radio and newspaper ads to raise awareness of your company and add a sense of urgency to your offer, will increase the results of your campaign by 35 percent or more.
In the next series of articles we will drill down into each one of these steps so that you can clearly understand how a tradigital strategy delivers maximum results.

On average, the conversion rates of landing pages in tradigital campaigns are between 8 percent and 10 percent with one (a golf course) at a high of 32 percent. Can you imagine if a third of your traffic converted into new leads? To put this into perspective, quality traditional websites average a conversion rate of around 3 percent.

How To Rewire Your Brain For Happiness

Our brains naturally hold on to negative experiences more than positive ones. These 3 strategies will help you learn to focus on the positive.

In Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence, neuropsychologist Rick Hanson says our brain is like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones. That built-in negativity bias helps keep us safe.
This means that we readily notice and internalize anything negative that happens to us during the course of a day, while glossing over anything positive because we're busy solving problems or scanning for something to worry about. For example, as entrepreneurs, we often tend to overestimate the threats and underestimate the opportunities for our businesses.
In business relationships with partners, employees or colleagues, trust is often a delicate fiber that connects us and can easily be broken. As Hanson puts it, "Uncomfortable experiences are immediately fast-tracked into memory stores: Once burned, twice shy ... Strong dislikes are acquired faster than strong likes ... Something bad about a person is better remembered than something good."

Rewiring Our Brain

It pays to become adept at knowing how to reshape our brain so we counteract our default to the negative. In his book, Hanson reveals how to do just that—how to train our brain to hardwire all the positive experiences, to "take in the good" that happens every day in our life. This involves turning a positive event into a positive experience.
We can make this happen if we take 10, 20 or 30 seconds to savor the positive moment. And there are many of them during the course of a day, Hanson says, but we just don't notice them. These brief seconds of paying attention to what has happened and relishing it makes the positive experience sink in so it can develop into a neural structure. The more we do this, the better we become at balancing our hardwired negativity bias with an ability to take in the good.
Drawing on years of research in neuroscience, Hanson shows that to build inner strength into our brain, we need to meet three core needs: safety, satisfaction and connection. Learning which positive experiences can satisfy these core needs every day goes a long way toward helping us cultivate positive emotions and hardwiring contentment and peace so we can focus on a successful life.
The following three tactics, which help fulfill your core needs, can help you concentrate on the positive.

Practice Being Calm

You can boost your sense of safety by regularly focusing on experiences that make you feel calm. Calm is an attitude of composure that lets us function at our best in stressful, harried or charged situations. It's means moving away from a crisis-driven mindset.
We often miss opportunities to practice calmness because we're used to being "on" all the time. For example, calmness isn't rushing from one airport gate to another when there's ample time for making our connecting flight. It's taking a real break from your business during the day to have an uninterrupted meal. It's waking up an hour earlier so you don't have to rush through traffic. It's giving your child an extra 10 minutes' of peaceful attention in the morning.
Create such moments during your day to experience calmness, and intentionally focus on the experience for a few seconds to relish how it feels. Repeatedly internalizing experiences that bring a sense of calm to your life helps you build that emotional muscle so you're better able to face situations in your business or personal life without feeling pressured or rattled by them.

Raise Your Satisfaction Awareness

When you're feeling satisfied, you're more likely to experience such feelings as gratitude, gladness, accomplishment and contentment. These are powerful antidotes to the negativity bias in our brain. So it's important to become more aware of what satisfaction means for you, and then take the time to savor the experience when it happens.
For instance, it may be closing a sale or completing a project ahead of time. Or it may be as simple as learning something new every day. You need to be clear about whatever it is that brings you satisfaction so you can create more of these opportunities but, more important, so you can savor them when they do happen.
If you need inspiration in this regard, consider how Rich Jones, CEO of Open Watch, a company that builds tech solutions for independent media groups and nonprofits, goes about it. In "Hacker Lifestyle: How I Feel Satisfied With Every Day," Jones offers a simple three-pronged approach that works for him: "Every day," he says, "I simply force myself to do 3 things: Get paid. Get fit. Make something cool." What are the three things that make you feel satisfied as an entrepreneur?

Value The People In Your Life

You can strengthen your sense of feeling connected by regularly focusing on experiences during the day in which you feel cared about or valued. You can also focus on experiences that make you feel like a good person, such as when you feel compassion or when you're doing something kind for others.
Marshall Goldsmith, voted one of North America's top 50 Thinkers in 2011 by the Harvard Business Review, says that when asking older people who are dying what advice they'd have for others, one of the themes that consistently comes up is to focus on friends and family. You may have wonderful business associates now, but when you're 95 years old and you look around your death bed, very few of your business associates or fellow employees will be there waving goodbye. Your friends and family will probably be the only people who care for you and be there for you in the end.
As psychologist William James once said, "The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated." Don't let the daily preoccupations with your business cause you to miss the appreciation you receive from those closest to you.


Bruna Martinuzzi is the founder of Clarion Enterprises Ltd. and the author of two books, Presenting with Credibility: Practical Tools and Techniques for Effective Presentations and The Leader as a Mensch: Become the Kind of Person Others Want to Follow.

Insights from an app-developer veteran: Think simple, low-risk

The press loves an “app millionaire” — entrepreneurs that make big money as their products attract venture capital, or the assimilating hands and deep pockets of a technology giant like Apple or Google.

Most developers will never live in that world.

The majority will make their living as contractors or employees working on other people’s apps, but some make a living writing their own apps and releasing them in the various stores. I have been living off my own apps for a decade now. From the Treo 600, through the iPhone revolution and on to the growing popularity of Android.
At the risk of sounding like a hoary old man of the hills, I’ve seen a lot of changes and been astonished at the ways in which the market has developed. But some things have remained true throughout the 10 years I’ve been running Hobbyist Software, and I expect they’ll go on being true long after I’ve hung up my keyboard. So here are a handful of tips and observations for the solo developer.

Satisfy your own needs

My most popular apps are ones that I’ve developed for myself to satisfy my own needs with devices that excite me. If you want a capability on your device, chances are there are other people thinking the same thing. Having a problem you want to solve for yourself means that you are more committed to it and actually understand it. It’s also a lot more fun.

Take feedback and act on it

Without exception it has been feedback from highly engaged users which has allowed my apps to keep developing over the years, to improve and stay fresh. I respond to most customer emails myself and aim to do so quickly. This seems to have a lasting halo effect as customers recommend my apps to their friends. Many people are surprised and very pleased to get an email from the real developer rather than a support minion.

Keep it simple – but not too simple

You’ll typically get most feedback from the highly technical users who want lots of complicated features and options. These guys are great, they have some killer ideas, but they are not the majority of your users. In order to keep the broader base happy, you need to keep things simple. Palm OS used to talk about ‘the zen of Palm.’ They obsessed about letting users act in as few taps as possible. Apple has embraced this desire for simplicity — though, with Apple, making things beautiful can sometimes get in the way of achieving the goal.

Looks matter

When I started developing, apps were called applications, and we cared more about what they did than how they looked. Times have changed. For your app to be a success, it needs to look good. Spend that bit of extra time (and maybe money, if graphic skills aren’t your thing) to give it a bit of polish.

You can’t predict success

Apps are like pop songs. You write the app, you polish it and you release it. You don’t know whether it will be a hit or flop. That is true even after your first successful app. Most pop bands are one-hit-wonders, and most developers will struggle to follow initial success. I had low expectations for the app that would become my most successful project, and others that I was super-excited about disappeared without a trace. You do your best, release your app, then move on if you need to.

Small is good

I have been accused of lacking ambition, but I like my small, low-risk approach. I don’t have employees, I have never spent more than a few thousand pounds to develop, design, and launch an app. Many developers are working towards a big launch on borrowed money, hiring an expensive team of rock star developers and publicists, hoping and hanging on for that ever elusive venture capital or big tech buy-out. I look at most of those app ideas and wonder why they didn’t just build their app in the evenings, launch it, and see what happens. Most will disappear without a trace, but a good idea that fulfills a need will gradually find a market. And probably has as much chance of hitting it big as any other decent app, with a lot less risk.

Rob Jonson is a self-taught programmer who has been releasing apps under the Hobbyist name for 10 years. Rob makes his living selling apps (including the best selling VLC Remote and VLC Streamer) direct to customers via app stores. Rob made his first app, Butler (a no.1 best seller), on Palm OS for the Treo600 (arguably the first smart phone). Rob managed to make the transition to iOS with the best selling VLC Remote, released in 2008, the earliest days of the App Store. Along the way, he’s released apps for Palm OS, Web OS, Android, Windows Phone, iOS, Mac, and Windows. One of his early cult Palm OS apps even influenced the key ‘Just type’ feature of Web OS. You can find out more about his apps and Hobbyist Software.