2015 Reflections: Make 2016 Better!

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As the new year begins, I encourage everyone to reflect back on 2015; determine what worked and did not work, and use those lessons learned to make 2016 an even better year. Here’s a useful download to help you do that.

Here is a simple one page template that I believe can be extremely helpful for starting the new year off on the right foot, which is something my mother always used to say to me in days gone by. Of course, if you are left handed, I’m sure using the left foot to start the new year will be good too!

Here’s to a successful 2016!

[gview file=”https://voiceofreasonconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Reflections-and-Outlook-No-Dates-Rev2-2016.pdf”]

Creative Methods for Keeping Top Employees are Essential to Startups

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I read a fantastic New York Times article today titled “Small-Business Owners Devise Creative Ways to Keep Workers.” It was a insightful read, and I related it to quickly. As a serial entrepreneur and the founder of a number of startups, I have first-hand experience in the dangers of losing employees to other companies.

The article discusses the ways that business owners discover that key employees are leaving their business. For me, I always found out suddenly. Many times, employees would reach out to me and give me their notice seemingly out of the blue. It was painful and endangered my businesses by negatively affecting a key factor of their success – employing top talent. It would often take many days and weeks to re-fill a given position with replacement talent.

Want to know a secret to surviving employee turnover? Don’t panic.

Here’s my advice to every business owner, startup founder, or manager faced with the problem of employee turnover and sudden employee departure: don’t panic. It may sound easier said than done, but it’s truly the key to keeping your sanity – and your business – intact. The easiest way to stay calm in a stressful situation like this is to constantly develop new talent. Always be on the lookout for top talent and potential new hires. When an employee surprises you, move quickly to reach out to the network of prospective talent. You will develop certainty in your business and get the talent your business needs.

Today’s entrepreneurs have a lot of creative options on the table.

Reading the article also gave me a lot of hope. Today, business owners can look forward to the ability to create their own, original incentives to retain talent. The article mentions how one business treated all of its employees, and their families, to an all-expenses paid cruise after they hit some customer acquisition goals. Another mentions gifting an employee a trip to Paris. Incentives like that will help you counter the fast-moving, ever-changing labor market and bring certainty to your business.

To learn more about other creative incentives created by business owners for their employees, read the full article.

Social Media as a Marketing Vehicle

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It’s 2015 and everyone knows we need to be online in order to make the most of our marketing efforts. But many companies struggle to find ways to organically engage with their audience in a meaningful way. Here are a few methods you could use to generate buzz about your brand:

  • Influencers Drive Actions: Companies are seeking out influencers, or individuals with great knowledge and clout on a specific topic within a particular demographic, to adopt their products and let others know that they’re using this product and like it. Using influencers not only improves awareness, it also drives sales.
  • Connect With Your Audience: Take this case study, for example: “On November 15, 2013, Make-A-Wish created one of the largest and most elaborate staged event ever, which included participation from President Barack Obama and other government officials and law enforcement … As a result of its extraordinary word-of-mouth campaign, Make-A-Wish received 1.89 million social impressions, 555,697 #batkid hashtags, significant press coverage including a Buzzfeed article that generated 2.5 million hits within three days, more than 21,683 Instagram and Twitter photos posted by the end of the day, and, of course, increased donations.”
  • Interact With the Community: Engage with local schools by giving their journalism students a chance to write about your product, distribute samples to people that are likely to enjoy it, and host events to give your demographic an opportunity to interact with your brand.

It is always a challenge reaching your demographic, but the true magic of social media lies in its tendency to organically retain the attention of your customers. Ultimately, it is up to you to employ the proper strategies to engage your target audience and have them interact with your product.

Read the full article here in Entrepreneur

A Celebrity’s Guide to Rockstar Social Media

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LE-AA429_SOCIAL_P_20151012122858When it comes to social media, nobody gets it like celebrities. They consistently put out content that caters to their fans, and reinforcing their brand and strengthening their relationship with their fans. Your business could benefit greatly from social media by learning from the stars and how they keep their followings engaged. Here are a few common practices you could employ to boost your company’s social media:

  • Acknowledge Your Customers: Taylor Swift is well known for getting back to her fans, so much so that several sites have appeared to compile her replies to her audience. Get your customers excited to interact with you by demonstrating that you care about their concerns online and replying to both positive and negative feedback.
  • Don’t Be Too Commercial: Though it may seem contradictory, promoting your brand through social media isn’t about telling them to buy your product, it’s about making a narrative as to why they should buy your product. Your Instagram followers prefer to see a “behind the scenes” sneak peak over a “buy now” banner.
  • Create a Narrative: When Beyonce was in the tabloids in regards to troubles in her marriage, she did not try to dispel the rumors by confronting the publications. Instead, she posted happy pictures with her husband Jay Z, and in time the rumors went away. Instead of arguing with bogus reviews, show your customers the quality of your food by showing quality photos of your food to demonstrate that the rumors are false.

All in all, good social media takes time and strategy. Developing quality content to engage your audience can be a challenge on its own, but ultimately will provide a rewarding opportunity to build an authentic connection that will foster lifelong relationships with your customers.

Read the full article here in The Wall Street Journal.

Social Skills: Valued Over Technical Ability?

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As technology and automation replace workers, new jobs are created in order to support the machines and adapt to the shift in the economy. But as robots begin to perform surgeries, do your accounting, and manufacture your goods, there will be a shift in skills demanded of workers. Here are a few key changes that can be expected in the coming years:

  • Education: While social skills are not emphasized in today’s curriculum, emphasizing team work can help improve the social skills necessary to survive in today’s job economy.
  • The Current State of Jobs: “Despite the emphasis on teaching computer science, learning math and science is not enough. Jobs that involve those skills but not social skills, like those held by bookkeepers, bank tellers and certain types of engineers, have performed worst in employment growth in recent years for all but the highest-paying jobs.”
  • Women Thriving in the Workplace: “Women seem to have taken particular advantage of the demand for social skills. The decline in routine jobs has hit women harder than men. Yet women have more successfully transitioned into collaborative jobs like managers, doctors and professors.”

At your own workplace, ensure that cooperation and teamwork is emphasized and nurtured. Though your job isn’t likely to be immediately threatened by incoming technology in the immediate future, it may be important to have a backup plan in case it is. This excerpt from the article best summarizes what jobs are under pressure, and which will come to thrive in the coming years: “Jobs that require both socializing and thinking, especially mathematically, have fared best in employment and pay, Mr. Deming found. They include those held by doctors and engineers. The jobs that require social skills but not math skills have also grown; lawyers and child-care workers are an example. The jobs that have been rapidly disappearing are those that require neither social nor math skills, like manual labor.”

Click here to read the full article in The New York Times.

How Amazon Stays Ahead of the Game

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Amazon is no stranger to staying ahead in the tech industry, and its web services sector is no different. Amazon Web Services, or AWS, leads the online computing industry offering services at prices that no competitor will be willing to match. How did AWS manage to gain such a competitive advantage whilst keeping long-term sustainability a goal? Here are a few key points in their strategy that have helped them be successful:

  • Be an Opinion Leader: “The idea seems to be to dominate not so much by the traditional “vendor lock-in” of hooking customers on proprietary technology, but by making itself the center of the styles and habits of cloud computing.”
  • Look to the Long Term: Mr. Jassy, head of AWS, said “We’re extremely long-term oriented,” he added. “We’re trying to build a relationship with our customers that will outlast all of us in this room.”
  • Know Your Strengths: Amazon has developed some of its competitive edge by buying technology from smaller firms and applying it to their giant infrastructure.

Knowing which fields your business can improve in will help it develop core competencies that will give your company a competitive edge. AWS has understood this, and with it has built a service with which no competitor can compete. Its intelligent business tactics lend AWS access to the latest technology before it becomes available to their competitors, and securing their position at the top. Applying these tactics to your own company will help you stay ahead of your competition, and stay there.

Read the full article in the New York Times here.

Over-Demanding Employers Spurring “Gig Economy”

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Corporate life in New York City is infamous for being grueling, demanding, fast paced, and intense. Still, the bustle of the city that never sleeps attracts the brightest minds. Yet despite the recent upturn in the economy, workers are unhappier than ever with the increasing demand that seems to have gotten out of hand as of late. People are working more hours for less money, and frustrated with the results. Additionally, the cost of living in New York has rapidly outgrown average salary growth. Here are a few key ways that employees are adapting to what is increasingly shifting towards what experts are calling “the gig economy:”

  • Freelancing Becomes Norm: With employees feeling like they’re working around the clock anyways, many are figuring: why not work for myself? Many employees are supplementing their income (or replacing it entirely) with freelance work where they often make more money than they otherwise would have.
  • Layoffs Burdening Star Employees: Managers seeing big returns from layoffs of low performing employees are continuing to do so at the expense of over-burdened high efficiency employees, resulting in only 19% of employees in industries like the tech industry being “very happy” with their job.
  • Growth is Misleading: Most of the job growth has been in the healthcare, fast food and retail industries where salaries average below $25,000 a year.

So what does this trend mean for your business? Expect your competition to be not only rival agencies and businesses, but you must also be weary of freelancers who are looking to take your clients and can do so at a lower price. Graphic design and PR will get cheaper as supply becomes more accessible as freelancers flood the market, while those still at agencies will likely feel a similar strain. However, top talent will still be attracted to top firms, and the compensation and perks will be there to compensate them for premium work.

Read the full article in Crain’s New York Business

How Big Brands are Reaching Millennials

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Talk about Millennials is everywhere: how are you supposed to target a demographic that avoids ads like the plague? Millennials watch less TV than any generation older than them, use ad blocking software to block apps, and look at most of their media through mediums like Instagram which don’t feature ads. With such a challenging demographic to target, what are big brands doing to connect with this generation?  Here are a few key strategies brands are using to reach this demographic:

  • Create an Experience: Many big brands have turned to experiential marketing, holding events or stunts that create great memories that Millennials will come to associate with the brand.
  • Reach Millennials Through an App: Brands like Nike and Under Armour have developed fitness apps for customers to use and interact with the brand.
  • Understand How They Like to Communicate: Domino’s Pizza now allows you to order a pizza by sending them an emoji. Just letting Millennials know that you “get them” can be enough.

With such a mobile-centric demographic such as Millennials, it is no wonder that brands are turning to reaching them through their phones. Spending as much as 90 hours on phone apps in a month, it’s what’s most important to them. Throwing big events also allow attendees to organically share the experience on their social networks, which exponentially increases the effect of your marketing efforts. Key insights like these will help your marketing efforts, and keep you from being left in the dust.

Read the full article in the New York Times here.

What You Need to Know About Generation Z

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As Millennials are making their impact on today’s work force, employers are turning to see what they can expect from Generation Z as they prepare themselves for today’s economy. Described as people born from the mid 90’s to mid 2000’s, Generation Z is just now starting to make its impact. Make no mistake: marketers are scrambling to be the first ones to figure out this generation. Fickle, smart, and diverse, Generation Z is quite different from the entitled Millennials, and are predicted to be more like their great grandparents rather than their older siblings. Here are a few key things you need to know about Generation Z’ers:

  • They Are Diverse: With birth rates for Hispanic and Mixed children soaring between the years of 2000 and 2010, this diverse generation sees their African-American president as normal, not a breakthrough.
  • They Move On Quick: With Vine, the social media platform built exclusively on 6-second videos, as the prevalent form of Social Media among Generation Z’ers, you can count on a generation that will forget about your product just as quickly as they saw it.
  • They Are Risk Averse, Safe: Having grown up during tumultuous times, Gen Z’ers are subjected to their parents, the Gen X’ers, will to provide safety where there was none before. Products featuring extra safety features, promoting sustainability, or that promise to be free of toxins are a selling point to these kids and their parents.

Most of all, it is a generation that values the long term. After seeing how Millennials are bearing the weight of the baby boomers, Generation Z’ers are pragmatic and are not looking for a quick fix. Once you can understand the above characteristics, you can begin to understand Generation Z. Marketers will have to be able to understand minds that have short attention spans, but are still looking for the long term. Though it may be confusing and contradictory at first, the first to master their market will have large rewards to reap.

Read the full article here in The New York Times.

Using the Latest Technology to Increase Productivity

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Part of maintaining a competitive edge in business is making sure you are keeping up to do with the latest technology. The right network and infrastructure can dramatically increase the efficiency of your employees and your company. That said, here are some infrastructure-enhancing technologies that can revolutionize the way your company does business:

  • High Performance Mobile Networks:With over half of all workers using their phones to access work-related content, it is important to have a solid phone and network that will be there when you need it.
  • Social Networking: Interact and target your audience using social media to drive sales and raise awareness for your brand.
  • Cloud Computing: Access your data anywhere with cloud computing technology. Increasing your productivity, data security, and efficiency, you should look into adopting software like Google Drive or Dropbox for your company.

Technology is core to keeping a business up to date. Adopting the technologies above will make for happier employees who are able to effectively do their job by empowering them to effectively manage their data and target your appropriate audience.

Here is the full article on Tech.co