Why You Should Audit Your Social Media

By Anna Cairo

 

Having an online presence isn’t enough in the digital world. It’s important to make sure your social media presence is making an impact.  

 

Evaluating how successful your social media usage has been will make you more effective in the future. Here are three points to consider when conducting a social media audit of your business:

1. Internal Review
Evaluate what you did in the social media engagement space for the preceding year (for example) to assist in improving your social media marketing. Here are some questions to ask:

• What tools and resources worked? What didn’t work? Why?
• What content was positive and well received?
• What did the audience not like?
• What are people saying online about our business?
• What can we do better?

All these things are relevant to knowing how your business is tracking with social media activities and what needs to be updated or removed. It is important also to understand why something has failed even more so than why something succeeded.

2. Reputation
Does your organisation’s offline reputation match up with its online reputation? One of the common mistakes that businesses make is that they don’t align their online and offline presence. They make them two separate identities when in actual fact they need to be identical and consistent.
The message must be the same, the branding needs to be the same and profiles need to be the same and complete. This must be consistent on each social media platform that is utilised. Where there is inconsistency, it simply confuses your identity and your brand. Take the opportunity to audit these facets of your business and rectify the issues for the future.

3. Integration
Is your business using and integrating its platforms? By this I mean, are you sharing your Twitter feeds on your other social media sites? If your business has a blog, are you asking readers to follow you on Twitter or ‘like’ your page?
Of course you don’t want to be in their face but there is nothing wrong with making people aware of what social media platforms your business is using. Also remember that if your business does any guest writing not to forget to have a byline asking people to check you out on your particular social media platforms.
Although SMEs obviously don’t have the same time and resources as large organisations, this doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be analysing their data. Try using some measurement tools for 2013. Today is as good a day as any to review your social media platforms so that you are able to adjust or change your planning, strategy or objectives.

Why You Shouldn't Work Less

Emily Oster

Would I be happier if I spent less time at work?

Surely we have all asked ourselves this at one time or another. Perhaps during a fit of pique about a ridiculous deadline or the idiot who works in the next cubicle over. But even when things are going well, you might still wonder: Would I be happier if I worked less? After all, there are other things in life one might want to do during the daytime hours - hang out with the children, climb Mt Everest, sit in a cafe and read a book - all of which seem, in theory, more pleasurable than racking up more hours at the office.

Before my daughter arrived it hardly ever occurred to me to work less, but since she came along, I've given it more thought. I'm pretty happy now, but could I be happier with fewer hours at work? After all, I really enjoy playing with dinosaur stickers and reading Knuffle Bunny.

If you asked me which gives me more joy, my work or my family, there is no question that it's my family. Hands down. If I had to give one up, it wouldn't even be a contest. And, yet, in a typical workday I spend at least eight hours at my job, sometimes more, and only about three with my family. And, ultimately, I think that's the time split that makes me happiest.

How can this make sense? Isn't it obvious that the activity that gives you the most happiness should be the one you do the most? It turns out that happiness doesn't work that simply, and the answer lies in a principle that economists call "diminishing marginal utility."

When I teach this, it's usually in the context of consuming things - say, oranges. The first orange you really enjoy, the second is slightly less good, the third you are pretty bored, and by the 10th you are quite sick. This works for basically any good you consume: The more of something you already have, the less you want yet another of that same thing. It explains why, for example, you'd probably rather have half oranges and half bananas, rather than all of one or the other.

The same logic works with time.

Each hour of your day - sleeping, eating, working, showering, playing with those dinosaur stickers - delivers some amount of happiness. And usually the second hour of the same activity makes you less happy than the first one. The first hour of dinosaur stickers, amazing. The second hour, OK. The third hour? Even the best parent may wonder if it's, perhaps, time for a glass of wine. In the language of economics, the marginal utility of time with your kids - the happiness you get from the last hour you spend with them - is declining as you spend more hours.

Work is the same way for two reasons. The enjoyment of work - to the extent that you have any - is likely highest in the first hours of the day when you are fresh, not tired, working on the most important things. By the eighth, 10th, 12th hour of the day, it's a lot less fun. Of course, work also provides you with income. But the value of this also declines as you add more work. Think about it like this: The first hour of work buys you food, the second buys you housing, and so on, but the 12th hour might be buying you a nicer espresso maker. Everyone likes nice espresso, but the value of the income decreases as you get more of it. (This is called "decreasing marginal utility of consumption.")

How quickly your enjoyment of any activity declines is pretty personal. You may still love that third hour of stickers, or you may really hate the second hour of work. But, in general, for nearly everyone, there seems to be at least some decrease in enjoyment as you continue an activity. In short, humans are programmed to get bored.

Knowing this, how do you divide your time to make yourself as happy as possible? It's simple: The last hour of your time doing each activity should contain equal amounts of happiness. If I spend eight hours at work and three with my daughter, then this is ideal if the eighth hour at work has the same amount of happiness as the third hour with her.

How do I know this is right? If it were not the case - if the third hour with my daughter was much better - then I could make myself happier by taking the last hour at work and spending it with my daughter instead.

The key here is understanding that I may value my daughter much, much more than my job and still want to spend more time at work. Because it may be that the first hour of time with her gives me incredible joy - far outstripping even a whole week of work happiness - but the enjoyment diminishes fairly quickly. If it decreases much faster than the enjoyment of work, then it's easy to see why I might want to spend more hours at work.

The Secret Phrase Top Innovators Use

by Warren Berger

How do Google, Facebook and IDEO jumpstart the process that leads to innovation? Often by using the same three words: How Might We. Some of the most successful companies today are known for tackling difficult creative challenges by first asking: How might we improve X or completely re-imagine Y or find a new way to accomplish Z?

It's not complicated: The "how might we" approach to innovation ensures that would-be innovators are asking the right questions and using the best wording. Proponents of this increasingly popular practice say it's surprisingly effective — and that it can be seen as a testament to the power of language in helping to spark creative thinking and freewheeling collaboration.

When people within companies try to innovate, they often talk about the challenges they're facing by using language that can inhibit creativity instead of encouraging it, says the business consultant Min Basadur, who has taught the How Might We (HMW) form of questioning to companies over the past four decades. "People may start out asking, 'How can we do this,' or 'How should we do that?,'" Basadur explained to me. "But as soon as you start using words like can and should, you're implying judgment: Can we really do it? And should we?" By substituting the word might, he says, "you're able to defer judgment, which helps people to create options more freely, and opens up more possibilities."

Tim Brown, the CEO of the innovation and design firm IDEO, says that when his company takes on a design challenge of almost any type — and IDEO does everything from designing new products to envisioning new ways to deliver healthcare — it invariably starts by asking How Might We. Brown observes that within the phrase, each of those three words plays a role in spurring creative problem solving. "The 'how' part assumes there are solutions out there — it provides creative confidence," Brown said to me "'Might' says we can put ideas out there that might work or might not — either way, it's OK. And the 'we' part says we're going to do it together and build on each other's ideas."

Although the HMW process has been used at IDEO for a number of years, its origins can be traced back to Basadur and his early days as a creative manager at Procter & Gamble. In the early-1970s, the company's marketers were working themselves into a lather as they tried to compete with Colgate-Palmolive's popular new soap product, Irish Spring, which featured a green stripe and an appealing "refreshment" promise.

By the time Basadur was asked to help out on the project, P&G had already tested a half-dozen of its own copycat green-stripe bars, though none could best Irish Spring. Basadur figured the P&G team was asking the wrong question ("How can we make a better green-stripe bar?") and soon had them asking a series of more ambitious HMW questions, culminating with: "How might we create a more refreshing soap of our own?"

That opened the creative floodgates and, over the next few hours, Basadur says, there were hundreds of ideas generated for possible refreshment bars — with the team eventually converging around a theme of finding refreshment at the seacoast. And out of that came a coastal-blue and white striped bar named (what else?) Coast, which became a highly successful brand in its own right.

As the Coast story suggests, there's more to HMW methodology than just using those three words. Basadur employed a larger process to guide people toward asking the right HMW questions. This involved posing a number of "why" questions, as in, Why are we trying so hard to make another green-striped soap?. He also urged the P&G team to step back from their obsession with a competitor's product and try to look at the situation from a consumer perspective: For the customer, in the end, it wasn't about green stripes, it was about feeling refreshed.

Gradually, Basadur took the HMW approach beyond P&G to other companies, including the tech firm Scient. One of his converts at Scient, the designer Charles Warren, then proceeded to take the methodology with him as he moved to IDEO. Tim Brown confesses that, when first introduced to the phrase, "I was skeptical at first; it sounds a bit Californian." But before long, Warren told me, IDEO was conducting company-wide sessions "with 700 people doing HMW together."

As Warren then moved from IDEO to Google, the infectious HMW approach found a new host. More recently, HMW was carried from Google to Facebook by Paul Adams, who worked with Warren on Google+.

And there's evidence, too, that it may be spreading to the nonprofit sector. When one of IDEO's co-founders, the late Bill Moggridge, was named director of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in 2010, he brought HMW questioning with him. Soon after he started at the museum, Moggridge posed for a group photo with museum staff members — and everyone wore T-shirts bearing the words "How Might We..."

Min Basadur maintains that it's common for companies to expend efforts asking the wrong questions and trying to solve the wrong problems. "Most business people have limited skills when it comes to 'problem-finding' or problem definition," he says. "It's not taught in MBA programs." To fill that void, Basadur opened a consultancy, Basadur Applied Creativity, which developed its own "Simplex" process of creative problem-solving for business — with HMW questioning at the core of it.

HMW proponents say this form of questioning can be applied to almost any challenge — though it works best with ones that are ambitious, yet also achievable. Brown says it doesn't work as well with problems that are too broad ("How might we solve world hunger?") or too narrow ("How might we increase profits by 5 percent next quarter?"). Figuring out the right HMW questions to ask is a process, Brown says: "You need to find the sweet spot."

Great Advice from the Biggest in Business

“Seek advice on risk from the wealthy who still take risks, not friends who dare nothing more than a football bet.” – Jean Paul Getty

Founder of Getty Oil Company and 1966 Guinness Book of Records richest person, Jean Paul Getty was an industrialist and an astute entrepreneur.

Thanks to some shrewd investments he was one of few to come out of the Great Depression on top and went on to build a business empire with controlling interests in nearly 200 companies.

Famous for being a miser, when his son was kidnapped with a $17 million ransom, Getty agreed to pay no more than $2.2 million - the maximum that would be tax deductible – and loaned his son the remaining $800,000 at 4% interest.

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and only five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you will do things differently.” – Warren Buffett

The ‘Oracle of Omaha’ is widely considered the most successful investor of the 20th century and one of the most influential people in the financial world.

Consistently ranking among the world’s wealthiest people, Warren Buffett bought his first shares at the tender age of 11, three for himself and three for his sister.

“The ability to deal with people is as purchasable as a commodity as sugar or coffee, and I will pay more for that ability than for any other thing under the sun.” – John D. Rockefeller

John D. Rockefeller was a famous American industrialist who revolutionised the oil industry by founding the market dominating Standard Oil Company in the 1800’s (now Chevron). He was known to borrow heavily, reinvest profits and adapt rapidly to changing markets.

He is also well known for defining the modern structure of philanthropy, through which he created several foundations that had a major effect on medicine, education, and scientific research.

“It’s more important to be smart than tough. I know businessmen who are brutally tough, but they’re not smart.” – Donald Trump

Outspoken American business mogul Donald Trump cut his teeth at his dad’s real estate company, helping develop an apartment complex while still at college.

After claiming business bankruptcy in the 90’s and going close to personal bankruptcy too, Trump staged one of the biggest corporate turnarounds dealing real estate to rocket into the billionaires club, where he still resides today.

“When people are placed in positions slightly above what they expect, they are apt to excel.” – Richard Branson

Founder and chairman of the 400 company strong Virgin group, Richard Branson is one of the world’s most recognised and successful entrepreneurs.

Starting out his business journey with a magazine called Student at the age of 16, Branson went on to open his flagship Virgin Records business at 22 and then to start up credit card, airline and mobile phone companies throughout a very colourful career.

“My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them...from the perspective of wanting to live life to the full, I felt that I had to attempt it,” Branson says.

“A real leader faces the music even when he doesn’t like the tune.” – Arnold H. Glasow

American businessman and humorist Arnold Glasow started his first business just after the Great Depression, a humour magazine.

He jumped on his hilarious niche in tough times, marketing the magazine nationally for companies to repackage and send to their own customers. A huge business success, Glasow ran the magazine for over 60 years.

While not a massive mogul, Glasgow’s great advice is well worth a mention here.

“Formal education will make you a living; self education will make you a fortune.” - Jim Rohn

Rags to riches entrepreneur Jim Rohn was a store clerk earning $57 a week before starting distribution of nutritional supplements that saw him become a millionaire in 5 short years.

Then, after the collapse of his company subsequent decline of his fortune from over $2.3 million to almost zero, he hit the speaking circuit and started a personal development business. He would continue presenting around the world for the next 40 years and go again from rags to riches.

“If you see a snake, just kill it. Don't appoint a committee on snakes.” – Henry Ross Perot

Uber efficient businessman Henry Ross Perot started out as a salesman for IBM before going it alone and founding Electronic Data Systems in 1962. Perot was refused seventy-seven times before he was given his first contract for EDS.

He later took the company public and it went from $16 a share to $160 within days before General Motors took a controlling interest in the company for $2.4 billion some 22 years after Perot started up.

With his money and spare time, Perot ran for the US presidency twice, in 1992 and 1996.

“Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish.” – Sam Walton

As a teenager Sam Walton would milk the family cow, bottle the surplus and drive it to customers before doing his paper round and selling magazine subscriptions. Just to help the family make ends meet.

After being voted “Most Versatile Boy” at his highschool graduation, Walton’s entrepreneurial upbringing put him in good stead to take over management of a variety store at 26. That variety store blossomed into giant retail chain Walmart.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs

Iconic Apple IT guru Steve Jobs was the charismatic personal computer pioneer that also revolutionised mobile music devices. He is credited with bringing Apple from within 90 days of bankruptcy to profitability in under two years.

iMac, iPhone, iPod, and now iCloud, there’s a good chance that you’re using one of Jobs’ devices right now.

Build the Best Team Possible

Jeff Hoffman, Nov 6, 2012.

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The most important ingredient to entrepreneurial success is talented employees. 

Even with lots of funding, an average team will only produce average results.  The best business plan in the world can't execute itself.  It needs a talented team of motivated people with the right skills to get the job done.  Considering how important finding talent is to entrepreneurial success, it amazes me the backward approach many leaders take to recruit talent.

All too often, leaders recruit by explaining what their plan is, and by talking about what they want to do.  After being recruited that way myself one time, I felt like saying, "So let me get this straight.  You want me to work 100 hours a week for the next five years so you can buy a new boat?"  (The bad news is I think he would have said, "Yes".)

When I was building my first start-up, CTI, which American Express later acquired, I grew my team by asking each potential new employee to begin by telling me his goals.  I asked recruits what they wanted to achieve with their lives.  I asked them to tell me their long term hopes and dreams.  And then I mapped out a plan to show how working for my company could get them there.  We became partners in achieving their objectives, not just mine.  Have you ever drawn a roadmap of how an employee can achieve his life's goals by working for you?  It's not too late to start.

It's funny how some CEOs and business owners think everyone at the company works for them.  If you really want to succeed, you'll realize it's exactly the opposite. 

One day early in Priceline's launch, I was walking past one of our "war rooms," where project teams gather when deadlines loom, and I asked my staffers if they needed anything.  Our newest engineer, a 20-year old internet developer, said, "Yes I do.  Could you go pick up my dry cleaning?" 

Without hesitation, I asked where the ticket was, and off I went.

I know CEOs who would never think to go pick up some 20-year-old programmer's dry cleaning.  That's their mistake.  That talented developer was busy creating the product that would make my company successful.  A leader's real job is to build an environment where the most talented people in the industry wants to work, and then do whatever you can to clear the path for their achievement.  You win when they do.

While you're at it, quit being cheap.  The age-old game of trying to hire an employee for the lowest salary you can get is not a longterm strategy.  I once tried to hire an operations analyst who was making $72,000 a year at his current job.  When he came to my office, I asked him to pick up a blank sheet of paper on the end of my desk, and write down the salary he wanted to accept my job offer.

He wrote down $80,000.  Then I told him to turn the sheet over and read what I wrote before he came in.  It said $85,000.  "But I only asked for $80,000," he said.  "I understand," I replied, "but I'm offering you what I think you're worth, not what you're asking for." 

He took the job for $85,000.  My friends thought I wasted $5,000.  Boy were they wrong.  Not only did that new employee bring in all his friends and save me thousands in recruiting costs, but I can't tell you how many times I had to send him home at night when he was working late to prove to me that I had made a good decision.  My investment was repaid many times over.

You can't win without the right talent.  Focus on their needs, not yours, and they will guide you to triumph.

Project Management Software: Perceive, Prioritize, Perfect

By Ramon Ray & the Smallbiztechnology.com Team

When you’re managing multiple people, or teams, keeping everything coordinated properly can be a challenge. Using a dry erase board, a notepad, or even a ‘to do’ app in your smart phone, may not be the best choices for helping you decide what needs to be done and who needs help, when. The most ideal situation would be to create a project management site that is central to you and your teams’ needs, where everyone can collaborate, share information, and ultimately get things done.

Project management software is everywhere, and most of them will give you the simple tools you need to help keep your staff involved and engaged. One tool in particular, Wrike, integrates tasks, schedules, ideas, files, and discussions – via e-mail even – into a centralized planning hub that can be easily monitored by all. It’s meant for a smaller user base, as its pricing reflects and it gives some excellent tools for keeping teams involved and reporting constant; this includes managing time and hours spent on tasks. While the latter is hardly unique to any project management software tool, it is a core essential requirement. It uses easy-to-read Gantt charts, which simply lay out project requirements in a timeline format, and the interface is quick and simple to use.

Never Say No to Networking

By Kathryn Minshew

When new entrepreneurs ask me for advice, I sometimes tell them to NYFO — Network Your Face Off. Nearly everything I've accomplished in the past two years, from speaking on CNN to watching my company cross 1.7 million users in less than a year, can be directly traced back to connections I've made and help I've received from a network that is vast, diverse, and active.

The best networking suggestion I can offer? Always say yes to invitations, even if it's not clear what you'll get out of the meeting. I'm not arguing for long, pointless, unstructured conversations with everyone you meet. But many of my most fruitful relationships have resulted from a meeting or call in which I was not entirely sure what would or would not come of the conversation.

You could call it making your own luck, by increasing the odds of making the right connection. Because you can't assume that you know much about someone you don't know very well. You may know their occupation, industry, and job title — but you don't know what they may be an expert in, and you certainly don't know who they know.

Of course you can't possibly take every meeting. But regularly connecting without a reason or purpose — with people who seem to be doing interesting things — can have unexpected benefits. Two of the people who were instrumental in recommending me for Forbes 30-under-30 were serendipitous connections. Some of the best partnerships we've secured for The Muse (the company I founded) came through casual acquaintances who saw me and made a mental connection — even when I didn't.

Hand in hand with this philosophy comes another, highly complementary strategy: When you want something, broadcast that to everyone you meet. When talking about your desires for your business, be honest. A little candor, a little vulnerability, goes a long way in turning a conversation from trite to meaningful. For a period in January, I desperately wanted to land a partnership with Yahoo. For an entire month, I answered every "How are things going?" question with some variation of: "Great! I just started YCombinator, which has been an adventure. Now I'm trying to put together a partnership with Yahoo. How are things with you?"

Ninety-seven times out of a hundred, the conversation continued as normal, with a reciprocal introduction or update and additional exchanging of information and small talk. But three people I spoke to were different: They immediately responded by suggesting they had a former colleague, relative, mailman, or friend at Yahoo, and would I like an introduction? In thirty days, I went from no relationships at Yahoo to three warm introductions to power players who could make my desired content syndication partnership happen. Six weeks later, Daily Muse content went live on Yahoo! Shine.

I didn't know any of those three people had a Yahoo connection; in fact, they were hardly the ones I would have deemed most likely. And quite frankly, if I had sent out an email asking one hundred people in my network if they knew anyone at Yahoo, it would certainly have felt like an imposition. But the strategy of taking a broad range of meetings and letting everyone know the problem I was tackling — that strategy worked, and it has worked again and again in the months since. When doing this, be sure to deliberately pick problems that can be solved by introductions (fundraising, talking to certain companies) rather than those that require the sustained thoughts of individuals (product decisions, specifics of growth strategies).

You may be asking, how can I make these connections in the first place? Show up, and often. This should be obvious, but as a busy entrepreneur it's amazing how unappealing it is to socialize with people you don't know when you're working 16-hour days. But everything starts with showing up.

Commit to going to one industry-related event per week, then three, then eight. Sign up for events newsletters in your industry (The Fetch and Charlie O'Donnell's This Is Going to Be BIG are good examples for the New York City area). People also tend to offer opportunities to those who are most recently in their memory. I can't tell you the number of times I've gone to an event and exchanged a few warm sentences with someone I haven't connected with in a while — only to hear from them a few days later: "This opportunity to speak / present / fundraise / partner / win an award crossed my desk, and I thought of you." Why did they think of me? Because I'm a good fit for the opportunity, and they saw me yesterday. Be the person they saw yesterday as often as possible.

Networks are powerful, and when done right leave you surrounded by a core of individuals who are all rooting for your success and happy to help you. The building blocks of a great network aren't purpose-driven meetings — they're casual encounters, agenda-less coffee catch-ups, and even favors for people who don't seem to be in any position to help you right now. Build your network that way, and when you present your acquaintances with a problem they realize they can solve for you — they'll be right there with an offer to help.