50 Golden Blogging Tips For Business: Social Media - Brad Shorr

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Every blogger should know that social media and SEO are fast becoming one big, messy and marvellous marketing discipline. Here is a collection of 50 blogging tips from my most recent and valuable posts on topics that are essential for a successful blog marketing effort. If you’re just starting out with a blog, these tips may save you a lot of time – and perhaps a little heartache as well.

Blogging Tips For Strategy

Blogging is a powerful tool to be used in marketing as well as presenting yourself as an expert, but you need to take notice of a few simple rules to make it more effective for you or your business.

1. Headlines are just as important as the blog post, and in some ways, more. It takes a pretty good one to capture the attention of readers who are scanning scores if not hundreds of Web pages every day.
2. SEO drives traffic, but a site must be optimized for conversion in order for that traffic to turn into leads and sales.
3. Companies err by concentrating on SEO and ignoring CRO, conversion optimization. The fatal flaw of an SEO fixation is that it takes your eye off the ball. SEO is about traffic. Traffic is important, but it’s not the goal.
4. The fundamental purpose of Internet marketing, and business blogging in this case, is conversion.
5. Publish regularly. Have a calendar based plan for your blog posts. Once a week is good, twice a week even better. The important thing here is that you stick to your plan.
6. Consider hiring an SEO specialist. This is one of the most important decisions you will make in your pursuit of online marketing success. (see points below)

Blog Design And Functionality

No matter how brilliant a website’s design, no matter how elegant its navigation, sooner or later visitors will decide whether to take action because of something they read. In the end, the effectiveness with which a website converts visitors hinges on words. If a new website is going to hit all the right notes, its content must be just as well crafted as its design and programming.

1. Primary SEO keywords should appear at the beginning of headlines. This helps readers as well as search engine crawlers.
2. Use bold text for keywords; again, this help readers in addition to strengthening SEO.
3. Use bulleted lists to the attention of readers and crawlers.
4. Insert primary keywords at the beginning of Meta titles.
5. Build a strong internal link structure on your site.
6. Optimize site images – this is an often-overlooked technique that boosts SEO and user experience.
7. The biggest error in corporate website content: inward focus.
8. The second biggest error: burying the lead under a pile of unimportant words. Give readers the point first of all, and then elaborate.
9. The third biggest error: poorly optimized or non-existent Meta content. Your site will seriously confuse Google and readers without proper optimization.
10. The fourth biggest error: Too much content. If you can say it in 1000 words, you can say it more effectively in 500.
11. The fifth biggest error: Lame or non-existent calls to action. If you don’t tell readers what to do next, they won’t do anything.
12. Corporate sites tend to have weak calls to action because they don’t take the time and apply the creativity to develop them in the first place.

SEO For Bloggers

Title Tags are the Nuclear Warheads of Content Marketing.

While Title Tags contain only a very small mass – roughly 65 characters – they pack an unbelievable punch. Because of title tags’ enormous impact on SEO, social sharing and conversion, content marketers should know how they work, and how to put them to work.

1. Title tags are the most important piece of Meta information on a Web page in terms of SEO.
2. Title tags are also crucial for optimizing user experience and facilitating social shares.
3. Title tags may or may not include a branding message.
4. Title tags must always include the primary keyword phrases for the Web page it represents.
5. Title tags can be composed for conversion: snappy titles inspire social sharing. The decision whether to stress SEO or conversion depends in large part on the nature of the content.
6. Skilful use of H1 title tags boosts conversion without compromising the SEO integrity of title tags.
7. Title tags should be updated if on-page content changes relevant keywords.
8. The biggest factor in selecting an SEO partner: understanding their methodology. If the agency doesn’t have a formal one, or if the methodology is outdated, results inevitably will be poor.
9. The second biggest factor: understanding the SEO’s track record. Actions speak louder than words!
10. The third biggest factor: making sure there is a good fit. Every SEO has a sweet spot; if you’re not in it, results will lag.
11. The fourth biggest factor: the longevity and stability of the SEO. You don’t want to start from scratch after investing years developing a program with a partner who suddenly disappears.
12. The fifth biggest factor: great relationships. You don’t want to start over after investing years on a program with a partner who suddenly disappears.

Some web content writers, as well as web designers view on-page SEO as a necessary evil to an effective content strategy on the web. However, when properly executed, SEO can actually enhance a site visitor’s experience, rather than detract from it.

Writing For Web

Web writers are a special kind of breed. Their jobs include writing AdWord ads, corporate bios, blog post titles, calls to action, display ads, Facebook fan page posts, landing pages, Meta descriptions, taglines, testimonials and tweets.

1. Writing AdWords ads requires more precision than perhaps any other form of Web writing.
2. Corporate bios require genuine creativity to be readable and relevant.
3. The art of writing brochures should not be lost, because it’s still a highly valuable business skill.
4. Landing page composition is too important to be a sideline job: great landing page writers are made, not born.
5. Several important (and not always understood techniques) go into writing a truly persuasive sales proposal.
6. Taglines are the most all-around demanding form of business writing there is. There’s a reason why brilliant taglines cost a fortune.
7. Twitter may seem like a frivolous medium, but great writing skill is required for effective business tweets.
8. “Different from” is universally accepted, but “different than” is not.
9. Avoid the expression “if and when.” Not even experts understand its meaning.

Social Sharing And Blogging

Twitter is a feast-or-famine marketing tool. It can help you achieve important business goals, or it can be a monumental waste of time.

Social Sharing is the latest ‘add on’ in blogging and Twitter has become one of the most important social sharing platforms. Here are some practical tips how to make Twitter perform better for you.

1. On Twitter, define your purpose clearly before launching your page.
2. Make sure you have adequate resources to support your Twitter program. Many firms grossly underestimate the time and effort needed.
3. Select the right Twitter interface platform to support your program. They all have strengths and weaknesses.
4. Vet your Twitter followers and clean them up to avoid being buried under a mountain of spammers.
5. Learn the basic types of tweets and best practices for writing them before you start tweeting.
6. Don’t tweet on one or two themes all day long: variety helps attract followers.
7. Although you have 140 characters to work with, tweets at 100 characters or less can be very effective and draw retweets.
8. Avoid jargon and exotic abbreviations in tweets – the longer it takes someone to get your drift, the less likely they’ll be to pay attention to you.
9. Schedule certain types of tweets in advance to save time and make sure you’re getting the full message out.
10. Always respond to people who retweet your material and ask you questions.
11. Always be ready to lend a hand to fellow tweeps – giving to get works well on Twitter.

I hope these 50 tips will help you in your blogging endeavours. If you have any blogging tips of your own please share with us.

Brad Shorr works for Straight North, a Web development, Chicago-based agency concentrating in B2B, with clients in specialized niches such as credit card processing for gas stations and truck tracking systems. via socialmediarevolver.com

 

Searching For New Solutions to Attract and Retain More Customers? Looking for a Strategic and Innovation Advisor to work on retainer? A riveting speaker? 

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group; a leading Strategic Management and Innovation Consulting Firm in Denver, Colorado. He is an author, speaker, and a strategic innovation and hypercompetition expert to profit, non-profit organizations and municipalities. He advises clients with an objective view of their competitive capabilities and defines a clear course of action to maximize their innovation return on investment to achieve profitable growth. Build a capability for ongoing competitive innovation across your company. Call 719-649-4118 or complete our form: contact us for more information on hiring Jim to advise or speak for your next event.

 

Ways To Monitor Your Website to Keep Customers

A staggering portion of the country’s consumer activity now happens in cyberspace. Last year, individuals spent nearly $227.6 billion shopping online. Though these customers have a multitude of e-retailers to choose from, they tend to stay loyal to businesses that offer consistently good online experiences.
That makes it more important than ever to measure the experience visitors have on your website. There are various approaches, both software- and appliance-based, that are generally known as real user monitoring (RUM) or end-user experience monitoring. Using such a system can mean the difference between loyal customers and lost sales. Here are a few more reasons to consider incorporating one into your service strategy:

1. A real user monitoring system is basically a smart stopwatch for e-business. It reports the time it takes to perform the requested action, as in transferring money from one bank account to another. This capability is a natural add-on to a technology investment such as application performance management. Look for IT vendors who package RUM with their systems at no additional cost, or check out free RUM software online.

2. Make sure all applications on your website function flawlessly all of the time. The failure of an online payment service, for example, can do hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of damage within hours. The long-term implications are even more serious. If customers cannot complete a transaction on their first visit to a website, they are unlikely to return when so many other alternatives exist.

3. Fix problems before customers complain. When RUM reports show slow load times or other deadlocks, use the data to pinpoint and repair the problem immediately, before it affects users. A RUM solution should deliver traffic streams from the client side, server side, and the network, so you can see whether a problem resides in the data center, the network, or the browser. via businessweek.com

Want to increase the sustainability of your nnovation initiatives or need a speaker? Contact us.

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A leading consulting firm specialized solely in enabling organizations of all sizes in all industries develop top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. 

Get Out of the Office to Get Creative

Are you planning a vacation, weekend getaway, or staycation this summer? As you think about what you might want to do or try, consider adding a visit to a business that you have always wanted to learn more about. Many businesses offer tours, but you might want to go a step further and see if you can create your own personal excursion that includes a conversation with the founders and a chance to learn about how they do things (nothing proprietary, of course). Call ahead and make arrangements, or consider contacting your local college or university to see if there are existing trips to destinations that you can join. I took a group of students and alumni to Italy, and one of our stops was a tile factory that inspired its staff by devoting space to design resources for many distinct products and services beyond tile. We left the factory with many ideas to bring into our own businesses—and not one of us is in the tile manufacturing industry.

Your destination need not be exotic, or even involve a passport. Check out local businesses—and invite them back to your business in return. This idea exchange is a great opportunity to think beyond the parameters of your own business, and it’s likely to lead to a new set of "what if?" questions and possibilities for the company.

Lisa Gundry
Professor of Management
Director, Center for Creativity & Innovation
DePaul University
Chicago

via businessweek.com

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Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A leading consulting firm specialized solely in enabling organizations of all sizes in all industries develop top line growth through strategic innovation. Want to increase your innovation initiatives or need a speaker? Contact us. 719-648-411 or email. 

Simon Mainwaring: The “doing” vs. “being” of branding

Image credit: Gemssty.com

AdAge recently did a great article on micro-sponsorship highlighting leading brands like Quaker Oats and Pepsi that are reaching out to communities for their stories and ideas around positive social change. To me this begs the question, are these marketing or research campaigns?

In my mind they’re a little of both and a smart thing to do. Not only are these brands participating in social conversation but they’re learning how to be effective.

The social good space will soon become crowded just as the green space has. The challenge for brands will then be how to define yourself in a way that is most meaningful to their consumers.

Too often brands are caught up in their doing – the doing of getting their latest product to market, of meeting their next quarterly profit projection, of jumping on the latest mobile technology or app.

What is more critical and determinative is the “being” of a brand.

If a brand understands who it is it’ll be able to articulate and demonstrate its core values clearly to consumers. And when it does that, every social change initiative will reinforce their authentic brand narrative rather than come off as a cynical effort to polish an unrelated brand identity.

So before a brand rushes off to do something, it would be wise to stop and be something. That way it’ll be more clearly defined, more meaningful to consumers and a standout in a crowded space.   

via simonmainwaring.com

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Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A leading consulting firm specialized solely in enabling organizations of all sizes in all industries develop top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. Call for an appointmentto hire Jim to speak or advise your organization at 719-649-4118 or email. 

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Who Cares Wins: Why caring is now the key to your brand’s success

Thanks and welcome to our blog. I look forward to sharing ideas with you. Paula 

 

No book could be more important or timely than Who Cares Wins by David Jones of Havas.  There is a growing awareness that the business revolution brought about by social media is bringing with it an equally transformation in the way brands deal with their customers. And while the currency that marketers trade is still emotion, the relationship dynamics between brands and their customers has dramatically changed.

Who Cares Wins explains in detail the drivers and best practices of this new dynamic. Jones does a masterful job of explaining in very clear terms, why business success in the future will be driven by the authenticity, transparency, and accountability of brands and their ability to react quickly and consistently with these three qualities. In fact, he makes a compelling case for why the successful brands of the future will be those that are most meaningful in the lives of their media-savvy and socially connected customers.

On the flipside, Jones explains why those brands that ignore the impact of social media and these new customer expectations do so at their peril.  In only the last few months we’ve seen the consumer push-back against Netflix and Qwikster, against the Bank of America Debit Card Fee, on Bank Transfer Day, against the Verizon Online 2$ payment charge, and most recently the backdown of Congress over SOPA in the face of online activism.

So what Jones is talking about in this book is not conjuncture, wishful thinking, or projection, but rather a business reality that is already here. As such, he rightly positions social responsibility as an invaluable opportunity for brands to build their bottom lines while also becoming a force for good in the world. In order for this shift to gain traction and pace, large brands and entrepreneurs need case studies and proof points to justify their shift in priorities and practices. Who Cares Wins provides this in spades, and rightly positions this shift in the marketplace as one of great opportunity, rather than cause for concern. No doubt this is an educated risk that every business leader must take, and that spirit is captured in the title “Who Cares (rather than ‘Dares’) Wins.” But the risk of not engaging with this shift in business practices is far greater. Who Cares Wins is your guidebook on how to negotiate the social business marketplace in a way that builds your business and a better world for all.

To order your copy of Who Cares Wins click here, and you can follow David Jones on Twitter at @davidjoneshavas.

via simonmainwaring.com

We are a leading innovation and hypercompetition consultancy with a passion for profit. Want to increase the sustainability of your growth initiatives or need a speaker? Contact us.

 

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A leading consulting firm specialized solely in enabling organizations of all sizes in all industries develop top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. He is a former U.S. Navy Seabee and grandfather of five. For availability email or call us at 719-649-4118. Subscribe to our innovation and hypercompetition newsletter.    

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Gallup: The Value of Personal Branding - Achieving Success In Any Economy

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In the first article in this series, "It's Time to Brand Yourself," Blaise James explained his theory of self-branding. Your personal brand isn't a couple of adjectives, and it shouldn't be a résumé either. It should demonstrate your authentic talents and strengths. Your self-brand is integral to your career and your life -- and it influences your long-term career strategy and development.

Your self-brand is integral to your career and your life -- and it influences your long-term career strategy and development.

According to James, Gallup global brand strategist and former strategic planning director at Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, your personal brand helps you map out the best of who you are and apply it to the best of what your company is. To do that, James recommends writing a statement of purpose, determining your point of view, and ascertaining your principles -- not only because they act as guides to conduct your strategies, but also because they're hard for anyone else to replicate. Your self-brand can help you become invaluable to your company or to a hiring manager. 

In this interview, the second of a two-part series, James describes how people can reconcile their brands with that of their companies. He talks about how to define a differentiated brand and how to present it. He explains the difference between tactics and strategies in branding -- and why hiring managers are bored by most résumés. And in the end, he shows why s

Self-branded people are so valuable to companies. Read on to learn why constructing your personal brand may be the best thing you can do for your workplace and for yourself.

GMJ: You said that the first step in the process of building your personal brand is thinking of yourself as an embedded entrepreneur. The second step is ascertaining your talents and those of your boss. What is step three?
Blaise James: Step three is finding the positive aspects of the environment that you and your consumer share so you can make your brand undeniably appealing to your consumer. This is how some of the most powerful brands today achieved success. 

For instance, Dove realized that its consumers lived in a world in which individual beauty should be celebrated over the unrealistic, manufactured beauty promoted by the beauty industry. Dove used its "Campaign for Real Beauty" to make this positive challenge. Kaplan University, a top brand in the explosive online education category, realized that its potential American consumer lives in a country in which 76 million Baby Boomers will retire over the next two decades and only 46 million American workers will be there to take their place. Kaplan saw this as a positive for their business: to lead the effort to train the nontraditional American student -- which traditional education has essentially failed -- to fill this 30-million-person gap. So they are leading the charge to "End Wasted Talent." This positive brand appeal connects the Kaplan brand name to a real mission in the consumer's world. In both cases, a larger environmental factor -- the way consumers define beauty or a large demographic trend -- added special positive significance to their brands.

Your brand needs to do the same. For your own brand, if your consumer is your boss, your environment could be a positive aspect of your company: for example, a can-do attitude, a unique expertise in your industry, or a relentless pursuit of creativity. If your consumer is the hiring managers within a particular industry, that environment might be what's happening in the industry or business world today.

Say that one of your talents is analytical ability. One key factor in your environment is that companies are trying to get smarter about how to be productive while saving money. So your analytical talents will definitely be a plus, and they should be a featured part of your brand. The point of this step is to think about the ways your talents intersect with the environment that you and your consumer share.

The Four Steps to Building Your Personal Brand Step 1: Think of yourself as an "embedded entrepreneur." Embedded entrepreneurs have a different mindset; they come up with new solutions to company problems and new ideas to fuel future growth. They understand what makes them unique and use that insight to navigate a profitable and fulfilling path within their company and over the course of their career. Step 2: Develop an understanding of your talents and strengths -- and those of your current or potential boss. Find what you're naturally good at so you can develop your strengths regardless of what field or position you're in. Then develop an understanding of your "consumer's" talents and strengths -- those of your current boss or the hiring managers within your industry, for example. Step 3: Determine the positive aspects of the environment you and your consumer share. For example, an organization's environment could be a can-do attitude, a specific expertise, or a relentless pursuit of creativity. Understanding your talents, your consumer's talents, and your shared environment is crucial to building your brand, because your talents must mesh with and make sense within your environment if you are to be effective. Step 4: Articulate your Purpose, Point of View, and Principles (the "Three Ps"). They are guides to how you will deliver your brand using the appropriate tactics.

GMJ: So part of your brand offering is your purpose?

James: When I create brand strategies, I go beyond purpose. You need to unpack purpose and help people understand how they carry out their purpose. First, you find the intersection point between you, your consumer, and the environment you share. I call this finding the "you, them, and us." Then you take that information and create statements of purpose, point of view, and principles.

The point of view tells us the why, the purpose tells us the what, and the principles are thehow. They're how you achieve your purpose.

Your statement of purpose comes first, and it will be a guide to how you'll conduct yourself and a filter for the decisions that you'll make as you deliver your brand. So, for example, the statement of purpose for an HR manager, Jane, might read "I'm in the business of providing senior managers with the human capital they need to feel confident in leading our company to growth." A CEO might say, "I'm in the business of inspiring global organizations with the leadership, management, and futurism they need to create value for the world's shareholders." And the statement for John, a marketing director for a nonprofit hospital, might read "I'm in the business of providing visionary executive directors with the strategic new audience development expertise they need to achieve their healthcare mission."

A statement of purpose is good, but it's possible someone could replicate it. Although purpose is important, it's only one step in creating differentiation. The second step is to determine your point of view -- your beliefs and unique take on the world. You do this by completing this sentence: "I believe the world would be a better place if . . ."

This exercise is valuable to establishing your personal brand because it's hard to replicate beliefs. They also give you a real motivation for doing what you do. Most people and companies never answer this question for themselves, let alone for their consumers.

The Three Ps of Your Personal Brand Strategy When crafting your brand strategy, a statement of purpose is important. But it's also crucial to "unpack purpose" and help the consumers of your personal brand understand how you carry out your purpose. Statement of Purpose: This statement is your guide to how you conduct yourself, and your talents can provide key clues. To build your statement of purpose, complete this sentence: "I'm in the business of . . ." Point of View: This statement affirms your beliefs and your unique take on the world. State your point of view by completing this sentence: "I believe the world would be a better place if . . ." Principles: Principle statements articulate how you act on your purpose. Either you make good on them, or you compromise your purpose. These statements begin with phrases like: "I always . . . " or "I only . . ." or "I never . . ."

GMJ: What should your statement of beliefs include?

James: Your statement of beliefs should articulate what you will do that's positive in the world.

Let's go back to the example of our nonprofit marketing manager John and look at his point of view. John believes that even the best ideas need the genius of execution and follow through to make a difference in the world. Remember, his purpose statement is "I'm in the business of providing visionary executive directors with the strategic new audience development expertise they need to achieve their healthcare mission." So his point of view now answers why he's trying to achieve this purpose.

The answer why really helps us differentiate ourselves. For corporations, this whystatement can be incredibly motivating to employees who deliver the brand.

GMJ: What else can help you differentiate yourself when crafting your purpose statement?

This is another reason why knowing your talents is so important. Let's say that John has taken Gallup's Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment to help him identify his talents. John's top talent themes include Analytical and Activator, which in this context provide insights to how John thinks and how he influences others. John knows the type of executive director that he wants to attract: He wants to work with people who consistently look toward the future -- this is a talent often found in the StrengthsFinder Futuristic theme. Many people in nonprofit organizations embody the theme of Adaptability; they have to dance on a dime to accomplish their mission with limited budgets.

Now we've reached our brand intersection: where Analytical and Activator meet Futuristic and Adaptability. So John's brand focus is as a realizer of visions. He can help executive directors activate their ideas. And because this statement is genuine to John, it's valuable and hard to duplicate.

The point of view tells us the why, the purpose tells us the what, and the principles are thehow. They're how you achieve your purpose.

GMJ: Explain principles. Do you mean values or ethics?

James: Think of principles as either/or statements. Either you make good on them or you've compromised your purpose. Statements of principles begin with "always," "only," or "never," and they give a structure to and are a litmus test of your personal brand.

Let's use John as an example again. His statements of principle would be something like this: "I will only work for executive directors who have real vision." "I will never send a résumé to a nonprofit organization with a mission that I don't believe has lasting, significant relevance." And "I will always ensure that I have a yearly strategy in place to guide marketing initiatives." These principles will help him achieve his purpose. Just like any good brand strategy, they act like a filter that guides his decisions.

You can't stand for everything or you stand for nothing. You have to focus.

By the way, CEOs are often shocked when you tell them their corporate brand can't be everything to everyone. It's the same for your personal brand: You can't stand for everything or you stand for nothing. You have to focus.

GMJ: Of what value are social networking sites to self-branding?

James: Don't confuse strategy with tactics. This is just a word of warning: Many personal brand coaches lead with "Build your brand on Facebook" or "Do self-branding on Twitter."

If you hear that, proceed with caution. These folks are confusing strategy with tactics. Your résumé, your interview, your networking groups, your Facebook page, your tweets, your LinkedIn connections -- all that stuff is tactics. They're the ways in which you reveal your brand. Your purpose, your point of view, and the principles that guide you, those must come first.

GMJ: So how do you use these sites in a way that is consistent with your strategy, your brand?

James: When you have a solid personal brand strategy, who you're following on Twitter makes sense. The tweets you send have common themes because they come from your sense of purpose, your point of view, and your principles.

Depending on what your principles are, you may decide never to shotgun a résumé to monster.com. You may not subject yourself to the decision process of TheLadders.com. Instead, you may send a creatively packaged snail-mail letter to the senior vice president of human resources, or you may join the arts committee that the CEO and her husband chair. Those are all tactics that send a message about your personal brand.

But are they the right tactics? You will only know after you've put your strategy in place. Once you've done that, your résumé stands out because you're focused like a laser beam on what you want and how you talk about it. Hiring managers get a real sense of your difference and are clear about why you want to work at their firm.

So much job advice these days is about just getting a job. Just get it -- and so what if you take a step down?

GMJ: But that's a reality for many people.

James: It absolutely is, and it's bad for companies. This is exactly the cross-purpose that hiring managers are facing. They don't want to spend the money to bring in workers who are just looking for any job. Instead, they're going out of their way, in my estimation, to sniff out people who are just trying to get a job for the sake of working.

GMJ: What gives people away when they're doing that?

James: Résumés, for one. There's a whole way of gaming résumés nowadays, and it's not at all strategic. If you're cramming your résumé with buzzwords that you think are right for the job but have nothing to do with who you are or what you've done, how have you differentiated yourself from everyone else applying for that position?

What pops out at HR VPs are interesting facts that authentically come from who you are and that tell them how you will realize the mission of the job and the purpose of the company. That makes them want to call you in, because you gave them a sense of your unique value.

Self-branded employees are self-directed and more innovative. They're problem solvers, and they're a lot more engaged.

This is key: Don't start on tactics until you have your brand strategy. Then, when you get into the tactics, don't just do what's hot. Bring a sense of who you are to how you present your skills and experience. Think about how to differentiate yourself and your brand over the long term.

Remember: You're now an embedded entrepreneur. I hope that opens up a different way of thinking for people. The way the world is going, markets are so cluttered and competition is so acute -- and companies can basically replicate a product or service overnight. Their brand is crucial to differentiating their company, product, or service from all the others. The same is true of people.

GMJ: How does thinking of yourself as an embedded entrepreneur change how you approach your work?

James: Having a personal brand also helps you realize that meeting your goals matters as much as meeting the company's. When you're pursuing your goals -- and they're aligned with your company's goals -- you're much more engaged to act on the company's and the customer's behalf.

It also gives workers a sense of control. Right now, 7.2 million people are unemployed, which is a daunting number. Most workers still have jobs, but many of them are feeling uncertain and fearful.

GMJ: How are embedded entrepreneurs valuable to companies?

James: Embedded entrepreneurs point their brand toward the problems of the business. If you don't know what your talents are and you don't know what your brand is, it will take you a lot longer to get up to speed, and you'll be less productive. Anything that helps people express their talents leads to increased engagement, which benefits the company. Ultimately, people feel more engaged in their jobs when they're coming up with ideas, thinking creatively, and pursuing an agenda -- being proactive rather than reactive.

Gallup knows that people who work from their talents are more likely to be engaged, engaged employees are more likely to engage customers, and engaged customers are much more profitable to your business. So if you're a CEO, you want your workers to know their talents and use them to construct their identities in the company. That takes some work, some really profound thought, but it's worth it -- self-branded employees are self-directed and more innovative. They're problem solvers, and they're a lot more engaged.

GMJ: What can managers do to help people build their self-brands?

James: Ultimately, people have to do this on their own. It's a personal process that factors in someone's whole life. It's not top-down -- it works from the bottom up. But managers can encourage employees to develop their brands, and they can focus on their own brands and chart their own way through their companies. Your personal brand is more than just words -- it's actions. Live out your principles. Don't pay them lip service. That's something managers can do: lead by example.

-- Interviewed by Jennifer Robison

via gmj.gallup.com

Want to increase the sustainability of your growth initiatives or need a speaker? Contact us.

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A leading consulting firm specialized solely in enabling organizations of all sizes in all industries develop top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. He is a former U.S. Navy Seabee and grandfather of five. For availability email or call us at 719-649-4118. Subscribe to our innovation and hypercompetition newsletter.   

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Innovation: Culture's Big Business Moment | Fast Company

Company culture is having a moment. And why not? The culture of an organization can be the key to its sustained success (see: shiny, happy Zappos employees ringing up more than $1 billion in sales) or degradation at the hands of disgruntled employees (see Greg Smith's much-shared op-ed in The New York Times describing the erosion of Goldman Sach's corporate to something “toxic and destructive”).

More than a business buzzword, culture is a cornerstone, according to Shawn Parr. But that hasn't stopped it from being misunderstood and discounted as the woo-woo component of a company that doesn't have much of an impact on its balance sheet. However, Parr argues, engaged employees in a performance-oriented culture give businesses a better chance at financial growth and innovation. Culture is a place where strategy is born.

A heated debate took place among Fast Company expert bloggers and our community of readers on whether “culture eats strategy for lunch.” The original quote "wasn’t meant to take sides so much as it was to highlight that the amount of time business executives pay to each is way out of proportion based on the contribution of each to an organization's success," wrote Brent Daily at Roundpegg.com. 

Business leaders at SXSW last week clamored to take a stab at articulating which is more important. Their answers, while different, suggested that organizational culture was a critical component in enabling the successful execution of strategy.

Here's Edward Saatchi, cofounder of NationalField, on how their culture of accountability made it possible to carry out the startup's strategy to connect on-the-ground operatives during Obama's 2008 campaign.

Ultimately, writes Bob Frisch, managing partner of The Strategic Offsites Group, you don't have to choose. “It's like asking whether you would rather back a great poker player with weak cards or an average player with great cards. You’re more likely to win when you have both: a great player and great cards. The same goes for culture and strategy. You don’t have to choose. Culture doesn’t eat strategy, and the company that lets culture do so is likely to starve.”

With that in mind, we've rounded up the experts to weigh in on how to build a great culture, how to nurture it, how to use it to foster innovation, and how to change it when things aren't working.

Bake It In

For Boy CEO Mark Zuckerberg, hacking goes way beyond the allegations that he coded his way into the Harvard Crimson and ConnectU--it's an integral part of him and the company he started in his dorm room. For Zuck, the hacker culture is about using shared effort and knowledge to make something bigger, better, and faster than an individual can do alone. His "hackathons" at Facebook are legendary and help foster innovation in all manner of projects from building better data centers to crowdsourcing urban planning for its surrounding neighborhood. At Facebook's new headquarters, the Hacker culture reigns supreme--the writing is literally on the wall.

Encourage Buy-in

Dennis Crowley, cofounder and CEO of Foursquare, says that when the staff grew from two to 10 people, he started by hiring friends he knew could work together. That fostered an initial spirit of teamwork and open sharing that scaled along with Foursquare's growth.

Pay Nothing

Founder of ClearGears Arshad Chowdhury is convinced that culture isn't costly. It can even save money. Start by getting rid of expensive firewalls that block Facebook and YouTube. Access to social media tools can help employees research and network faster. Also, Chowdhury says, it’s not true that the longer you work, the more work you will get done. According to a 2010 study, flexible work hours can lead to increased retention and productivity. If you must have staff on site, let 'em sleep. A NASA study indicates that a nap of just 26 minutes can boost productivity by 34%.

Throw Yourself Off a Cliff

To encourage innovation, Reid Hoffman, cofounder of LinkedIn, believes you need to hire creative truth seekers who can assemble a plane on the way down from that cliff leap.

Empower and Support

It's not just enough to hire great people, you have to empower them--especially junior staff.

Recognize Achievement

A culture is only as good as the environment that supports it. People work for more than just a paycheck, they want their achievements to be recognized by the leaders and peers. Erin Newkirk, founder of RedStamp, says a little thank-you can go a long way. And it doesn't have to cost a thing.

Eliminate Poison at the Source 

If someone or something isn't working, it's time for a change. To shift culture in a better direction, Jim Fowler, CEO of Jigsaw, says start with eliminating those who are poisoning the well.

[Image: Flickr user Simon Li] via fastcompany.com

 

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A global management consulting firms specialized solely in helping organizations of all sizes in all industries catalyzing top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. He is a former U.S. Navy Seabee and grandfather of five. Jim is board president of a charter school located in Colorado Springs whose sole purpose is to prepare otherwise disadvantaged students more competitively for college. To arrange for Jim to speak at your next event or devise an effective hypercompetition strategy email or call us at 719-649-4118 for availability. Subscribe to our innovation and hypercompetition newsletter.    

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In Turbulent Times Women May Prove to Be Better Leaders Than Men

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During turbulent times, organizations spend a great deal of effort on rescue and recovery work. This may include fiscal fitness programs to rein in costs, employee performance is scrutinized to select candidates for terminations, suppliers are squeezed to reduce prices and employee benefits are slashed. However, organizations rarely look at the gender, style and effectiveness of management during these times. Evidence suggests that women may be better than their male counterparts in improving employee morale, motivation and performance – and these are crucial factors that can enhance chances of organizations survival in turbulent times. 


Organizations can better deal with turbulent times if leadership shows that it cares and good information is provided without falsely raising hopes. So, too, it helps if clear lines of communication are established and employees are engaged in the recovery plan. Employees know their business intimately, especially those in the front line, and they can generate great ideas to win back customers, reduce costs, improve products or streamline processes. So leaders should adopt a management style that is engaging, inclusive and collaborative, and where individuals and groups can make decisions. This participative or ‘laissez faire’ style works well in an era that makes wide use of the internet, where many people can contribute, even if they are located on the other side of the world. 


Who is best at a participative management style? Contemporary research indicates that women may be more suited to this style than men. Female managers think and operate differently. In an interview with CNN Money, Catherine Kaputa, author of The Female Brand: Using the Female Mindset to Succeed in Business, said, “In general, women are most comfortable with a management style that is more collaborative and less concerned with rigid hierarchy and top-down directives. As it happens, that more inclusive, collegial style is what gets results in global companies today.”

According to Dr Bernard Bass who developed the theory of transformational leadership, women are more suited to leadership in the current century. Bass ran a workshop with Bell Labs in the US with 24 participants – twelve men and twelve women. He picked out the participants with the four highest charismatic leadership scores and it turned out all four were women. He later repeated this in New Zealand, and also gathered data from a thousand or so cases in related research. His conclusion was that women were more inspirational. They were also more transformational. 


Evidence that points to women’s edge over men in financial dealings is cited by David Weidner, columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He writes, “A new study by Barclays Wealth and Ledbury Research found that women were more likely to make money in the market, mostly because they didn’t take as many risks. They bought and held. Women trade this way because they aren’t as confident – or perhaps as overconfident – as men, the study found.” And this is precisely what is needed in chaotic market conditions that are causing immense problems for people and organizations.

So what makes women better leaders than men? It may partly be simple biology – women have higher levels of the oxytocin hormone than men. Research carried out by Paul Zak (Claremont Graduate University, California), Angela Stanton (Chapman University, Orange, California) and Sheila Ahmadi (University of California, Los Angeles) found that oxytocin is the ‘bonding chemical’. Higher levels of oxytocin lead the individual to greater empathy with others and to a less aggressive stance. Oxytocin stimulates a nurturing characteristic that responds to the emotional needs of others. Warmth and sensitivity are also by-products of high levels of the hormone. Even when the level of oxytocin is similar in women and men, the far higher levels of estrogen found in women act as an accelerator for the effectiveness of oxytocin. This may explain why women develop stronger affections for their children and what makes them good mothers.

A more convincing view is that concepts, rather than hormones, are key controller of behavior. Hormones may create desires, tendencies or inclinations, but its concepts that really control and direct action. This can be clearly seen in reality. Consider Muslims who fast in the Middle East during peak of summer. The body craves for water and food in the extreme heat, yet devout Muslims override these bodily desires and abstain from drinking or eating from sunrise to sunset – for a whole month. Women’s distinctive behavior may be a result of ideas or concepts derived from cultural expectations, religious convictions, and physical differences between men and women.

During turbulent times, a management style that is more characteristic of women leaders really produces positive results. Collaboration becomes vital if the organization is to capture all ideas and opinions to ensure that the best possible course is taken. Women consult more with their peers and teams than men. Showing empathy when people are distraught will provide stability in the workplace. Women are better at expressing empathy than men. Similarly, responding to people’s emotional needs will ensure that they continue to perform under pressure – and women are much better at using emotions in a positive way. Women also tend to reduce or avoid hierarchical layers and to short-circuit communication channels, and this leads to improved trust and better communication. Being less aggressive will ensure that risk is reduced. Women take fewer risks than men so the organization’s chances of survival are higher. 


Not everyone agrees that women make better leaders. Gary N. Powell, professor of management in the School of Business at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, carried out research with D. Anthony Butterfield over three decades. It showed that good managers exhibit more traits associated with men, such as autonomy and independence, than traits associated with women, such as warmth and sensitivity to the needs of others.

Evidence may suggest that women tend to lead better than men, but not all women are better leaders. Andrea Jung, who became CEO of Avon Products and Carly Fiorina, who was appointed CEO of HP, both in 1999, are examples of women who did not perform well, were perceived to be arrogant, did not consult much and hence were eventually pushed out. 


There is also a strong view that women are not decisive enough. This view is backed by a nationwide survey carried out by Pew Research Center Social and Demographic Trends in 2008, where women scored lower than men in the ‘Decisive’ leadership trait category.

Women face another hurdle. Although it differs from country to country, prejudice against women leaders is still deeply rooted. According to Catalyst, a Canadian non-profit organization expanding opportunities for women and business, women currently hold only 5.6 percent of Financial Post 500 CEO/Head roles. The US fares even worse. Just twelve Fortune 500 companies were run by women in 2011, down from 15 in 2010. However, according to the 2011 Grant Thornton International Business Report, the statistics are slightly better in Asian economies. Thailand leads the way with 30 per cent of companies headed by women, followed by mainland China at 19 per cent, Taiwan at 18 per cent and Vietnam at 16 per cent.

Despite the male dominated leadership space, organizations are beginning to see the value in appointing women to lead, especially since the dot-com bust in 1999–2000. For example, there have been notable appointments in the US corporates – Anne Mulcahy took on the CEO role at Xerox Corporation in 2001 and Indra Nooyi was appointed to PepsiCo in 2007. More recently, Margaret Whitman became CEO of HP in 2011 and Virginia Rometty succeeded Sam Palmisano as CEO of IBM in January 2012. It is also interesting to note that in the midst of economic turbulence the world over, Christine Lagarde has been given the task of leading the IMF.


Organizations stand a better chance of getting through turbulent times if they give women a fair chance at the helm of leadership. Women may not have broken through the ‘glass ceiling’ yet, but there is no doubt that future corporate leadership will have much higher level of the female gender, at least in the capitalist-democratic nations. via CEO Magazine

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. We are one of the very few consulting firms specialized solely in helping organizations of all sizes in all industries catalyzing top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Email or call us at 719-649-4118 to speak at your event or devise an effective competitive advantage and innovation strategy for your organization.  Subscribe to our innovation and hypercompetition newsletter.

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