The Impact Of Social Media
By Cheval John
Many thought that social media was just a fad that would go away.
They did not believe that it would have a tremendous impact on the way we live.
There were different social media sites like MySpace, Friendster, etc.
All of a sudden, Facebook came into play and became a major player in the world of social media.
A couple of years later, Twitter inserted themselves into the social media space and have grown to play an important role in the way we communicate.
They have been other major sites like Pinterest and Instagram that has made the world more visual.
Now it is impossible to keep up because there is a new social media site popping up almost every day.
There is no doubt about the impact of social media.
That is why it has become an official day on June 30th.
Mashable started this tradition five years ago with it first conference in 2010.
Five years later, the event has grown to almost every city around the world with their very “own” conference.
The city of Houston has joined in on the party with their inaugural conference with dynamic speakers who have been recognized for their expertise in social media.
This event has been recognized by high ranking officials in the different cities of the world and in some states as well.
Social media has given many people, businesses and organization the opportunity to showcase their expertise and build their own brand.
One person that has taken her brand and built her business through social media is Melany Berger.
Ms. Berger started her blog a couple of years ago and has grown the blog to the point of where she has won many awards including this year’s Shorty Awards in the blogging category.
Ms. Berger earned the nomination because of her loyal followers on Twitter.
Her combined social media following is over 80,000.
Melany has stayed true to herself and did not deviate from that true personality.
Also, she engages with her audience on a daily basis that has played a major role as well in growing her following.
It has allowed her to work with some of the major brands like American Express.
That is the exact reason why businesses should be working with her because they don’t know how to interact with their customers.
They feel that social media is another mechanism to broadcast their message without listening to their customers.
The truth is if they want to succeed in this digital age, they must engage with their audience and not just sell.
And if they are smart, they should attend conferences that deals with social media in addition to today’s conference.
They will be glad they did.
The Art of Collaboration
By Cheval John
Disclaimer: I am an Amazon Affiliate and I make a commission based on the recommendation of a book
Is it possible to work together without meeting each other in person?
In this day and age, the answer is yes.
Technology has made it easier for anyone to collaborate on projects from anywhere in the world.
They don’t have to fly to one location to work together like they did before the evolution of technology.
That is why most businesses are allowing their employees to work from home because they see the savings in not letting them working in one place.
It doesn’t hurt if they meet in person once or possibly twice a year to deepen the friendship with their colleagues.
Examples of companies or people who are using technology to their advantage to collaborate on projects without first meeting in person are Brian Fanzo and Rachel Miller, Basecamp and Erin Baebler/Lara Galloway.
1. Brian Fanzo and Rachel Miller
Brian Fanzo and Rachel Miller are considered one of the best people who knows how to interact with their community on social media.
Mr. Fanzo is the Chief Digital Strategist and Partner at Broadsuite Media Group while Ms. Miller is the Chief Social Listener for Pipeliner CRM.
They host a Twitter chat called, #sbizhour, previously known as #sshour.
#Sbizhour deals with how businesses can be better at interacting with their customers and building a community.
The chat has been around for a year and has gained a lot of attention in the world of Twitter because it trends on the social media platform most of the time.
What is really cool about the both of them is that they have never met in person yet.
“Rumor” is that they will finally meet in person this year.
2. Basecamp
Basecamp, formerly known as 37 Signals, is one of the most interesting software companies in the world.
They started out as a web design company when it was founded in 1999.
One of the ways they marketed themselves was by starting a blog called “Signal vs Noise” in 2000 and sharing their experience about running a business, their thoughts on the industry, etc.
You can argue that they started their blog at the right time because blogging was in it’s beta stages.
As documented in their book, “ReWork,” they could not find the right software to get their work done.
So they decided to create their own software called Basecamp.
Once they showed Basecamp to their clients, they told them that they needed this for their businesses.
In the world of entrepreneurship, you have to know when to pivot your company because of market changes.
If you stay with the old business model, then you will end up losing out and your company will suffer for it.
Jason Fried, one of the original founders, and David Heinemeier Hannson recognized the change and pivoted Basecamp to solely being a software company in 2004.
As of now, the company has 36 employees.
What sets them apart is that the majority of their employees are located in different parts of the world while the rest of them including the founders are based in Chicago.
They don’t have to worry about communicating with each other on projects because they use their own products.
That is one of the best ways to sell your product to customers because you are using it yourself.
And if you want to learn from them, get their book, ReWork.
I can guarantee that you will love it (I have read the book over 13 times).
3. Lara Galloway and Erin Baebler
Many are recognizing the importance of entrepreneurship.
It is more evident that women are seeing the importance of running their own business.
According to the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO), there are more than 9.1 million companies owned by women.
My guess is that 1/3 of them are owned by “mompreneurs,” a women who is an entrepreneur and a mother
They see that running a business is the best path to securing their own destiny.
Mompreneurs might have difficulty in being both a business owner and a mother at the same time because they don’t want to feel like they are neglecting their duties in being a parent and vice-versa.
Lara Galloway and Erin Baebler understands the challenges of being a mompreneur.
As a result from their experience, they co-authored the book, “Moms Mean Business,” which achieved Amazon Best-Seller status.
What is really unique is that the both of them did not meet in person while they co-authored the book.
Ms. Galloway explained how they got the book written on my podcast, “What’s The Word?”
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The only time they met in person was when they launched the book.
So if a person believe that they can’t collaborate on a project with someone they have not met in person, I hope they will follow the examples listed above.
Because the internet have made the world a borderless society.
And it is highly possible to build great friendships and collaborate without first meeting in person.
What Does Five Years Of Work Experience Means?
By Cheval John
Photo Courtesy of Stuart Miles
You have probably seen this in job descriptions when you are looking for work.
The description that the employer post says they are looking for a person who have five years or more of work experience.
And the most frustrating part of this is most of the descriptions are probably for entry-level positions.
You might be thinking, “What Does Five Or More Years of Work Experience Really Means?”
It is “understandable” that employers are very choosy on who they hire.
They are the ones who are spending the money and want to be careful on who the right person for the position will be.
They are also burdened with the coverage of their employees.
And in this day and age, they don’t want to go through months and months of training the new employee on how their systems work which comes with a cost.
So if they can find a person who meets their requirements, it will save them a whole lot of money.
Though it is good news in the short term, it is bad in the long term.
What they don’t realize is that they are hindering their progress of hiring the right person because they are looking for that so-called, “Rock Star.”
They feel that the so-called “Rock Star” will solve their problems and over deliver.
At the same time, they believe that they will not have to pay them the salary they deserve.
When companies have that type of thinking of looking for the “rock star,” they are missing the very people who are very talented in plain sight.
And when they miss the talent, it is actually costing them more money than if they had hired the employee.
They are also causing low moral in their company because they have put pressure on the current employees to deliver great work with less resources.
And then they wonder why they can’t find the right people to fill their company’s position.
And if you are the person who are trying to find your dream job and are hindered when you see the required “five years of experience,” here are a couple of suggestions:
1. Get a Part-Time Job. The reason is because it will allow you to have consistent cash flow while you are waiting to achieve your ideal workplace
2. Start A Side Business. If you trying to get work that fit your skills like writing, public relations, etc., then starting a company or even “freelancing” your service will give you a head start in gaining your dream work. You might eventually love your “freelancing” business to the point that you might forget about seeking employment.
3. Have a Strong Social Media Presence: Everybody is an influencer. If you can showcase how efficient you are on social media, then you have a great chance of wowing your potential employer.
And the chances of building trust with CEOs, Human Resource professionals, etc. on group chats on social media, will put you ahead of everyone else who are only putting out resumes and hoping for someone to see it among equally great resumes.
4. Start A Podcast: Podcasting is the lowest of competitions out there. You could possibly interview the owner of a company and ask them about how they decided to create their business and get your foot in the door. In addition to this article I wrote for Millennial CEO, here is another reason why you should podcast. Yesterday, Spotify, which has 70 million listeners, announced that they are adding video and podcasting to their music streaming service. That is a huge opportunity for podcasters to gain more listeners in addition to iTunes and Stitcher. If that does not convince you, then I don’t know what will.
When you make a concerted effort to create your own opportunities, you might end up attracting the right employer who will see your talent.
That in turn will allow you to show them what they were missing when they were searching for that “rock star” employee.
Hopefully, they will finally see that the “five years of work experience” in their job description is not really relevant anymore.
The Flexibility Of Being A Small Business
By Cheval John
Photo Courtesy of Dream Designs
Everyone is celebrating national small business week.
It is in honor of all of the small businesses which plays a huge part in the United States economy.
According to the U.S. Small Business Administration’s 2014 report, they were 28,443,856 small businesses currently in operation in the U.S.
The majority of the small businesses are non-employers (22,735,915).
Though these non-employer businesses would like to have employees, they probably enjoy being solopreneurs.
Another thing that you can factor in with these solopreneurs is the fact that their non-employer businesses could be side businesses because they are taking the small steps towards full-time entrepreneurship while they are at their current full time work.
One of the best things that small businesses have over the larger corporations is the flexibility to pivot when the market changes.
They do not have to worry too much about letting go of their workers if the economy is in a recession.
Though this is great news, you might still have the “I do not have enough money blues” to compete with the larger corporations.
That is not the mindset to have because you can still compete against the larger businesses even if you do not have the “large budget.”
Despite having “limited” resources, you have the ability to be very creative on how you market your product or services with the biggest game changer of all: SOCIAL MEDIA.
Social media is a place where anyone can interact with a person even if they are thousands of miles away.
With platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc., you can be very creative in how your share your message.
My suspicion is that you are like many of the small businesses who understand that must engage with your audience on a daily basis to earn their trust and eventually a new customer.
You also realize that gaining the trust of the customer is a long term goal and that it will take time to earn their loyalty.
If a corporation want to get their message out in the world, they buy advertisements, sponsor television events like college football, basketball, etc. to get in front of the large audience that are tuning in to watch the events.
That is why the smartest companies, intuition says the majority of small businesses, are participating in group chats on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn to build their audience.
They are also blogging to showcase their expertise.
Like Stephanie Shirley, owner of Bennis Public Relations Inc.
She shares about the ups-and-downs of running a business through her company’s blog
Mrs. Shirley was very creative in building a loyal following of nearly 1,000 fans because she has been very transparent with her readers.
Because of her transparency, she has taken her business to the next level.
Another way that small businesses can market their product or services is through a podcast.
You might be thinking “Why not just a blog?”
Though blogging is very, very important, the blogosphere is over populated.
According to statista.com, there were 173 million blogs in the world in October of 2011.
That number has really increased tremendously since that report came out.
It is also possible that they are more blogs out there that are not currently active at the moment.
So the number of blogs could possibly be close to 400 million.
However, they are about 300,000 podcasts.
And with the amount of people who uses smartphones which is over a billion, that is a huge opportunity for small business owners to reach a global audience.
And iTunes reported in 2013 that they had over 1 billion subscriptions of podcast from their website.
Another thing to consider about podcasting is that Apple created the Carplay system in 2014 that allows anyone to connect their iPhone to their car’s dashboard.
The Carplay system is set to be in 50% of cars hopefully by the end of this year.
So with less competition and huge access to potential listeners, small businesses can start a podcast and build a loyal audience in addition to having a blog.
They also do not have to worry about being their true selves when they are sharing their message out to the world unlike the corporations.
So if you are a small business and are looking to take your business to the next level, consider starting a podcast and also a blog because it will allow you to grow your audience the right way and you will not have to worry too much about using a marketing budget to share your message.
That is something that larger companies will probably not be able to do because they will have to get approved from a hierarchy of executives before they can share their message.
Small Businesses Are Really The Innovators
By Cheval John
I had made a promise about two months ago that I was going to have articles out twice a week.
I was going to put out an article as an continuation of a series of companies/people who are doing more with less resources.
Last week I broke that promise and missed putting out the article last Thursday and I want to say that I am sorry.
Though they is a valid reason for missing out on last week posting, which I can explain, I will take full responsibility for missing the deadline.
What I should have done was write the post the day before and let it rest for a while before putting out that Thursday.
I should have forseen the circustance of not being able to write the post on the very same day and getting it out to all of you to keep the schedule and my promise.
Now, I have learned my lesson on writing an article the night before publishing so that when something unplanned comes about, I will be ready to just hit publish on the same day.
Here is another example of people/organizations who are doing more with less:
Kelly Hungerford
Mrs. Hungerford is a small business consultant who co-host “bizheroes” every Tuesday at 1 p.m. central.
She was working with Paper.li for about four years before striking out on her own.
With the limited resources that they had, Kelly used her imagination and build the Paper.Li community into a loyal following.
One of those innovations was #bizheroes chat.
She started the chat last year and over that period, amassed a loyal following.
#Bizheroes has also trended on Twitter for the majority of the time they have been in existence.
That ingenuity of Mrs. Hungerford has made Paper.Li one of the most respected small businesses in the world.
By the way, she still co-host the #bizheroes chat with Paper.Li even though she is on her own because of the company treating her right.
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