Archives for June 2018

June 10, 2018

2 min read

With all the tweets, iMessages, streamed songs and Amazon prime orders, did you ever wonder just how much data is actually being generated every minute? To find out, cloud-based operating system Domo analyzed data usage over the past year, and shared the results in its sixth Data Never Sleeps report. It dives into online consumer behavior, examining the amount of data being generated every minute across popular apps and platforms including Google, Instagram, Amazon, Netflix, Spotify and more.

Related: How Data Science Can Help You Grow Your Business Faster

By the looks of the research, things are only getting bigger. In 2012, there were approximately 2.2 billion active internet users. In 2017, active internet users reached 3.8 billion people — nearly 48 percent of the world’s population.

When it comes to social media, data usage is unsurprisingly high. Since last year, Snapchat alone saw a 294 percent increase in the amount of images shared per minute. Nearly 2.1 million snaps are shared every 60 seconds. On average, there are 473,400 tweets posted every minute, 49,380 Instagrams photos and 79,740 Tumblr posts.

Related: Here’s How to Download and Delete Your Facebook Data

So who’s behind all this social media madness? Americans upped their internet usage by 18 percent since 2017, however it’s not all going to Snapchat and Twitter. Much of it is going to video-streaming services such as Netflix and YouTube. Since last year, Netflix saw a whopping 40 percent increase in streaming hours, going from 69,444 hours to 97,222. And YouTube videos have reached 4.3 million views per minute. Even the peer-to-peer transactions app Venmo saw a major data jump, with 32 percent more transactions processed every minute compared to last year. Overall, Americans use 3.1 million GB of data every minute.

To learn more about our data usage of 2018, check out the infographic below.

June 8, 2018

6 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

While the world is still dismissive of women with ambition (the word is seen as a positive in men and a negative in women), plenty of female power players are hoping to change that.

The key issue: likability. Women with ambition are seen as “unlikable,” according to a Columbia Business School study. It’s not exactly a revelation, but the gender bias needs to be addressed.

Powerful women are doing exactly that. Cindi Leive, Glamour’s former editor-in-chief, says “Let’s resolve to redefine likability to include women who want things, badly, for themselves and for others.” In other words, women who are ambitious.

Related: What You Can Learn From These 3 Celebrity Women on Using Social Media for Social Good

Here are three business lessons entrepreneurs can learn from women with ambition who are challenging what it means to be likable — and succeeding:

1. Trust your instincts.

Image Credit: Karwai Tang | Getty Images

Reese Witherspoon says she believes the world would change if women were encouraged to be more ambitious.

When Witherspoon started her own film production company to tell women’s stories, she was told there wasn’t a market for female-driven material and her business wouldn’t survive more than a few years. She took it as a challenge. Big Little Lies, the hit HBO drama she produces, took home eight Emmys for its first season, and her production company, Hello Sunshine, is a powerhouse.

Apple recently purchased three female-centric Hello Sunshine projects, including a series about morning news show hosts that is said to be one of the most expensive deals in TV history — $240 million for 20 episodes. Apple is betting that Witherspoon’s instincts about projects will lead to a huge ROI, helping it compete with Netflix, Hulu and Amazon. Witherspoon’s ambition isn’t just changing the gender landscape in media; it’s also generating an enormous profit.

Witherspoon’s success with Hello Sunshine carries an important lesson for entrepreneurs: Trust your gut and make things happen for yourself. Witherspoon knew she wasn’t the only person in the world craving female-centric stories. So, when she was discounted, she didn’t take no for an answer.

Related: Should You Take Business Advice That Contradicts Your Instincts?

Trusting your instincts doesn’t mean that just because you have a good idea, it will magically generate a profit. Witherspoon didn’t simply know in her gut that stories about women were both needed and profitable, then sit around waiting to be handed a producing gig. She read books to find material she wanted to produce, got on the phone and called studio heads until she found someone who would listen to her vision. And when she finally got a meeting, she had done her research and was fully prepared to successfully pitch her ideas.

Translation?  Follow your instincts, and also put in the work.

2. Don’t ask for permission.

Image Credit: Frederick M. Brown | Getty Images

 

Writer-producer-actor Mindy Kaling is fiercely blunt about women having ambition: “‘Why the f**ck not me?’ should be your motto.” No more putting yourself and your abilities down, thinking someone else deserves your dream. If you’ve put in the work, you deserve success, and if it’s not handed to you, then you make it happen.

Kaling didn’t become a writer and producer on The Office and The Mindy Project (the latter of which she also created and starred in) by politely waiting to be offered authority.  She went out and seized it.  As Kaling puts it, “I love women who don’t ask ‘Is That OK?’ after everything they say.”

Related: Wonder Women Don’t Ask for Permission to Make Big Moves

Women have a tendency to put others on a pedestal while downplaying their own strengths. Not Kaling, whose TV namesake quips “It’s so weird being my own role model.”

If you’re an entrepreneur struggling with finding the confidence to consider yourself your own role model — or make your business goals a reality — Kaling has some stellar advice: Put in the effort. Work really hard, harder than everyone else around you. Work, Kaling says, until you “know your sh*t.” 

If you’ve put in the hours, Kaling believes you’re wholly allowed to feel entitled to your career goals: “Entitlement is simply the belief that you deserve something.”

When you know you deserve something, you don’t ask permission to take charge — you simply do it.

3. Flaunt your success.

Image Credit: Mike Pont | Getty Images

Fashion designer Tory Burch tells women to embrace ambition and uses her Tory Burch Foundation to empower women entrepreneurs. Burch, listed as one of Forbes’ Most Powerful Women in the World, believes we need to rebrand how women with ambition are perceived so that more women-owned businesses can thrive. 

To that end, Burch has created a Fellows Program that gives out grants and provides support to female-led businesses. Two of her fellows have seen their businesses make over a million dollars.

Burch takes issue with the fact that only 4.6 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women and vehemently believes that women hiding their ambition is no way to achieve gender parity. Quite the opposite. Burch’s “Embrace Ambition” campaign is designed to empower women to fully own their ambition — and reject the idea that ambition is only a positive word when applied to men.

Entrepreneurs can take a lesson from Burch: When you become successful, don’t hide your success — flaunt it!

Your business is more likely to succeed if you make a point of promoting your accomplishments — not by bragging but by having the confidence to share stories of your success. Did you break the ice and land a new client by bonding over your mutual love of adopting animals? Did you give a bold, daring speech and get a standing ovation? Confidently share your achievements because success breeds success.

Related: 8 Proven Habits for Ultimate Success

Women have a reputation for downplaying their own strengths and waiting for others to praise them rather than praising themselves. If you’re having difficulty embracing your ambition and flaunting your success, turn to a platitude from your childhood: Practice makes perfect.

Vocalize your strengths and loudly declare to the world how amazing you are until you start to believe it yourself. And help other women along the way. Applaud your female peers to give them the confidence to applaud themselves. Women supporting other women is key to more women succeeding in business, particularly in leadership roles.

 

June 7, 2018

6 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Gail Corder Fischer is the co-founder and executive vice chairman of Dallas-based Fischer & Company, the go-to real estate firm for global Fortune 500 companies like FedEx and IBM. But this member of The Oracles wasn’t born a real estate mogul—quite the opposite.

In her own words, Corder Fischer got her start at 14-years-old as a “French fry girl at McDonalds.” By 15, she’d discovered a “knack for sales” from selling carpet cleaning services over the phone. Without instruction, Corder Fischer took her boss’s sales script, opened the Yellow Pages, and started dialing for dollars. One could say she was the original robocall.

Gail Corder Fischer, co-founder and executive vice chairman, Dallas-based Fischer & Company.

Image credit: Michael Weschler

In the male-dominated world of commercial real estate, Corder Fischer used supreme self-confidence to her advantage. “With cold-calling, you have to be determined. It’s a numbers game. Just keep smiling and dialing,” she quips.

What started with a desk and a telephone is now a multi-million-dollar enterprise. Here are Corder Fischer’s top leadership lessons learned along her way to the top:

1. Double down on due diligence.

Before getting on the phone, Corder Fischer stresses the importance of researching everything about the company you’re calling, their decision-making process, and the person you’re speaking to. She learned this the hard way after cold-calling an important prospect when starting out. “I immediately jumped into my pitch,” says Corder Fischer. “He interjected, ‘Young lady, if you’d bothered researching us, you’d know we just started building new headquarters,’ and hung up. I was mortified.”

Gathering intelligence and building a relationship with a prospect can take time. Be patient. Aim to become their personal, indispensable thought leader who consistently provides meaningful value. Forward useful articles with highlighted passages of interest, and your thoughts or ideas. Send them a handwritten note or thoughtful gift. You could even offer to work for free and say, “If you like my work, just pay whatever you think it’s worth.” These are all “hooks” to entice someone to give you a face-to-face appointment with the decision maker. Corder Fischer recommends having three hooks.

Another hook could be a personal connection like the same alma mater, hometown, country club, vacation spot, hobby, or even your spouses’ common interests. Your unique approach to solving the prospect’s current challenge is also a hook; maybe you have proprietary software that drastically reduces the prospect’s costs beyond what they thought possible.

“Meeting someone who can’t approve your proposal isn’t a great use of anyone’s time,” says Corder Fischer. “But if you offer uncommon value through well-positioned hooks, people will want to hear what you have to say.”

2. Nurture your company like a child.

Corder Fischer shares that building a business is like raising a child. “The first 10 years are the hardest,” she says. “I slept on a couch after my first-born and kept a baby bed in a spare office.

“When starting out, a relentless work ethic is critical. You’re not only competing with entrenched industry behemoths, but also every other tenacious entrepreneur, Ivy Leaguer or better-funded startup on a mission to disrupt your industry.”

For Corder Fischer, the great equalizer is time. “God gives everybody 24 hours in a day,” she says. “You must be prepared to outperform your competition by working longer hours. It’s tough, yet fun; you’re building something and will be rewarded eventually—when clients see you as indispensable.”

3. Conserve your cash.

Cash management is the key to scaling. “If you can do something yourself, don’t hire someone for it,” says Corder Fischer. “In the beginning, you’re the accounting department, the marketing department, the envoy—everyone. Only when you start having consistent success do you make your first hire, then the second.” But hire cautiously. Corder Fischer recommends keeping an eye on your margins, so you don’t scale too quickly.

She also advises using technology to help, but make sure to keep it simple. “There are billion-dollar companies that run on QuickBooks. You don’t need an expensive or complicated accounting system,” she shares.

4. Stand firm in your opinions (use your ‘big girl’ voice).

As your company grows and you assume a greater leadership role, be firm in your ideas and opinions; Corder Fischer stresses this is especially crucial for women in male-dominated fields.

“If you’re the only woman in the room—and you have an opinion—be confident in your delivery,” she says. “A meek or deferential communication style is ineffective. Use your ‘big girl’ voice. Don’t be swayed from what you know is true. The person who speaks the first and loudest usually wins.”

5. Never take ‘no’ for an answer.

Although tenacity is a must-have trait, Corder Fischer suggests matching it with manners. “When you’re persistent, be equally polite to the gatekeeper.” To do so, Corder Fischer suggests using phrases like, “With all due respect, Sir,” or, “I understand you don’t want to focus on this, but in our experience, beginning this process six to 12 months in advance helps.”

Ultimately, Corder Fischer insists people respect hard work and persistence. “They’ll eventually come around. I don’t care how angry they get; don’t stop calling. If they say “No,” it could mean, ‘No, not now,’ or ‘No, I’m too busy to consider your request right now,’ or, ‘No, you haven’t asked me enough questions or politely bugged me enough to believe you really want this.’”

Even when painful and laborious, enthusiastically attack every obstacle; it’s an opportunity waiting to be discovered. And Corder Fischer is living proof that hard work pays.

June 6, 2018

5 min read

This story originally appeared on Bizness Apps

Using a new app is like meeting someone for the first time. Your initial interactions could be awkward and confusing or there could be an instant connection. In both of these settings, first impressions are everything!

How do you make sure your app falls in the “instant connection” category? App onboarding is the holy grail when it comes to ensuring a great first impression. Onboarding is one of the most critical phases of an app user’s journey, as it is that first point of contact with your app.

What is app onboarding?

The onboarding process is essentially a series of screens that guide users through the app’s interface and functions. App onboarding allows businesses to strategically communicate with their users, as well as facilitate a positive user experience. These onboarding screens have three purposes:

1. Educate the user about the functions and benefits of the app
2. Allow the user to register their login details
3. Collect profile information that can be used to deliver personalized content and notifications

Types of onboarding

There are different types of app onboarding that you can implement, depending on your business and type of app. What all of these onboarding methods have in common is that they empower users and encourage them to learn through exploring the app.

1. Benefits-oriented onboarding

As the name suggests, this type of onboarding demonstrates the benefits or value the user will get from the app, in an attempt to encourage conversion. This approach focuses on what the app does, rather than how to use the app. These onboarding screens will also include permission requests that the users can opt-in for, such as accessing location and sending push notifications.

2. Function-oriented onboarding

This approach focuses on app functionality by teaching the user how to use the app. The user will get a tour of the app with specific instructions on how to get started and how to perform certain actions.

3. Progressive onboarding

Progressive onboarding is a little more extensive as it shows users new information as they progressively navigate through the app. The instructions displayed on the screen pertain to the page the user is on, like a live walkthrough. Instead of getting the instructions up front, the users will learn as they explore the app.

Why does your app need onboarding?

While you probably already see the need for app onboarding, let’s dive a little deeper into the science behind it.

It is difficult for new users to intuitively know how to navigate an app, especially if the interface is different than what they are accustomed to. Creating a positive first-time user experience is fundamental to an app’s success, as well as ensuring ongoing app usage. The truth is that users lose interest when an app takes too long to figure out.

Note that 21 percent of users will only use your app once. While this may or may not be due to the complexity of your app, it is an important statistic to hone in on. Including an app onboarding process will help make the first-time use as seamless as possible, minimizing potential drop off of users. In other words, businesses can increase their app retention by using appropriate app onboarding.

Hubspot breaks down retention into three phases: short-term retention, mid-term retention and long-term retention. In the context of this blog post, we will be focusing on the first phase of short-term retention. In terms of app use, this refers to Week 1 after a user has downloaded the app.

According to their research, the biggest drop-off in usage happens during the short-term retention period between Week 0 and Week 1. Retention drops nearly 75 percentage points down to just above 25 percent in a single week.

What does this mean? There’s much more room for improvement early on, such that small changes in user onboarding will have a massive impact in that week, and the weeks to follow. Your goal in “Week 1” is to ensure that your app is used more than once. By implementing user onboarding, you can get more early usage and, as a result, increase app retention over time. Localytics saw app user retention rates increase by 50 percent after implementing a solid onboarding.

Next steps

If you are a Bizness Apps partner, you have access to our onboarding feature with the Northpark Source Code. Our new app onboarding provides a simple and seamless walkthrough that educates the user on the value of the app, as well as it’s feature permission requests. At the end of the walkthrough, users have the option to sign-up for the app and create their own profile. 

This benefits-oriented onboarding is a must for small businesses in order to gain customer insights by:

• Delivering a seamless user experience
• Enabling an easy-win lead gen tool
• Putting a name and face to your customers

Make sure to activate this app onboarding process for your small business clients, as they will see a substantial increase in app conversions. This will result in increased revenue in the long term and you, as the reseller, will be able to showcase the ROI from your app. It’s a win-win!

June 5, 2018

6 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Social listening has been a major marketing strategy in the recent years, but primarily for larger brands. It’s not that smaller businesses didn’t need it — the price point just didn’t make much sense for what they’d receive.

But today, things have changed. Tools have not only become more affordable, but the number of active social media users has grown tremendously, almost at a faster rate than people getting new mobile phones. The kind of data that is available now is massive and overwhelming.

There are a lot of reasons behind the growth. Facebook and Twitter are getting into the original TV and broadcasting battle. Publishers and media companies have focused heavily on social sharing from their websites. More businesses are getting hip to social media marketing. And, the young are getting older, able now to not only own phones, but also access social media sites.

With this new influx of usage, measuring social activity has become an art as much as a science. People are using social media so much so that they probably don’t realize they’re using it to voice an opinion, share news with friends, read reviews on new places, etc.

As a small business owner, you need to see what these conversations are about. Not only do you need to see your brand mentions, but online conversations are a gold mine of new data that could provide valuable insight for future strategies.

Here is a list of some top social media listening tools you can sign up for, all varied in pricing and features.

Related: 5 Social Media Rules Every Entrepreneur Should Know

Google Alerts

We all love free stuff, right? One of Google’s most beloved and yet underappreciated tools is Alerts, which sends you an email of automated search results for whatever keyword you’re looking for. You can set up alerts for up to 1,000 terms and have the results emailed to you daily, weekly or whenever a new results occurs.

But you get what you pay for. Google Alerts only does searches on sites that get crawled by Google. So, there may not be as many Facebook results, hardly any LinkedIn, Pinterest or Instagram results and a spackling of Twitter results. There’s also no sort of data visualization or collection either.

Related: 10 Laws of Social Media Marketing

BuzzSumo

Image credit: Buzzsumo

This tool is all-around a reliable, inexpensive, feature-packed option for business of all sizes. Starting at only $79/mo for up to 5,000 mentions, you can set up alerts not only for mentions of your brand name, but also your competitors’ and other search terms. If you’re a soap maker, maybe you’d want to set up alerts for your brand name, a local competitor, local markets accepting new vendors, any mentions of favorite scents and more.

You can also run unlimited content and influencer searches, so you can find ideas for new articles that are related to your business and social media influencers who may make sense for your brand.

Related: 12 Social Media Mistakes That Entrepreneurs Make

Mention

If you’re flying solo or just looking for a lower commitment than above, this tool may be for you. Starting at just $29 per month for up to 3,000 mentions, Mention does a lot of what’s covered above with BuzzSumo. The higher tier you go, the more features you unlock, like Sentiment Analysis (measure how positively people are talking about your brand online), Automated Reporting (send regular emails and reports to the people who need to know), API access (pipeline information to other compatible programs and tools) and much more.

One interesting feature is Crisis Management. It’s for brands who may have an online reputation risk so that you can find and reply to any message that may appear during a certain brand crisis.

Related: This Instagrammer With More Than 2 Million Followers Literally Cooks Her Content

Hootsuite

Image credit: Hootsuite

This tool is like the Swiss Army knife of social media tools. Its main feature is scheduling and publishing across multiple social accounts, but it also comes packed with analytical, search and data visualization features that will definitely be of help to anyone handling social media monitoring in your company.

Hootsuite is free to use, but if you want to access all the essential features for monitoring social media, then you’ll need to upgrade to at least the Pro or Business tiers. Both are $5.99 per month and $499 per month respectively. If $499 is too much of a commitment, you can opt for the Pro plan and add other features a la carte to your plan. The Pro plan allows you to publish and schedule to 50 accounts, but offers only one Enhanced Analytics report. Below you can see the different features you can add on monthly to your plan.

It’s important to note that Hootsuite’s customer service is likely what sets it apart from other tools. They’re quick to respond and their staff is knowledgeable and friendly.

Keyhole

If your business strategy is to work with influencers, then this tool may be best suited for you. Starting at $179/mo, Keyhole does all the basic reporting and monitoring of social media activity, but it also allows you to not only search for influencers, but pull reports on their activity, too.

As of right now, you can’t really get much insight from another person or competitors’ social media data. But, Keyhole will allow you to attach certain accounts that you want to gain data access to, so you can see how influential these influencers and their campaigns are.

Related: 10 Proven Ways to Make Millions on Social Media

Nuvi

Image credit: Nuvi

If your marketing needs exceed than what’s been mentioned so far, then you’ll need a more sophisticated tool like Nuvi. Getting pricing from them depends on your unique needs, as their ethos is that you only pay for what you want. But, rumors around the web state that the tool starts at around $300 per month.

Their key product differentiator is that they’re experts at data visualization. It is hard to derive key learnings based on a page with numbers, but this tool makes it easy for you to quickly see how your business is perceived online, how effective your social media is, and to capture negative comments before a crisis gets too big to handle (and if it does get that big, then this tool is equipped to handle that.)

No matter what tool you decide to use for monitoring your brand online, keep in mind that it’s up to you to make data go from informative to actionable. Respond to those online mentions, regardless of whether it’s a positive or negative comment. Look for trends that may inform your next marketing campaign. Find ideas for a new product or service that you can provide.

Of course, all of this starts with having your own solid social media presence. If you’re unsure if your accounts are up-to-date and optimized, social media audits are available to help you determine where your strengths and weaknesses are.

Did we miss any mentioning tools? Let us know of your favorite ones in the comment section!