July 18, 2018

3 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Forget the useless, though wildly popular and entertaining, apps that previously filled up our smartphones or computers. People now want apps with function and purpose.

Here are the fastest-growing new or recently redesigned apps of 2018, according to business app platform Zapier, which compiled the data using its platform.

1. Discord

Nostalgic for the days you stayed up late playing The Sims and messaging with your friends? Discord is a voice and text chat app that connects more than 14 million daily players in the gaming community through video and audio.

2. Things 3

If you need help organizing your busy schedule but don’t have a personal assistant, check out Things 3. This award-winning personal task manager app can help you get things done and achieve your goals in an organized manner.

3. Leadpages

Not your typical email marketing service, Leadpages helps you create customized landing pages, webinars and ads to generate leads. It focuses on growing your email list, then links to a third-party site, such as MailChimp, to send your campaigns to those that signed up.

4. Klayivo

Klayivo pulls in data from your ecommerce platform, point-of-sale software or other marketing tools and helps you create highly targeted and super-relevant email, Facebook and Instagram marketing. You can set up automated trigger emails for when customers sign up, abandon shopping carts and check out.

5. Square

Square handles all of your company’s digital finances. With four different platforms (Payments, Point of Sale, Payroll and Capital), Square helps you track all of your money on your smart device. Compatible with both Apple and Android, you can make customer transactions, pay employees and fund your company.

6. Salesflare

If you feel like you waste too much time updating your CRM, Salesflare is for you. A CRM that basically fills out itself, Salesflare inputs data for you so you can focus on making sales. It reminds you what follow-ups are the most important and who talked to what customer, so your team can efficiently work together to increase profit.

7. Coda

If you want to build your own website instead of relying on Squarespace or Weebly, Coda lets you hand-code with a little help. It edits your text to make sure your coding is in tip-top shape.

8. Landbot

Landbot creates a Chatbot for you within minutes that lives in your website and enhances your customer’s experiences.  

9. ClickUp

ClickUp’s easy-to-use product management software keeps your team productive, efficient and headache-free. It lets you integrate with more than 1,000 other services, such as Slack and Zapier, to keep everything your company needs in one convenient place.

10. Ghost

A modern-publishing toolbox, Ghost helps you create and manage an online blog or publication. It edits, manages content, schedules, builds proper SEO and more, all through its simple platform.

July 16, 2018

6 min read

Jon Rubinstein started his own company in 2005 for a very simple reason: “I needed a job,” he laughs.

OK, maybe he’s oversimplifying things a bit.

For years, Rubinstein worked at a successful management company that represented actors, writers, directors, comedians and digital personalities, but, he says, he wasn’t happy. He wanted to get out, but the problem was that most of his opportunities were in Los Angeles and his kids were in New York. 

Rubinstein wanted to stay close to his children, but at the time, there weren’t a ton of management companies in the area. So after considering his options, he decided that if there wasn’t a New York-based company doing what he wanted to do, he’d start his own. 

Related: Daymond John Explains His Crazy Ride to Success (Podcast)

It was a risky move and came with its fair share of those classic middle of the night “What am I doing?!” moments that almost all entrepreneurs face. But with hard work, hard work and then some hard work, the gamble paid off. Rubinstein’s company, Authentic Talent and Literary Management, currently reps an impressive roster of creators, writers and actors including Michael C. Hall and Brie Larson. But speaking with Rubinstein, it becomes clear that his goal wasn’t simply to land a bunch of A-listers. He wanted to create a company that not only improved the careers of its clients but also had a culture and philosophy geared toward improving the world at large. Here’s how he went about doing that

He asked himself, “Why?”

“If you ask most people why their company exists, most people cannot tell you, other than to make money. So the first thing is I thought about was why should Authentic exist. There were two things that kept coming to mind: 1. I wanted to have a company that when I look back on it — hopefully when I’m 100-years-old — I can really proud of what we did. And 2., I wanted to focus on adding value to my clients’ lives. I wasn’t interested in being their best friend and going to parties. I wanted to empower and enable my clients to make a difference with their work.”

He educated himself.

“I didn’t have a business education, so I did a lot of reading when we started out. I was really knocked out by Blue Ocean Strategy. I noticed that in my field, year after year, there would be some new client that everyone was clamoring for — it’d be like a shark feeding frenzy among management companies. And I wasn’t particularly eager to play those games. So the premise of the book is that everybody is fighting on this small patch of bloodied, red ocean, but there’s this big wide blue ocean out there and if you start looking in different areas you start to find something that there’s plenty for everyone.”

Related: 4 Super Business Lessons From Marvel’s Decade of Box Office Success

He embraced “the suck.”

“Initially, it was just a grind. I’ll just be really straight about it. It was me in a cubicle on Lafayette Street, and then I hired an assistant eventually. We just worked really hard and tried to figure out how to do this thing. And you quickly find all the things that don’t work. At the end of the day, I’d get together with my first colleague Robert Glennon, who is still with the company, and we’d just say, ‘Well, that sucked.’ And we’d just learn from it and move on.”

He pursued happiness outside of the office.

“As hard as we were working when we started, it was and is important to me that people who worked at this company have a life. I want people to have a good life. I’ve studied meditation and Buddhism, and everything I’ve learned comes back to the idea that all happiness comes from serving others. I’ve done a lot of work in Haiti as Board President of Mimsi International, which provides medical training and pregnancy care in remote areas of the world. One of my proudest moments was during a trip, my girlfriend and I were on a beach waiting for a boat to take us to this little island and a woman approached us … [with] these little twin 6-month-old girls in her arms. And she said, ‘You did this, you helped me have these babies and they’re healthy.’ It was amazing to be a part of that.”

He looks for ways to make more doing less.

“We’re definitely a performance-focused company and people are accountable for their results. But we don’t, for example, have a set vacation policy for our managers. They have the capability they do whatever they want. You have got to trust people and create a structure so they’re incentivized to be successful, not just glued to their desks going through the motions. And I listen to my managers. When they tell me, ‘Oh my God dude, I’m working so hard!’ the answer isn’t ‘Too bad, that’s life.’ We try to figure out what to do about. How can we support you in making 10 times the money with half the effort? That’s what I’m interested in.”

He encourages criticism.

“We do reviews with our clients every year where we ask them how we are doing. We look at what’s working and not working. I got that from some management book I read somewhere but it’s been great. If people say ‘everything is great’ we don’t accept that — we truly want to know what we can do better. And if they do have a problem with us, we address it. It’s one mistake I’ve seen over and over in business: people are reluctant to admit a mistake and reluctant to admit that they don’t know everything. My philosophy for myself and for the company is to be constantly improving, constantly learning and constantly on the lookout to be more effective at our jobs.”

July 15, 2018

2 min read

The marketing industry isn’t the same as it was 10 years ago. And much of that is thanks to the rise of smartphones.

Today’s marketing initiatives go far beyond print ads and desktop computers, and it’s more important than ever to have a mobile marketing campaign in place for your business. If you’re feeling stuck, there’s no need to worry. With a few quick tips and an understanding of how other businesses are using mobile marketing to their advantage, you’ll be well on your way to creating a stellar campaign.

Related: Teach Yourself Online Marketing With This Simple Technique

People spend 59 percent of their time on mobile, according to research compiled by App Geeks. But marketers spend 15 percent of their budgets on mobile and the remaining 85 percent on desktop. In addition, mobile ads have higher conversion rates. Overall, average smartphone conversion rates have gone up 64 percent compared to average desktop conversion rates.

Now that you know the importance of mobile marketing, it’s important to understand the different types. SMS marketing, app-based marketing, push notifications and email marketing are some of the most popular methods. When it comes to SMS, 79 percent of smartphone users say they rely on SMS opt-in to help them make purchasing decisions. In addition, push notifications drive nearly 10 times more users to make a purchase.

Related: 104 Facts You Didn’t Know About Mobile Marketing (Infographic)

It’s clear there are plenty of mobile marketing opportunities. To take advantage of them and to learn more, check out App Geeks’ infographic below.

July 14, 2018

2 min read

Some rituals might seem like nonsense, but it turns out, they can be helpful when it comes to productivity and job performance. Studies have shown that rituals can help us take on tough challenges at work, boost productivity and even decrease anxiety. How do you know what type of ritual is right for you? Here are some ideas.

Related: 7 Steps to Peak Performance in Business and in Life

Instead of starting your day with a hot shower, try opting for a cold one. Cold water increases blood circulation and releases endorphins, which can boost a person’s mood and make them more productive. Another helpful ritual is shutting down distracting devices. For example, turn your smartphone on airplane mode for a few hours so you can hone your focus on a single task until its full completion.

Whether you’ve got a big deadline approaching or an upcoming presentation, if you’re feeling anxious, one ritual to help calm your nerves is counting your breaths. A quick daily mindfulness practice, such as counting your inhales and exhales for 10 minutes, can help relieve stress and get you in the right headspace for getting work done.

Related: 4 Ways to Decrease Stress and Maximize Performance

From journaling daily to doing five-minute desk exercises, check out Pound Place’s infographic below for nine daily rituals to boost performance at work.

July 13, 2018

5 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

When you’re finished crafting an engaging blog post for your readers, you may be disappointed to see that no one is reading it. It would be nice if, as soon as you posted that content on the web, you got a ton of traffic; but that’s not realistic. Some 63 percent of marketers in a Marketing Charts study said their biggest content challenge was driving traffic and generating leads. So, how do you promote your blog and get more traffic?

Related: 5 Smart Ways to Integrate Cross-Promotion With Online Marketing

You can’t rely on SEO alone to drive traffic to your site; instead, you’ve got to work at bringing in more of your target audience, yourself. And the only way to do that is to promote your content.

Here are some great tips you may not have considered that will get your content in front of your audience. Check them out for how to promote your content like a pro.

Promote your blog in your email campaign.

You should know by now how important building an email list is. So, if you’ve already started building one, you’re in a great position. The people who sign up for your email list are probably going to be the ones most interested in your content. That’s why it makes sense for you to promote your new posts to them, first.

Related: A Guide to do Effective Content Marketing on LinkedIn

For example, fitness guru Chalene Johnson includes links to blog posts in her emails with a clear call to action like “click here.”

Email newsletter, chalenejohnson.com

Choose a headline that sparks curiosity to make sure your email gets opened, and keep your email short and interesting. You can also promote your new posts in your monthly newsletter. Letting your email list members know about your new post first is an effective way to get early traction and encourage shares right away.

Participate in forums and aggregate sites.

You may not have considered promoting your blog posts in forums or aggregate sites, but this is actually a really easy and effective way to get your content noticed. An aggregate site is basically a place where you can find information from many different sources related to a specific topic.

Share your own content in these places to help other users with questions they might have. This is a great way to connect directly with your target audience members, provide them with some of your expertise and share a link back to your blog. 

A popular choice for many is Reddit, where there’s a community for almost anything under the sun; and many of those communities boast hundreds of thousands of members: 

Reddit digital marketing posts, https://www.reddit.com/

Just do a quick search to find a community or topic that relates to your industry and join the conversation. Other popular forum and aggregate sites include Quora and Triberr. Just remember not to be spammy, and only promote your content when it’s relevant.

Share on social media.

Sharing on social media is a given for promoting your content but there are a few tactics you might be missing. First, make sure to share your content on many different platforms. Also link to your blog in all your social media profiles to make sure it’s one of the first thing visitors to your social media pages see.

Below, BloggingWizard.com is consistent in sharing its unique blog posts on social media; consistency attracts a larger following. 

Tweet from BloggingWizard.com, https://twitter.com/bloggingwizard

In addition, repromote your older, most popular posts so that your new followers will be able to see your best content. Twitter and Facebook allow you to pin your most popular posts to your profile, so they’re the first thing people see.

Share your new content on social media as soon as it’s published, and share your brand’s new content multiple times. You can use a tool like CoSchedule, to see how your posts are doing and to schedule more posts so you can get more of your content out there. Don’t forget to thank readers who share your content too.

Use retargeting.

According to CrazyEgg, you can reach up to 84 percent of your visitors with retargeting. Retargeting is a great tool that allows you to entice your website visitors to return to you and check out more of your content.

Retargeting essentially involves a pixel that you install on your website; this allows you to “follow” your previous visitors around the web and show them ads for your website.

For example, if you visit your Pinterest business page, you may be retargeted on Facebook with the following ad: 

Pinterest retargeting ad, https://www.facebook.com/

This is a low-cost tactic you can use to promote your most important content, whether it’s your latest blog post or the paid course you offer. Retargeting allows you to engage with your visitors even after they’ve already left your website without checking out your content, making it a valuable tool to get your content seen.

Related: How to Use Content and Social to Promote Your Small Business

The more time you put into promoting your blog posts, the better results you’ll see. These tactics for promoting your content will almost certainly boost your traffic and increase engagement.