6 Inspiring Couples Proving You Can Mix Work and Love | Inc.com

February 14, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Starting a business with your spouse. To some, it might sound like trouble; for others, like these six couples who are partners in life and work, it has produced harmony and great returns. If you’re considering going down that path, take their advice by protecting clearly defined roles, open lines of communication, and a strongly grounded relationship. “If one person has the capacity to defer, and one person better have the capacity to defer, someone’s got to do that,” says Mario Del Pero, who founded the fast-casual restaurant chain Mendocino Farms in 2005 with his wife, Ellen Chen.

Also: Don’t bring the boardroom into the (proverbial) bedroom. “We’ve become proponents of not talking about work in downtime,” says Andrew Goetz, who founded the skincare line Malin+Goetz with his partner, Matthew Malin, in 2004. “If I see a phone at dinner, I whack it across the room.”

Want to Produce Great Content? Get Your Employees On Board | The Startup Magazine

February 14, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

You want your customers to be your brand ambassadors, but truth be known – your employees already are. And on a side note – if you aren’t confident that they are ambassadors for your business, why are they working for you?

Your employees have superior knowledge of the products or services that you offer and have the most interaction with clients, meaning that they are attuned to the demands, expectations and concerns of the customers.

All of the content that a business creates, should provide value to the customer base and target audience. With your employees having first-hand access to the questions and concerns voiced by customers, it makes good sense for them to be involved, or be kept up to date with the creation of the content.

How Video Streaming Services Like Netflix and VIDGO are Changing TV Forever | CoolBusinessIdeas.com

February 13, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

We all remembered when MTV famously played the music video “Video Killed the Radio Star” over and over when the service first aired. On air radio remains a mainstay because it is one of the few information and entertainment services one can access and enjoy while working, driving or working. However, video streaming does have the potential to kill TV services for several reasons. This is why stations like HBO are changing and tech companies from YouTube to Amazon are altering how they do business.

Content You Can’t Find Anywhere Else

YouTube, Amazon and Netflix have free content available on demand while other movies and shows require you to pay per episode. They try to differentiate themselves by not offering the same catalog of movies and TV shows.

Partially in response to licensing rights that were a legal mess to get approved when Amazon and Netflix tried to license American TV shows abroad, they started curating their own content and creating their own shows. For example, you can only find the modern remake of “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Fuller House” on Netflix while “Transparent” is only on Amazon Prime.

Signing Off: The Most Effective Ways to End Your Emails | Business News Daily

February 13, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

A simple “thank you” might be all it takes to get your co-workers or clients to respond to the emails you send them, new research finds.

A study from email productivity software provider Boomerang revealed that the phrase you use to sign off your emails can impact whether or not you get a reply.

The research found that emails that close with a variation of “thank you” get significantly more responses than emails ending with other popular closings. Specifically, “thanks in advance” had a 65.7 percent response rate, the highest among the eight most popular email closings.

Verizon’s new plan: Consumers win, investors lose | CNN Money

February 13, 2017February 23, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Verizon has brought back its unlimited data plan. That’s great if you’re a Verizon customer. But it is terrible news for its investors.

Verizon (VZ, Tech30) stock fell nearly 1.5% in early trading Monday. It’s now down about 10% so far this year, making it the Dow’s worst performer of 2017.

Verizon’s move is a clear sign the company has to pull out all the stops to remain competitive with wireless rivals AT&T (T, Tech30), Sprint (S) and T-Mobile (TMUS).

“In recent months, both T-Mobile and Sprint had some success taking additional share from Verizon by virtue of their unlimited offerings,” wrote Morgan Stanley analysts in a report Monday morning.

Do You Have A Unique Selling Proposition | Getentrepreneurial.com

February 9, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

If I were your prospective customer, why should I do business with you above any and all other options? Why would I be an absolute fool to buy what you sell from anyone else but you? That answer should be clearly articulated in the form of your USP.

What you need to know…

A USP is the single, most distinct and important benefit a business owner provides to their clients that’s different from their competition. It’s absolutely critical to not only create an effective and highly compelling USP, but to use it in every piece of marketing you develop, and in every form of communication you use with your clients and prospects.

Why you need to know this…

Your USP, working in tandem with your elevator pitch, creates a huge competitive edge for your business. Developed properly, it will separate your business from your competition, eliminate them in the minds of your prospects and have them saying to themselves that they would be fools to do business with anyone else but you.

Twitter’s advertising business is stalling | TechCrunch

February 9, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Twitter may have re-oriented itself and laid off part of its workforce to streamline its business, but it still doesn’t look like it is bringing in enough money to keep Wall Street happy.

Here is the biggest data point from the company’s fourth-quarter earnings report: according to the company, advertising revenue totaled $638 million, which was down slightly year-over-year. A reversal in its advertising growth is certainly not going to help Twitter’s case, which needs to be able to pitch itself to advertisers as a legitimate alternative to Facebook — and now Snap, which is expected to go public in March and already generated $400 million in 2016.

YouTube Go is finally here, kind of | Mashable

February 9, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

It seems Google is all prepared to release its anticipated data-conscious YouTube Go app to the public.

An early version of YouTube Go hit the Google Play Store Wednesday. The app, as promised by Google last year, is light (less than 10MB in size) and features an option to share files using Wi-Fi Direct protocol.

Flipboard’s Quest To Save Online Publishing—And Itself | Fast Company

February 8, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The iPad was a futuristic gadget when it debuted in April 2010, but the apps it presented offered a rather nostalgic revival of traditional media. Photos, graphics, magazines, and books optimized for its high-res screen featured a print-era visual polish that had been sorely missing from ad-crammed web pages and monochrome ebook readers.

One of the early hits was Flipboard, a graphical embodiment of social media that launched in July 2010. It turned Twitter and Facebook feeds into an online magazine by displaying the photos, articles, or other pages that people linked to. Previews of articles were laid out like items on a newspaper page; and flicking up on the screen triggered a visual effect that looked like flipping pages. Flipboard was among the top 10 iPad apps in its early days, according to rankings by AppAnnie. “It seemed to be a perfectly timed creature of the iPad age, of the tablet age,” says digital advertising consultant Ken Doctor, author of the book Newsonomics: Twelve New Trends That Will Shape the News You Get.