Category: Tools and Information

Create a Referral Engine That Works Every Day in Your Business | Duct Tape Marketing

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I’ve written about this topic many times, but it just never get’s old! (Check out the referral marketing archive on Duct Tape Marketing) The fact is, although I’ve been writing about the idea of referral generation for years, it always remains relevant, no matter what marketing trends and technologies come and go.

Getting referrals can often seem like a daunting task for marketers, but it doesn’t have to be. I’ve put together a list of recommendations you can use to teach your clients how to build referrals (not to mention teach yourself a thing or two).

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Should you install solar panels on your roof? Ask Google | Mashable

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In 2015, Google launched Project Sunroof, a map that shows which houses have enough sun exposure for solar panels to be a viable energy source. However, the original map was very limited, covering only the San Francisco Bay Area, Fresno, California and Boston.

Now, Google has greatly expanded the project to cover all 50 U.S. states, with a total of 60 million buildings in the database.

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What If There Was A Way To Change How You Looked On Google? | CoolBusinessIdeas.com

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Negative perception from consumers often results in poorer sales and margins just because of negative search results. The role of online reputation management in today’s business and media landscape is of paramount importance in today’s digital age. Finally there is a cool business that has solved the issue of unfair and biased search results from “Fake News” and the media. The Reputation Management Company has developed programs that can delete unfavorable results and replace them with relevant and real results.

Despite how huge your company is, be it a small medium sized company or a large multi-national company, customers, prospects and potentially everyone are talking about you. They will tweet how much they like about your product or how undesirable your service is on Facebook. Customer experiences are always shared through word of mouth and increasingly on the social media.

This is why it’s crucial for brands to have a professional team of search engine reputation management experts who can identify negative results and get them removed from the web before they cause any damage.

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To Persuade People, The Key Is To Make Them Feel Good | Life Hack

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Have you ever felt it hard to get someone to believe you, or do something that you want them to do? Whether in selling something or just winning friendships, we all need to have skills to persuade another person. You could use it in little things, such as in getting a discount from the market, or landing a major business deal. Follow the three tips below and you will surely be more persuasive.

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How a German-Jewish Mystic Created an American Soap Company Determined to Clean Up the Planet | Adweek

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Read the label on most soaps and you’ll find a few words about freshness and lather. But pick up a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s and you’ll read this: “Whatever unites us is greater than whatever divides us! … Only if constructive-selfish work, perfecting first me, like every arctic owl-penguin-pilot-cat-swallow-beaver-bee, can I teach the Moral ABC.”

It goes on. And on. Hundreds of these tiny, preachy, semi-coherent phrases cover every inch of the bottle. All of them are the work of late visionary Emanuel Bronner, a German-Jewish soap maker who escaped Hitler, then came to America to preach his vision of a unified mankind. Bronner’s mystical rantings landed him in a mental institution (he escaped that, too), after which the good doctor (who wasn’t really a doctor) started selling his family-recipe peppermint soap to finance his itinerant sermonizing—only to begin printing his sermons on the label once he realized people were more into his soap than his teachings.

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Lyme Disease Soars in Michigan as Tick Populations Grow | Live Science

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Cases of Lyme disease in Michigan have risen dramatically in recent years, and a new study links that trend to larger and more widespread tick populations.

Researchers collected data from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services on 1,057 Lyme disease cases diagnosed between 2000 and 2014, and aligned them with a new analysis of tick distribution across the state. Results showed that not only did the number of yearly infections in the state increase significantly over the 15-year period, but so did the number of counties where ticks had been seen, or found to be established.

And the number of infected people may be much higher than the records indicate, the researchers said. Because Lyme disease is frequently misdiagnosed as other illnesses, reported cases likely represent only a fraction of true Lyme disease infections — perhaps as little as 10 percent, the study authors reported.

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Indianapolis Is America’s Best City For Renters In 2017 | Forbes

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Indianapolis tops our list of the best cities for renters this year thanks to astonishingly low average monthly rents and astonishingly high levels of affordability.

The average Indianapolis rent is just $806, eating up a mere 17% of the median household income for the city. That makes Indianapolis the cheapest place to rent of the cities we analyzed and the second most affordable. Only Kansas City, Mo., has a better rental affordability score at 16% of income.

And Indianapolis has a 5.6% apartment vacancy rate, which makes it easier for renters to find a place and harder for landlords to hike prices — rent increased just 2.5% last year in the city.

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This Grandfather Bet His House That Burgers and Beer Will Never Go Out of Style | Inc.com

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Hop Jack’s is locally famous for its brews, burgers, and neighborhood feel. The company has 12 restaurants, with three more under construction, mostly around Seattle and Tacoma, Washington. It employs 800 people and does more than $30 million in annual sales. The casual-dining juggernaut is the creation of a first-time entrepreneur who found himself unemployed in his 50s.

Mark Eggen, 62, spent most of his life working for the Red Robin chain, where he learned two things: how to run restaurants and how to scale restaurants. Eggen would likely have been a Red Robin lifer had the company’s IPO not required he relocate from Seattle to Denver. Unwilling to move while his kids were in high school, Eggen joined another company, from which he got fired.

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How To Promote Innovative Thinking | CoolBusinessIdeas.com

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Sometimes, it can seem like your brain is teeming with thousands of ‘useless’ ideas that you do not actually need at the time. But, when you are asked to come up with an innovative business idea – whether as part of a marketing campaign for your current business or because you want to create a new, niche business from scratch – it can feel like the fount of your creativity has run dry. No need to panic, however: just use one of these five easy techniques for stimulating those creative juices.

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