Are traditional or digital marketing methods best for your business? | The Startup Magazine

March 10, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

With so many marketing methods available, business owners can find it tough to decide what will benefit their company the most. Whilst there are numerous successful strategies, the real question is: is there a marketing method that best suits your industry?

Leaflet distribution specialist Direct Letterbox Marketing has compiled some data on the best marketing methods for different industries. Where does your business sit? Find out below…

Direct marketing

Target Marketing Magazine analysed some of the most successful companies’ direct mail campaigns of that year. In the top 10 results – the following industries appeared:

Why airplanes still have ashtrays. No, you can’t smoke | Money CNN

March 10, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

I get asked a lot of questions about airplanes. The one I get asked more than practically any other is: If airlines banned smoking, why do new airplanes still have ashtrays?

You may not have noticed it, but on the wall right next to the lavatory door is a tiny ashtray that pulls out from the wall. Each lav has two, on or next to the inside and outside of the door, despite smoking’s full prohibition on flights in and out of the U.S. since 2000, it is an essential safety feature of every flight.

Because there still needs to be a safe place to put out a lit cigarette.

Time Management Tips to Avoid Entrepreneurial Burnout | Business News Daily

March 9, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

It’s no secret that running a business takes a lot time and dedication. You’re in charge of executing the day-to-day tasks, the long-term strategic planning and everything in between — and if you don’t have the budget for help, you may feel like you’re running a one-person circus.

Succumbing to stress and burning out might seem inevitable when you’re responsible for so many business and personal obligations. But allowing yourself to get caught up in the stress can take its toll on your physical, mental and emotional health.

Why Do People Fail at Marketing Their Business? | Getentrepreneurial.com

March 9, 2017March 9, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself. Peter Drucker

People fail at marketing for a variety of reasons. This list is not meant to be all-inclusive but here are the most common reasons I encounter:

Never been trained in marketing

Don’t understand the psychology of marketing

Are not consistent in their marketing message

Don’t ask for help because they don’t know who to trust

Don’t want to do it for themselves

Don’t know what works and do not want to spend the money

Could This Be the Battery That Revolutionizes Our Cars and Phones? | NBC News

March 8, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The co-inventor of the lithium-ion battery, which powers almost every modern mobile device and many newer electric cars, says he’s developed a safer battery that lasts three times longer.

In a filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in research published in the March edition of the journal Energy & Environmental Science, John Goodenough and colleagues at the University of Texas report that their new battery technology could produce a safe, non-explosive cell able to power an electric car much longer than current batteries do — with charging times measured in minutes, not hours.

WakeMode App Launches to Let You Know if Your Internal “Battery” Needs Charging | CoolBusinessIdeas.com

March 8, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

WakeMode is launching a new sleep and fatigue management app that predicts fatigue levels during the day using advanced data analysis technology. Similar to the way cell phones display a bar indicating battery life, WakeMode shows you YOUR battery levels, based predominantly on how much rest you got during the night. WakeMode pairs with almost any bluetooth enabled wearable or contactless device, with or without a heart rate sensor, to monitor sleep patterns using motion and heart rate to first analyze the user’s sleep patterns and then create a personalized actionable sleep improvement program

Why You Should Love America’s Worst Airport | Bloomberg

March 7, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

LaGuardia smells like a used car filled with old Cinnabon bags. It’s New York’s second-busiest airport (behind John F. Kennedy International), and yet there’s no convenient way to get there by mass transit. The floors are scuffed. The carpets are stained. Some of the bathroom stalls don’t have working locks. Just this month, a runway was struck by lightning, and brown water poured out of a ceiling. Each year it serves about 28 million people through a hodgepodge of terminals that seem to be perpetually under construction. During a 2015 speech about infrastructure, then-Vice President Joe Biden told a Philadelphia audience, “If I blindfolded you and took you to LaGuardia Airport in New York, you must think, I must be in some Third World country.” People laughed. “I’m not joking,” Biden said. People laughed some more.

I don’t know why, though. LaGuardia is my favorite airport. I want one thing from an airport: to get me to my gate as quickly as possible. LaGuardia, dilapidated hellhole that it is, is pretty good for this. “I can get to the airport 41 minutes before my flight and be fine. That’s impossible at most big-city airports,” says Brian Kelly, founder of the Points Guy website, which offers money- and time-saving air travel tips. Kelly’s good fortune is a result of those terminals, which spread out fliers instead of funneling them through a central departure point.

Are We Breaking The Internet? | Fast Company

March 6, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Recent outages from critical services across the net have created massive disruption in recent weeks: Whether it was Amazon’s S3 service failure, which took down thousands of sites, Cloudflare’s “Cloudbleed” security issue, which forced many sites to ask users to reset their passwords, or Google Wifi’s accidental reset, which wiped out customer’s internet profiles, the infrastructure behind the internet has looked substantially more unstable recently.

The packetized technology that underlies most of the internet was created by Paul Baran as part of an effort to protect communications by moving from a centralized model of communication to a distributed one. While the Internet Society questions whether the creation of the internet was in direct response to concerns about nuclear threat, it clearly agrees that “later work on Internetting did emphasize robustness and survivability, including the capability to withstand losses of large portions of the underlying networks.”

10 Grammar and Proofreading Tools for Content Marketers | Duct Tape Marketing

March 3, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

In creating online content for your business, you want to ensure it has several essential ingredients checked off before distributing it to your readers. Above all else, it needs to be interesting and engaging for them, or you’ll quickly lose their attention. But, second to that, it’s crucial that the grammar, spelling, and punctuation of your content be flawless.

When errors find themselves throughout your content, it not only calls into question your credibility as a reliable and trusted source, but it also causes readers to ask about your motives and whether you’ve put in the time and effort to create quality content for them.

Avoid those mistakes and those questions by properly proofreading your content before it goes out, with the help of these amazing tools:

The Craziest Things That Have Been Funded on Kickstarter in 2017, So Far | Entrepreneur

March 3, 2017March 3, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Kickstarter is a great way for entrepreneurs to get funding for their out-there ideas. And when it comes to crowdfunding — no idea is too crazy. You’d be surprised at some of the things people are willing to fund.

In 2014, Zach “Danger” Brown wanted $10 to make a potato salad — so he started a Kickstarter campaign that wound up raising more than $55,000. From an ostrich pillow to a Grilled Cheesus (i.e. a sandwich press that toasts the face of Jesus in bread) — you’d be surprised at some of the campaigns that gained traction.

A pen made from air pollution, an origami canoe, a levitating timepiece — this year, we’ve already started seeing wild campaigns. Check out the craziest Kickstarter campaigns of 2017 — so far.