It can be difficult to gain credibility and trust in an industry, especially when you’re competing with much bigger companies. However, there are ways you can make your company appear larger than it is, even if you’ve only got a small budget. By investing in the right services and products, you can feel and look like a corporation, even though your business is still small.
Here are just some of the ways you can do this:
You’ve just started your business, your website is finished, your SEO is lined up, your products are ready to ship, and you’ve got a hungry team eager to seize the moment. All you need to do now is get the word out about that amazing product. Right?
Maybe, but maybe not.
When speaking to budding entrepreneurs, I sometimes find myself giving advice that you wouldn’t expect from a PR professional. I tell them that, for a lot of brands, hiring a PR pro isn’t worth the cost. Don’t get me wrong, a great PR team is one of best brand-building tools a business can employ. But if your brand isn’t positioned to benefit from a well-executed PR strategy, you could end up wasting your time and money.
In general, sympathy and empathy are often confused with one another. There is good reason for this too, primarily because both words deal with similar emotions and are derived from the Greek term páthos (which pertains to suffering and feeling). These words are also commonly ascribed to situations of sadness and mourning, as people try to identify with a particular group or individual that has been afflicted by tragedy.
Despite the similarities in terms of application and origin, however, there are core differences that separate the two words. Sympathy describes the feelings of compassion and pity that we may have for another person’s plight, for example, whereas empathy enables us to put ourselves in the shoes of those who are suffering and share directly in their sadness.
We’re just 18 weeks away from the “Great American Total Solar Eclipse” that will darken skies across the continental U.S. on Aug. 21. Are you ready for it?
If you haven’t started preparing to see the eclipse, the time to start is now. Between travel, lodging and eclipse-watching gear, there’s a lot to plan for — and that’s only the beginning. To ensure that your total solar eclipse experience isn’t a total flop, there are a few more things to take into account in the days leading up to the eclipse and to the moment of totality itself.
At Mirego headquarters in Quebec City, employees aren’t tied to their desks. They can choose to work in the company’s lounge, settled around a fireplace or to bring in their families and sit with their children, who can choose from boxes of games and toys.
It’s such a cool vibe that a few months ago, Mirego, which designs technological solutions for clients, produced a 200-page publication—a sort of arty company yearbook—filled with employee images, anecdotes and profiles.
It’s all part of president and CEO Albert Dang-Vu’s mission to soften the distinction between work and home. “We want to create a space that people want to go to every morning,” he says. It has worked: Dang-Vu reports an employee retention rate of close to 100% and says almost all new hires come through word of mouth or staff referrals.
How do you get a consumer to stop scrolling through Twitter and click on something your brand created? That was the question Karina Wilsher, global COO of New York City ad agency Anomaly, was faced with answering for her clients. “If you look at the old model of advertising, it has an ascending story arc with a big reveal at the end, whereas in today’s world, with everyone on their phones, you need to deliver the headline first to get their attention,” she says. Rather than train her team to think like journalists, Wilsher went out and hired one–a former digital editor of The Wall Street Journal.
Anomaly hasn’t stopped with journalists. The award-winning agency, whose clients include Beats by Dre and Coca-Cola, has also recruited data scientists and technology- product designers. It turns out Anomaly is hardly, well, anomalous when it comes to companies reaching outside their conventional talent pool for fresh perspective, new ideas, and skepticism about business as usual. “If you want radical innovation, you need to look to unusual suspects,” says Marion Poetz, an innovation professor at Copenhagen Business School. As you find your industry being uprooted by technology, consider turning to outsider talent who can help push your company forward, so you don’t get left behind.
The U.S. has no federal law governing employee dress codes. Because of that, employers are allowed to implement dress code guidelines they feel are appropriate as long as they do not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, religion, disability or any other federally protected status.
“Dress codes across industries have become more casual than ever – and what were once major taboos like jeans, stubble, messy buns, tattoos, have become increasingly commonplace in the modern workplace,” said Rachel Bitte, chief people officer at Jobvite.
Rather than attempting to create a strict atmosphere of fancy blouses tucked into long skirts and dress shirts with ties, many employers are now open to informal attire and personal fashion trends.
Technology has become so disruptive in the business world that sometimes its exact purpose can be forgotten.
From marketing to product development, to new software tools and communications, the list is almost endless as to the digital transformations taking place.
While disruption can be scary at first, it is absolutely necessary for any entrepreneurial aspiration.
Here’s how these three companies are embracing digital disruption that also satisfy a range of business needs.
There’s a huge temptation when you have a crazy idea to keep it all to yourself but if you read the stories of those people that truly challenged convention you’ll often find a theme of sharing their idea with others that the mainstream media hasn’t really picked up on.
From Nike to Starbucks, the last 50 years have seen the creation of some huge brands by focused entrepreneurs who stand as figureheads to thousands of employees and billions of annual revenue. Yet despite being vastly different in operation, both of these giants hid a secret in plain sight.
The people behind these conglomerates may have been individually lauded as the men behind their respective brand success, but both openly admit to having shared the responsibility of growing their businesses and wouldn’t have succeeded without having done so.
We’ve all been there: You arrive at the gate and it turns out there are more passengers wanting to fly from point A to point B than there are seats on the plane. You wouldn’t be the first person to have thought the thought that, “Well gee, if you only have 200 seats, why would you sell more than 200 tickets?” It turns out, however, that there are a couple of excellent reasons for doing this, powered by money, efficiency and a whole lot of statistical analysis.
Moving 900 million passengers around within the U.S. every year is no mean feat, and people travel for all sorts of different reasons, with leisure and business being the two dominating categories. The thing is, not everybody turns up to every flight. On average, the number of people not turning up to flights is around 5 percent, but, in certain circumstances, that number can be up to 15 percent. Obviously, that puts airlines in an interesting position.
