The author reminds us that companies don't want to invest in you anymore. Hence take the trainings and learnings into your own hands. Plan it the way you would plan a curriculum. Be prepared to be in permanent "beta" state and learn continuously.

Invest In Yourself

Find a skill that is based on what you are good at, that which gives you joy and that which will pay you. These three parameters will tell you if you will survive in a job in the long term.

Assets, Aspirations & Market Realities

You do not have to be the best in the world. It is sufficient to be the best in your organization, in your timezone, in your industry segment. Pick a hill that has less competition.

All Advantages Are Local

The author says, "your career success depends on both your individual capabilities and your network's ability to highlight them". When you want to create a connection, do not think, "how can that person help me?". Instead, think, "how can I help that person?". In corporate careers, the connections are not transactinal. You will have to build relationship for years to see the fruits.

Network

You will not find good fortune accidentally. You will have to make efforts to be in the right place at the right time. It takes hard work, smart work and good network for opportunity to knock on your door. When you have no resources, create them.

Serendipity

The Startup of You by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha is a short book. It is practical and has actionable advices at the end of each chapter. The book encourages you to treat your career like a start up company.

The Startup of You by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha is a short book. It is practical and has actionable advices at the end of each chapter. The book encourages…

career

Career

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

business

Business

startup

Startups

The Startup Of You - Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha

Unless you go an extra mile integrating your content ideation and creation processes into your sales funnel, your content may never bring in sales despite high search rankings and lots of traffic.
In this case, completing that extra mile requires only five steps, from ideation to CTAs and format.

Making Your Content More Effective In The Sales Funnel

What is it you are selling? Which problems are your products solving? Build your content ideation and keyword research processes around that. Not every “relevant” keyword is worth pursuing if there’s no way to tie it to your value proposition. The best content idea is the one that connects a searchable keyword with the product(s) your brand offers. It is not a bad idea to integrate your products into your keyword spreadsheets.

Match Content Ideas To Your Value Proposition

What questions are people asking when they search using a particular keyword? What problems are they experiencing? Your content should solve those problems and answer those questions. Content structure is one of the most effective ways to boost conversions. Break your content into logical sections. Answer all the questions relevant to the section. Visitors will be drawn deeper and deeper into your content, making them more willing to trust your brand and ultimately buy.

Build Content In A Problem-Solution Format

Search intent reflects why users are likely searching for something. In most cases, people search to buy, get informed, or go somewhere. Your page needs to give them that opportunity. Search intent optimization is key to converting readers into buyers, but don’t forget search intent may evolve based on how well your copy is written and structured. Creating text to match and transform that intent is fundamental to successful intent optimization.

Optimize For Search Intent

<ul><li>After creating content that delivers on the visitor’s intent, integrate calls to action that match the intent, such as:</li><li>List products from your site people can use to follow the steps.</li><li>Include a discount or promotional offer.</li><li>Ask them to sign up for a newsletter to get exclusive offers, etc.</li><li>Enable your visitors to schedule a demo or a sales call often shortens the buyer journey.</li></ul>

Get Creative With Contextual CTAs(Call To Action)

Finally, to make the most of your content creation in the buyer journey, create more videos. Between 37% and 47% of buyers prefer to engage with and learn more about a brand through video. Videos also will make your products more findable through YouTube and carousels on Google and other platforms. Creating videos help acquire new customers as well as close more sales. Any time you are working on an article, ask yourself if there’s a video creation opportunity there.

Create Videos

Follow these five steps to build a stronger bridge between your content marketing and sales – Content Marketing Institute

Discover the world of business and economics.

economics

Economics

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

writing

Reading & Writing

How To Make Content a More Effective Part of Your Sales Funnel - Content Marketing Institute

Misinformation is generally spread without malice or intent. Disinformation, on the other hand, is generally organized and has a specific outcome in mind. 
For example, during school days, the misinformation heard around Beef Jerky Sticks containing earthworms became so widespread that even now there are thousands of Google searches for the topic and the company even had special hotlines to handle questions.

Misinformation Vs Disinformation

Active social media listening is the best way to detect false information before it catches on. This is a baseline activity and its benefits reach far beyond identifying potential misinformation.Look at the data carefully to examine for a common language in comments or user-generated posts. Also, look broadly at posts your community managers are responding to and search for comments that might be otherwise overlooked in day-to-day community management (particularly if your team is large or the duty for responding rotates among different humans).

Protect Your Brand: Always Be Listening

Brands themselves sometimes contribute to a sense of confusion. Be extra clear about things that could cause confusion (like deals or things that have limited availability).  Also consider how you phrase Tweets and messages, especially if your brand is prone to phrasing things as a question. There are times when asking a question sparks community engagement. But it’s not always necessary. NPR, citing Betteridge’s Law, actually trains journalists to generally avoid it.

Brand Interactions

If you encounter false information it’s important to answer it with truth and link to a source where readers can further verify if they so choose. It is also important to do this promptly. If it is clear from a customer’s message that they are using your product or service and have encountered something that sparks a question, it’s probably not misinformation.

Correcting The Records

If someone shows up in your feed for the first time with clearly false information, take a moment to look at their other posts. Check to see if they’re a prospect or customer. If not, it is possible it may be a troll out to spread bad information about you.

Find The Source

What's the difference between misinformation and disinformation? And how can your brand prepare and respond to it?

artsandculture

Society, Arts & Culture

What Brands Need to Know About Misinformation and Disinformation

The digital marketing landscape has changed a lot. Those who are nimble and act fast tend to do well. But it takes more than an ability to be an executioner; you have to be a strategist. Luckily, there's no shortage of imaginative folks who can bring something new to the table. 
There are so many chess moves being made that it is extremely easy to take on too many things if you can't learn the art of focus or saying no.

Seeing Tasks Through

Your value proposition could as well be that you are different. Don't be afraid to lay out what sets you apart and even more importantly, let your customers know how your unique traits benefit them. In a world where companies follow up with, "We do that, too," don't be afraid to be the one saying, "That's just not us, but we do XYZ." Most likely, customers will appreciate your authenticity and genuineness.

Choose Your Lane

Stick to what you know works and have the patience to see what's a fad and what's going to stick. Working with a ton of bright-minded individuals means there's no shortage of ideas. While they all may have the legs for growth potential, find the one idea that makes the most sense for your business and see it through at least one to two quarters.

Give Each Project Enough Time

While perfection may be a good feeling when grading ourselves, zeroing in on a project too closely can actually be detrimental to success. Don't get caught up in every minor detail, as this is how time passes us by (along with our competitors). Build your timelines with a launch date and stick to it. Along the way, there may be things that will knock you off your guard rails; but with a proficient plan, your team can stick to what must be done for a successful launch. Keep the goal in sight.

Execute Until it's Nearly Perfect

Have you ever met that person who says, "I'd have a lot more success if I just had time to reflect?" Perhaps we are all guilty of falling into that bucket every now and then.  Go to the drawing board and assess what you did well with each project and what you can improve on.  The overall message is to build a strategy and stay keenly focused on closing down on it. Commit to something that you're at least 80 percent sure will bring in the new revenue, and don't let shiny object syndrome distract you from obtaining it.

Rinse, Repeat and Double Down On What Works

Stick to what you know works and have the patience to see what's a fad and what's going to stick.

productivity

Productivity

problemsolving

Problem Solving

Have Trouble Seeing Tasks Through? Try This 4-Step Process

Using outbound sales to boost inbound leads can result in positive effects. This is confirmed by many businesses that found a way to grow organically through a well-balanced outbound and inbound plan.

Balancing an outbound and inbound plan

The outbound sales process focus on a hand-picked audience and help you decide on the direction for content marketing. Outbound sales help define the marketing strategy by seeing what made the contacted customer buy your product or service. Once you've gathered the information from outbound, edit and optimise your content strategy to encourage organic customers to have a smoother conversion process.

Use outbound sales to define your content marketing strategy

The outbound sales process helps to sell your product or service, but it also has other benefits that are not immediately visible. A customer that didn't buy will visit your website for more info or double-check the facts your outbound team offered. It results in increased organic traffic, a better SEO ranking, and a better chance to reach more leads.

Outbound activity increases traffic on your website

Gathering data from potential customers does not just help improve outbound sales; it also potentially improves your chance of learning more about your customer. Therefore, the person working with outbound sales can define the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and other data. The most important factors that affect the ICP are:<ul><li>Industry</li><li>Company Size</li><li>Annual Revenue</li><li>Location</li><li>Main Customers</li><li>Operation Longevity</li></ul> If you include these in your outbound sales conversation, you can get useful information for your inbound strategy.

Define your ideal customer profile using outbound sales

Outbound interaction allows you to shape the buyer's journey on your website. When you have an idea about the ICP, you can optimise the journey. The following questions can help the outbound sales efforts to customise the buyer's journey. <ul><li>Where do the customers look for more information before buying your product/service?</li><li>What main things do they want to know before making a decision?</li><li>What terms did they search for in the decision-making process?</li></ul>

Define the buyer's journey with outbound

It is not uncommon for companies to understand the buyer's journey but still have issues with inbound lead generation. The outbound process can help to find inefficient inbound processes. You can identify the main inbound issues by asking current and potential customers pointed questions. This strategy requires you to have a good analyst that can centralise the answers and expose any problems with your inbound strategy, such as not enough content, a lengthy check-out process. or not enough payment methods.

Outbound sales can help identify a conflicting inbound strategy

Since you have a database with outbound contacts, you're one step away from targeting them with PPC online advertising. Include unconverted clients from outbound campaigns on a PPC strategy to increase the chance for conversion. However, ensure not to overdo the retargeting as excessive advertising can turn them away for good.

Use outbound contacts for ad retargeting

The benefits of outbound sales for inbound processes.

Learn how to grow your business organically through a well-balanced sales plan, utilizing outbound sales to boost inbound leads.

6 Ways Outbound Sales Helps Inbound Leads Grow⎪Predictable Revenue

Businesses often overcomplicate their product strategy and end up navigating through a maze of competing objectives and needless requirements. Product managers in any industry can implement a simple and adaptable framework to streamline their product process.

A product strategy doesn't need to be complex

A product strategy requires three essential elements: <ul><li>Reputation</li><li>Capabilities</li><li>Market need</li></ul> These three forces work together. Without reputation, the product is not trusted. Without market need, there is no demand. Without capabilities, the product cannot be made.

Three driving forces of product strategy

A market need includes:<ul><li>Better serving an existing need. For example, Uber took the taxi-service industry and found a better way to meet driver and customer requirements.</li><li>Uncovering an unknown need. For example, developing a product no one imagined was possible to create.</li><li>Creating a new need. For example, the iPhone created a platform for applications to simplify peoples' lives and then created consumer needs for the applications.</li></ul>

Market need

To develop new product ideas, ask:<ul><li>If you decided to end your current product line in six months, what impact would that have on your customer? If there would be little impact, consider not expanding this product line.</li><li>Is your new product going to disrupt the market? If it only creates a ripple on the surface, you need to reconsider whether to pursue it at all.</li><li>What would happen if you were to delay the release of a new product to make it more advanced? A good product roadmap consists of balancing timing with opportunity.</li></ul>

How to develop new product ideas

Consider your current capabilities and those that could be acquired. The minimum capabilities are:<ul><li>Technical. Without this capability, your team will be unable to create the product. It may seem obvious but is often overlooked.</li><li>Manufacturing. Pay attention to the criteria when evaluating potential manufacturers, such as experience building similar products, robust quality control, suitable financial and inventory terms and conditions.</li><li>Distribution. Without a sound distribution system or network, you will not be able to support the demand of your customers.</li></ul>

Capabilities

Reputation impacts the success of your product in two ways:<ul><li>In the ethical and moral behaviour of the company.</li><li>In the company's expertise in a particular area.</li></ul> The success of the sales, marketing, and distribution channels is based on your reputation with customers. One way to improve your chances of success is to analyze your company's reputation from an outsider's point of you. Read press releases, listen to investors' feedback, gather data on complaints and requests with your marketing or customer teams, research online reviews, and invite customer responses to your new product idea.

Reputation

A simple but effective product strategy framework that consists of three key elements.

Sometimes the simplest approaches are the most effective. Use this product strategy framework, comprising just three key elements, to streamline and focus your next product journey.

product

Product & Design

The 3 Essential Elements of a Streamlined Product Strategy

When it comes to branding, potential customers feel that what you see is what you get. What you see is the brand's visual identity. Visual identity is the impression you create through visible elements of your brand. Images are powerful because they speak on an emotional level. It is then important to ensure your visuals are communicating accurately.

Visual identity is what you see

Visual identity is all the graphical information and is used to express who a brand is, from the logo to the interior design of a store. The visual identity comes together in a brand style guide, instructing how to represent the brand visually. The purpose of visual identity:<ul><li>create an emotional impression on people</li><li>express the nature of the brand and services or products offered</li><li>using consistent visuals to unite the business</li></ul>

Visual identity

Brand identity expresses everything that makes the brand what it is, including visual identity, non-visual elements such as brand voice, copy editing guides, mission statement, core values, etc. Visual identity expresses who a brand is on the outside.

Visual identity vs. brand identity

The building blocks of a visual identity creates a cohesive meaning. <ul><li>Graphics are drawn or designed pictures. It could be as simple as shapes or more complex, such as logos, icons, illustrations, and animations.</li><li>Typography is the shape or style of the text in your branding.</li><li>Colour is used to identify a brand through a colour scheme, usually not more than three colours, and often specific hues, shades and tints.</li><li>Imagery is the photography and video content, which represent the brand's personality and customers.</li><li>Brand assets are physical objects that contribute to a brand's visual identity.</li></ul>

The elements of visual identity

Graphic design often acts as a roadmap for keeping brand visuals consistent and aesthetically pleasing. <ul><li>Logo and branding design is the centre of a visual identity. A logo is the symbol for a brand and informs many of the graphics, colour and typography choices.</li><li>Business and advertising. Companies use their visuals to reach out to customers, such as brochures, billboards, tv/magazine/banner ads, etc.</li><li>Digital tools are created to be used, and visual identity is used to nudge the user towards completing their task.</li></ul>

Graphic design and visual identity

<ol><li>Define your brand identity, as this should guide the visuals. What is your mission statement? And core values? Who are the buyer personas? What is your communication style?</li><li>Be familiar with the six elements of design.</li><li>Tell a compelling story. Visuals grab attention, but stories pull people in.</li><li>Aim for simplicity. Focus on one message at a time.</li><li>Balance consistency with contrast. All the elements should look like it's part of the same brand.</li><li>Know when to be bold and when to step back.</li><li>Design for the medium. An online brand will look different from a brick-and-mortar brand.</li></ol>

How to design a visual identity

Visual identity can help to tell your brand's story.

To make sure your visual identity is communicating the way it should, we’ve compiled this guide to the ins and outs of visual identity—we'll show you how to create one that will inspire customers to pay attention.

Visual identity: everything you need to know about this essential aspect of branding - 99designs

For the first time since 2008, volume is missing from high-volume hiring, leaving most organizations using traditional recruitment strategies unprepared. As a result, employers are now having to quickly adapt to the current situation — with no true guideline for doing it the right way.
Companies are consequently increasing wages, offering sign-on bonuses, and covering tuition fees in a bid to get candidates through the door and to keep hold of current employees. And yet, all over the world, the talent pools for hourly roles continue to dry up.

A Hiring Crisis

The heightened risk of getting sick, along with low wages, inflexible work schedules, and the increasing number of remote vacancies are all contributing to the talent crisis affecting the high-volume hiring. 
But the lack of candidates for hourly jobs, which are mostly entry-level in nature, is the result, not the cause, of the broken talent acquisition practices that have been in place for years. Again, the pandemic has simply brought these issues to light.

People Don’t Want To Work For Others

In the current context, the lack of candidates at the top of the funnel seems like the most pressing problem. Yet if we look beneath the surface, we see that across industries, companies in the high-volume-hiring space are struggling with high attrition, poor-quality hires, and high drop-off rates throughout the recruitment funnel.   These problems are constant, and fixing them could put an end to the shortage of workers, as fewer people quitting means fewer seats to fill.

High-Volume Hiring No Longer Works

Traditionally, attraction and selection have been treated as two distinct challenges. Companies have always benefited from high volumes of candidates, so they rarely had to worry about not having enough talent to choose from.  Now, as talent pools shrink, employers realize that this approach to recruitment is deeply flawed. At the same time, they’re becoming anxious about people having more leverage over their job preferences. Translation: You can’t attract candidates unless you make your brand, workplace, and offering attractive.

The Employers Are In A Flux

Selection processes, whether powered by a single recruiting platform or multiple tools, tend to be linear in how they screen out candidates. A candidate needs to meet the threshold set for each stage to progress to the next. However, in a rapidly-changing labor market, this approach sets you up for failure.  To future-proof your hiring, you need to take a holistic approach to recruiting and move from a rigid, linear process to a flexible, agile one.

Fixing the Faulty High-Volume-Hiring Process 

<ul>
<li>Matching. First, matching should help you identify the right applicants, as well as get them excited about the role.</li>
<li>Automation. In a tight labor market, you want a process that’s quick and enables you to offer job security as fast as possible.</li>
<li>Candidate experience. You should build an engaging application experience that reflects your employer brand and helps job-seekers learn about the business and the role before applying.</li>
<li>Business intelligence. When hiring at scale, controlling your process and having full visibility into your data is essential.</li>
</ul>

The Four Areas To Focus On

Simple tips to determine if your candidates have the behavioural traits and skills needed for the role

books

Books

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

communication

Communication

Hiring the Best in Class

corporateculture

Corporate Culture

The Hourly Hiring Crisis Is a Process, Not a People, Problem   - ERE

Your brand is the exact blueprint of how you will represent yourself to your customers. It’s the manual that tells you and anyone in your company who and what your company is not only from a design standpoint but also, who your customers are<a href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/283181"> </a>, what their wants and needs are, what the voice and tone of your marketing efforts and communication will look like.

What a brand really is

Understand what emotions your customers are craving, and you will win your branding efforts. Oftentimes, a business’s marketing<a href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/topic/marketing"> </a>campaigns focus too much on delivery mechanisms and not the state the customer will be in once they receive the product or service.

Sell emotions

Most customers don’t actually want the specific item, service, or product they purchase. They actually want more safety, security, happiness… or less pain, less stress, less time or effort output, and more results. Most customers' wants and needs are simple. While attempting to stand out, entrepreneurs tend to overcomplicate things and think that because their mechanisms of delivery for their products are so different from their competitors that their customers care as much about it as they do.

What customers care about

<ul><li>What emotions are evoked when my customers receive my product or service?</li><li>What are the pain points that my customers are trying to solve?</li><li>What is the end-state of receiving my product or service for an extended period of time? </li><li>What are the results my product or service delivers?</li></ul>When people are first learning about your product or service, what are the emotions they are feeling? As they move from a cold/unaware person to a warmer and more educated lead, what emotions and thoughts do they have about your product and service?

Questions to ask yourself

If you buy a Tesla, you signal to the world that you’re forward-thinking. Maybe you like technology, renewable energy, or you just like fast cars? No matter what emotional reason you bought the car, fun, safety, prestige, status… or any other reason, you still signal to the world that you’re the type of person that would buy a Tesla, and you join a silent club of Tesla owners.

Create Community

When you define your brand, you create a container for your business. You figure out what fits into “the box” that defines who and what your business is and who it serves. You understand what it is that you do you and what you don’t do. When you’ve created this roadmap, it allows you the ability to say no to opportunities that will create inconsistencies in your business.

Consistency is key

Color pallets and fonts matter, but it all comes down to how your customer feels about the promise you make to them. 

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

Your Brand Is Much More Than Your Logo. Here's What Really Makes Your Brand Stand Out to Customers.

You seem to be doing the right things. You and your team are working incredibly hard and making progress, but you can’t help thinking: is this how it’s supposed to be? It feels like no matter how hard everyone on the team tries, we never get ahead of our problems. And we obviously need some kind of breakthrough

Tell me if this story sounds familiar

New companies appear while others fade away. Products and processes come and go. In a few years, an industry can change from what seemed a stable oligopoly to fierce, cutthroat competition.

Change is rampant

Businesses used to follow a hierarchical structure, with layers of management. Entrepreneurs could make money by organizing the efforts of others. Today businesses are often flatter, with fewer layers separating senior management from junior staff. Teams form to do projects, then disband when the project is completed.

No more hierarchical structure

That flood — the digital revolution — has changed not just how we think about work but, on some level, even what it means to be successful. You can’t get away with doing business as you did before; you can’t remain prosperous while ignoring the big changes occurring on your doorstep. But adapting isn’t free; it requires time and effort and careful consideration of what trends really make sense for your enterprise. I have a recommendation: Be bolder than you have to be. Move faster than you have to.

The digital revolution 

The reason you are struggling is that you are trying to run a 21st-century business in a world that is rapidly changing. I don’t mean your product or service needs to change. Those can be fine just as they are. The problem is almost always with your internal processes, systems, and the way you hire, manage, measure performance, etc.The old rules of thumb are out of date. Previous business plans will have to be redrawn, automatic assumptions will have to be questioned, accepted strategies will have to be revised.

Adapt your business to the new reality

How can you learn to reinvent and adapt your business model and products? Innovation is essential for businesses that want to survive in an increasingly competitive environment. To be competitive, a company must have the ability to successfully re-launch itself as new markets change.That might mean constantly thinking about where your product or service can go next, constantly nurturing emerging opportunities, and constantly bringing in new blood with new perspectives. When developing growth opportunities, it’s important to avoid getting paralyzed with self-doubt

Find and reassess growth opportunities

Purpose-built companies are better suited to the modern world. By this, I don’t mean companies with a vague do-gooder mission statement found on their website. I mean companies that are designed internally to take full advantage of the environment they work in

Purpose behind money-making

In this kind of environment, the company that gives employees the best chance to develop their skills and use those skills in ways that matter to them will have a huge advantage over its competitors.We are in an era where the ability to think independently, question collective wisdom, and create new solutions to old problems will be more important than ever. We need leaders who can foster a culture of continuous learning. We need managers who are not afraid to let go of the old way of doing things when it doesn’t work anymore. We cannot stick with what was good enough yesterday.

Enabling and supporting learning and adaptability

The ability to see things from different perspectives is an essential competence in life. All high-performers, need to do this.By identifying the new opportunities based on other perspectives, you are able to move quicker than your competitors. You can recognize patterns before others do, see connections sooner, capitalise on emerging trends even before they are very visible.

Consider multiple perspectives

Here are the facts. Business models change. The rules of business are constantly being rewritten, sometimes in significant ways. Industries rise and fall. New ones are invented every day, others are consolidated out of existence. What this means is that business today is an evolutionary process. If your business model isn’t changing, then it’s dead.”

Redefine your business model

Tell me if this story sounds familiar: you’re running at full speed and you feel like you’ve been going full speed for a very long time — forever. You seem to be doing the right things. You and your…

Business is changing. Will you adapt or be left behind?

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