Archives for March 2015
Women in the Business World Still Deal with Gender Bias
I have three daughters, and I love them all tremendously. Heather, Meagan and Lindsey have brought me so much joy throughout my life. And all three of them, from the time they were very young, have been extremely confident and assertive. They had it far from easy in their developmental years and I was not always the best parent. My girls have a passion for life, they are surrounded by friends and people of all backgrounds and beliefs, they have a vision for their future and a confidence that radiates from their soul. But they fight something I do not.
My son Jordan has this characteristic as well, but have you ever noticed how itâs different for women than it is for men?
You see a man who is confident and assertive and heâs considered a âleaderâ and a âgo-getter.â But then you see
At the head of Viral Solutions are Thomas von Ahn and Christine Kelly, two small business marketing experts with decades of experience in the trenches. Tom and Christine help to give their clients a fresh new outlook on how they can run their business, thanks to the insight they gained in the trenches of the business world themselves. They arenât your standard tech geeks; rather than forcing technology to be a solution to every problem, they apply their outstanding knowledge and sales processes to the technology thatâs available to them. This makes for much more effective, streamlined marketing campaigns.
a woman with the same traits, and theyâre characterized as âbossyâ or (pardon the language) âbitchy.â Itâs a complete double standard.
And this double standard manifests itself very early in childhood. Girls are basically expected to be programmed for different roles than boys. In the views of many, they should be playing house, rather than playing sports. They should be playing with dolls, not action figures. They should be submissive to natural born leaders – supposedly men! That is RIDICULOUS!
The fact is, in 2015 we should be far beyond the point where men are expected to be the leaders, and women are expected to be in the background. I have known and worked with some pretty remarkable women throughout my career. Matter of fact, my business partner is female and so is our resident PhD (Katie Doseck). However, many women still to this day struggle with being a woman and being expected to behave a certain way in the working world.
But the qualities that make a great entrepreneur and a great leader do not discriminate by gender. A great leader needs:
⢠Wisdom to know what the right decision is and when to make it
⢠Strength to take on responsibilities and carry out tasks that others would shrink from
⢠Tact to know how to communicate with people of all backgrounds, beliefs and temperaments
⢠Courage to shoot for goals and accomplishments they have dreamed of
⢠Resilience to pick themselves back up after the inevitably fail
Not a single one of these traits is exclusive to either men or women. Thatâs because leadership knows no gender.
I would challenge us all to remove ourselves of our biases whenever we make business decisions and judge people solely for the qualities they possess.
Copyright 2015 Viral Solutions LLC
by Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100âs of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.
What Entrepreneurs Can Learn from March Madness
March Madness has finally kicked off. Itâs one of the greatest several weeks of sports for the entire year â nonstop college basketball games for four consecutive days each weekend. What more could you ask for?
As you kick back and enjoy the games this year, you could also consider it an opportunity to meditate a bit on what it means to be a leader in your company.
Every year, we see new unforgettable moments of leadership, perseverance and teamwork happen in the tournament. Any entrepreneur would do well to learn from them.
Here are a few examples:
- You shouldnât be afraid of competition. Have you ever noticed how teams pick up their game in a big way when the tournament begins? Thatâs because itâs a higher level of
competition and greater stakes than ever before. The teams that find the greatest success are those that thrive in a pressure-filled, competitive environment. The same is true in the business world. You shouldnât be afraid of your competition. Instead, consider competition an opportunity to raise your level of work and push yourself to heights youâve never seen before.
- Believe in your team. Every time a new champion is crowned, you always hear the players say things like, âthis is a great group of men and we never stopped believing in each other.â That belief in your team is extremely powerful. If you do not believe that your team and your company is capable of achieving your goals, then guess what: you probably wonât. Trust your employees to do their jobs well and work as one cohesive unit â micromanaging will never help.
- Success comes from even the most unlikely places. Just in recent years, we saw Butler go to back-to-back championship games out of the Horizon League, and little known VCU and George Mason reach the Final Four. Never underestimate what the underdog is capable of. When you are looking to hire someone new to your team, sometimes it pays to give extra attention to employees that worked their way from the ground up through sheer grit and determination, rather than those that were seemingly destined for greatness.
- Know Your Competition. You should have the mindset that you are the competition. However, you can also be over confident and underestimate your competition. Yes – be proud. Never walk into your arena unprepared for any objection. Know your strengths. Know your weaknesses. Know the external threats. Execute your game-plan. Do not become this years Iowa State Cyclones!
Keep these lessons in mind, and enjoy the tournament! Keep on Wisconsin, keep on!
Copyright 2015 Viral Solutions LLC
by Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100âs of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.
What Kinds of Content are Proven to Draw the Most Attention?
By now, you know that whenever you put together a content marketing campaign, you need to have high-quality material that is interesting and applicable to your target audience. What you might not realize is that there are specific types of content that you can post on your blog or social media that are much more likely to get hits and search engine traffic.
Here are a few content formats that you should strongly consider adding to your content marketing strategy:
- âUltimateâ guides. People donât like having to search through the entire internet for a huge amount of information on one single topic. Therefore, âultimateâ guides can be a big help to
your business, because they allow you to put just about all the information a person could ever want on a given topic into one single location. This means that you have created the go-to resource on a topic, which means people will be more likely to link to you. Use this content as a blog or article on your website or a downloadable white paper in PDF format
- Industry studies. People love content that is chock full of data because itâs interesting, easily digestible and easy to share. Plus, relevant data and studies relating to your industry are probably very easy to find, making them a pretty renewable marketing resource. You can even perform your own case studies based on your business operations and then write up a report to publish on your website and share on all your platforms.
- Visual content. Images and videos have been proven over and over again to be extremely valuable content marketing tools. To get more specific, people love interactive images, diagrams, quizzes, infographics and puzzles. Many people in the United States identify themselves as visual learners, and a lot of times this kind of visual content can take complicated information and make it a lot easier to understand.
- Long lists. You can find âtop 10â blog posts all over the internet, but what about âtop 100â or âtop 200?â Similar to the way the âultimate guidesâ work, having such a long list can make that piece of content the go-to source for its particular topic.
While there is certainly plenty of room to be creative in your content marketing campaign, these four types of content should factor heavily into your plans. Contact us today at Viral Solutions for more information on how to get started with an effective content marketing campaign.
Copyright 2015 Viral Solutions LLC
by Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100âs of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.
How to Get More Subscribers to Your Businessâs Blog
Itâs always a good idea to optimize your blog for search engines and to try to get links from other sites and through social media, but whatâs really worth its weight in gold for a blogger is a subscription. Subscriptions mean guaranteed views to your new posts, and people who subscribe are more likely to regularly share the content that you post. If you want to go platinum, make sure your blog has freemium offers that are impulsive!
So how can you set up your blog in a way that will make people more likely to subscribe? Here are a few tips (killer stuff at the bottom):
- Â Have a subscribe/opt in field on your home page. Before users even travel from your home page to your blogâs landing page, there should be at least one prominently featured field
Copy-writing services. | Beyond our regular sales and marketing services, we also offer full-scale copy-writing services to develop content for your website, blog, featured articles, emails or any other types of written content that you need. All you need to do is let us know your content needs and we will provide you with a quote. Our copywriters take care of the rest, delivering professional, high-quality content straight to you.
that allows users to subscribe to your blog. This field should have an eye-catching, appealing headline encouraging people to sign up, such as âsign up for free business tips from experts,â or something relevant to your company.
- Also include opt in fields on each blog post. Many times, people will land on an individual blog post from a google search or social media link. Therefore, you should make sure that you include the same subscription field at the end of each blog post or in the sidebar so that people who come from external sources can easily opt in to get updates.
- Make subscription fields minimalistic. People shouldnât have to feel like youâre asking them to fork over too much information simply to sign up to your subscription list. Just get names and email address. Three or fewer fields have been proven to be the most effective means of attracting subscribers.
- Promote on your own social media. Not only should you be regularly posting your blog and newsletter content to your social media pages, but you should also be letting your followers know that there is the option to subscribe.
- Give incentive for subscriptions. Make it clear that subscribers get access to exclusive content, or possibly offer special deals to people who subscribe to your newsletters and blogs.
- Most importantly: produce quality content. Obviously, people arenât going to be interested in subscribing to your content if it isnât any good. Focus on producing high quality content at all times, and that will go a long way toward boosting subscription numbers.
- Link to Relevancy. Your blog posts should be original content. However, often times, the best content is curated from other sources with your added commentary, insight, viewpoint and critique. When you do so, make sure you link to the original source and link internally to prior relevant posts you have written.
- Freemiums. With every blog article, you should have relevant freemium offers that grab attention and draw those with a pulse. These freemium offers should be relevant to your article and enhance the content with deeper dive knowledge, available through an opt-in form.
Take these tips into consideration, and go get some brand new subscribers to your businessâs blog and newsletter! Then when you do the last two points, you can actually monetize your blog.
Copyright 2015 Viral Solutions LLC
by Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100âs of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.
5 Things You Should Know About LinkedIn
When used correctly, LinkedIn is one of the most powerful tools for business networking that youâll find on the web. When you are proactive with the way that you use the social network, you can reach out to new potential clients or business partners and find a lot of information that could help you improve your business operations.
However, there are a few things that you should know about LinkedIn if you are going to get the most out of your experience on the site:
- Not everyone wants to network. Everyone uses the site differently, and you need to figure out which people are ones who are likely to want to reach out to others they havenât met, and
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which people arenât particularly interested in extending their network beyond existing connections they know. If you are reaching out to someone that you havenât met before, explain how you found them and why youâre interested in connecting. If they donât accept your request to connect, be respectful of that.
- You need to make a good first impression with your profile. After all, your profile is the first thing your connections will see. You should have a professional-looking photo, detailed information on your profile, personal recommendations, a thoughtful summary and a customized profile URL.
- People notice spam. People hate being advertised to, and considering that LinkedIn is fully of business-savvy people, theyâre going to know when youâre only there to spam them with advertisements. Even subtle advertising likely isnât going to be of much use.
- You need to get personal. Just like in your normal marketing practices, you need to be personal with the way that you use LinkedIn. If you give people personal acknowledgement, theyâll be much more likely to reciprocate and form a relationship with you. Add custom messages to connection invitations, recommend them for services and more.
- Groups are imperative. Groups are the best way to increase the size of your network and reach out to people that youâve never met. By participating in and starting discussions, you can increase your visibility while taking in a whole lot of useful information.
For more tips, reach out to us today at Viral Solutions.
Copyright 2015 Viral Solutions LLC
by Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100âs of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.