BOOK REVIEW for Start Something That Matters, By Blake Mycoskie

Have you ever felt so inspired by a book that the minute you finished reading it you felt as though you had to make a difference in the world. Well by reading “Start Something That Matters” by Blake Mycoskie you will feel just that and even more. Blake Mycoskie is the founder of TOMS Shoes, and in this book he will take you on his journey to Argentina and back. He gives you the blueprint to successfully blending corporate philanthropy into a marketing mix by using examples from his own company. This book teaches you all the fundamentals you need to creating and transforming your own business.

His 6 keys to success guide the reader in the process of how to find a business’s origin story as well as promote a business through word-of-mouth marketing.

Finding the should in your own story

Has there been an event in your life that inspired you to start a business? On a piece of paper, write down this story and why it was so memorable to you. Stories are something that everyone remembers and if you repeat your story over and over to people, they will never forget it.

Face your fears

We all have fears, whether it is in business or life it’s part of being human. In order to overcome fear, one must find a way to focus specifically on that fear and work on trying to overcome it. Write your fears down on sticky notes and paste them around your room or on your desk at work, you will see that when you get them out of your head it will be easier to focus on them.

Be resourceful without resources

There are many ways to shave dollars off the budget of your company. Using Mycoskie beginning at TOMS, he gives you personal ways he achieved his goals without breaking the bank and how you can do the same for your company.

Keep It Simple

Emphasizing simplicity in ones business allows for adaptability when change is needed. The simpler your business starts off the more time there is to focus on your company’s expectations and goals.

Build trust

Building trust creates a transparency in your company that keeps you honest and allows for people to take part in your goals and be a part of the process. Allowing employees to handle projects or daily task of their own company builds even more trust within your company. Putting together a trip or outing with everyone in your company, helps build even more trust and makes everyone on your staff feel equal.

Giving is good business

When you incorporate philanthropy into your business model like Mycoskie has down, your empowering your customers to market your business for you. They become the reason why you succeed because they know what they are doing is going to a good cause. For every pair of TOMS someone buys, a pair of TOMS goes to a child in Argentina or any other developing country in the world. If you are able to implement a way for your company to give back then it will make your business a good business.

This book is nothing but inspirational and makes you realize how to pursue your passions and devote yourself to the causes that inspire you. Mycoskie shows you that you can find profit, passion, and meaning all at once. If you are trying to figure out how to get your great idea going, then you should pick up the book “Start Something That Matters” by Blake Mycoskie and get inspired!

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For our first day, as the weather was not that good, we went to Port Lucaya Market Place, where there is a duty free shop, local people who sell a lot of things and restaurants. We just walked trough the village and ate lunch.  After that we found a bar where you can drink a cocktail in coconut. Which was very cool it that in the Bahamas we can drink because legal age is 18 years old. So we took one coconut with Piňa Colada, it was really nice.

The next day we rented scooter all day long to go a little bit through the island and discover beaches.  We went to Lucayan National Park where we found caves and a really beautiful beach called Gold Rock Beach, where a scene from Pirates of Caribbean 2 was filmed.  Westayed there for 2 hours and it was amazing. And then we decided to go back to downtown Freeport to see how it is. But the weather decided differently for us, on the road it started raining so hard and we just got wet so that we finally go back to Port Lucaya to take back scooters. After a shower we finally spent the night in Port Lucaya where there was animations.

And for our last day on Sunday, we rented again scooter in the morning to go this time to Paradise Cove, where somebody told us that there is also beautiful beach. It’s was true, we were not disappointed. We spent the afternoon in our hotel swimming pool, which was very nice. And then we had to leave so we took the taxi to go back to the port around 5pm.

We had a really nice week end, Bahamian people are very nice and welcoming. Every time we needed something or information to go somewhere there always was somebody to help us which is very pleasant when you don’t know the country.

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A picture is worth 1000 words. Click this link below to learn the way to personal branding!

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Brain of a Blogger

Nowadays, everyone wants to blog and share their ideas with the world, but being a rocking blogger is not as easy it may seem. Without the right foundation, a new blog can be a doomer from the get- go. When starting a blog there are different types of dilemmas that plague beginning bloggers, some examples of these are; blog theme, the perfect URL, SEO, blog content, and share my content. In a couple sentences, I will go through these 5 topics and explain how you can create a blog that is worth reading. If you need tips on how to create a great blog, you can check out some of our blogs at our BCN website.

Blog Theme:

This is sometimes very tricky for the beginner blogger. They are not sure where to begin, but it it always easy to first figure out “why am I doing it”, “who will listen to me?”, “how will I promote my site and measure its success?”, and “how many times should I post?” These are 4 simple questions to ask yourself in order to be successful in the world of blogging.

The Perfect URL:

The perfect URL describes your content but in a short way. It also has keywords in it especially if you are targeting a lot of competitive keyword phrases, you will want to take every advantage you can get.

SEO:

SEO is way to improve the visibility of a website in a search engines natural search. For blogs, you don’t want to repeat the same word over and over again because Google will pick up on that and they could take your site down. You also want to have your title match what you are talking about. Creating the right meta- tags for you blog is also very important, this is where you want to put in all of your keywords so Google will pick up your blog. Lastly, it is important to have people share your link so it becomes more visible to everyone on the web.

Blog Content:

How do you make your content king? Its simple, come up with that great ideas that the other bazillion bloggers haven’t done yet!

Share my Content:

This is the easiest step of all, make sure you are able to customize social sharing buttons. You want to be able to have people share your blog on their blogs, share your blog on facebook, or share your blog on twitter like we have done our social networking sites.

Whether you decide to create a blog for yourself or your company, these 5 dilemmas will solve any problem you are having. If done the right way, these blogs will bring more traffic to your website, will help you interact with your customers, and make it simple for you to keep up-to-date and maintained.

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So here we are finally in South Florida with no place to live. Now for accommodation we have to restart everything since the beginning, going every day on Craigslist and sending a lot of email. But finally after we discussed it with our parents, we just asked if it would not be easier if we stay in our hotel. It’s true that we are properly installed, we have everything we need, a nice room with all efficiency, near downtown Fort Lauderdale, and 2-minutes walk from the beach. So after we negotiate a little bit the price for two months with the management, it’s decided we stay at Fort Lauderdale Beach until July 31st.

Now we just need to enjoy our life in South Florida ! The thing we have done the most since we are here, it’s probably shopping. As our money, Euro is stronger than Dollar, some price are very interesting for us. One thing that we can’t enjoy here it’s the nightlife as we are not 21, which is a little bit annoying as it’s usual for us in France and as it’s easier to meet people at night. But we like our life here because we find people are less stressed than in France, I mean people take time to talk with you, to help you, it’s very pleasant when you’re coming from an other country and you know anybody here. There some little differences that we noticed when we arrived, the first thing is that is very weird for us to see that people do not wear helmets when they are on a motorcycle as in France it is compulsory. The second thing is the number of fast food and restaurant, the first days when we arrived we noticed that everywhere you are going, you can eat !

About my internship at Big Customer Network, everything is going very well too. Since the first day, everybody has made me fell very welcome. The work I am doing is interesting and allows me to learn more about marketing and also thanks to the different things I am working on, gives me more vocabulary which is very good to help me to improve my English.

So finally even if at the beginning we had a little trouble with our accommodations, everything goes well now and we try as much as we can, to discover the American culture and to enjoy our trip. Next week I’ll tell you more about our weekend trip to the Bahamas.

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EDUCATION TOPIC OF THE WEEK

5 Hot Facebook Marketing Trends

Social Media is an important component of an overall digital marketing strategy.  It’s another way to connect with you audience and communicate your company and brand “story”.

Facebook seems to be an area that a lot of companies struggle with.  They know they need a Facebook page, but aren’t quite sure what to do with it.

Facebook can be a great way to drive traffic to your various web real estate – your main company website and magnet sites which can include landing pages, blogs, discussion boards, campaigns, etc.

It’s also a great way to get more “likes” and “shares” for your content.  Make sure you are including those tools on all your content for your visitors to use is vital.

Here are some additional Facebook marketing trends to help give you some ideas

1) Use powerful visuals:

Sites like Pinterest and Instagram (which Facebook recently bough for $1 billion dollars) have made showcasing visuals on your Facebook page even easier.  Infographics are also becoming more and more vital to sharing data and findings in an easy to absorb, visual way.   Also the use of videos is important.

2) Tapping Real- Time Data:

Facebook Timeline is a great way to share your company history and keep your audience up to date with important events, real time data and company or product updates.

3) Using Your Timeline Photo for Marketing:

People spend a lot of time of Facebook.  13% of all time spent on the internet is on Facebook.  Make sure your company shows up well.  Create a special graphic to put on the top of your timeline.  Some great examples are:  Zappos, Starbucks, Nike.  Learn from them.

4) Create interaction with your posts:

Creating ways to get your customers more involved is very important.  So a simple “fill in the blank phrase” or funny status update to your Facebook wall could engage more people to interact with you then you think!  Don’t be afraid to use humor.  People want to be entertained so even if you are an accounting firm, you can still be funny, well a little funny.  Let your personality come through.

5) Interact with your Facebook Community:

People love being acknowledged publicly on Facebook.   So make sure you have someone interacting with your fans when they take the time to respond to a question you ask or post or like something.  Take it another step and mention them in a post or post right on their wall.  You may be surprised with the impact little gestures like that will have on your company.

Don’t get caught up in thinking you need some special Facebook or Social Media Strategy in order to take advantage of using these amazing sites to connect with your audience.  You know how to do that.  Facebook is just one more effective tool you can use as part of your overall digital platform.

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1. Create, curate and own the conversations
2. Get involved in conversations already happening

I’m going to focus on #2 right now because once you experience what others are doing, you are going to want to focus on #1 in a hurry.

I don’t know about you, but I spend a couple hours every week reading articles or blog posts and watching videos on topics related to marketing, technology, domain names, PR, social media, etc. I also spend an equal amount of time reading articles and blog posts, keeping up on discussion board threads and watching videos on all my clients industries. So for instance if you were to see my reading list today subject areas like restaurant construction, medical malpractice insurance,government contracts, infrared saunas as well as others would show up. I’m a learning addict so this is a one of my favorite things I get to do.

As a result of this, I leave a lot of comments and share much of what I read to my community through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, etc. I use services like Digg and StumbleUpon to help publicize what I view so others can enjoy it.
I don’t do any of this as a strategy to create links back to my sites or have Google view me as more authoritative than my peers. I do it because I love learning and I love sharing what I learn with others. But as a result of my participation, these additional benefits happen. Comment marketing can be an incredible inbound marketing tactic when done correctly.

So when we refer to item #2 and tell you to get involved in conversations that are happening that is what we are referring to.

1. Find the relevant blogs or discussion boards in your industry. If you need help with this, let me know. Based on your industry and job function, I will gladly get you a relevant reading/view list for you to start this.

2. Spend some time on these sites every week and comment where appropriate. And share with others.

A couple things about this. I know some of you may have already tuned me out because you think you don’t have time. Get rid of that obstacle. We aren’t talking about needing to spend hours and hours on this to start. Spend 10 minutes a day over your morning coffee or at night over a glass of wine while watching your favorite TV show. Just start. Secondly, leave comments that add value to the conversation. “Great post.” “Thanks” do not qualify as adding value.

What happens over time is others see that you make great comments and see your name a lot which builds like-ability and trust with your business community. I guarantee over time this will create opportunities for you and your business. That is worth a lot.

If you want to dig into this topic more here is a great post by Rand Fishkin by SEOMOZ. You will also see this post as a great example of everything I’m talking about above.

If you need help getting started, let me know.

The post How to get involved in important business conversations that pertain specifically to YOU appeared first on Big Customer Network.

What we absolutely don’t do is look over our shoulder wondering when the next algorithm is going to change and impact our results.  We never want to be in that game.  While we are always experimenting and testing new techniques on our platform, there are some foundational elements we always stick to and so should you:

1. Discover how your customers or prospects search for you.  How do they use language?  People search the way they talk so pay attention to how your audience speaks about your offering.  Then use those phrases  - in your domain name, in your titles, in your content.  But naturally – not like a crazy person.
2. Don’t just spend time and energy on your home page and then neglect all your interior pages.  Make sure every page on your site is focused on a specific topic or keyword phrase.  Use absolute urls for your interior pages instead of lengthy subdomains.  More about this later in the week.
3. Don’t have any broken stuff on your site.  Don’t have duplicate content.  Make sure your site is fast.
4. Contribute interesting, relevant, fresh content that helps your visitors solve a problem, feel better or entertains them and give them easy ways to share it and leave comments.
5. Build a family of high quality sites that you can interlink all your sites to.  Also build relationships with other high authority sites that can earn you links again and again.
6. Provide your audience with a great experience.  Give them the content they want.  Don’t try and trick them and don’t try to get them to give you anything before you’ve earned their trust.

Learning how to create relationships with an audience online is imperative to your long term success.  But it’s not easy and it’s not quick.  You have to work at it consistently and you have to be smart about it.  You can’t get sidetracked by the latest gimmick or new trick.  Plan the work, work the plan!  Before long, you will have a solid platform that attracts the right audience and is algorithm-proof.

If you would like a FREE web analysis with detailed action plan on how to implement these best practices, send me an email with your website (s) listed and we’ll check out what you are doing and provide you with an easy to follow plan to get on track.

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WHAT IS RETARGETING

At BC Network Media, LLC we do our best to keep up with the latest trends and tactics happening on the internet so we can determine how best to utilize them on our platform as well as the platform we create for our customers.  It is also our goal to be a trusted resource to the online community for internet best practices and help keep you informed.

We have been noticing lately the same ads showing up when we are on completely different sites.  We knew Google had created some ad programs that did this but we weren’t completely sure how it worked so we researched it further.  Here is some more detailed information into this practice which is called RETARGETING.

Retargeting is the process of keeping your brand in front of your online audience after they leave your website. So imagine being able to display your brand to people who have some type of interest in it. With retargeting, that is just what you get to do. The banner ads you create for your company will follow users throughout the internet. So this means that people who have shown some type of engagement in your brand will see these ads. When I say “they have shown some type of engagement in your brand” I simply mean they visited your site then left.  While they were on the site they performed an action on your site like signed up for a “free trial” then never came back, or they downloaded something like a webinar and let it expire.

Retargeting gives you another shot to create awareness for your company.  Now you might be thinking this is either a good idea or you hate it all together. If you hate the idea it is probably because you think this is a form of “interruption marketing” which can be annoying for some customers when they are browsing the web. But once you read the next 3 topics below, you might change your mind about retargeting.

1. Why should you use retargeting:

• Helps you reach out to customers who are already qualified which means they know your brand and have found you
• It helps increase the number of conversions for your website
• It helps decrease the cost per lead

2. The Science of Retargeting:

• Starts off with frequency and duration
• Frequency is how often the ads are being shown to someone (whether it be 5 times a day or once a day)
• Duration is how long the ad will be shown to someone (whether it be for 6 months or just a week)
• Ad relevance also plays a big part in the science of retargeting which means you always want to make the content relative to the consumer
• Lastly you want to be able to entice the customer with a coupon or a special deal so they want to come back to your site

3. 4 Retargeting strategies to help any business:

• Occasion list strategy
  • Having a customer be redirected to your site after they made a certain purchase. Example is once you buy a gift for your mom for her birthday an ad will reappear and remind you to get your mom a gift for Valentines Day.
  • Key to take from this: want to make sure you have your ads reappear to customers for different occasions after they made a purchase
• New Product Free Trial
  • After someone downloads a free trial on the internet they will see a reminder or some type of coupon to entice them to come back to the site another time
  • Key to take from this: Want to create banners with coupons on them so people will see the ad and want to click on it
•  Strategy discount offer
  • Someone visits a site then leaves the site without doing anything. Because they visited the site the data will be saved on the computer and placed on a re marketing list. Later in the month he/she will see ads with no offers for the company and then eventually he/she will see discount ads to get her to go back to the website.
  • Key to take from this: Create ads that entice people to come back
•  Portfolio Strategy
  • Someone visits a cleaning site, leaves the site, then later on she will see a friendly display to drive her to the fresh laundry website again.
  • Key to take from this: design a website that looks good and has relevant content so when people are redirected to your site from your ad they want to stay on the page

As you can see above, retargeting can be very helpful. It reduces your cost per lead and increases the number of conversions for your website.

Retargeting has some similar attributes to what we do at BCN Media with our magnet sites, sometimes referred to as landing pages or micro websites.  Our goal with our magnet sites is to make sure we show up when our audience is looking for the solutions we provide.  We show up by using relevant domain names that match how someone would be searching coupled with relevant, authoritative content and related links back to a main company website.  We believe by showing up and then providing a customer experience that matches the customers expectations, we can begin to create an online relationship with them.   At the end of the day it’s all about providing what your visitor is looking for in a way that creates trust and the desire to take additional steps.

The great thing about our magnet sites as well as retargeting efforts, is you can test them over time to determine if they are helping you reach your goals.

To learn more about BIG Customer Network, visit our website http://www.bigcustomernetwork.com/ or fill out this form http://www.bigcustomernetwork.com/contact/ and someone will contact you within 24 hours.

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