Can you make money on social media? That is probably the most asked (and least answered) question in the digital age.
While everybody (and their dog) are on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Pinterest, few businesses are able to tap onto this huge reservoir of commercial potential.
Do you know that 40% of our time at work is engaged in selling, even if we’re not in sales? Or that “Bob the Builder” can be a sales trainer?
Sprinkled with discoveries from fields such as behavioural economics, life coaching, and improv acting, To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others by bestselling author Daniel H. Pink scores. Interspersed with charming anecdotes on septuagenarian Fuller Brush salesperson Norman Hall (Pink’s unsung hero who was the last such salesperson), To Sell Is Human is neatly divided into three parts.
“What we have done for ourselves alone die with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal” – Albert Pike
Entrepreneurship is one of the most challenging ways to make a living. Done right, however, it can be the most rewarding, allowing one to fulfill one’s dream, vision, purpose, and mission.
This man wants you to think more clearly (courtesy of Wikimedia)
You’ve heard the saying “to err is human and forgive divine”.
What you may not know, however, is that us Homo sapiens have been hardwired over the millenia to be illogical, distorted in our perception of reality, and inaccurate in our judgements.
In other words, to err repeatedly is human.
Do you know that your five senses (sight, sound, scent, taste and touch) play a major role in what you buy?
While marketers go gaga over social technologies and their impact on digital commerce, it is often our physical perceptions of a product which influence buying decisions.
What is the secret sauce to enduring corporate innovation?
Is it the ability to introduce disruptive technologies? Are smaller companies – also known as emergents – more able to shake the market? What about religion, climate, geography, education, patents or even (gasp) luck?
Social media marketing is probably the most heavily written management topic on the planet. Unfortunately, many books, articles, blogs and podcasts on social media focus too heavily on the “feel good” factor of success stories. These tend to be more inspirational than instructional.
Ric Dragon’s seminal publication Social Marketology is different. Providing a methodical framework covering strategy, organisation, execution and measurement, the book provides a step by step process to managing the social media marketing function.
Weird is the new normal. Mass is dead.
And the rich, who is anybody who can afford to buy stuff or do stuff for fun, are no longer embracing the mediocre middle of the bell curve.
Jerry Newman of University of Buffalo (courtesy of UB Faculty Experts)
Imagine a 57 year old management professor donning the uniform of an undercover fast food worker for 14 months. Opting for this “hardship” research project during his sabbatical, he goes through seven jobs in burger chains like McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s.
Along the way, the professor discovers “powerful truths about what makes businesses great” and provides lessons from behind the counter “guaranteed to supersize any management style”.
What are entrepreneurs and business builders made of? Who should you bring to your team at different stages of growth, and why?
The answers, according to venture capitalists and business leaders Anthony K. Tjan, Richard J. Harrington and Tsun-Yan Hsieh, are contained their book Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck (HSGL). Tackling the human aspect of entrepreneurship, leadership and management, the book surmised that each of us are biased towards one of four traits – namely heart, smarts, guts, or luck – in our decision-making processes.
