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Walter Lim – Young Upstarts All about entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, ideas, innovation, and small business. Fri, 23 Mar 2018 16:00:15 +0000 en-US hourly 1 All about entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, ideas, innovation, and small business. Walter Lim – Young Upstarts All about entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, ideas, innovation, and small business. Walter Lim – Young Upstarts [Review] The Freaks Shall Inherit The Earth Fri, 08 Jul 2016 02:30:36 +0000 the freaks shall inherit the earth

Chris Brogan is a freak. And a very successful one too.

Author of numerous bestselling books on social media and influencer marketing, including “The Impact Equation“, Chris has consulted with huge companies like Disney, Microsoft, Coke and Google, and is the publisher of Owner Magazine. He has also sold multi-million dollar companies, and amassed huge followings on social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus.

His latest book “The Freaks Shall Inherit the Earth: Entrepreneurship for Weirdos, Misfits, and World Dominators” touts itself to be a “real-world business playbook” for entrepreneurs (or wannabe entrepreneurs) who have a problem fitting into the strictures of society.

It teaches you how to think differently to overcome your fears, create a vision for your exciting new venture, and start making your entrepreneurial dreams come true.

In other words, “The Freaks Shall Inherit the Earth” was written specifically for weirdos and misfits. Like me. And boy was I charged up after reading it!

So what lessons are contained in this slim business book? There are 12 altogether, and I shall summarize them here.

1. Embrace Your Freakiness.

Be proud of your freakishness as an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur. Make art and embed it in your craft, regardless of the business you are in.

Learn to overcome fear. Build discipline into your life by changing your programme, talking yourself into it, starting and keeping good habits, “eating” lots of goodness (uplifting content), carving away bad habits (like watching TV), and working more than you celebrate.

2. Define Your Own Success.

Establish the ingredients which make up your success. Money? Time? Fame? Achievement? Progress? Health? Serenity?

Define the specific success targets for your venture, eg:

  • 10,000 regular customers a year
  • Losing 30 lbs in 3 months
  • Reading 20 books in a year

Understand that failure is definitely an option, and use it as an opportunity to learn.

“Instead of thinking it as failure, think of it as an outcome you didn’t expect or want.” – Anthony Robbins

3. Learn New Skills.

Work on your weaknesses and commit to learning one or two new skills every two to three months. Ensure that you put aside time to learn about marketing, sales, finance, and legal aspects of running a business.

Put it in your schedule so that you will not forget. Master time, be curious, and explore so much that you make Dora look like a homebody.

4. Work from a Framework Daily.

Set aside goals for measurement according to these distances:

  • Five years
  • Three years
  • One year
  • Six months
  • Three months
  • One month
  • One week

Put in place positive daily habits and schedule it so that whatever needs doing gets done. Work out a list of things that needs doing. Through this, you will build discipline and kill time wasters.

5. Define Your Path.

Regardless of whether you are an employee-preneur, employee or solopreneur, there is always an end objective for you. Look towards where you are heading towards. Use it to decide on what you should do right now and where you are heading to next.

Each destination will have a unique requirement. The important thing is that if you do not have a road map, you are more likely to get mired in the woods and lose your direction.

6. Fall in Love with Not Knowing.

Learn to be comfortable with what’s unknown. Overcome your fear of failure and have a battle plan so that you can better prepare for such occurrences.

Use the following framework to figure things out:

  • What exactly am I trying to figure out?
  • Can I break this project down and list the smaller details?
  • Does any of this seem familiar?
  • Can I accelerate my learning?
  • Can I buy my way past some of this (in the short term)?
  • What’s a task list that would help me work on this?
  • Can I find a similar model?
  • Where can I research?
  • Who can I call?
  • What can a practice plan look like?
  • How will I know I’m better?

Remember the immortal words of Picasso…

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” – Pablo Picasso

7. Welcome Obstacles and Challenges.

Set a new challenge for yourself every month, and use it to hone your obstacle clearing muscles.

This can be a list of the various challenges which you may normally avoid or run away from. It can be an interesting list of stuff like “Ask my customer for referrals.” or “Call the officer from the regulatory department”.

The more challenges you face daily, the stronger and more resilient you will feel about your business, and more importantly, your life.

8. Create Systems That Work for You.

Like the step on creating frameworks, you need to build systems that help you to work better. This would help you to automate certain tasks so that you do not have the burden of remembering to do them each day.

For Chris Brogan, he writes down five to seven reminders on what he needed to focus on daily. He also has a “compass” which he reads daily – one which has three sections:

  • Daily actions: The detailed checklist of stuff that needs to be done each day.
  • Reminders: The important strategic goals which you’ve set out to achieve, for the short, medium and long-term.
  • Affirmations: Positive words that encourage you, edify you, and inspire you.

9. Build Your Media Empire.

In the age of social media and digital content, it pays to have a media project for your work. Before building your media channels, do consider variables like cost, time to create, personality (are you good on video?), and searchability (think Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Optimization).

For Chris Brogan, the structure of his business is anchored on three areas:

  • Content: Create interesting content that people can relate to and choose to consume;
  • Community: Build a community with your content, and interact with people who consume that content;
  • Marketplace: Create a marketplace to reach out to like-minded folks in your community in specific areas of interest.

10. Connect with Your Fellow Freaks.

Make a pledge to connect with at least three to five new people a day if possible. The more folks you can find to serve, the better your chances of success.

Beyond helping others and serving them, you may also wish to connect two people who might benefit from knowing each other.

Do everything to keep your monchu (ie family in Okinawa) alive and well.

11. Own Everything.

As an entrepreneur, it is important to instill the concept of ownership in everything that you do. The more you are able to take ownership of your circumstances, the better.

Start with owning your words. Keep a list of negative and defeatist things not to say, and make a new list of empowering words.

Make positive choices in your life too, so that you can keep growing.

12. Be Ready for Bad Times.

Last, but certainly not least, be ready when the sh*t hits the fan. There will be road bumps, and there will be people whom you disappoint.

Adopt the three A’s when you apologise. In the restaurant world example cited by Chris, it would be as follows:

  • Acknowledge: “Your food isn’t ready to be served yet. It has really taken a long time.”
  • Apologize: “I’m really sorry for the delay.”
  • Act: “I’m going to give you a free appetizer to make up for it. May I also give you your next drink on the house?”

A Clarion Call for Freaks.

With the encouraging call for freaks, weirdos and oddballs to “inherit the Earth”, The Freaks Shall Inherit the Earth is a joy to read.

The most important message? Start doing your life’s work now. In other words, don’t just read the book and shelf it.

In Chris’ world, it is better to start somewhere now than to wait around for the chance of doing something only when everything is in order. Which will probably never happen.

Let me end by quoting a paragraph from the book.

“This is your moment. Draw up your plans, simple ones, and go after them. Take your shot. And if it doesn’t work, take another, and another, and win.” – Chris Brogan

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[Review] The Cultural Intelligence Difference Fri, 22 Jan 2016 02:30:08 +0000 the-cultural-intelligence-difference

How do you work effectively in a cross-cultural team? What should you do to seal a deal with a foreign partner?

The answers to these and more are found in “The Cultural Intelligence Difference: Master the One Skill You Can’t Do Without in Today’s Global Economy” by cultural intelligence thought leader David Livermore.

Billed as the “one skill you can’t do without in today’s global economy”, Cultural Intelligence or CQ is a scientifically validated instrument. It joins the ranks of other forms of “intelligence” like IQ (Intelligence Quotient), EQ (Emotional Intelligence), SI (Social Intelligence), and AQ (Adversity Quotient).

Collectively, these different “intelligences” helps us to more effectively navigate our lives and our workplaces.

So how do we measure CQ and use it to improve our cross-cultural effectiveness?

What is Cultural Intelligence (CQ)?

According to Livermore, the definition of cultural intelligence can be understood as follows:

“Cultural intelligence is the capability to function effectively in a variety of cultural contexts – national, ethnic, organisational, and generational.”

Rooted in intelligence research, a strong performance in CQ helps us not only to better understand different cultures but to effectively solve problems and adapt across multiple cultural settings.

Such abilities are critical in an increasingly connected global economy. With newly emerging markets, diverse workforces, and trans-national teams, everybody needs to be more culturally smart.

Measuring One’s CQ

Before determining which areas to focus on, Livermore suggests that a CQ Self-Assessment test could be taken.

Focused on the four CQ Capabilities – CQ Drive, CQ Knowledge, CQ Strategy, and CQ Action – the test helps you to gauge how high or low your CQ levels are. From there, you can determine which areas you should focus your energies and attention on.

Through improving your CQ, you can enjoy benefits such as the following:

  • Better ability to adjust to a cross-cultural environment at work;
  • Enhanced job performance in leadership, decision making, negotiation and networking;
  • Greater personal well-being; and
  • Higher profitability for the enterprise.

Let us now dive into each of the capabilities.

CQ Drive (Motivation)

The first pillar of cultural intelligence, CQ Drive measures the extent to which you are energized and persistent in your approach to culturally diverse situations. It covers three key areas:

  • Intrinsic factors: natural interest and enjoyment;
  • Extrinsic factors: tangible benefits and rewards; and
  • Self-efficacy: confidence in cross-cultural work.

In determining one’s CQ Drive, the following question is asked and answered:

Do you have the confidence and drive to work through the challenges and conflict that inevitably accompany cross-cultural situations?

To improve one’s CQ Drive, 8 strategies are proposed:

  1. Face your biases and act on them.
  2. Connect with existing interests (eg sports, food, fashion or other areas) in another culture.
  3. Scare yourself by imagining what would happen if you are not culturally savvy.
  4. Visualize success.
  5. Reward yourself, preferably with a related reward (eg learning Japanese and then having a Japanese meal where you order in the language).
  6. Recharge your batteries.
  7. Maintain control by reducing your reliance on hosts.
  8. Travel.

CQ Knowledge (Cognition)

Quantifying your understanding about culture and how it shapes behaviour, CQ Knowledge straddles four sub-dimensions:

  • Business/Cultural Systems: knowledge about cultural systems in the world;
  • Interpersonal/Cultural Values: understanding of how cultures differ in their values, religious beliefs, social etiquette etc;
  • Socio-Linguistics: knowledge of different languages, verbal and nonverbal cues; and
  • Leadership: understanding of how effective management differs across cultures.

To improve upon your CQ Knowledge, the author suggests the following strategies:

  1. Study culture up close by people watching, attending celebrations, enjoying art, eating and shopping;
  2. Google smarter using specific sites and keywords;
  3. Increase global awareness by reading relevant international and foreign news;
  4. Go to the movies or read a novel;
  5. Learn about cultural values – the degree of individualism vs collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, cooperativeness-competitiveness, time orientation, context (high or low), and doing-being;
  6. Explore your cultural identity;
  7. Study a new language;
  8. Seek diverse perspectives; and
  9. Recruit a CQ coach.

CQ Strategy (Meta-cognition)

Motivation and understanding alone isn’t enough in cross-cultural work. One needs to be aware of what’s doing on in a cross-cultural situation and be able to manage them effectively. This is where CQ Strategy comes in.

There are three aspects to CQ Strategy:

  • Awareness: Awareness of the personal and cultural dynamics occurring in a multicultural situation.
  • Planning: Taking the time to anticipate how to best engage.
  • Checking: Monitoring if you are behaving appropriately in a cross-cultural situation.

Once again, there are various strategies available to help us improve our CQ Strategy:

  1. Notice; don’t respond: ask yourself why things happen in a certain way instead of responding hastily;
  2. Think widely and consider what others do as “different” rather than “wrong” or “right”;
  3. Focus deeply and embrace mindfulness – don’t run on automatic;
  4. Journal and reflect;
  5. Plan social interactions and consider how you’ll behave;
  6. Manage expectations;
  7. Create checklists so that you don’t miss out on key steps;
  8. Reframe a situation so that you can channel your energy away from frustration to solution;
  9. Test for accuracy of your observations, plan and actions; and
  10. Ask better questions: probe more deeply into what’s behind something you observe.

CQ Action (Behaviour)

Last but certainly not least, CQ Action quantifies the extent to which you can act appropriately in cross-cultural situations. There are three sub-dimensions to this:

  • Nonverbal: How comfortable you are in adapting your nonverbal behaviours (eg gestures and facial expressions);
  • Verbal: Modifying your verbal behaviours (eg accent, tone, pronunciation, and language); and
  • Speech Acts: Altering the way your communicate in areas like the way you provide critique, express gratitude and so on.

To improve upon your CQ Action, the following strategies are listed in the book:

  1. Develop a repertoire of social skills: social etiquette, national pastimes, questions on family, etc;
  2. Be an actor and mimic your cross-cultural counterparts (but don’t overdo it);
  3. Make taboos taboo by learning about them and not committing them;
  4. Use basic vocabulary;
  5. Try new vocal sounds in the other culture;
  6. Slow down;
  7. Put yourself in a place of need by asking for help;
  8. Join a multicultural team.

A Cross-Cultural Compass

Comprehensive and systematic,”The Cultural Intelligence Difference provides a useful roadmap to anybody seeking to navigate the unchartered oceans of diverse cross-cultural situations. Backed by research and case studies, it tackles an important yet oft neglected element of management and leadership.

With increasingly diverse workplaces and growing inter-connectivity between nations and cultures, cultural intelligence will take on greater significance in the years to come.

By embracing the holistic approach to cultural intelligence described in the book, we are better prepared to meet the challenges of a new world.

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[Review] Talent is Overrated Mon, 11 Jan 2016 02:30:58 +0000 talent-is-overrated

How does one become a world class performer in any field? Can we improve our chances of success despite being born to adverse conditions?

With an eye-catching title and an alluring subtitle – “What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else” – Fortune editor-at-large Geoff Colvin’s book “Talent is Overrated” provides excellent food for thought in today’s knowledge economy.

Debunking age-old notions that nature matter a lot more than nurture, the book proposes that prodigious amounts of deliberate practice is the key to success in multiple fields.

Citing examples from the worlds of music, sport and business like Mozart, Tiger Woods, and Jack Welch, Colvin’s central thesis is that top performers are not born but made. While genetics may play a small role in determining super-stardom, empirical evidence suggests that those who do extremely well are usually not blessed with positive genes.

The Power of Deliberate Practice

So what’s the secret of world class performance and success?

While Malcolm Gladwell’s idea in “Outliers: The Story of Success” of putting in 10,000 hours of hard work may still hold water, Colvin suggests that deliberate practice may be more important than just working hard. This would cover the following steps in any endeavour:

  1. Do activities that are designed specifically to improve performance. Get a teacher, mentor or coach to help you improve;
  2. Do activities that can be repeated frequently, often to the point of ad nauseum and beyond;
  3. Receive feedback on your results so that you can sharpen your skills and hone your craft;
  4. Practice in areas that may be highly mentally demanding. They may be intellectually challenging (eg chess), involve strategic thinknig (business), or be physical like sports;
  5. Activities that aren’t much fun would require deliberate practice.

In the book, highly accomplished performers in any field tend to perceive more, know more, and remember more than most average people in their specific areas of specialisation and expertise. They understand the significance of indicators that lesser mortals fail to notice, look further ahead, and make finer discriminations. Using mental models developed over time, they can also organise information in an exceptional manner.

Three models of deliberate practice

To embrace the principles of deliberate and well-structured practice, there are three models to choose from:

1) Music model.

Here, the practice comprises going through a fixed “script” and finding ways and means to deliver well on that specific area of performance.

In the business world, it can include speeches and presentations where one rehearses a specific pitch until perfection, often with the help of coaches or videos of oneself performing. One can also adopt the habits of best practices in this field.

2) Chess model.

In a manner reminiscent of war strategy (think Sun Tzu’s “Art of War”), the chess model entailed studying positions from real games between top-level players and choosing the best moves.

Such an approach has been well-documented in the business world, and it can be used to focus on specific skills that need improvement. Here, case studies and “gaming” (scenario planning) would be useful.

3) Sports model.

The final model has two key concepts.

The first involve the conditioning and building of strengths in specific areas most useful for a sport (eg hand-eye coordination for baseball), while the other is to work on specific critical skills (eg kicking a football).

In the business world, such conditioning can be applied to improving on fundamental skills (eg financial analysis) through the practice and honing of one’s cognitive abilities.

Deliberate practice in organisations

On an organisational level, the principles of deliberate practice can be applied through the following approaches:

  • Understanding how each person should be stretched and developed;
  • Finding ways to develop leaders within their jobs;
  • Encouraging staff to be active in their communities;
  • Identifying good performers early;
  • Inspiring these talents; and
  • Investing time, money and energy in people development.

Culture is also key. Here, teamwork should be emphasised and valued over “prima-donna-ship”.

Perhaps the most meaningful and inspirational lesson I learned was that anybody can be a top performer so long as he or she is willing to do what it takes.

If you are willing to apply the principles deliberately and purposefully, you can be better at whatever you are doing.

It is important, however, to have passion for what you do. While extrinsic motivators may play a role, elite performers are often intrinsically motivated.

Parenting with deliberate practice.

As a parent of an eight-year-old, I’m heartened to note that success is a life-long venture that can be groomed. While it is true that certain violin virtuosos started when they were 2 years old, many of the top artistes playing in major symphonies started at a later age.

What’s undeniable, however, is that the top performers almost always put in more hours of hard deliberate practice.

To start our kids off on the right footing, parents must provide the right home environment of focused stimulation, discipline and inculcation without killing their passion. This blend of extrinsic factors could hopefully spark off our children’s intrinsic motivation. Over time, it would help to fuel the journey towards eventual greatness.

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[Review] The Art Of Social Media Fri, 16 Oct 2015 03:30:05 +0000 The Art of Social Media

Do you want to rock your social media marketing game? Keen to learn from the legendary Guy Kawasaki?

If so, check out “The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users” co-authored by Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick.

Providing over 120 “power tips for power users”, the slim volume provides practical hands-on “tips, tricks and insights” culled from Guy and Peg’s years of battle-hardened experience at the forefront of social media and content marketing.

Unlike other social media marketing self-help books, this one is virtually BS free. There are no theories expounding the virtues of A versus B, no research citations from university professors, and no third party case studies from companies X, Y or Z.

Instead, everything is written heart-on-rolled-up-sleeve. Narrated with Guy’s characteristic wit and candour, the book provides painstaking detail of how things are done, what works and what doesn’t.

Creating Your Platform.

Organised into 12 sections, I love how the book begins with the art of the start, ie “How to Optimize Your Profile”. From profile photos, cover images, biographies to URLs, we are taught how to maximise our online presences on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter.

What’s new to me was the idea of crafting a mantra – two to four words which explain why we exist. Guy’s mantra is “I empower people”, while Canva (a wonderful free design tool) uses “democratizing design” as its mantra. I guess mine would be “geek marketer”.

Content, Content, CONTENT.

Focused on content curation (ie finding and sharing other people’s content) as opposed to content creation, the book describes a system of planning, calendaring, finding, and sharing of posts on social media.

To find the right content to share, you could use curation and aggregation services (eg Alltop, Buffer, Feedly, Reddit), trawl lists, communities and groups (eg Google+ communities or LinkedIn Groups), or look at what’s hot and trending.

Perhaps the most useful rule in feeding the “content monster” is what’s termed the Reshare Test, ie ask yourself the following question: “Will people reshare my post?”

Perfecting Your Posts.

Once you’ve located the right content to share, you need to preen, polish and package it in the form of a shareable post.

Here, there are several of the ‘Be’s to take note of:

  • Be valuable – make it informative, analytical, helpful or entertaining
  • Be interesting and bold
  • Be brief (just like the book!)
  • Be thankful – credit your sources, provide hat tips and links
  • Be visual – a picture paints a thousand words
  • Be organised – use bullet points, headings and subheadings (just like this post of mine!)
  • Be sly (ie use blog title templates like the ones here)
  • Be found – use #hashtags
  • Be active – share between three to 20 different posts a day (Gulp!)
  • Be distributed – use tools to schedule and distribute posts like Buffer, Hootsuite and Post Planner
  • Be a Mensch – give to others without an agenda
  • Be promotional – ie pay to advertise if you need to
  • Be analytical and curious – find out what works best for you
  • Be defiant – well, this means just creating great content and ignoring all the “SEO witchcraft” out there

Commenting and Sharing.

On the issue of responding to comments – and trolls – I like how the authors adopt a “glass half full” approach in giving negative commenters the benefit of the doubt. This is probably best summarized by this quote (cited from the book):

“Don’t take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.” – Don Miguel Rutz (The Four Agreements)

The spreading and sharing of posts (whether created and curated) is also well covered. Some of the tactics include…

  • Including share buttons on your blog posts
  • Starting an email list
  • Writing guest posts
  • Pinning every post on Pinterest
  • Adding a ClickToTweet link
  • Using Slideshare

Socializing Events.

Events present great opportunities for social media and content marketing. Three different events are covered in the book:

  1. Real life events – From hashtags (use an evergreen one like #coolerinsights) and photo corners to live tweets, conferences are great opportunities for social sharing.
  2. Google+ Hangouts – An entire section is dedicated to powering your live video chats on Google+. Includes the equipment to get, colours to wear, and the creation of trailers and event pages. Plus a nifty checklist!
  3. Twitter Chats – Ditto for Twitter, where everything from hashtags to speed of typing is covered.

Optimizing for Different Social Platforms.

Last, but not least, readers are taught how to optimize their content for different social media platforms. Some of the key takeaways include the following:

  1. Facebook: Use Facebook Page’s insights, embed videos (YouTube videos don’t play well on Facebook these days), and interact with other Facebook pages
  2. Google+: Check how your post looks, use comments and +1s to run polls, use replies to generate attention, and stylize your text.
  3. LinkedIn: Write a personalised connection request and keep it serious (duh).
  4. Pinterest: Rotate your Pinterest boards, add categories and descriptions, share your pins with other social networks.
  5. Slideshare: Differentiate between a powerpoint slide and a slideshare – your audience is not around to hear you present! Also, ensure that your title, category and tags are well crafted.

A Power Packed Guide.

Pragmatic and fluff-free,”The Art of Social Media is a must-have for anybody keen to use social media for business. Candid and unabashed, its approach to social media marketing requires a significant amount of discipline, determination and diligence.

Admittedly, not everybody can do what Guy and Peg can do. After all, both authors are stalwarts in the social media spaces, especially Guy – the former chief evangelist for Apple. However, there are certainly gems in the book worth considering.

Will you join me in grabbing a copy of this book and applying its principles? For more information, check out The Art of Social Media website here.

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[Review] The Social Customer Mon, 05 Oct 2015 06:30:26 +0000 the-social-customer-by-adam-metz

The greatest challenge of the social media age isn’t to grow the largest fan or follower base. Nor to achieve the greatest “virality” in our digital campaigns.

Rather, it is this:

“How can we better reach prospects, convert them to customers, and serve their interests through social media?”

While Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have found ways to monetise their platforms, many are still figuring out ways to connect one’s communities on social media with the corporate wallet.

Enter “The Social Customer: How Brands Can Use Social CRM to Acquire, Monetize, and Retain Fans, Friends, and Followers” by Adam Metz.

Covering a wide range of topics on social Customer Relationship Management (CRM), this ambitious book spans a wide spectrum of social business topics. They range from social customer insights, marketing, sales, analytics, demand management, support, and customer experience, to mobile and location based services.

Defining Social CRM.

First, we need to understand what Social CRM is. Metz provides a good definition in his book as follows:

“The customer owns the conversation now, so companies need to change the way they do business. Social CRM is a philosophy and a business strategy that uses technology, work flow, business rules, and social information to talk with (not at) the customer in a transparent way, to make value for both parties.”

This philosophy of designing processes, workflows and experiences around the customer rather than the company is the key pillar of Social CRM (SCRM).

Unlike traditional CRM, Social CRM (or SCRM) is about how companies reach out to customers at the times and channels where the customer feels most at ease. In other words, a company is viewed more as a peer rather than an institution.

This can be perceived through the chart below:

CRM versus Social CRM

Courtesy of The Future Organization

In order to make company brands “social objects” (stuff which people want to talk about), companies can consider the six foundational premises of Social CRM articulated by Paul Greenberg. These revolve around the following principles:

  1. Companies should make themselves likable and relatable to customers;
  2. Companies should help customers control their lives;
  3. Companies should help customers fulfill their agendas;
  4. Companies should be non-obtrusive and un-interrupting;
  5. Companies should provide value to the customers; and
  6. Companies should provide delightful and memorable experiences to customers.

The Social CRM Process.

According to Metz, the Social CRM process is fairly involved. It covers community management, listening on social channels, mining of one’s customer database, establishment of a social CRM team, and the invoking of either macro responses (automated activities like birthday coupons) or micro responses (manual interventions like organising a press briefing).

These activities can be visualised by Chess Media’s chart below:

Social CRM Process Courtesy of Chess Media Group

23 ways to use Social CRM.

From the basics, Metz goes on to describe the 23 Use Cases of Social CRM.

Covering social customer insights, marketing, sales, service/support, innovation, collaboration, and customer experience, the use cases illustrates examples of companies doing them, market and technology maturity levels, and recommended vendors.

These use cases straddle what Metz calls the 5 Ms in social customer insights. They are namely: monitoring, mapping, middleware, management and measurement.

You can see how these concepts are categorised in the chart by Altimeter Group and Metz Consulting below:

Social Customer InsightsCourtesy of The Social Concept

Social CRM Methodology.

From the Use Cases, the book proposes that a Social CRM methodology could be adopted. Represented by the acronym lPOSTm, the steps involved are…

  • l = Listening to what your customers are saying
  • P = People and your relationships with them
  • O = Objectives, ie what your brand wants to do
  • S = Strategy, the stuff that the book teaches
  • T = Tools, the myriad platforms and software needed
  • m = Measurement, a necessary evil

Bringing Social CRM Strategy alive.

To make one’s social CRM strategy come alive, the book proposes the following key actions:

#1 Develop a Strategy Canvas.

Adopt a strategy canvas approach (ala Blue Ocean Strategy) to differentiate your business from the “red oceans” of competitors.

Here you should consider the Four Actions Framework, namely to eliminate factors your industry take for granted, raise factors of social customer management above industry norms, reduce areas that are less valuable to social customers, and create new factors of value.

#2 Differentiate Social CRM from its components.

Avoid confusing Social CRM with its disparate components like database marketing, IT systems, loyalty programmes, social media platforms, or marketing and PR alone. This is important in order to integrate these other activities in a way that brings value to the customer.

#3 Measure Social CRM holistically.

Create a holistic way of measuring your Social CRM activities through dashboards monitoring KPIs such as the following:

  • Net Promoter Scores – how likely are your customers to recommend you to others?
  • Brand Reputation – usually provided by social sentiment firms, they monitor online brand perceptions
  • Social Collateral Engagement – online “buzz” like conversation levels, influence of commenters, sentiment of comments, and qualitative feedback
  • Social Ecosystem Health – number of online community members, types of content shared, visitor traffic, interactions, and responses
  • Social Commerce – actual conversation to sales, customer reach and group marketing efforts, often by affiliates

#4 Craft detailed workflows and pathways.

Put together fairly detailed workflows and escalation paths. These require integrating Social CRM systems with both customer and non-customer facing processes such as the following:

  • Customer service processes – eg call centre, conflict resolutions, technical support
  • Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
  • Supply Chain Management (SCM)

The goal here is to provide integrated and seamless customer-support across all touch-points, from reach, acquisition, conversion, to after-sales customer service, customer loyalty to customer advocacy.

#5 Integrate with social advertising and technologies.

Embrace and integrate social CRM with social advertising and retail as well as the emerging opportunities offered by mobile apps and geo-location technologies. This should ensure that there is coherence in how the company views the customer across the entire spectrum of customer touch-points.

A Useful Guide to Social Media with CRM.

In a nutshell,”The Social Customer” provides a comprehensive guide to the emerging world of social CRM, social commerce and customer experience management.

As an introduction to the wide ranging topics, it doesn’t delve deeply into each individual arena. At times, I found it challenging to visualise how the various multiple systems look like and had to stop to think hard to imagine how A connected to B and C.

Having said that, Metz does provide lots of useful links and references throughout the volume. He is also generous in giving credit to many of his contemporaries while citing and modifying their ideas.

Overall, the book is a useful guide to companies keen to incorporate CRM approaches to their social media channels.

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[Review] Start With Why Thu, 17 Sep 2015 12:30:44 +0000 Start-with-Why

We’ve seen it happen time and time again.

A company starts off with great fanfare, led by a charismatic and visionary leader. She brings it to new heights and grows it year after year.

There is much clarity in what the company does. It attracts a loyal and growing following of customers and fans.
Every action the organisation takes is aligned to its core values and beliefs. Employees who work there are passionate about what they do. They resemble acolytes of a religious cult in their zeal and fervour.

Suddenly, the CEO resigns, retires or is booted out of the organisation.

Initially, the momentum generated still propels the firm forward. Over time, however, it loses its steam. Performance becomes lacklustre until the former leader returns to save the company from ruin.

This has happened with companies such as Apple (Steve Jobs) and Starbucks (Howard Schultz).

The answer starts with “Why”.

What is the magic ingredient embodied by these icons of business?

According to Simon Sinek, these icons of business are able to inspire heroic and massive action in others by beginning with “Why”.

Anchoring its core ideas in psychology and human behaviour, Simon’s book “Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action” teaches us that outstanding leaders and organisations achieve a disproportionate degree of influence by following the principles of the “Golden Circle”.

The circle comprises three concentric rings with “WHY” in the core, followed by “HOW” and finally “WHAT”.

This can be represented by the figure below:

Start with Why Golden CircleSource of image

Applying the Golden Circle concept.

By beginning with “Why”, inspiring leaders and organisations can leverage on the beliefs and aspirations of their employees and their customers. This allows them to tap onto a deeper vein of trust, belief and passion which transcends the common attributes of competitiveness such as quality, features, benefits, service and price.

Indeed, the most successful firms have the clarity of “Why”, discipline of “How” and consistency of “What” – in that order.

Drawing upon human biology, Sinek equates the positions of “Why”, “How” and “What” in the Golden Circle with the relative positions of the deeper Limbic Brain and the outer Neocortex of our human brain. The former is responsible for feelings such as trust, loyalty and decision making while the latter handles rational and analytical thought as well as language.

This is why companies and persons that can tap onto the intimate recesses of the Limbic Brain through clearly articulated “Whys” are a lot more successful at motivating people to act than those focused on the rational attributes of “Hows” and “Whats”.

Examples of such corporations and individuals include Apple and Steve Jobs (Sinek’s favourite example), Southwest Airlines, Wal-Mart and Sam Walton, and civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.

Mapping the Golden Circle to organisations.

Expanding further upon the concept of the Golden Circle, the book proposes that organisations need to be hierarchically organised in a conical shaped fashion.

They need to begin with the “Whys” on top, followed by the “Hows” (staffed by able lieutenants who are great executors), and “Whats” below.

It is the “Whats” that the marketplace eventually sees as the ultimate expression of a company’s “Whys”.

Start with Why Organisational HierarchySource of image

To exert an inordinate influence, Sinek advises companies to focus on the “innovators” and “early adopters” (re: Diffusion of Innovations curve) to be their key customers. This group would likely be more loyal and adventurous, embodying the spirit of the organisation as well as the beliefs of its founders.

Towards the end, the book warned one against losing one’s “Why” by being too obsessed with the machinery of the organisation or the wishes of the stock exchanges.

To sustain an organisation’s core business over the long haul, it is necessary for the organisation to continually hold on to its mission, vision, beliefs and values. These “Whys” need to then be made concrete in the organisation’s DNA and culture so that it can survive the departure of its founder.

An inspiring guide to building business influence.

Overall, “Start with Why” is a great and motivating read for those looking to be inspired wherever they are. Deceptively simple, yet elegantly written, the book demonstrates through numerous examples how businesses and brands can deepen their kinship with employees, customers and other stakeholders.

In a way, starting with “Why” is about diving deeply into your organisation’s core narrative. It is about encouraging and inspiring others to buy into one’s organisation and brands by igniting their beliefs rather than through bribery, coercion of generous rewards.

Ultimately, starting with “Why” is all about sustaining one’s business. By doing so, business leaders can better propel their enterprise forward and bring along like-minded followers. This could hopefully transcend the iffy fads and trends of consumer tastes.

Highly recommended.

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[Review] The $100 Startup Tue, 25 Aug 2015 02:30:52 +0000 The-100-Start-Up

How do we escape the 9-5 shackles of corporate drudgery to build a life of adventure, meaning and purpose? Can we do this with $100 (or less) in our pocket?

The answer to both questions is yes. At least according to Chris Guillebeau, author of “The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future.

From a pool of over 1,500 small business owners who built businesses earning US$50,000 or more from a modest investment (often US$100 or less), Guillebeau’s book focuses on the 50 most intriguing case studies.

With the key themes of freedom and value at its core, “The $100 Startup” is a brilliant blueprint assisting “wannapreneurs” keen to heed the rallying call of the microbusiness revolution.

Espousing that borrowing money and debt are optional, the book proposed that entrepreneurs starting such businesses were more interested in the lifestyle it offered rather than making oodles of cash.

By bootstrapping, bartering, reducing overheads (rental and manpower), and leveraging technology (especially the web), one can start one’s own business almost on a dime without being beholden to creditors or venture capitalists.

Let me cover the salient points of the book.

Passion, Skill and Value

To improve the chances of start-up success, we’re taught three key philosophies.

First, we should focus on businesses that converge with both our passion and what people are willing to pay for.

Second, we should examine how our competencies (eg a teacher’s ability to do planning and manage people) can undertake “skill transformation” to suit a specific business.

Third, we should ensure that there is alignment between our passions, skills, and what people want.

In other words…

Passion or Skill + Usefulness = Success!

Give Them the Fish

To create true value, we should give people what they truly want, and not just what we think they want. In other words, we should give them “the fish”.

Dig deeper to uncover hidden needs, latch onto popular hobbies or passions, make our customers heroes, and sell what they’ll buy.

We should also provide emotional benefits instead of just physical features and focus on what we can add or take away to improve people’s lives. For example,

  • Restaurant: From “Food and drinks” to “Relax and let us take care of you after a busy day”.
  • Software Developer: From “App developer” to “We provide technology solutions to take your headaches away”.

Nuts and Bolts

Once the above is achieved, Guillebeau detailed several practical steps on bringing it together. Most of these take the form of a one-page plan which covered stuff such as the following.

#1 Information publisher

First, we should become an information publisher (kind of like me here) by finding a topic that people will pay to learn about. Capture our content (text, video, or audio), package the materials into a product, price it appropriately, and publish it.

#2 Instant consultant

You could also position yourself as an instant consultant. Pick something specific (not general) and charge a fair rate. You can download a free template here to see how this can be done.

#3 One-page business plan

Develop a one-page business plan. This should include what you will sell, who your customers will be, how much you will charge, how you’ll market your business, what determines success, and how objections will be managed.

You can download a free template here detailing how this can be done.

#4 Compelling offer

To create a compelling offer that can’t be refused, the book emphasised three things:

  • A Frequently Asked Question section that addresses objections;
  • An incredible guarantee to allay fears; and
  • Overdelivering aka “Wow, look at all this extra stuff I didn’t expect”.

#5 Business launch

To launch one’s business, creative and innovative ways should be considered. Centred on enchanting storytelling, a good launch strategy can be broken down into a 39 step product launch checklist (another free download here).

#6 Hustling and promoting

Hustling (aka marketing) or the art and science of promoting oneself is also covered.

Here, we are advised to combine style with substance to achieve impact, and to embrace strategic giving by providing a valuable service which helps people while building relationships.

The key is to spend 50% of your business development time on creating. The other 50% should then be spent on connecting with others. Check out the free promotion plan to decide how.

#7 Fund raising and profits

The book also covered ways to raise funds and increase profits.

From borrowing from family members to Kickstarter to car loans, there are various ways to reduce one’s startup burden. The point here is to keep one’s liabilities to a minimum.

To generate greater revenue, one could adopt three key principles:

  • Price one’s product or service in relation to its benefit and not costs of production;
  • Offer customers a limited range of prices; and
  • Get paid more than once (ie the subscription model).

Growth & Sustenance Strategies

The final section covered the thorny question of growing the business and keeping it going for the long haul. This spanned the following areas:

#1 Generate Higher Revenue

To scale, one could consider various ways to “tweak” one’s way to the bank. They include:

a) Increasing traffic and conversion on a website. This may involve conducting A/B testing to see which works better.

b) Increasing average sales prices by upselling (“Would you like fries with that?”), cross-selling (offering related items after purchases are made), and sales after the sales (special offers immediately after the sale).

c) Selling more to existing customers.

d) Creating a Hall of Fame to shine the spotlight on customers while providing social proof.

e) Encouraging referrals.

f) Holding contests.

g) Introducing powerful money back guarantees (eg 110% guarantees) or making a big deal aboutoffering no guarantees.

#2 Franchise Yourself

To multiply one’s efforts, one could use a “hub-and-spoke” model of maintaining a home base while using other outposts to diversify oneself. One should also determine if outsourcing to virtual assistants, subcontracting and hiring employees would truly work.

Naturally, there are pros and cons to each, and these are covered in detail in the book.

Partnerships such as affiliate programmes may also work. However, the author advises that a more generous commission scheme for affiliates may work better in attracting higher quality partners.

#3 The Long Haul

Finally, to sustain one’s entrepreneurial efforts, one should decide whether to stay small as a solopreneur or grow one’s business. We are also told to “work on our business” instead of just in our business (hat tip to The E-Myth Revisited).

This entails reviewing aspects like business development, offer development, prices, and customer communication, and monitoring one or two key metrics (eg sales per day, sales conversion rate, leads per day, etc).

Great Guide for Bootstrappers

Stuffed with fascinating stories of individuals who uprooted themselves from corporate comfort to embrace micro entrepreneurial ventures, The $100 Startup inspires as much as it instructs.

They include Jen Adrion and Omar Noory, who gave up corporate jobs to sell custom-made maps out of an apartment, James Kirk, who uprooted from Seattle to open an authentic coffee shop in “tea and biscuits” South Carolina, and Kyle Hepp a wedding photographer who travels the world from her home base in Chile.

Positioned as a guide for bootstrapping solopreneurs, the book doesn’t dive deeply into any one specific domain. Skewed towards online-based businesses, however, it does provide useful tips for location-independent businesses keen to embrace the capabilities of the web and social media to improve reach while reducing costs.

To conclude, I’d probably place”The $100 Startup” together with other hallowed volumes for start-up entrepreneurs in the digital age. These would include other cardinal reads like Launch, The Lean Startup, The 4-Hour Work Week, and The E-Myth Revisited.

A definite must-read for anybody keen to embark on their own entrepreneurial adventure. Like me!

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[Review] Optimize Mon, 03 Aug 2015 02:30:49 +0000 Optimize Book

How do you incorporate Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media, and Content Marketing into your marketing efforts?

Answer: Adopt a customer-centric content marketing strategy which incorporates search and social media optimization.

Focused on the science of search, social and content marketing, Lee Odden’s book “Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing” is a practical guide to understanding, integrating and applying three of the most powerful concepts in digital marketing. Packed with flow charts, check lists, tables and step-by-step guides, “Optimize covers a wide scope of content marketing topics.

Here are five big takeaways on developing an optimized content marketing strategy which I’ve gleaned from the book.

1. Start with Research & Planning.

Unlike many of his peers, Lee Odden doesn’t believe in winging it and trusting his gut. Rather, he embraces a methodical and rigorous approach in researching and planning his content marketing efforts. The two key ideas worth mentioning here are:

a) Keyword Research, SEO Audit, and Social Listening.

Understanding the social landscape – customers, competitors and influencers – is an important aspect of content marketing. One could use tools like SEMRush, Google Adwords Keyword Planner, and the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) to monitor what competitors are doing and what customers are searching for. Social listening tools like Radian6, Google Alerts, and Trackur may also help you to learn what’s buzzing on social networks.

b) Content Marketing Strategy.

In creating a content marketing strategy, it is important to consider the following points:

  • Set the right objectives (are we elevating brand awareness, generating sales leads, or improving customer service?)
  • Research targeted customer segments
  • Develop comprehensive content plan
  • Promote our developed content
  • Use social networks to engage with community
  • Measure outcomes of content marketing efforts

Further details of each point are highlighted in the sections below.

2. Know Your Customer Inside Out.

An integral part of content marketing, customer research and understanding can be divided into the following:

a) Map Customer Life Cycle.

In developing a content plan, it is useful to consider which stage a customer is at, namely:

  • Awareness? Content marketing helps people to discover your product service online through search or social media
  • Consideration? Content educates and engages prospects
  • Purchase? Long-tail content helps customers with specific purchase intent to transact with you
  • Service? FAQs, technical support forums, and other platforms assist customers with product issues
  • Loyalty/Advocacy? Through engaging content, customers are nudged to become advocates and share them online

This can be perceived through the following chart (courtesy of TopRank Blog):

Customer Life Cycle

b. Develop Customer Personas.

Understanding one’s customer also entails developing a detailed profile of who they are. These buyer personas can be fleshed out via a 6-step process:

  • Identify key customer attributes: What should they care about, and what motivates them?
  • Collect data: Demographic and psychographic information, role in buying cycle, web behaviours, and so on
  • Analyse and create segments: Look out for patterns and segment customer groups more precisely
  • Create profiles: Anywhere from 3 to 10 different personas
  • Identify keyword groups and content types: Match relevant keywords and topics of interest
  • Incorporate content creation, optimization and promotion: Integrate customer personas with the content that would interest them

3. Create + Curate Customer-Centric Content.

Now that we have learned who our targeted customers are, it is time to develop content that hits them in the sweet spot. There are two things to consider here:

a) Content Plan to Attract, Engage and Inspire.

Build a content plan that is precisely calibrated to what the customers are looking for. Things to consider here include targeting customers at a specific point of their life cycle, identifying current content gaps, coming up with an editorial calendar and publishing schedule, and promoting the content on different channels.

One needs to also determine the appropriate content type (eBook? white paper? blog post? video? infographics?) and to see how the cycle of social media and SEO can be incorporated as part of a hub and spoke model of content publishing and promotion. This can be visualised below (courtesy of Top Rank Blog).

SEO and Social Media Cycle

b) Create, Curate and Optimize Content.

When creating individual pieces of content, it is useful to ask the following questions:

  • How does the content benefit your organisation’s marketing objectives?
  • What SEO benefits can you gain?
  • What is the best mix of created and curated content?

Created content establishes thought leadership, facilitates brand storytelling, and attracts links from websites and blogs. Curated content, on the other hand, grows brand awareness, attracts links from social sources, and keeps prospects engaged.

Content should also be optimized through a whole range of SEO techniques. You can some of these in my blog post How to Master SEO for WordPress.

4. Socialize Content.

Beyond optimizing one’s content for search purposes, we need to also build engaged communities on social networks and “electrify” them through promotion and link building. Here are several steps to do so:

a) Build Social Communities.

In building communities on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube, one should consider the role of “brandividuals”. These are natural advocates who identify with a company’s brand as well as their own (see Citizen Marketers here).

Consider too the unique characteristics of each social network. For example, Facebook allows a rich variety of content types like text, images, videos and applications to be shared. Twitter limits content to 140 character bursts, while the integration of Google+ with Google may give it an added boost to SEO.

b) Content Promotion and Link Building.

The main currency for “Google Juice” are back links from authoritative websites to your own.

Here, we are advised to first conduct a link audit, develop a link strategy, evaluate links and their sources for relevance, authority, and trust, and build back links.

Strategies to build links include using social sharing widgets on your blog posts, offering to provide guest posts to reputable websites, or submitting one’s website to relevant directories.

5. Sustain Content Marketing.

Last, but not least, “Optimize” teaches us two important aspects of the content marketing journey: measuring success and adopting optimized and socialized content marketing processes.

a) Measure, Refine, and Adapt.

Through identifying content-related objectives for each content type, specific KPIs could be established. These could range from…

  1. Revenue goals: speed of sales, referrals, cost per lead etc
  2. Engagement goals: comments, shares, inbound links etc
  3. Cost saving goals: issue resolution time, employee turnover, etc

Various analytics tools could be used to measure SEO and social media performance. They include Google Analytics, SEOmoz and SEMRush for search, and Sprout Social and Radian6 for social media.

b) Processes and Training.

To integrate optimization, social media and content marketing into your organisation, a combination of process, people and technology is required.

Take inventory of current processes in search, social, and content marketing. Identify the right individuals to implement various aspects of search, social media and content marketing. Zoom in on the right skills needed, and develop a training programme to get staff up to speed.

Ensure that your team – or hired consultants – are able to manage the entire spectrum of content marketing. This would cover planning, creating, optimizing, and promoting to measuring the results of content marketing efforts.

A Must Have For Content Marketers.

Comprehensive and detailed,”Optimize is an invaluable resource for digital marketers trying to understand how the new wave of content marketing rides on to its older predecessors.

Meticulous and exacting, Lee Odden doesn’t skimp on the necessary steps needed to weave SEO, social media, and content marketing into a compelling digital trinity for marketers in the new millennium. Highly recommended.

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[Review] Reinventing You Mon, 13 Jul 2015 02:00:36 +0000 Reinventing You book

You’ve slogged hard for years. Maybe even decades. Somewhere along the way, you lost your mojo.

Maybe work isn’t as fulfilling or meaningful as before. Or you realise that you haven’t made any progress in years.

What should you do under these circumstances?

Well, Dorie Clark has the answer in “Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future“. This step-by-step guide is designed to help you evaluate what you are good (and not so good) at, grow your personal brand, and reinvent yourself professionally.

Tastefully written and flavoured with colourful tales drawn from her personal experience as well as that of others, the book prescribes a carefully articulated 10-step process to personal professional transformation.

Narrating her own personal reinvention, Clark felt that relying on sheer hard work alone isn’t enough. A former journalist retrenched a day before the planes hit the World Trade Center on September 11, Clark reinvented herself by moving on to be the Director of Communications for Howard Dean’s presidential campaign and the boss of a nonprofit advocacy group before finally becoming a consultant.

So what should one do to reinvent oneself?

1. Recognise where you are starting from.

The first step involves understanding where we are truly at. As quoted by Clark, “If three people say you are a horse, buy a saddle”.

To do so, conduct focus groups and 360 degree interviews with trusted friends and colleagues, study your performance reviews, seek genuine and honest feedback, and Google yourself. After you have done this, look out for clear and discerning patterns. Be careful though not to give too much credit to outlying opinions.

2. Research your destination.

Ignorance isn’t bliss in any professional reinvention. Keep a low profile first and take a break if you need to. Thereafter, study your prospective job or industry by researching online and offline. Both blogs and books are great for this purpose.

To probe more deeply, you may also wish to conduct informational interviews with industry movers and shakers. Remember though to follow up closely thereafter with your interviewees. Add value to them and who knows – some of them could be your mentors later on.

3. Test-drive your path.

After ascertaining where you want to go, find ways to explore your new occupation through apprenticeship, volunteering or job shadowing. This may involve putting together a list of dream companies or individuals to work for, determining what value you can provide and reaching out proactively.

In doing so, understand how much time and money you can spend. Often such opportunities may not pay well.

However, don’t let that faze you. Instead, be bold, dream big, and accept that the path may not always be linear.

4. Develop the skills you need.

To accelerate competence in your preferred new field, find opportunities to expand your scope in your current job.

Moonlight strategically by spending your weekends or evenings trying out other jobs. Go back to graduate school only if it helps you in your new role.

Where possible, develop a list of core skills and knowledge needed, and find help in filling those critical gaps.

5. Find the right mentors.

Switching to a new path isn’t easy. Having mentors helps you in loads of ways.

Consider first whom you want to emulate by drawing up a dream list. Check that these individuals are a good fit in terms of availability and temperament. Make it a point too to learn from professional groups like trade associations and guilds.

You should also be sure what your potential mentors can teach you. If need be, develop your own curricula. Be specific about what you desire to learn from him or her. Remember to repay your mentor not only with gratitude but useful leads and future collaborative possibilities.

6. Leverage your points of difference.

Inevitably, breaking into a new field is challenging – especially one where you have limited experience.

To overcome this, build on your transferable skills. For example, a teacher can be a good salesperson as she can communicate eloquently and convincingly. If possible, capitalise on your differences, and draw from your own unique background and “outsider” perspectives.

Redefine yourself as a brand by emphasising how your differences are strengths. Combine your attributes to make yourself memorable and special. For example, you could emphasise how being a former civil servant equipped you with superior writing, analysis, and planning skills.

7. Build your narrative.

After you have zoomed in on your unique value proposition, it is time to craft your compelling story.

Draw the connections between your past and present. Float hidden and underlying themes that could be relevant, bridge your brand gap (eg Tim Ferriss leveraging his “4-Hour” brand from work to health to cooking), and highlight the value you can bring.

Some of us may have a “road to Damascus” moment (ie a divine revelation). If so , it would be good to weave such insights into our personal stories.

Finally, it is important to be true to ourselves, shun being phony, believe in ourselves, and embody our new brand in whatever we do.

8. Reintroduce yourself.

Only after you have done all the above should you announce yourself to the world.

Here, you should find a way to transfer your status from one role to another and communicate your credentials in the right way. In this instant, writing about yourself may possibly be perceived to be less boastful than talking about yourself.

If necessary, you may wish to work with third party “validators” to promote you to others. Such arrangements can be mutually beneficial.

Lastly, go to where the action is for your preferred roles – be it online or offline. Don’t be shy to take sweeping symbolic actions so that you can emblazon yourself in the minds of important new stakeholders.

9. Prove your worth.

To show that you are worth your salt, develop your own content and build your portfolio online.

Blogging (ahem) is a great way to get yourself recognised if you love to write. Other methods include video blogging (ala Gary Vaynerchuk’s former Wine Library TV) and podcasting.

Importantly, forge strategic alliances and partnerships with influencers and leading industry publications. You may also wish to build your reputations offline through public speaking and leading (or forming) a trade association.

NB – Do remember to schedule your activities so that social media doesn’t take over your life. Whatever you do must be sustainable and not burn you out prematurely. I can certainly attest to that!

10. Keep it going.

Comparing reinvention to a journey rather than a destination, Clark advises us to keep monitoring how our personal brand is perceived. Along the way, we should make adjustments wherever necessary.

To keep us on the straight and narrow path, we may wish to make public commitments with our friends. We should also build up goodwill, not be afraid to reevaluate ourselves periodically, and understand that its OK to make a mistake and screw up.

Sometimes we may need to backtrack. However, that doesn’t mean that whatever we have experienced or learned in our new endeavour were wasted.

A timely guide for me.

Personally, I found that”Reinventing You connected deeply with me in many ways. Reading it at a time when I was going through my own reinvention, I found the advice given pragmatic and grounded in reality.

Admittedly, some of the necessary steps are painful to take. I cringed at the thought of raking up my past mistakes, or acknowledging where I screwed up. Despite this, I found the book highly useful in laying a positive foundation for my new career as a content marketing consultant, lecturer and marketer.

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[Review] Inbound Marketing Thu, 02 Jul 2015 02:30:38 +0000 Inbound-Marketing-Book

Do you know what Inbound Marketing is? Keen to use inbound marketing to improve your marketing ROI?

Pioneered by co-founders of HubSpot Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, inbound marketing is a leading Business-to-Business (B2B) digital marketing strategy. The fact that HubSpot is a NASDAQ listed marketing automation company worth $1.24 billion in market capitalisation is a testimony to inbound marketing’s strengths.

Written by Halligan and Shah, “Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs” covers the fundamentals of inbound marketing. Spanning the breadth of using content to generate leads, acquire prospects and convert customers, the book straddles content marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), social media and other related areas.

What is Inbound Marketing?

First, let us define what inbound marketing is. The best definition I can find came from Wikipedia (no surprises), and it goes like this:

“Inbound marketing refers to marketing activities that bring visitors in, rather than marketers having to go out to get prospects’ attention. Inbound marketing earns the attention of customers, makes the company easy to be found, and draws customers to the website by producing interesting content.”

Traditionally, marketers use outbound marketing techniques like email blasts, telemarketing, direct mail, TV, radio and print advertisements to reach buyers. Unlike outbound methods, inbound marketing looks at using targeted and valuable content on the Internet to draw customers in.

Inbound marketing is permission based, while outbound marketing interrupts. Key differences between inbound and outbound marketing is nicely summarised in the infographic below (source of image):

Inbound versus Outbound Marketing

Creating a Marketing Hub.

The first step in inbound marketing lies in creating a marketing hub. An inbound marketing hub is a web site that with a blog, offers useful and compelling content, and is connected to “spokes” like email, sales conferences, social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+), social discovery platforms (Reddit, Digg, Delicious), and others.

Content is shared either directly on the website itself, or accessed through RSS feeds. Often such a website would have thousands of links coming from other websites. It should also be graded with tools like a Website Grader.

This can be represented by the diagram below (source of image):

Inbound Marketing Hub

Content and Inbound Marketing.

Great content forms the core of inbound marketing. In fact, content marketing is viewed as a subset of inbound marketing.

To succeed, companies need to build a content factory and operate like media/content companies (eg Wikipedia, New York Times, Mashable, etc). They should create remarkable content which provides great utility, attract links from other websites, and rank well on search engines.

Examples of such content (primarily B2B focused) include:

  • Blog articles – the mainstay of content and inbound marketers
  • White papers – five to seven page papers that educate marketplace on trends and challenges
  • Videos – instructional and educational videos about the industry
  • Webinars – online presentations on an industry topic
  • Podcasts – audio programmes often featuring interviews with experts
  • Webcasts – Live videos viewed online

Google Searches and Social Media.

In order for your marketing hub to be found, you need to rank well on search engines (like Google) and be shareable on social media. Let us go through each in turn.

a) SEO in a Nutshell.

The book gives a brief but useful run down of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), educating readers on the difference between Pay Per Click (PPC) ads like Google AdWords and organic content on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Key areas covered include:

  • Finding perfect keywords through balancing relevance, search volume and difficulty (ie competition)
  • On-page SEO: page titles, meta description tags, URLs, domain names, headings, and images
  • Off-page SEO: Generating inbound links through creating and sharing remarkable content
  • Avoiding Black Hat SEO practices like using link farms, automated content duplication, keyword stuffing, hidden texts, and others

b) Social Media Marketing.

From Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, LinkedIn profiles to YouTube videos, the book teaches readers how they should set up their social media accounts and “socialize” their content through these platforms. Best practices in using social discovery sites like Digg and StumbleUpon (a toolbar allowing you to vote for websites) are also covered.

The following words of advice from FreshBooks (featured in the book) are probably worth considering:

  • Tell your story on social media
  • Participate – follow up quickly to comments and comment on other accounts
  • Be open and treat people like you would like to be treated
  • Listen
  • Social media is a commitment, not a campaign

Inbound Marketing Funnel.

The most iconic element of inbound marketing is the ubiquitous marketing or sales funnel. Through a careful and calibrated process, the book leads readers through the funneling process of converting visitors or prospects into leads, and leads into customers.

This process can be best summarized by the sales funnel created by HubSpot itself (courtesy of HubSpot):

HubSpot Inbound Marketing Funnel

Here, there are three key things to take note of:

a) Calls To Action (CTAs).

First, you should have several Calls-To-Action (CTAs) on your website, with different types of forms. This can be anything from requests for demos, downloading of white papers, meeting requests and so on. Generally speaking, the best CTAs follow the acronym VEPA, ie they are…

  • Valuable – Provide valuable and helpful information to help users do their job better (eg webinars, white papers, e-book, research studies, free consultations)
  • Easy to Use – Make it easy and fuss-free to act on
  • Prominent – Ensure that it is prominently placed and unmistakable, with a clickable image and large font (minimal clutter)
  • Action Oriented – Use a verb and tell visitor what action to take (eg “Get Your ____ Grade”, or “Free Consultation”)

b) Landing Page and Form.

The landing page is the final step in converting a visitor to a lead. Well-designed landing pages can convert up to 50 percent of its visitors, while a poor ones convert less than one percent.

A good landing page matches content on the landing page with the content on the call-to-action (be it on the Google Ad, Facebook post, or email), builds trust with professional design and well-written copy, serves one function, and is simple and easy to fill.

Forms on landing pages should likewise have minimal inputs (usually just name and email address at the first stage), be seen above the fold (ie readers don’t have to scroll down), be simple, and instill trust.

c) Tracking.

Lastly, it is important to track the progress of each conversion stage, be it stranger to visitors, visitors to leads, leads to customers, and customers to promoters (advocates). Through web analytics software, you should be able to track indicators like web traffic, sign ups (at each stage), click throughs for CTAs, and more.

Managing Inbound Marketing.

Finally, successfully inbound marketing is predicated on three steps:

a) Hire right people and measure them right.

Here, we’re told to hire DARC employees, ie

  • Digital Citizens (people familiar with the web)
  • Strong in Analytics (quants familiar with analysis)
  • Possess Web Reach (ie influencers who already have a following)
  • Content creators (talents that can write like ex-journalists, shoot amazing photos or produce stirring videos)

Talents should then be measured on the four qualities above, graded accordingly, and compensated based on their performance on these variables.

b) Pick right PR agency.

Ensure that the PR agency you work with has the chops to execute inbound marketing. They should have digital citizens savvy with search and social, possess a decent website (as measured though a website grader), and have experience helping clients in inbound marketing.

c) Watch competition.

Inbound marketers should be paranoid about competition and keep tabs on how they are doing. There are seven ways to do so:

  • Website Grade – Run your website alongside competitors’ web sites on
  • Delicious – Check how well your competitors pages are bookmarked
  • Inbound Links – Check for the number of links for you and your competitors
  • Twitter Grade – Go to to compare
  • Facebook fans – Check for the number of Facebook fans you have vis-a-vis your competitor
  • Compete – Go to to compare estimate of traffic of your site versus competitors
  • Buzz – Go to Google and do a search on “your brand” versus “your competitor brand” (in quotations)

ABCs of Inbound Marketing.

Part of the New Rules of Social Media series, “Inbound Marketing” is an essential guide to B2B marketers keen to embrace inbound and content marketing. Although the book was first published in 2009, its principles are still valid to this day and age.

Admittedly, inbound marketing is still pretty nascent here in Asia. The majority of B2B companies are still investing a lot more time and effort in doing cold calls, participating in trade shows, and pitching their value proposition in terms of price-performance as opposed to customer value. Hopefully though this may change over time.

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University of Texas at Tyler

The University of Texas at Tyler (also referred to as UT Tyler) is a coeducational public university located in Tyler, Texas

Founded in 1971, University of Texas at Tyler is a component institution of the University of Texas System.

UT Tyler consists of four professional colleges and one traditional college of arts and sciences, offering over 90 academic degree programs at the bachelor, master, and doctoral levels. The University of Texas at Tyler is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. The university has a student body of 6,700, a 17:1 student to faculty ratio, and a park-like campus centered on Harvey Lake.

The university’s majors include Nursing, Music, Education, Business Management, Communications, Accounting, Marketing, Finance, Biology, English, History, Economics, Health & Kinesiology, Computer Science and Information Systems, and Engineering (Civil, Electrical, and Mechanical). Additionally, UT Tyler offers doctoral studies in Nursing, and one of the only PhD programs in Human Resource Development in the United States.

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University of Detroit Mercy

University of Detroit Mercy

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  • The Adventures of Zuma the Dog - Zuma Like DIY

    The third story book in our series where Zuma shows how helpful he can be by fixing up his house. Learning about numbers you can see how many jobs Zuma does in a day and keeps himself very busy.

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PT 11-120P139610

The PT 11-120P139610 is in our inventory.

The 11-120P139610 is also known as 11120P139610.

We stock over 75,000 parts in our 30,000 square foot facilities. We repair or exchange most parts. Contact Keyways to see if we repair or exchange the PT 11-120P139610.

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DEC 30-18709-08

The DEC 30-18709-08 is available from Keyways.

The 30-18709-08 can also be represented as 301870908.

We warehouse over 75,000 parts in our 30,000 square foot facilities. We repair or exchange most items. Contact us to see if we repair or exchange the DEC 30-18709-08.

For further assistance, go to our home page or call us at 937-847-2300

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DEC is an abbreviation for Digital Equipment Corporation which was purchased by Compaq Computer Corporation, which merged with HP ( Hewlett-Packard ).

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SUN 501-2872

The SUN 501-2872 is available from Keyways.

The 501-2872 is also known as 5012872.

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The DATABILITY VCP200+ is available from Keyways.

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2009 Mitsubishi Lancer Values

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2009 model year changes

The Mitsubishi Lancer, fresh of off last year's complete redesign, receives a new available 2.4L engine for 2009, along with a new ES-Sport trim that adds fog lights, a large rear spoiler, and front and side air dams. A Ralliart model, which replaces 2008's Lancer Evolution GSR, is expected to be released later in the model year.

Competitive comparison

Attractive, sporty styling; standard air bags all around; available navigation system and music server; new 2.4L engine available.

Special features for 2009

The styling on Mitsubishi's 2009 Lancer sets it apart from the rest of the compact and subcompact sedan crowd, thanks to the flashy front nose and sleek yet upright profile. It's a good value for the money, and has a fashionable, comfortable interior to boot. Standard side air bags and options such as the digital music server also make it an attractive choice from a features standpoint.
Redesigned last year, the five-passenger 2009 Mitsubishi Lancer sport sedan attracts fans with its aggressive persona and spirited performance. The DE and ES trim levels come with a 2.0L four-cylinder engine that produces 152 hp and 146 lb-ft of torque, while the GTS packs a new 2.4L four-cylinder engine that is good for 168 hp and 167 lb-ft of torque. Coming standard with a five-speed manual transmission, the Lancer offers a continuously variable automatic (CVT) transmission as an option. As for fuel economy, the 2.0L gets an EPA-estimated 22 mpg city/30 mpg hwy and 24 mpg in combined driving with a manual transmission, and the 2.4L rates 21/28/23 with the manual transmission; however, the CVT constitutes no appreciable difference. Mitsubishi Lancer safety features include a full assortment of airbags, including front-seat side airbags, full-length head curtain airbags and a driver's knee airbag. Antilock brakes are standard on the ES and GTS, and optional on the base DE, while the ES and GTS have four-wheel disc brakes, and the DE has rear drums.


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1980 Ford Value and Prices

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Note Truck Manufacturer

For Saleen XP8, Saleen Explorer, and Saleen Ranger models, please see "Saleen Sportruck" listing.

Note Car Manufacturer

For Saleen Mustang models, see "Saleen" listing. For 2006-2009 Mustang Shelby models, see "Shelby Automobiles Inc."
(Model years 2006 - 1926)

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One of the earliest car makers in the world, Ford was founded in Dearborn, Michigan in 1903 by Henry Ford. Poised to evolve with constantly changing consumer demands, Ford offers vehicles with a variety of engine sizes, seating configurations and transmissions as well as hybrid gasoline-electric powertrains.


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2012 SS Trike Prices, Values and Specs

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SS Trike Note

MOTORCYCLES/ATVS/UTILITY - Due to limited resale market, we are unable to determine used values.
(Model years 2014 - 2011)

3 Wheel Cycle

Building custom order three-wheeled motor vehicles since 2011, SS Trike operates is a state of Wisconsin. SS Trike provides three-wheeled creations incorporating custom chopper design attributes. SS Trike products are offered with an automatic or manual transmission choice.