#Hashtag #Everything75% of social media users use hashtags, and you should too.

When it comes to social media marketing, these useful little links give your audience an easy way to find your account, blog posts and so much more. Add style and brand to your content with hashtags that emphasize and impress. You can also track your hashtag analytics and other trending hashtags to stay on top of your game!

Expand Your NetworkThe small business industry is all about who you know and who you’re trying to get to know. It really is that simple.

Start building a buzzworthy reputation through an impressive network of contacts. Whether it’s partnering with other small businesses or featuring popular influencers in your content, the more people you establish connections with, the better. Having a strong network of people is trendy business.

Type 2 – The Helper

Empathy. Relationships. Support.

Twos are people-oriented and positive individuals. They are excellent communicators and tend to support the organization above all. Helpers display empathy through their desire to assist others before themselves. Their challenge is self-advocation and personal boundaries.

Type 3 – The Achiever

Success. Achievement. Standards.

Threes are productive, goal-oriented and highly motivated individuals. They are always focused on completing the task at hand. Achievers prioritize high accomplishment that is held in esteem by their work environment. Their challenge is collaborating with others and accepting new ideas.

Type 4 – The Individualist

Innovate. Aesthetic. Emotions.

Fours are creative, authentic and value-based individuals. They prioritize the personal connection they have with their work. Individualists use their own emotions to produce innovative and original results. Their challenge is reducing emotional reactions and not taking things personally.

Type 5 – The Investigator

Knowledge. Observe. Awareness.

Fives are strategic and intellectually-deep individuals. They seek technical expertise and the accumulation of knowledge. Investigators collect personal observations in preparation for taking action in the workplace. Their challenge is working with other levels of mental intelligence.

Type 6 – The Loyalist

Security. Guidance. Preparation.

Sixes are skeptical, sincere and actionable individuals. They are focused on creating structure within their working environment. Loyalists are dependable, especially when it comes to collaborative efforts. Their challenge is minimizing doubt so de-motivation is not initiated.

Type 7 – The Enthusiast

Open. Futurist. Spontaneous.

Sevens are quick-thinking, adaptable and optimistic individuals. They embrace change and turn challenges into opportunities. Enthusiasts thrive under workplace pressure through their ability to multi-task. Their challenge is to acknowledge and accept personal problems and limitations.

Type 8 – The Challenger

Protect. Authority. Direction.

Eights are self-confident, decisive and powerful individuals. They lead and stand up for the people they care about. Challengers show control through their belief of personal authority. Their challenge is adapting to different situations and avoiding the creation of unnecessary conflict.

Type 9 – The Peacemaker

Diplomat. Harmony. Mediate.

Nines are balanced, easy-going and unpretentious individuals. They see all sides of an issue and are able to bring people together. Peacemakers prefer the feeling of serenity throughout their working environment. Their challenge cultivates in their avoidance of conflicts or issues.

Get Inside Your Customer’s Head

Creating content centered around your ideal customer allows you to stay relevant and develop fresh ideas. Studies show that the most successful brands go to great lengths to make sure employees understand the experience of their customers. Stop thinking like you and start thinking like them.

What are their interests? How do they communicate? This will change your perspective and give you the creative outlook you’ve been craving.

Look for Ideas in Unlikely Places

Sometimes the best ideas are found in the most unexpected places. It’s been proven that switching environments can lead to positive brain stimulation within individuals. Go outside your comfort zone by searching for inspiration in places besides the office.

During your commute. While you’re in the shower. Let the world around you re-spark your creativity.

For Example: Is Facebook the best option for your business? To find out, setup Facebook analytics and design posts to get the insight you need. When analyzing these posts, look for overall benefits such as reach and engagement, rather than the overall numbers of shares and likes. When you carefully compare with other social media platforms, and give it enough time, you will have enough data to answer if Facebook is the best choice.

Data Provides Customer and Market Insight

Use data to keep tabs on industry-wide trends, market tendencies and customer developments. It all starts with curiosity and a need to grow.

For Example: Let’s say you’re releasing a new product, and you need to choose a marketing emphasis between a social media or an Adwords campaign. How do you pick? We’ll… it depends! What do your potential customers want to see and what will make them respond? What are your competitors doing? Just make sure you design campaigns that will answer these questions, specifically. It is only through data that you will learn what really works.

Data Drives Performance

Everyone fails, but not everyone has the strength to learn from those failures. As a business, it’s crucial to follow and track specific metrics, including productivity, sales and even employee happiness. Through this data, you become informed of what’s working and what’s not, along with what you need to change to be successful.

For Example: Have you noticed a recent decrease of productivity among your employees? Collect your own data by asking questions or sending a survey to all employees. Rely on the results to make insightful decisions. You want decisive action to quickly resolve the situation.

Everything Marketing Should Start with a Question

You know what they say… When you assume, you make an ass out of YOU and ME. If you’re looking for answers, you must first ask the right questions. The beautiful thing about data is that it always tells a story. Once you publish your efforts, data is automatically created. From analytics and demographics to figuring out what works best for your audience and why, data doesn’t just give you the facts, it gives you the answers.

Everything Should End with an Answer

So, you found the answer to your original question, but now what? Now you ask another question and another one and another one until all of your questions are answered and the voicemail box is full. Even then, you’ll find yourself wanting to learn more. Asking questions is important, but getting answers is what enables you to find out what failed and what is next.

#2: Tell Authentic Stories

Quite possibly the easiest way to humanize your brand? Make yourself relatable. Don’t spend all your time online just talking about how great your company is… Instead, be open, be honest and be real. Sharing authentic stories about your failures, hardships and lessons that you’ve learned will help customers better relate and sympathize with you. You can even share stories about your customers who previously struggled but then achieved success with help from your company/product. This will not only help humanize your brand but boost sales too!

The more open you are, the more trust your customers will give you.

#3: Express Appreciation for Your Customers

The best feeling in the world? Feeling valued. Letting your customers know that you care about them and appreciate their business is an easy way of establishing brand loyalty. The most effective way to do this is by offering special discounts with personalized messages to stand-out customers. Even a simple welcome/thank you email can turn one-time buyers into lifelong patrons. It’s truly amazing what a little bit of gratitude can do to help humanize your brand.

Customers need to be appreciated. Remember: without them, you are nothing.

Step #1: Brainstorm

Your brain has no limit. During this stage of the creative process, let your mind wonder to unfamiliar, and even terrifying places. The brainstorming process should have little to no filters, giving you the freedom you need to come up with something creative, and maybe even a little bit crazy.

There’s no commitment when it comes to brainstorming. That’s the beauty of it! Think of an idea, write it down and we’ll deal with reality later on.

Step #2: Relativity

Once you’ve got your brainstorm list, now’s the time review. This first evaluation will eliminate all ideas that fail to be relative. If your audience isn’t receptive towards the idea, it’s time to chuck it in the trash. You should never underestimate the importance of making our ideas relative to others. Being creative is great, but you also have to stay on track if you want the final idea to work.

Is the idea relative or not? It’s that simple. No need to stress about practicality just yet.

Step #3: Feasibility

This step helps bring you back to earth. It’s now time to take your new list of relative ideas and ask yourself if they’re possible to construct. This is also the time to determine which ideas are cost effective and appropriate to produce over time. It’s incredibly important to consider these aspects before moving forward with any idea.

Being realistic doesn’t mean leaving behind creativity. It’s being creative in a smart way.

Step #4: Value

You’ve got a creative idea that’s both relative and feasible… Now what? In order to understand the value of an idea, you have to predict the future ROI of it. Ideas are a way to bring your goal, vision or strategy to life. In the end, if it’s not going to give you the return you desire, it’s better to move on rather than moving forward.

If you want to find success, understanding value is key.

Step #5: Production, Distribution and Feedback

Now that you’ve made it to the final step, it seems like your idea is ready to go, right? Wrong. The last thing you have to do before moving forward is review it from a production standpoint. Often times creative ideas are easy to come by, but hard to produce. It’s your job to make sure your idea is ready for production by evaluating its potential success and making changes if necessary.

There’s nothing wrong with a little alteration! Do what you have to do to make your idea a reality.

Establish a Voice of Reason

In the midst of chaos, we often forget the importance of reasoning. It’s easy to take any idea you have and run with it. Yet, if it’s not thought out and executed, it can lead to a waste of time, resources, and worst of all, inspiration. The solution? Be open to the possibility of surviving but understand that there’s only a handful of ways to get rescued. Your voice of reason will help separate your good ideas from the bad.

Good Idea: Create a large rescue signal to planes and ships as they pass by the island.

Bad Idea: Start exploring the island without any strategy in mind.

Utilize Your Resources

Look around. The island is full of tools and resources you can use to turn your good idea into a reality. Now’s the time to gather the supplies and improvise when needed. There’s not enough wood to create a large signal fire? The waves keep erasing your SOS sand drawing? Take a step back. What resources do you have that could work? Don’t be afraid to get creative.

Giant palm leaves and a wide-open field? That could work!

Stay Focused on the Mission at Hand

You’ve accepted the idea. You executed it to the best of your ability. Now what? The only thing you can do now is wait. It can be easy to doubt yourself when something doesn’t work out right away. One of the most difficult part of ideas and execution is waiting for the results. Keeping a positive mindset and staying focused on the original mission will help district you from defeat. Good things take time.

It’s been three days… You’re about to give up. Wait, is that a plane? 

Hesitation Leads to Worldly Setbacks

Change is intimidating. There’s no denying it. But the time we spend hesitating is the time we waste growing. In the blink of an eye, trends come and go, and opportunities are presented that won’t be available 5 minutes from now. What will you do when it comes to your business? Will you embrace the journey or let it pass you by? It’s up to you.

The world won’t wait on you.

Embrace the Battle, Don’t Fear It

What’s more uncomfortable than failure? Absolutely nothing. Yet if we spend our time fearing failure, there will be no time left to evolve. You won’t always find success when trying new things, but the more you fail, the more you learn. And the more you learn, the more your business will benefit. Insist on failing so you can attract growth.

Sometimes by losing a battle, you find a new way to win the war.

Innovate, Don’t Procrastinate

Entrepreneurs don’t just wait for the perfect idea to come along. Often the best ideas come from seeing a gap or the need to improve upon one that already exists. In fact, a lot of successful businesses started with the entrepreneur needing something they couldn’t find anywhere else. Wantrepreneurs, however, tend to obsess about finding the next “get rich quick” idea. They wait and wait until something comes their way, all while wasting precious time refusing to innovate.

Pay attention to what people need and what has not been done before.

Work for Success, Not for Glory

Entrepreneurs work to be the best in their industry, while striving to find success and to leave their mark on the world. They put passion before profits. Wantrepreneurs only work for glory. If you truly want to find success, you have to value the means over the end. Remember, it’s not where you end up, but how you go there.

Chase the vision, not the reward.

Demand Transparency

There’s no such thing as secrets in the world of digitalization. Whether that’s a good or bad thing is up to you. Your business is on display to the world, making it easy for customers to make assumptions purely based on your online appearance. Luckily for you, you can easily benefit from this transparency. Use the demand your customers’ desire by establishing a sense of loyalty.

The more open you are, the more business you’ll conduct.

A New Breed of Influencers

The average person online has more influence now more than ever. Gone are the days of celebrity endorsements and fame advertising. Digitalization has created a new breed of influencers who have the potential to boost your business with one single post. It’s simple. It’s easy. And it’s a whole lot less expensive than what it used to be. The digital age is the perfect time to start expanding your business.

When people start sharing, you start gaining.

Give Your Message Life –

What are you trying to say? Who is your intended audience? What emotions are you appealing to?

Identify Your Intentions –

Why are you promoting this message? How effective will it be? Does it make sense?

Deliver Accordingly –

Where am I promoting this message? How will my audience receive it?

No marketing campaign or message is complete without the incorporation of pathos. Without emotion, you will lack a sense of relatability and humanity.

Research, Produce, Approve: A Cycle

Starting with research, we gained as much knowledge on the products as possible. We conducted interviews, examined the actual products, looked up similar products and did whatever it took to get the information we needed to create the display. Once we knew what we were working with, the design process took over. Our designs were produced and tested for relevance, accuracy and stability. There were hundreds of variables needed for success, which is when the approval process kicked in. We went through level after level, making changes and then gaining approval from our clients. With strong communication, we were able to alter small details along the way and make sure the display we were designing was perfect. This cycle allowed us to come back with each display being better than the last. We pushed ourselves to be the best, and that’s when we found success.

A Happy Client Starts with Delivery

Chances are, if you’ve been to one of the thousand stores our display was shipped to, you’ve seen it in action. The simplicity allows for a professional look, while the functionality does exactly what’s it’s supposed to do – display and market the different types of headphones to customers. With only two weeks to design and produce a project for one of the largest national retailers, we were able to deliver on time and within budget.

Crowdfunding Campaigns Need Care, Branding and Marketing

The only way to raise this money was with the help of the public. We decided to create a crowdfunding campaign, asking our community to donate towards the cause. With a series of interviews and videos, we launched this fundraiser at the beginning of October 2018. To insure constant attention, we promoted this campaign using social media, online advertisements and an email database we created. The trick to crowdfunding is to get the message to as many people as possible, as quick as possible. There’s more to it than just putting up a website online. To be successful, crowdfunding campaigns need to be taken care of. They need strategy, branding, marketing and research. We were confident our marketing and design skills would bring in the desired funding. What happened next was truly unbelievable.

Results You Won’t Believe

Our crowdfunding campaign in currently underway. We are getting a generous amount of donations, and we cannot thank our community enough. Every two weeks were a putting out a new video to keep our campaign content relevant and fresh. We are well on our way of hitting our goal. For a deeper look into our crowdfunding project, click here: https://www.gofundme.com/collectionofvoices.

Ideas Without Execution are Bound to Fail

Ideas are easy. They come in abundance. You will always have new, inspiring ideas to share with the world. Simply having a life-changing idea is not enough to actually change lives. It’s what you do after you have an idea that matters. Execution requires experience. It needs creativity. It takes wisdom. And above all, timing is everything. Use these skills when executing a plan and watch your idea life off the ground.

Execution Only Works with Excellent Ideas

You have ideas. We all do. The trick is to take an idea you are truly passionate about and run with it. We live in a world where creativity is one of the leading factors for success. Don’t let your fear of failure keep you from trusting yourself and your ideas. Excellence comes from within. It’s being able to trust your gut, make a decision and see it through until the very end. Execution is not possible without ideas and ideas are not possible without you.

1. 1. Who is your target audience and what is appropriate?
   2. How will the company use this new “marketing tool”?
   3. Will you need support/service when completed?
   4. What is your strategy to re-evaluate the success of this marketing tool?
   5. What is the end deliverable (e.g. web, email, print)?
   6. What is the company’s project goal?
   7. Does it follow the creative brief and marketing approach?
   8. What is your budget?