Startup Tips Archives - Page 35 of 66

3 Ways to Make a Social Impact With Your Startup

When I think about startups that incorporate social good, I think about businesses that are always doing the right thing – for their team, for their community, for their customers, and for the environment. Most importantly, the decisions that they make naturally consider their social impact. They don’t fake it and it is not a fad strategy – it is core to the business model. Social good isn’t about doing something to just get attention.

Case in point: After living and working in Malawi, artist (and friend) Marissa Perry Saints, founded Dsenyo in an effort to create opportunity for hard-working African women and artisans. “Social good is the reason we exist and it permeates every facet of our identity. With this approach we have buy-in from everyone…leadership, staff, suppliers and customers. Our social mission is our core,” she explained.

If you’re interested in incorporating social good into your business, here are three best practices I gleaned from my fellow Boulder- and Denver-area entrepreneur friends:

Clearly Define and Communicate Your Social Impact

Think through whether the fundamental problem your company solves is actually “social good.” If so – define how. What is the social impact of the work you’re doing? If successful, what is the social impact your company will have? Your team has to believe it in order for them to execute, and in order for them to share the impact they’re having in the community and with your customers. Is it a leap? Or is it real?

Analiese Brown, Community and Recruiting Manager for ShipCompliant, said, “Social good should become an outcome of what you’re trying to build, rather than an afterthought. What is the fundamental belief that drives your business? If you can get clear on why you do what you do at that very basic level, it becomes easier to see how you can achieve social good as an extension of your product and brand. That doesn’t mean your product has to solve a social problem explicitly (although it might), but it does challenge founders to think about how they could use their existing resources — their team, their technology, their solution — to make the world a better place.”

Make It Part of Your Company’s Culture

As an entrepreneur, you have to communicate your social impact clearly with your team early and often before you can make the case for doing it externally. It has to be ingrained in everything you do. And it must naturally connect to your business’ mission and vision.

Elizabeth Kraus, Managing Director of The Impact Angel Group, said, “To really achieve social good, startups should first start thinking about it early in the process so it can shape the company culture and be supported by the early investors and stakeholders. Startups can’t forget that they must survive in order to create social good. If used as support for customer acquisition, employee retention and other startup challenges, a social good strategy can be a competitive advantage.”

Be Authentic About Your Impact

Marc Gutman, Chief Meeting Officer and Founder of Lighthouse Conferencing, said, “My biggest piece of advice to startups looking to do this is do it for the right reasons. Do it because it is meaningful to you and your team. Do not enter into it as something that’s going to be monetized or to bring you business. If it does, that’s a bonus, but you’ll most likely be disappointed if this is your main reason for starting one of these programs.”

In other words, don’t create a social good strategy solely to generate revenue. It won’t work because people will see through it. Rather, connect the dots internally and externally on how your company can make a positive social impact throughout your business model. And if you can’t, don’t force it.

If your company’s mission isn’t to change the world, that’s okay too – there are other ways to incorporate social good into your model. For example, some employers choose to empower their employees to use paid time off to donate to the charity of their choice. Said Bill Douglas, CEO of EssentiaLink: “I chose to create a charitable time off policy from the start and encouraged employees to donate their energy on company time to the charity or school of their choosing. This bonded our teams because we all cover for each other without hesitation when its for charity. There is pride in ownership as employees boast about their chosen charity. Our stakeholders even get involved now. Its become engrained in our culture and everybody benefits.”

Integrating social impact into your business model shouldn’t be an afterthought and it shouldn’t be temporary. It should be central to achieving your vision. Otherwise, it might just be a distraction — one that your clients and employees will see through.

Sarah Schupp is the CEO and founder of UniversityParent.com, the #1 site for college parents to find everything they need to help their student succeed. Follow her on Twitter @Sarah_Schupp

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

5 Tips for Streamlining Your Online Marketing Efforts

Desk With Digital Tablet. Marketing Research.

I can’t pin down the exact emotion that hits me when I try to quantify just how much time and energy my partners and I routinely dedicate to our company’s web presence. Pride? Exhaustion? Bewilderment?

It’s not a struggle, though, to give a name to the crippling frustration we’d all face if we ever ended up at the bottom of search results despite our efforts. While I’m not the foremost expert on SEO, SEM, PPC, and all of their acronym relatives, I am expert enough to know that brute effort in those areas, by itself, is not enough to protect a business. It takes intelligent and strategic effort. That’s why I use several different firms to outsource our web marketing.

But the real key to maximizing returns comes in not just contracting the appropriate experts, but in managing them well. Here are my five top rules for keeping your outsourced marketing team (and yourself) accountable and efficient:

You can’t analyze data if you don’t have data. The foundation behind any good web-analysis method is Google Analytics. Since setting up this service is both easy and free, there is absolutely no excuse not to have an account, whether you spend money with Google or not. When you do this, don’t forget to set up all of the lead capture forms so you can track leads/conversions in order to see exactly what is attracting your visitors. If you haven’t done this, do it now. If you have, go back and make sure you’ve done it thoroughly.
Always be scanning. A common maxim in sales is “keep your eye on the prize.” Not in web traffic — instead, you want to keep your eyes on everything. Comb through your data in search of benchmarks that lead to sales, sure — but don’t forget to look further upstream too. In other words, don’t just look for a sale’s end goal, but for areas you can key into and strengthen. Is your traffic mostly from direct referrals (typing in your URL manually), or is it coming from a specific blog? Likewise, pay attention to the content of links and keywords. There are infinite ways to search for your company, so make sure you’re targeting hotspots and adjusting your strategy accordingly. Finally, don’t draw a line between web traffic and phone traffic. Many vendors offer call tracking, which can be useful to identify surges of inquiries in addition to those of sales.
Find your sweet spot. Look upstream at the quality and returns of your online marketing. Your average rankings and cost per click are two indicators that can help identify if you’re in the most efficient spot on the search engine or if you’ve run askew. While holding the number one paid spot has its clear advantages, branding campaigns among them, many companies find that these spots are not the most efficient. PPC and SEM campaigns shouldn’t be “all or nothing,” so monitor your costs per conversions closely.
Evaluate your metrics wisely. Rather than comparing your marketing results over consecutive periods, try comparing them by season or even years prior. Taking into account events such as holidays and industry upturns/downturns can greatly affect the accuracy of your interpretations. Apply the same level of stringency to areas such as backlinks and rankings. Just as all months are not equal, nor are all backlinks or search locations. Evaluate new backlinks for quality to avoid getting pegged by Google and consider using an IP proxy to differentiate between your personalized search results and those of your target customers.
Apply constant pressure. Don’t let yourself (or your vendors) become complacent with good results. Even after sales climb, it’s important to remain active and responsive. One way to combat stagnation is to ask that your vendors schedule regular conferences with you. Similarly, just because you’ve asked your vendor for new ideas or opinions in April doesn’t mean you can’t ask again in May (and June).

Sage management of web marketing efforts is rarely the easiest path to follow, but it’s often the best path. Just remember that anything you measure and work toward will improve, no matter what. Online marketing through outsourced vendors is no exception.

Sam Saxton is currently the President of Salter Spiral Stair, Mylen Stairs, and Paragon Stairs. He previously has operated a residential construction company and has experience in acquiring small businesses as well as advanced marketing/sales strategies. He is a graduate of Babson College with a focus in entrepreneurship.

If You Want to Disrupt Your Market, Look to the People on the Sidelines

People Walking In La Rambla Street, Spain, Europe.

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

This quote, attributed (perhaps erroneously) to Henry Ford, illuminates an important idea for entrepreneurs to keep in mind: Sometimes the best market for your product doesn’t exist yet.

I first began researching the market size for my data sharing company, ShareFile, in the summer of 2011 — just a few months before we sold to Citrix. We’d already made Inc.’s list of the 500 fastest-growing private companies for two years in a row, six years after I launched the company.

We launched ShareFile in late 2005. Rather than looking at the market for FTP (file transfer protocol, then the dominant form of file transfer) and considering what portion of that market we could capture, I thought about all the people who didn’t use FTP because it was difficult and cumbersome. That was the much bigger market in my opinion, and there were very few accurate measurements of that non-consumer group.

Are you factoring non-consumers into your startup plan?

A huge opportunity for entrepreneurs lies in taking advantage of that very slice of the market: The people who are sitting on the sideline, waiting for you to show them why they should even buy a particular type of product or service at all. This is disruptive innovation at its best, and it’s an increasingly viable way to achieve business success.

Perhaps it means your product is so new that it carves out a whole new market, building demand as it gains popularity. But that’s a very rare exception. Even breakthrough products like the iPhone and Tivo did not create entirely new categories. Much more often, capitalizing on non-consumption means you are taking an existing product or service and making it either a little bit easier to use or dramatically less expensive than incumbents.

Consider Uber. I’ve used this black-car service a lot recently, even though I’ve never been a heavy taxi user. I had a very distinct perception of taxis: they take 20 or 30 minutes to arrive, the car is often dirty, and the driver often gives you a death stare when you try to pay with a credit card. I was a non-consumer of taxis except when absolutely necessary. If Uber’s founders were just looking at the market of frequent taxi users, they would never have counted on me as a customer.

But when I learned about Uber and used it a few times, I became addicted. It’s a great and easy-to-use service: You open their mobile app, check the cars available in your vicinity, and click a button to request a car. You instantly see when your car will arrive. Your credit card information is stored in the system, so you don’t have to haggle with the driver or even take out your wallet. The drivers I’ve had have all been very nice, the cars have been clean, and the whole process is usually as stress-free as it could be (granted, I haven’t had the surprise fee experience that others reportedly have had).

Uber is not the only company to succeed in this way: Starbucks, AirBnB, and even Home Depot all created new markets or dramatically increased the size of a market by focusing on non-consumers and giving them a reason to enter the market.

Uber is building a great business by capitalizing on non-consumption. I likely never would have become a regular taxi user. But Uber improved the experience and simplified the process enough to win me over. What non-consumers can you win over with your next business idea?

This post originally appeared in Jesse Lipson’s Forbes.com column.

Jesse Lipson is a VP & GM for Citrix, which acquired his company ShareFile in 2011. ShareFile is a file-transfer service built for business users who need secure, reliable and easy tools for sharing data. He launched ShareFile in 2005 and bootstrapped the company from zero to four million users in six years. Jesse has also launched and/or led several other cloud and e-commerce businesses, including Rapidata.net, a pharmaceutical market research company, and the website development firm novelProjects.

A Trend Is Always A Trap: A Famous Ad Man on Mediocrity

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“No one ever got fired for buying IBM,” as the saying goes.

IBM here is a metaphor for the safe choice. For jumping on the corporate bandwagon. For following the trends of business.

Trend following might be safe for corporate types, but for startup founders, “safe” is a four-letter word.

Just ask legendary ad man George Lois:

Because advertising and marketing is an art, the solution to each new problem or challenge should begin with a blank canvas and an open mind, not with nervous borrowings of other people’s mediocrities.That’s precisely what “trends” are—a search for something “safe”—and why a reliance on them leads to oblivion.

Despite the risks of trend following, startups are notoriously bad about doing so (see my post Why Does Your Startup Sound Like a Startup? for more). Startup trends appear in homepage layouts, messaging, user acquisition plans, and even approaches to company culture.

But your runway’s shrinking and everything’s on fire and how are you going to make payroll?

This is no time for the safety of other people’s mediocrities.

Lois, again:

In any creative industry, the fact that others are moving in a certain direction is always proof positive, at least to me, that a new direction is the only direction.

Sounds a lot like the startup worldview. So it’s weird that, when, it comes to branding and messaging, so many startups fall into the trend trap of mediocrity and then oblivion.

Disruptive technology, you say? Too bad you look and sound like every other player in your space.

What if your messaging and marketing were as disruptive as your technology? What if your team put in the effort to tell a truly compelling and meaningful brand story that did justice to your product?

Leave the trends to the bloggers and journalists; they need something to write about come January.

By the way, when asked for insight into the coming year’s trends, Lois says:

My answer is always identical to what I said the previous year: “Beats the shit out of me. I’ll know it when I do it.”

Patrick Woods is a hybrid ad man/startup guy. As director of a>m ventures, he connects startups with awesome branding, PR, and marketing strategy.

This post originally appeared on the author’s blog.

What These Women TV Characters Can Teach You About Business

Two Women In Living Room Watching Television Eating Chocolates S

One thing that makes “Game of Thrones” so compelling (like “Girls,” “Homeland,” and the late “Breaking Bad”) is its complex, often controversial leading lady. As professional women, what lessons can we draw from Daenerys and her counterparts on other hit shows? A lot, as it turns out. Below, four of my personal favorites — and what we can glean from each:

Skylar White from “Breaking Bad”

Love her or hate her (yes, there is a whole subculture of Skylar haters), Skylar is savvy and smart. She lacks the sinister evil of her meth-cooking husband, but she definitely isn’t a pushover. Skylar successfully negotiated a bottom-dollar price for the car-wash acquisition — a move that even Walter seemed skeptical of. She’s also keen with numbers, enough to cook the books and launder drug money.

While it’s not wise to use those tactics (they will land you a visit from the IRS or your brother-in-law DEA agent), it is every business owner’s job to know their numbers. Lessons learned:

Don’t be afraid to negotiate. Everything is negotiable. Even business contracts presented by large corporations can be amended to your benefit. But you must speak up and have a leverage point; never want or need something so badly that you accept it at face value.
Know your numbers. You don’t have to do math equations in your head, but you need to know the financial status of your business at any given time. Start with your costs of goods or services and the margins on sales and go from there.
Carry on when things seem bleak. There may be days when even you don’t want to show up for work. But you must: for yourself, for your employees, and for your customers.

Daenerys Targaryen from “Game of Thrones”

As women, we often underestimate ourselves and even fall victim to the Imposter Syndrome. Dany could have easily slunk away or become the wife of another, silenced forever. But she had a burning desire to win in a man’s world. She takes up a league of her own, first by creating a trusted inner circle of advisors and then by winning over legions of loyal soldiers through compassion and empathy. By meeting their needs, she fulfilled her own. Lessons learned:

You are worthy. The only limitations we have are the ones we put there. With confidence and self-esteem, knowledge and a strong skill set, any opportunity is available to you if you seek it out.
Build a team. You can’t build a business alone. Invite people into your team who can complement your existing talents. Make sure they are supportive and results oriented as well.
Your employees are your strongest asset. Your employees help make your vision happen. Treat them well. Be fair and honest. If you do happen to have an underperforming employee who you can’t help improve, get them out! Bad employees will tarnish the good ones.

Carrie Mathison from “Homeland”

When she’s not interrogating prisoners of war or foiling bomb plots, Carrie is neurotic, unstable, and quite frankly, off her rocker. From the outset, it seems Carrie’s case is one of “how not to behave in business.”

Now look closer, and you’ll see Carrie is outshining her counterparts by acting on intuition, pushing boundaries and delivering results. Here’s the truth: great entrepreneurs, creators, and inventors are all a little neurotic. They are the ones really thinking outside the box (see: Steve Jobs). And most great business leaders all lead imbalanced work/home lives. So as we embark on the next season of “Homeland,” let us not judge. After all, isn’t there a little bit of Carrie in all of us? Lessons learned:

Business is emotional. Business involves daily interaction with many individuals. People’s livelihoods are at stake. Just like with your employees, be honest and fair. Keep your composure and treat others as you would want to be treated.
Crazy comes with the territory. Entrepreneurs are risk-takers. Our enthusiastic, out-there way of thinking is often the catalyst for new business ventures. Embrace the wild ride — and be glad that we aren’t all on the crazy train.
Push boundaries. You can’t copy your competitors. You must out-think them, outsmart them, out invent them. You sell tacos in a restaurant? Well, how about selling them in a food truck? Get creative and take your business to the next level.

Marnie from “Girls”

In HBO’s hit “Girls,” we meet a young, eager Marnie, who desperately wants the perfect life but quickly loses control. She is fired from her job, breaks up with her boyfriend, and is labeled a bad friend by her roommate, Hannah.

As entrepreneurs, we know that failure doesn’t seem quite as bad once we have a few years under our belts. If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough. So dear Marnie, make mistakes while you’re still young. And for those of us that are now past our twenties, let’s try something new today. In failing, we will ultimately win. Lessons learned:

You can’t control your environment. When the unexpected happens, use your system of checks and balances to deal with the situation and move on, so you can get back to business as usual.
Don’t be too rigid. Just like in fashion and music, there are trends in business. You may suddenly have a product no one buys anymore. Pivot. Accept the challenges head on — or go out of business.
Failure leads to success. A failed new product can be devastating. But within every failure are many learning opportunities about what worked and what didn’t. Next time, you will do things differently and hopefully succeed.

Our favorite characters may not be teaching us anything new, but they remind us of the many roles we have to play. We too fret over numbers, negotiate contracts and expand our businesses — all while pregnant with our third child. And yes, our own emotions sometimes get the best of us.

Maybe that’s why there is no “The Real Women Entrepreneurs.” We’re already charting our course, somewhere between the blurred lines of business, art and reality.

Erin Meagher is the developer of Kelapo™ Extra Virgin Coconut Oil, a product manufactured and marketed by Beneficial Blends LLC, headquartered in Tampa, Florida. Kelapo™ was launched in 2009 with the goal of producing the best-quality coconut oil on the market while ensuring fair and ethical treatment of the farmers who cultivate it.

How to Build the Right Team for Your Startup

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I’ve been spoiled throughout my career of building teams in large tech companies. I’ve had all the luxuries: infinite resources, time, and large pools of qualified candidates. At Google, we always had a steady stream of graduates from top schools flowing into the organization in entry-level positions. When it came time to build a new functional team, I would simply pull from the group of internal all-stars we had at our fingertips.

In the startup world, things are different. When the momentum is building and things are moving fast, your company begins to feel the push that comes with an early rush of success. The call to scale comes soon after. Assuming you have all the necessary prerequisites to scale (a demand for your product and the resources to make moves), answering that call quickly can be a big challenge.

At my current startup, Porch.com, we are in rapid growth mode. We are using the following principles to build powerful and effective teams while speed-scaling.

Know Your Numbers

If you have a team of nine and you hire one, that person is now 10 percent of your team! Hiring the wrong person in a group that small can be fatal. You still hand-pick your players and can exit bad hires, but so much rides on getting it right the first time.

When I am evaluating candidates, I weigh references and past success heavily. You have to be pickier in a startup because you’re moving quickly. Utilize lean startup methodologies when hiring. For certain roles, I like getting references during the phone screen so I can check them before investing more time interviewing.

Find People Who Fit

The people who thrive in startups are cut from a different cloth. Many just aren’t willing to burn the midnight oil to build something great and enduring. There are two major characteristics I look for when selecting candidates:

Flexibility – Things change rapidly in a startup. Can your teammate accept that and live a lifestyle with frequent ups and downs? To scale efficiently, startups need people onboard who can adapt quickly and welcome change. The startup grind is a lifestyle, not a job.
Problem solvers – Part of working at a startup means there are many unanswered questions. To many people, that’s what attracts them in the first place. Hiring problem solvers goes a long way. You need people who can identify questions you didn’t know existed in the first place.

Build With Organization Architecture in Mind

Anyone who has worked in a fast-moving startup has seen it happen: as teams grow and departments divide, your once swift and scrappy startup begins to surface some bureaucratic characteristics. The culprit is the communication breakdown that happens in a poorly architected organizational structure.

You might be growing a mighty force of talented developers, but if they can’t effectively communicate with product and design teams, building your product will be slow.

Take a look at your company and figure out which departments are essential to bringing your products to life quickly. Find ways to tie them together. Build pathways with clear leadership so decisions can be made quickly and autonomously within that team.

Architecting a company structure is easier said than done. It takes careful planning and monitoring on a continual basis from top-level leadership.

Optimize Your Space

As much as I enjoyed the scrappiness of working from our CEO’s basement for our first year, it quickly came time for us to move into our first “real” office space. We had several talented interns on the way for summer and we realized we needed a setup that would both allow us to maintain our scrappy culture and give us enough room for proper expansion.

It’s not uncommon for a startup to have a few offices before landing on a final location, so the ideal setup often involves flexibility for expansion while only paying for what you’re using. Try finding a large, mostly vacant space and negotiate terms that allow you to rent more square-footage as needed. You can maintain your lean efficiency while eliminating the need for frequent and costly relocations.

Speed-scaling a startup is no easy task — but it’s a good problem to have. It means your company has done something right. Keep building on your foundation. Get the right people in the right roles and give them the environment (figuratively and literally) to build something great.

Ronnie Castro is co-founder of http://porch.com, a start-up aimed at helping people manage and love their biggest asset – their home. Operations, revenue generating and customer acquisition experience with Google, Expedia and WildTangent.

5 Reasons Startups Should Never Work in Coffeeshops

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For many entrepreneurs that are tired of working from home, the corner coffee shop has become a haven for getting plugged-in to get productive with laptops out and headphones on. I can see why many entrepreneurs make coffee joints their place of biz; they’re from open morning til night, offer a warm atmosphere and have plenty of startup fuel flowing. However, I personally have never been a fan of this work environment and have not fallen under the spell of the cafe mystique. Leaving reeking of the smell of coffee grounds is not all it is cracked up to be. I say its time to realize what the coffee shop is good for: grabbing a cup of coffee, and conversing with friends, or reading a book in leisure. Its not the place to get your startup started and I have five reasons why.

1. It’s Distracting – All entrepreneurs can agree that focus is key to success. How can anyone concentrate for a full work day in an environment of chatting, bean grinding, and brew wooshing? Not to mention the overly-loud music filling the room; most prominent at Starbucks where music labels are forcing music down your ear canals in hopes of a purchase with your latte. If you do plan to work in these distractions, invest in some noise-cancelling headphones and blinders to keep your eyes on your laptop. Just pray no one bumps the back of your chair, asks to sit at your table or spills something on you.

2. It’s Unprofessional – I have never been a fan of taking meetings at coffee shops, mostly because of reason #1 above, but in all seriousness, its just unprofessional. Sure, it depends on whom you’re meeting with and your relationship with them. I would hope entrepreneurs would never schedule an investor pitch meeting at a Caribou. Coffee shops can be a logistical nightmare for meetings, even if they’re quick. There’s nothing worse than scheduling a meeting, showing up and not having a place to sit to conduct your meeting. Fail.

3. It’s Un-Collaborative – There may be other startup junkies in your vicinity at Intelligentsia, but since they are also desperately trying to stay focused they’re not exactly open to having collaborative discussions. Contrast to the environment at a real co-working space that promotes and breeds collaborative behavior like 1871 or the Inspire Business Club. There, it’s acceptable to join forces with other startup geeks and not have to worry about someone stealing your seat if you need to use the rest room.

4. It’s Expensive – The average latte in Chicago costs $4 and if you buy one a day that adds up to be $120/moth and $1460/year. That’s an expensive habit for bootstrapping entrepreneurs. With that money you’re spending on coffee you could afford most open-seating co-working spaces and those typically include a warm caffeinated beverage. Good luck trying to get away without making a purchase, they’ll toss you out for loitering.

5. It’s Lacking Resources – I have yet to see a barista hand over an entrepreneur mail deliveries with his caramel mocchiato. Not gonna happen. You can’t have mail sent to Starbucks; you wouldn’t use their address for your business; and they probably don’t have a fax machine you could borrow. Sure they have free Wi-Fi, but its not and will never be an office. Try reserving group of tables ahead of time to have a group brainstorming session. Nope!

These reasons may be my opinions, but you gotta admit, they have some merit. I’m not saying to not frequent coffee shops, they are local businesses that need our support. I’m just saying to think twice before working there. A coffee shop may be a fine escape every once in a while, but I recommend to find a place that you can be most productive with your startup. Kudos to you for at least getting out of the house.

Tim Hines is a serial entrepreneur, consultant and keynote speaker specializing in social media, mobile technology and entrepreneurship. Based in Chicago, Tim has been working in marketing, social media and the corporate travel industries for over ten years with companies such as the Tribune Company, TicketMaster and the CIA.

3 Simple Questions to Uncover Your Startup’s Personality

Duke Cannon Soap

My team does a lot of brand development, both for startups and for Fortune 500 clients. In the process, we’ve developed lots of tools and frameworks and processes for creating good work.

You’ve probably heard terms like brand essence, brand platform, positioning statements and the like. Those traditional processes, coupled with our own, are really helpful in jump-starting and guiding a brand project.

But as it turns out, almost all are completely irrelevant for early-stage startups. That’s because before you’ve arrived at product-market fit, your name and brand design matter little, if it all.

As you’re approaching product-market fit, brand does begin to matter. But the tools brand professionals often feel too ambiguous early on.

So what’ a founder to do?

The power of personality

That’s why I love the idea of uncovering your brand personality. It’s simple and bite-sized. And you can start working on it right now, no matter where you are on the growth curve.

Unlike brand essence and platforms, personality is something we innately understand. We already say things like, “That was the longest coffee date every. The dude had no personality,” and “She’s super inspiring with a magnetic personality.”

We get it. And what’s great is that innate understanding translates into brands as well.

Personality is something intrinsic that’s manifested in things like personal style, communication style, food and drink choices, and other lifestyle and social considerations. And the same is true for brands. Those external choices point to something deeper about what your brand believes about the world.

And the great news is that you can begin developing your brand personality today, starting with three simple questions.

1. What would your brand order in a bar?

First, ask what your brand would order at a bar. This exercise is great because it’s quick, relatable, and an answer almost immediately comes to mind.

For soap brand Duke Cannon, I’d say a classic American whiskey. Not bottom shelf, but no small-batch, hand-crafted crap.

For Warby Parker, a gin martini up seems about right.

Dollar Shave Club, a local craft beer (that Duke Cannon would probably roll its eyes at).

You can do the same thing with food. If your brand was eating its last meal tonight, what would it order?

Pizza? Surf n’Turf? Veggie burgers?

2. How does your brand walk and talk?

Next, try personifying your brand a little more. Picture your brand as a person in your head. Does he have a beard? Glasses? Is she wearing a sundress? Or a pantsuit? Hair up or down? What do they look like when they walk?

Whatever your brand eats, drinks, or looks like in your head, it’s less about the actual choice and getting it perfect, and more about the social connotations that come along with these things. Images crop up in all of our heads at the mention of tiniest personality detail — like a drink at a bar.

A woman eating a bone-in ribeye with whiskey versus a women eating a mixed green salad with Chardonnay, for instance. You start to know that person, even if just a little.

3. What does your brand believe about the world?

Finally, try to give your brand some strong opinions. About the world, about current events, about other products. Strong opinions are generally the clearest opinions. And when you’re clear about what you believe, people will understand your personality faster.

And don’t be afraid to be polarizing. Strong opinions are inherently controversial. They’re also the most convincing. And the people your brand might alienate wouldn’t be your customers anyway.

Take this example from the Duke Cannon FAQ page:

WILL USING DUKE CANNON SOAP GET ME LAID?

SON, YOU HAVE US CONFUSED WITH A POPULAR BRAND OF SHOWER GELS. THEIR “EFFECT” PROMISES GREATER ATTENTION FROM “EAGER AND ATTRACTIVE YOUNG FEMALES.” AND IF YOU BELIEVE THAT LOAD OF BS, YOU ARE A COMPLETE D-BAG. PLEASE LEAVE OUR SITE NOW. OUR SOAP GETS YOU CLEAN, NOT LAID. YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO TAKE CARE OF THAT YOURSELF.

Strong opinions don’t necessarily have to be direct shots at other brand, however. Harlan Estate is a super high-end, super exclusive California winery. Before you get the privilege of buying a bottle, not even a case, you have to get on their mailing list.

Their wines are listed at price points like $700 and $800 on the secondary market. Their brand believes something about wine and the world. So much so that H. William Harlan penned a 6 page “letter from the proprietor” that gives background on the family, the land, and the winery. And he closes with this statement:

“Yet we have only just begun to understand this land sufficiently to bring it into its current form. And I feel that is as it should be, for fine wines evolve over decades, and wine-growing estates, families, and communities across generations.”

Knowing your brand

As you being to explore these exercises, you’ll quickly see how a brand with a strong personality is so much more interesting and meaningful than one without.

The Duke Cannon website could say “the easiest way to get clean” or “the biggest bars of soap online.” Harlan estate could say “the best wine money can buy.”

Those are the easy, obvious positions. The “what” to say without thought about “how” to say it.

But we know there’s more to the story. Through fleshing out the personality behind the voice, we feel like we know these brands. When Duke Cannon gives you the finger, you chuckle.

When Harlan Estate says something like “Winemakers believe that the land speaks to them of possibilities. A winemaker’s goal is to express those possibilities, to capture the best of what the land has to offer,” you actually nod your head and say, “Yeah, express them.”

That’s because in addition to feeling like you know the brand through its personality, it also feels authentic. After spending some time with the Duke Cannon brand, there’s a high degree of consistency in terms of design, copy, and overall user experience. In fact, when you make a purchase, your confirmation email comes from intern1@dukecannon.com.

Harlan Estate, at the other end of the design spectrum, reinforces its personality with minimal design, rich black and white photography, and nearly a dozen multipage PDFs about everything from the vintages to the land to the opinions of the founders.

Authenticity emerges when your voice matches your beliefs. When the design and copy and experience work in harmony to communicate the truth about your brand personality.

So what does your brand believe about the world? The most interesting brand personalities emerge when you identify the tension between what is and what could be. What should be.

What is that point of tension that brought your brand into existence? Start there, and build outward.

Move from a Product to a Brand

Developing your personality will help your grow from a product to a brand. A product is easily copied; a brand is unique. A product is easily ripped off; a brand is an individual. A produce is a thing; a brand is a personality.

In our world, products are increasingly cheap and easy to test and launch. In a world of ever-expanding competition from incumbents and other startups alike. There are dozens of similar startups playing in the same space.

So how will you succeed?

First, you’ll build an incredible solution to a big problem. But then, to push even further ahead, you craft a compelling brand personality that energizes and inspire your audience.

A great personality keeps speaking even when you’re no longer talking. A great personality inspires people to talk about you when you’re not around. In my case, that meant a dude suggesting a dude buy soap as a gift to another dude! That’s powerful.

So what are you saying?

Patrick Woods is a hybrid ad man/startup guy. As director of a>m ventures, he connects startups with awesome branding, PR, and marketing strategy.

This post originally appeared on the author’s blog.

What You Need to Know Before You Build a Mobile App–Besides Code

Mobile app tablet smartphone

As mobile devices continue to gain adoption and outpace computer sales, entrepreneurs are eagerly seeking developers to bring their iPhone and Android app ideas to life. Mobile apps represent a massive opportunity for building a mobile-based company, but success takes far more than just a great idea and a talented development team.

At Sourcebits, we’ve worked on more than 500 projects since 2006. We’ve built more than 30 chart-topping apps, and we’ve spoken with hundreds of entrepreneurs about their product ideas. Some have been huge hits, others have struggled, and some ideas don’t get produced at all.

Here are the eight important questions every entrepreneur should ask themselves (these are the same questions we ask our clients) before diving head-first into the exciting world of creating iOS and Android applications. A SlideShare of these questions is also available here.

What are your motivations for building this app? What is motivating you or driving the development of this app? Money and fame are great, but they won’t be enough. You need to have a passion and a clear vision as to what your app will accomplish and the problem it will solve for the target customer. And that passion needs to be strong enough to endure the ups and downs of product development and the challenges of building a company.
When you share your idea with others, does anyone want a piece of the action? As you begin sharing and explaining your awesome new app idea, does anyone want to join you as a co-founder? Will they invest their money, their time, their talent and/or their connections to help you? If people are willing to work for a low wage in exchange for equity in your company, it’s a sign that they really believe in the quality of your idea.
Does talking about your app create buzz, curiosity, or generate feedback? Can your idea fit on a post-it? What’s your 15-second elevator pitch? You have to be able to tell people your idea in one simple line, explaining what you hope to achieve. You’re on to something if it stimulates lots of buzz and curiosity. If you can’t sell your idea and get people excited in person, it will be even harder to do so online. And avoid being defensive when you get feedback — listening to and evaluating the positives and negatives you hear could save you hundreds of thousands of dollars by helping you refine ideas and product features.
Do you have the money to build the app? (Don’t forget iterations and marketing.) You might think you can develop the next best app for under $10,000. And there are developers who will take your low budget — but you will get what you pay for. To build a great product, you could spend more like $250,000. Getting to a minimum viable product might cost you $100,000, and then you’ll probably also need a marketing budget to help people discover your app and a budget for iterations. If you don’t have that kind of money lying around, you’ll need to find investors. Hone your presentation skills and showcase your ideas to potential investors (friends and family, angels, VCs) in ways that make them excited.
What’s so special about your app? Between Apple’s App Store, Google Play, Windows and the web, there are millions of apps. In a flooded market, what’s going to make your app stand out? You need to have a clear idea of your differentiators, how the user experience will feel, and geographically what your target market will be. These will act as your compass when development offers various product directions.
How will you make it all happen? Do you have a team to develop and engineer the app for you? What will your design look like? What is your monetization strategy? How will you conduct user testing? How will you market your app at launch and beyond? How will you handle customer support? What analytics will you use to determine the second version? If all of this seems like a lot of work, you’re right — it is. Luckily for entrepreneurs like yourself, many resources are available to help you with every aspect of building a business around a mobile app. But skimping on any of these areas is a quick way for your app to become ignored and irrelevant.
How will you deal with inevitable adversity? Even if you’ve answered all these questions, plan perfectly and do everything right, success is never guaranteed. When the going gets tough, will you persevere or perish? The first version of your product isn’t likely to be perfect. So it is important to have iteration strategies and new ideas in place. How you handle adversity will determine your longevity in this competitive field.
Are you willing to leave everything to pursue this project? You need to decide if this will be a side project to pursue while maintaining a full time job, or if you are going to go all-in and focus full time on your app and new business. Although the financial risks are higher, leaving your job and fully pursuing your vision improves greatly your chance of success. Fortune favors the bold, if the bold have something great to offer.

Keeping a record of your answers will help you clarify your vision and keep you on track during the development process. It’s a great springboard for creating the mission, product road map and brand messaging for your company.

This post originally appeared on the author’s blog.

Rohit Singal, 38, founded Sourcebits in 2006. A trained radiologist, he quit medicine to found a startup in India. Sourcebits developed the first iPhone app from India – an alarm clock called Nightstand that was a major hit. The company has since built more than 500 products, including 30+ chart-topping mobile apps. Sourcebits employs more than 300 people, and secured Series A funding from Sequoia Capital and IDG.

3 Tips for Outsourcing Product to a Development Shop

Designer Drawing Website Development Wireframe

With a shortage of quality development talent, many founders have turned to development shops in order to start building their product.

At Terrible Labs, we have the opportunity to chat with many founders about how to get their first web or mobile product designed, built, and launched. Unfortunately, a lot of them have unrealistic budget expectations about building their product.

If you have a limited budget and need help building your product, here are three things we recommend to reduce the overall project cost:

Wireframe your product’s user flow before you talk to a development shop.

We’ve presented and written a lot about the value of wireframing and prototyping because we feel it’s the most important step when productizing an idea. However, most prospective clients come to us with an idea that exists solely in their head.

The goal of wireframing is to get the idea out of your head and onto paper. Once you put pen to paper, you’ll learn how your product actually works and not how you think it will work.

You can consider your wireframes sufficient after you have conveyed all of the possible ways a user can flow through your app. Make sure to account for everything from how the user signs up to how they ultimately achieve your product’s value proposition. In our experience, designing well-thought-out wireframes can cut 2 to 3 weeks off your project.

Be willing to cut features that aren’t necessary.

Good wireframes act as a blueprint for product development. More importantly, exhaustive wireframes will help a development shop break your product down into user stories.

User stories are descriptions of pieces of your product’s feature functionality. Ultimately they serve as the guide for development. At Terrible Labs, we take the user stories generated from wireframes and put them into a project management tool like Trello or Pivotal Tracker. Our clients then work with us to determine the priority of each story and positioning, which leads to a detailed estimate breakdown.

Once you have an estimate breakdown from your development shop, you can, based on your budget, determine which features are must-haves — and which are nice-to-haves, cutting accordingly. But you need those wireframes first.

Be a proactive project manager.

Good project management is the difference between finishing a project within the terms of the engagement and spending more money for additional, unplanned time.

At Terrible Labs, we work on a time and materials basis. This means that we work with a client on their product for a set term, regardless of what gets completed. The most important reason for this approach is that we want the client to take initiative to become a very active participant in the development process. Since we test continuously and often, we need quick feedback from customers in order to make changes sooner rather than later.

Staying active is critical. Take the time to use and adopt a project management tool so you remain an active participant. This ensures you don’t just end up under budget, but with a successful project that meets your expectations, too.

So, what are you waiting for?

Don’t let a limited budget prevent you from seeing your idea become a reality. If you are truly committed to building your product, take the initiative to extensively wireframe your idea, realistically scope your product, and then proactively run it. Follow through on these three steps, and you’ll be amazed at how far your budget will go.

Cort Johnson is a co-founder of Terrible Labs, a boutique design and development shop, and TicketZen, the easiest way to pay parking tickets with your mobile phone. He also works with Flybridge Capital Partners and its general partners as an advisor to support and broaden the firm’s investment activities.

5 Simple Ways to Use Twitter to Its Full Potential

Even the best businesses can have trouble adjusting to social media. It’s understandable that plenty of profitable and professional companies don’t use Twitter correctly, especially if they’ve been in business for many years before social media came into play. However, customers keep up with businesses online, and they will judge your ability to use Twitter and other social media sites.

If you want to attract more technology-savvy clients, then you need to make sure that you’re making the most of your Twitter account. Twitter can help bring in more potential customers and promote loyalty from your current customers, but only if you’re tweeting the right things in the right way. Take a look at these five things that even good businesses do badly on Twitter, and make note of what you could be doing differently.

They forget to create a profile. One of the worst things you can do is keep your profile picture as the little egg you first start out as. Make it personal. Upload a professional profile picture for your company. The picture should ideally be something that is recognizable even when it’s small. Don’t forget to also fill out your bio. If there is nothing there, people won’t know who you are or what your company does. This should be one of the first things that you do — there’s no excuse for you to be tweeting with an unfinished profile.
They tweet just about business. Yes, Twitter is a great way to show off your company and gain new customers. However, you shouldn’t plug your business in every tweet. Do people really want to read 140-character advertisements all day long? Tweet photos of your workplace or employees, facts about your industry, tips that you learned along the way, a funny anecdote or a question for your followers. People will be more likely to follow you and recommend you to others if they actually enjoy reading your tweets.
They don’t follow polite Twitter etiquette. Just because you’re interacting on the Internet doesn’t mean that you should let your social graces fall to the wayside. Don’t do tacky things like constantly beg for retweets or use excessive hashtags. Take the time to check your spelling and grammar. Use correct punctuation. No, you don’t need to use three exclamation points. Treat Twitter as though you were writing a company email or a friendly note to a client. You can have fun and joke around on Twitter, but make sure you do it in a suitable and easy-to-understand way.
They tweet too rarely. If you’re not tweeting regularly, then you’re not tweeting correctly. Twitter is made for frequent, daily updates. Because you’re limited to 140 characters, you should feel the need to tweet frequently anyway. If you’re having trouble remembering to tweet at least once a day, try a social media management tool that allows you to schedule tweets in advance, such as Hootsuite or TweetDeck.
They don’t interact with others. You shouldn’t just be tweeting out into the abyss and assuming that your followers are reading. Think of Twitter as sort of a meet-and-greet. Make conversation with others and share interesting news and facts. Get to know people within your industry as well. This might sound counterintuitive or like fraternizing with the enemy, but it will help expand your social network. It’s perfectly fine to talk customers and other business owners on Twitter too. Compliment others on something they’ve done that you admire. Ask them about their experiences in your industry. Thank your customers for their patronage, and make sure that you make it personal and sincerely mean it. Interacting is what Twitter is all about, so start talking to others and not just to yourself!

Did you take note of what you could change on your own Twitter account? Not making the most of Twitter doesn’t mean that you run a bad business, but it does mean that you are losing out on potential customers. Now that you’re armed with these tips, go ahead and rethink how you use Twitter. Redesign your account and start tweeting new, more interesting things. Twitter should be a enjoyable experience for both you and your followers, so go have some fun!

Brendon Schenecker is equal parts developer and CEO, which has led to array of tech-based startups and over 10 years of experience managing startup ventures. Brendon is currently founder and CEO of Travel Vegas, a technology-focused destination travel company.

3 Simple Strategies for Fearless Delegation

Female business team of four working together to achieve good re

At first glance, not doing something yourself feels risky: What if it doesn’t get done? What if it’s not quality work? But done correctly, delegating can actually lower the risk in your business. By delegating, you are decreasing the chance that you’ll burn out and that important activities only you can do won’t get done. Real control comes from managing risk and releasing control in appropriate ways. Here’s how to change your approach to delegation to maximize business results.

Identify Where to Focus

To help you let go of projects other people can do, you need to understand what exactly should fill the majority of your time. Where can your contribution make the biggest impact? For most business owners, these activities include strategic thinking about new business opportunities, building relationships, sales, and specific elements of operations.

Unfortunately, most owners find that the most essential business building activities never happen because they get so swallowed up in day-to-day operations. Take a moment to step back and think about where you can provide the highest value. Everything outside your core strengths and role should be activities that others can do.

Name the Fear

Vague feelings of discomfort can stop us from moving forward. But when we clarify what actually bothers us, we can then address the issue and breakthrough to the next level. Name your fears. To help you get started, I’ve listed out some common concerns in each category.

Delegating the Work

The work won’t get done.
The work will not get done well.
I feel bossy/mean.
I’m worried I’m inconveniencing others.
I feel out of control.
The work won’t get done the way I like it to be.

Doing the Work Yourself

I feel stressed.
I feel sleep deprived.
I’m frustrated.
I feel like my opportunities for growth are lost.
I am out of control.
I am limiting others’ growth.

After each bullet point, name in specific detail the perceived risks associated with both allowing others to participate and doing the work yourself.

Minimize the Risk

Once you have a detail list of perceived risks, take the opportunity to address each issue. Figure out how you can minimize the risk when someone else does the work. This will allow you to put the appropriate checks and balances and safeguards into place.

For example:

Perceived risk: The work won’t get done.

Risk mitigation strategy: Set up a follow-up system for each task. Make a running task list or hold meetings to review deliverables. Use tools like followupthen.com to remind yourself to ping someone.

Perceived risk: The work will not get done well.

Risk mitigation strategy: Take time to think through the work that you pass off to others. Identify whether you’re in the direction, coaching, support, or straight delegation stage – both with the individual and with the task. Tailor your management approach accordingly. Always factor in buffer time for work to be reviewed and edited.

By following this three-step strategy, you can delegate effectively and invest your time in growing your business — without burning out.

Elizabeth Grace Saunders is the founder and CEO of Real Life E®, a time coaching and training company, and the author of “The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: How to Achieve More Success With Less Stress.”

How to Make the Best Startup Decisions

Senior businessman thinking and making choice while looking up

I have unwittingly made some bad decisions in my 28 years on this earth, but every day I make better ones. Reflecting on this, it is clear that making the right calls, large and small, requires certain prerequisites and a thoughtful decision-making process. These considerations are especially important in a startup, where you will never have perfect information when making a decision.

The success or failure of your startup results from nothing more than the series of small, medium and large decisions that you act on . Make more right decisions than wrong ones and your startup will be more likely to succeed. In my experience, the best startup decisions are the result of a carefully thought out process, as follows.

First, the Prerequisites

The conditions below must be met before you start the decision-making process. This is imperative, as most bad decisions are made inadvertently because some or all of these conditions are not met first.

Follow your passions. For most world-class entrepreneurs, passion does not come primarily from the prospect of financial gain or personal notoriety; it comes from an innate desire to change the world. To make the right decisions for your startup, you must believe that if your startup succeeds, you will change the world in the ways you desire. The more your startup aligns with your passions, the more confident you will feel that you are making the right decisions for the right reasons.
Embrace the reality. You have to be able to properly assess and accept reality. Smart entrepreneurs do not see the glass as half-full or half-empty; they see a glass with a certain amount of water. Then, they decide to drink the water, or fill up the glass with more water. To make the right decisions, you must first see things as they really are.
Practice some balance. Your mind, body, and soul must be balanced before you can make good decisions. This is perhaps the most important prerequisite, and one that most entrepreneurs brazenly ignore. Startup culture encourages over-work and over-play; to be balanced you must also be mindful of your health and spiritual life, not just stimulating your mind.

The Decision-Making Process

Only after you know that the above prerequisites hold true, you can move on to the decision-making process. Below is the step-by-step process that works for me (inspiration), but you may follow a different process.

Let’s set up a scenario and walk through it. In our sample scenario, we are trying to figure out the primary customer type to market your startup’s solution to.

Identify the decision. Clearly identify the single decision you want to make and do not let extraneous things fog it up. In the sample scenario, you might ask yourself, “Out of my entire market of potential customers, who is my startup’s one highest-revenue-generating customer?”
Identify your options. Lay out the different options you have based on your own knowledge, keeping in mind the values that are important to your startup. In our example, you will now identify the different customer types that can generate revenue for your startup. And if we’re being realistic, you might eliminate certain customer types at this step as they are not feasible to reach.
Gather information. Collect as much information as is pragmatic about your options. In our setup, you might research different customer segments to gain further insight into your startup’s market and reduce your blindness. Utilize emerging tools such asClarity.fm to talk with the right experts and Compass.co to help put market data into the right context for your startup. After conducting research, you may end up eliminating a certain revenue-generating customer type, because it doesn’t match your startup’s vision or the context you are working within.
Make and implement the decision. Finally, the fun part: You get to make a decision and act on it! The decision should incorporate the information you have gathered, your gut instinct and your startup’s vision. In our example, you would make a firm decision on which customer segment you will target and start marketing to that segment (the marketing strategies you use may be a separate decision).
Evaluate the outcomes. Evaluate objectively if you made the right decision. Some questions you can ask in our sample scenario include: Is my startup solving a real need for this customer? How much revenue has been generated? Am I convinced that this was the right customer to target or should I target another customer? If you have balance in your life when thinking through such questions (i.e. your mental well-being is not solely dependent on startup success), you can make a proper evaluation. If you conclude you made the wrong decision, assure the prerequisites are really met and start over from step one.

In a startup, as in life, you will seldom have enough information to conclusively make the right decisions. To a certain extent, you have to rely on your gut instinct, especially as most decisions are interdependent (i.e. picking the highest revenue-generating customer may not lead to the most cost-effective marketing strategy).

When decision time comes, regardless of whether it is a small or a significant decision, make sure that you are passionate for the right reasons, thinking realistically, practicing balance in your life and following a thoughtful decision-making process. If you do these things, you will you make the right calls more often than not, and your startup will be better for it.

A version of this article originally appeared on Medium.

Naveed Lalani is the Founder and CEO of Portable Boutique Inc., a company that creates Plug & Play Bitcoin Widgets. Previously, Naveed was Chief Strategy Officer at DonorNation.org, and Co-Founder at Rally.org. Naveed gives back by advising the Thiel Fellowship and leading entrepreneurship initiatives at the Ismaili Professionals Network.

Have You Joined the Content Marketing Movement?

Businesswoman Reading Latest News

In the last few years, the words “content marketing” have become buzzwords in the corporate business, marketing, digital and media space. But what is it really? Content marketing as defined by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI):

Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience — with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

Content marketing is becoming the new black from both a quantity and quality standpoint for individuals throughout the world. Some have stumbled into this world. Businesses both large and small are realizing that in order to compete, they must embrace this new era of interaction and develop true content marketing programs. Content marketing is becoming a disruptive force. In the past, marketing pros relied on production, publishing and promotional amplification tools. Content is the fuel that makes all of those platforms run. However, a few blog posts or an email campaign won’t suffice anymore.

Provide Value With Content

Relevant content coming from a business through a thought leadership perspective has a considerable effect on attracting and retaining customers. It’s not hokey, it’s not a pitch and it’s not everyday sales — it truly has become an educational and informative way to deliver knowledge and content to build brand loyalty and awareness.

A study by Roper Public Affairs shows that 80 percent of business decision makers prefer to get company information in article form rather than in an advertisement. Seventy percent say content marketing makes them feel closer to a company, while 60 percent say that company content helps them make better product decisions. “Content marketing works because it delivers relevant proof of value,” says interactive content marketing strategist Mark O’Renick. Quality content marketing engages consumers to look at a business differently.

Many C-suite, advertising and marketing executives believe their company has great content to shoot out and share in the public arena, but they don’t feel they can do this quickly enough or keep it moving through a streamlined process. Spreadsheets, emails and project management systems have all been used by marketing teams in recent times to churn out content on a routine basis. This has led to a whole new industry of technology solutions that make your typical marketing editorial calendar look like a thing of the Stone Age.

Work Smarter

A Kansas City, Missouri-based startup, DivvyHQ, realized that content marketing is the present and the future of marketing. Their founders, both from the digital agency world, developed an ideation, planning and production workflow specialty tool to help businesses and online publishers embrace content marketing and collaboration, but in a manner that allows the user or users to do so in a more efficient way without all the headaches. Simply put, DivvyHQ aims to take content marketers out of spreadsheet, email, storage and organizational hell and alleviate the challenging manual and laborious process. Corporations such as Intel, Toyota, Bed Bath & Beyond, Walmart, Sprint, H & R Block, Travelocity and Adobe have all worked with DivvyHQ. PR and media giants Ogilvy, Edelman and the National Geographic Channel have also used the product to streamline their content needs.

“Despite the traditional publishing industry taking a beating over the last decade, companies can learn a lot from the day-to-day planning methods, scheduling tools and production processes that help publishers hit deadlines and crank out great content every day,” says content marketing expert Brody Dorland.

Turn to the Cloud

Companies and enterprise level organizations who handle multiple individuals and tasks are finding out they need a way to plan, divide and conquer their content marketing and editorial needs on the cloud. They have discovered they also need ways to break down the internal silos in the workplace. Some have used the old fashioned approach and tried breaking down physical walls in their office to get their employees and content producers to talk. There is an easier way. Virtual, real-time sharing and collaboration significantly improves these situations and breaks down silo walls.

Dorland believes, “Simplifying things and leveraging the cloud to help global, decentralized content teams collaborate, share assets and increase the quantity and quality of their content output is huge right now.”

The content marketing phenomenon isn’t going away. Content collaboration and team calendaring is on the upswing. The spreadsheet free editorial calendar is the new king of the castle. Companies both large and small are yearning and will continue to yearn for high-powered, specific content marketing tools to help take their business to the next level.

Content marketing is the new black.

A version of this post originally appeared here.

@JasonGrill is the founder of JGrill Media where he consults on media relations, public affairs and strategies and government relations. Under same umbrella, he works in the media as a local and national writer/contributor, radio host and television analyst/commentator. He is the co-founder of Sock 101.