Your #Career : Exactly How To Position Yourself As A First-Time Jobseeker…Here’s what “Personal Branding” Looks Like When you Don’t have Much Work Experience to Draw On.

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If you’re kicking off an entry-level job search, standing out in a sea of qualified candidates can be tough. After all, your work experience is likely limited to internships, and your academic credentials may be a hit or miss as far as an employer’s needs are concerned.

20 yr old hired

So how do you break through? It’s all about positioning. You simply need to create an identity for yourself that not only sets you apart but that prospective employers find desirable. But what makes that challenge different from the typical advice on personal branding is that new jobseekers don’t have much of an employment record with which to build their profiles. Here’s what to do instead.

“PERSONALITY” MIGHT NOT BE ENOUGH

When I interview entry-level candidates, almost all of them who show up are capable of doing the job. That’s because I’ve screened out applicants who don’t have the basic skills required for the position. So most candidates who make it over that first bar are pretty similar to one another.

Getting from that initial pool of interviewees to actually landing a job offer takes more than just researching the company or doing some mock interviews. You also need to think about how to sell your skill set for the job you’re interviewing for. While that sounds intuitive, it’s part of the interview preparation that many candidates overlook—possibly because to them, their credentials may seem self-evident, especially for an entry-level role that may involve a good deal of grunt work.

But companies aren’t just looking for any old pair of hands to do a low-level job. They’re investing in someone with the potential to stick around and, hopefully, do higher-level work. So in order to drive home what makes you appealing and distinctive in an interview, you first need to understand what the employer considers appealing and distinctive.

 

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START ASKING QUESTIONS

The best place to start is to figure out what makes employees in that job successful. All you have to do is ask. Entry-level jobseekers may think it’s overkill to sign up for LinkedIn Premium, but it can help. This way you can search for alumni from your school who already have the type of job you’re interviewing for. (Sometimes universities’ own alumni databases aren’t all that up to date or comprehensive, whereas most people are pretty good about keeping current on LinkedIn.)

Get in touch and ask questions about what skills, qualities, and characteristics an entry-level candidate needs to possess in order to succeed in that role. You can reach out to fellow alumni or even just with connections you have in common on LinkedIn. Ask them if they remember which traits they themselves touted most on their job interviews. And be sure to ask what will get an employee promoted to the next level up from there later on.

Since most employers are hiring entry-level candidates to fill immediate positions and advance over time, it’s important to have a big-picture understanding of the type of candidates your interviewer is looking to hire.

EXPLAIN HOW YOUR SKILLS REFLECT WHO YOU ARE

Now that you’ve pinned down the role’s major success factors, it’s time to have a closer look at your skills. Remember: An interviewer doesn’t really expect you to have much experience for an entry-level job, so it all comes down to skills.

Break those down into a list of your hard and soft skills. Find the common denominators, then turn that into a coherent narrative, not just a series of qualities.

So for instance, if you’ve learned that the junior art director job you’re interviewing for requires you to be creative and a little edgy, that’s how to position yourself. Make sure your portfolio includes work you’ve done in school or during an internship that reflects that attitude and shows your technical competence, too. Let your interviewer know that your art professors and other students appreciated your ability to think ahead of the curve and find solutions to visual or design challenges on the fly. And offer an anecdote about a time that actually happened, don’t just assert that it’s true.

Whether or not your interviewer remembers all the specific details doesn’t really matter; if you’ve positioned yourself well, they’ll certainly remember what you stand for.

DON’T LET YOUR FOLLOW-UP GO TO WASTE

You can reinforce your positioning in your follow-up, too. If you just interviewed for an entry-level sales role and presented yourself as someone with great closing skills, demonstrate that. Go beyond the typical thank-you email and highlight what makes you such a strong closer.

It doesn’t hurt to expand on a point you didn’t get to touch on that much on the interview, as long as it’s relevant. You might mention that, since you’re now at the end of the interview process, you hope you’ve managed to close the deal—and that that’s a skill you’ve been working on. Maybe you picked up some closing techniques in your summer internship or during mock sales calls in a class during your senior year. Or you could simply link to an article you just read on the subject.

Whatever your approach, you’re using that last interaction with an interviewer to extend a point you’ve already built up during the interview process—and, hopefully, proving that the way you positioned yourself actually had substance. Validating that in your follow-up email can go a long way to landing you the job you want. And best of all, you don’t need a long resume with impressive experience to do it.

Don Raskin is a senior partner at MME, an advertising and marketing agency in New York City. He is also the author of The Dirty Little Secrets of Getting Your Dream Job.

 

FastCompany.com |  DON RASKIN | 10.26.16 5:00 AM

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#Leadership : Why My Company Started Helping Our Best Employees Quit…This Company Sits Down with Every Employee who’s Stayed for Three Years to Plan their Career Options—within the Firm and Without.

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 In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Superbosses author Sydney Finkelstein argues that some of the most successful leaders encourage their top-performing talent to leave. He also observes that some of the most transformative executives have the shortest tenures at the companies they reshape.
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The reason, Finkelstein says, is simple: It’s difficult to acquire and hold onto outsize talent, but far better to house it within your organization for a short time than not at all. Rather than fight turnover, companies may do better to embrace it—and instead focus on improving the quality of the people who cycle through its doors, as opposed to reducing the quantity of those who do.

THE CASE FOR BUILDING AN EXIT DOOR AND OPENING IT WIDE

This a concept my own company is taking to heart. After all, more money and bigger titles can only go so far, particularly for talented employees who aren’t primarily motivated by extrinsic incentives like those. Sometimes the next level up simply doesn’t match an employee’s aspirations, skills, or career timetable.

So the best thing for an employer to do is to help them find another great opportunity, instead of pouring time and resources into trying (and failing) to get them to stay. The companies that succeed will build reputations for launching leaders’ careers, which can help them attract the next wave of promising talent.

 

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That’s the theory, anyway, that recently led us to formalize the exit route as a key part of our staffing plan. The way it works is this: Throughout their tenures, we ask our employees to consider (and reconsider) their desired career goals for the next five to 10 years. We discuss possible paths to help them achieve those goals, and the skills and experiences they’ll need to acquire along the way.

Because we hire many younger professionals with limited work experience, we often have to invest heavily in developing their skills and expertise. Generally speaking, we hope that all high performers will stay with us for at least three years, both so our investment will pay off and so they’ll have time to thoughtfully consider what they want next in their careers. After that period, though, we work with them on advancement opportunities—inside the company and out.

To do that, we work with our employees to define three potential paths: two within the firm and one beyond it. If they choose the exit route, we make introductions to potential employers, serve as references, write LinkedIn recommendations, and even coach employees through the search process. Sure, these are resources we could be putting into retention efforts instead, but the preliminary results suggest we’re doing the right thing.

WHAT COMPANIES GAIN BY HELPING EMPLOYEES MOVE ON

Here are a few of the benefits we’ve already begun to see.

Increased employee engagement and retention. Being able to openly discuss career routes is a great relief for many employees, and this openness contributes to a supportive, transparent culture. The program also encourages managers to think more like career coaches than micromanagers preoccupied by short-term needs. Managers learn how to engage with team members in thoughtful, authentic ways, building trust and loyalty and improving overall employee engagement.

And since managers actually understand their employees’ career objectives, we’re better equipped to assign meatier projects—even if they’re not directly tied to employees’ roles—to help them build their desired skills. This can help increase the odds that our most talented employees stick around longer, because they feel valued and see tangible advantages to doing so.

More predictable succession planning and smoother transitions. When exit paths are discussed forthrightly, managers can gain more time to plan employees’ departures. There’s plenty of runway to document all their projects and processes. There’s also more time to think carefully about contact changes for customers and partners, making the handover smoother and more thoughtfully carried out.

Outgoing employees benefit as well, getting to leave the company on a high note, feeling celebrated, appreciated, and grateful to the company for helping them land their next big role. Nobody’s blindsided or left feeling bitter.

Employer branding and recruiting benefits. In the age of Glassdoor, Yelp, and Quora, it’s more important than ever that employees leave feeling like their time with an employer was well spent. Companies that have built reputations not just for hiring well but for supporting talented people can get a major recruiting boost. Former employees are potentially some of your most powerful assets—people you can leverage for referrals or even consider rehiring later in their careers.

It’s far from intuitive for most companies to invest heavily in recruiting and professional development, only to actively facilitate employees’ departures. But after years of thoughtfully considering our employees’ needs as well as our own, we’ve come to the conclusion that sometimes the best path forward is out.

 

FastCompany.com |  MATHIDLE PRIBULA |  10.25.16 5:00 AM

#Leadership : 10 Bad Habits You Must Eliminate from Your Daily Routine…When it Comes to Productivity, the Little Things Make All the Difference. Quit Sabotaging Yourself with These Bad Habits.

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You are the sum of your habits. When you allow bad habits to take over, they dramatically impede your path to success. The challenge is bad habits are insidious, creeping up on you slowly until you don’t even notice the damage they’re causing.

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“Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.”   — Warren Buffett

Breaking bad habits requires self-control — and lots of it. Research indicates that it’s worth the effort, as self-control has huge implications for success.

University of Pennsylvania psychologists Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman conducted a study where they measured college students’ IQ scores and levels of self-control upon entering university. Four years later, they looked at the students’ grade point averages (GPA) and found that self-control was twice as important as IQ in earning a high GPA.

The self-control required to develop good habits (and stop bad ones) also serves as the foundation for a strong work ethic and highproductivity. Self-control is like a muscle — to build it up you need to exercise it. Practice flexing your self-control muscle by breaking the following bad habits:

1. Using your phone, tablet or computer in bed.

This is a big one that most people don’t even realize harms their sleep and productivity. Short-wavelength blue light plays an important role in your mood, energy level and sleep quality. In the morning, sunlight contains high concentrations of this blue light. When your eyes are exposed to it directly, the blue light halts production of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin and makes you feel more alert. In the afternoon, the sun’s rays lose their blue light, which allows your body to produce melatonin and start making you sleepy. By the evening, your brain doesn’t expect any blue light exposure and is very sensitive to it.

Most of our favorite evening devices — laptops, tablets and mobile phones — emit short-wavelength blue light brightly and right in your face. This exposure impairs melatonin production and interferes with your ability to fall asleep as well as with the quality of your sleep once you do nod off. As we’ve all experienced, a poor night’s sleep has disastrous effects. The best thing you can do is to avoid these devices after dinner (television is OK for most people as long as they sit far enough away from the set).

 

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2. Impulsively surfing the internet.

It takes you 15 consecutive minutes of focus before you can fully engage in a task. Once you do, you fall into a euphoric state of increased productivity called flow. Research shows that people in a flow state are five times more productive than they otherwise would be. When you click out of your work because you get an itch to check the news, Facebook, a sport’s score or what have you, this pulls you out of flow. This means you have to go through another 15 minutes of continuous focus to reenter the flow state. Click in and out of your work enough times, and you can go through an entire day without experiencing flow.

Related: 10 Habits That Will Make You Much Happier

3. Checking your phone during a conversation.

Nothing turns people off like a mid-conversation text message or even a quick glance at your phone. When you commit to a conversation, focus all your energy on the conversation. You will find that conversations are more enjoyable and effective when you immerse yourself in them.

4. Using multiple notifications.

Multiple notifications are a productivity nightmare. Studies have shown that hopping on your phone and e-mail every time they ping for your attention causes your productivity to plummet. Getting notified every time a message drops onto your phone or an e-mail arrives in your inbox might feel productive, but it isn’t. Instead of working at the whim of your notifications, pool all your e-mails/texts and check them at designated times (e.g., respond to your e-mails every hour). This is a proven, productive way to work.

5. Saying “yes” when you should say “no.”

Research conducted at the University of California in San Francisco shows that the more difficulty that you have saying no, the more likely you are to experience stress, burnout and even depression, all of which erode self-control. Saying no is indeed a major self-control challenge for many people. “No” is a powerful word that you should not be afraid to wield. When it’s time to say no, emotionally intelligent people avoid phrases like “I don’t think I can” or “I’m not certain.” Saying no to a new commitment honors your existing commitments and gives you the opportunity to successfully fulfill them. Just remind yourself that saying no is an act of self-control now that will increase your future self-control by preventing the negative effects of over commitment.

6. Thinking about toxic people.

There are always going to be toxic people who have a way of getting under your skin and staying there. Each time you find yourself thinking about a coworker or person who makes your blood boil, practice being grateful for someone else in your life instead. There are plenty of people out there who deserve your attention, and the last thing you want to do is think about the people who don’t matter when there are people who do.

7. Multitasking during meetings.

You should never give anything half of your attention, especially meetings. If a meeting isn’t worth your full attention, then you shouldn’t be attending it in the first place; and if the meeting is worth your full attention, then you need to get everything you can out of it. Multitasking during meetings hurts you by creating the impression that you believe you are more important than everyone else.

8. Gossiping.

Gossipers derive pleasure from other people’s misfortunes. It might be fun to peer into somebody else’s personal or professional faux pas at first, but over time, it gets tiring, makes you feel gross and hurts other people. There are too many positives out there and too much to learn from interesting people to waste your time talking about the misfortune of others.

“Great minds discuss ideas, average ones discuss events and small minds discuss people.”   — Eleanor Roosevelt

9. Waiting to act until you know you’ll succeed.

Most writers spend countless hours brainstorming their characters and plots, and they even write page after page that they know they’ll never include in the books. They do this because they know that ideas need time to develop. We tend to freeze up when it’s time to get started because we know that our ideas aren’t perfect and that what we produce might not be any good. But how can you ever produce something great if you don’t get started and give your ideas time to evolve? Author Jodi Picoult summarized the importance of avoiding perfectionism perfectly: “You can edit a bad page, but you can’t edit a blank page.”

Related: 9 Bad Habits You Must Break To Be More Productive

10. Comparing yourself to other people.

When your sense of pleasure and satisfaction are derived from comparing yourself to others, you are no longer the master of your own happiness. When you feel good about something that you’ve done, don’t allow anyone’s opinions or accomplishments take that away from you. While it’s impossible to turn off your reactions to what others think of you, you don’t have to compare yourself to others and you can always take people’s opinions with a grain of salt. That way, no matter what other people are thinking or doing, your self-worth comes from within. Regardless of what people think of you at any particular moment, one thing is certain — you’re never as good or bad as they say you are.

Bringing It All Together

By practicing self-control to break these bad habits, you can simultaneously strengthen your self-control muscle and abolish nasty habits that have the power to bring your career to a grinding halt.

A version of this article appeared on TalentSmart.

 

Entrepreneur.com | October 25, 2016 | Brad Bradberry 

Your #Career : 20 Signs That You Should Quit Your Job (Infographic)..If You can Relate to Many of These Signs, It’s Time to Rethink Your 9 to 5.

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For most of us, we spend at least 40 hours a week at our jobs. That’s a lot of time. So if you’re not feeling passionate about the work you’re doing or notice you’re not growing professional, maybe it’s time to rethink your nine to five.

business woman with her staff, people group in background at modern bright office indoors

Your career should be a path to success, so sharing the same goals andvalues of your employer is vital. Being bored, overly stressed and/or burnt out are clear indicators that it’s time to say bye-bye to your current job.

 

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To truly tell if it’s time to resign, listen to your gut. That instinctive feeling will let you know if you should be looking for other opportunities.

 

Entrepreneur.com | October 23, 2016 |  Rose Leadem

#Leadership : 3 Lessons From Tim Ferriss About Avoiding Burnout…A Chance Encounter with the Productivity Guru yields Three Priceless Insights.

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We sat in the southern courtyard of Oheka Castle, the 127-room chateau-style estate along New York’s affluent North Shore. As the other guests at the Shopify Build-A-Business VI dinner made their way back inside, I saw Mr. Productivity himself sitting a few chairs down: Tim Ferriss.

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I’d been a staunch follower of his work since 2007 — the release year for the first edition of “The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anyway, and Join the New Rich.” Understandably, I was nervous to say hello. “Screw it,” I thought, taking a swig of courage and making my way over. I introduced myself, we toasted wine glasses, and then we covered topics ranging from what microphone I use for interviews to his upcoming book.

But there was a bigger question I had in mind. Turns out, it was the same one other Shopify contest winners wanted answered: How do entrepreneurs avoid burnout? Here are a few insights Ferris shared.

1. Identify your most important metric and scale it weekly.

There’s no shortage of data out there. Tools can help e-commerce entrepreneurs track everything from customer demographics to churn rate. So data isn’t the problem. It’s the sheer amount of data that eventually becomes stifling. There’s no way for one person to sift through it all.

Let’s use me as an example. My biggest metrics are shopping-cart conversion, shopping-cart size and shopping-cart abandonment rate. Now, let’s say I have no trouble getting users to my site or to checkout, but they always end up buying the cheapest item. My metric would be increasing shopping-cart size, so I’d track cart size week over week.

Again, the key here is to nail down just one metric. It should be whichever one is most important to your business at the moment. Then, focus on moving it forward week over week. Ferriss says the biggest risk for startups is not failing to execute — it’s executing too many (often unimportant) tasks at once.

Related: The Most Important Metric You Can Track

 

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2. Define the 80/20 rule in your inputs and desired outputs.

The goal of this exercise is twofold: to help you identify inefficienciesand strengths. Taking inventory of both allows you to eliminate the former while multiplying focus on the latter. You need to identify which activities will achieve the highest ROI for the least effort and then zero in on only those tasks. Once you do, you’ll alleviate burnout and get on the road toward sustainable, long-term growth.

If you’re still overwhelmed, focus on the negatives first — i.e., inefficiencies and psychic anchors holding you back. Oftentimes, getting rid of these alone will do the trick.

Related: The 80/20 Rule of Time Management: Stop Wasting Your Time

And now for my personal favorite. Let’s see if you can guess why.

3. Book a 4-week (or longer) vacation in the next 12 months.

Why four weeks or more versus the conventional two? It forces you to remove yourself as a bottleneck. Two weeks is just short enough for you to come back and try to put out fires. Four weeks forces you to develop systems, rules and policies that enable your business to run without you. The other side effect? You position yourself for a future windfall by making your business sellable.

But you can’t just go anywhere. Make sure the location isn’t associated with business or work. Ferriss suggests you get outside your normal routine and working environment. In fact, he recommends Japan.

It’s an opportunity to be in a completely alien environment without sacrificing safety. Social conventions are different. Western influence is absent. For most English speakers, Japanese language and handwriting are virtually unintelligible. Plus, there’s so much to explore. This shock to your system will give you a new perspective on everything — especially your business.

Book everything in advance and, ideally, with other people so it’s harder to cancel.

 

Entrepreneur.com |  October 24, 2016 |  Brian Roberts 

#Leadership : 3 Signs You Have Succumbed to Helicopter Management…There is Nothing Efficient about Hovering Over the People you Hired because you Trusted they Can Do the Job.

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Helicopter parenting took off in the 1980s, when paranoia was at an all-time high over child abductions, and the U.S. was in an economic boom that made things like SAT prep classes and expensive extracurriculars the standard. For years now, there have been discussions about how helicopter parenting is ruining America’s children and we know that helicopter managing (more commonly known as micromanaging) can be just as damaging to an entire company as it can be to an individual’s career.

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However, few of the guilty are conscious of their overbearing ways. As a Stanford dean wrote in a book on the rise of helicopter parenting on college campuses titled “How to Raise an Adult,” even she — an academic writing about the phenomenon — failed to fully realize that she and her husband did a fair amount of helicoptering in their own home. You can notice helicoptering, dislike it and still be guilty of it.

Just as certain cultural factors seeded this style in parenting, others have seeded it in the workplace, making it more tempting than ever to micromanage. The rise of open offices, real-time messaging and collaborative tools like Google Docs make it downright easy to jump into a team member’s work and take the reins.

Like helicopter parenting, helicopter managing often comes from a good place. You don’t want to see your reports fail and you want your team to succeed. That’s why, as Harvard Business Review writes, “Micromanagement has a way of spreading in organizations, where goals and accountability are intricately nested. What your team delivers affects what you deliver, and so on up the chain of command — so the pressure is on everywhere to make sure everyone comes through.”

If you’re being micromanaged, you’re more likely to micromanage your own reports, and then inefficiency spreads throughout the organization. This inefficiency can stunt growth and hurt the company long-term if it’s not rectified.

Here are a few signs you’ve slipped into helicopter managing:

1. Your employees are getting testy.

You ask for status updates multiple times before something’s due, you make to-do lists for your team members, you jump in and offer advice when a team member hasn’t asked for it, and when you ask your employees the status of something, they usually reply with “I’m on that and will update you in our next meeting.” Not every exasperated employee is being micromanaged, but if your entire team is getting irritable, you might want to take a look at your management style.

The habit of overly checking in within open office environments can feed this exasperation. “Wide-open workspaces and copious real-time data on how individuals spend their time can leave employees feeling exposed and vulnerable,” writes Ethan Bernstein for Harvard Business Review. “Being observed changes their conduct. They start going to great lengths to keep what they’re doing under wraps, even if they have nothing bad to hide.”

Related: The 3-Step Cure for Micromanagement

It’s easy to fall into a vicious cycle. You might intervene to make sure you  support employees every step of the way, the same way well-meaning helicopter parents can now spy on their kids’ homework. But when you insert yourself too much, they often feel less empowered to step up, and then you feel more like you need to direct, thus creating an unhealthy dynamic that never stops.

 

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2. Your team isn’t failing — ever.

Everyone needs to fail every now and then in order to grow and, if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll realize that some of the most important lessons you ever learned were because of failure — even minor failure. And while it’s really important to note here that employees are by no means like children, there are still parallels in the relationship:  failure is a difficult thing to watch both as a manager and a parent. Slate writes, “When children aren’t given the space to struggle through things on their own, they don’t learn to problem solve very well… The other problem with never having to struggle is that you never experience failure.” Substitute “employees” for “children” in that statement, and it’s equally true.

It’s extremely challenging for as a manager to see an employee do something that you know will not work out. You’ll always be tempted to jump in, and you also can’t always let people fail. Being too hands off could cost the company millions, so you have to find a balance.

People think not micromanaging should be easy — it sounds like less work, in theory. However, one of your jobs as a manager is to find the times it’s okay to let an employee try something new and perhaps fail, as long as you take the time to walk your team member through anything that goes awry and how to improve next time. The whole process can feel painfully slow and less than efficient, especially when you see the mistake before it happens, but it’s still good management.

So don’t deny your team members the opportunity to learn from occasional failure. Ultimately, these small failures will grow your team members in ways that will help grow the organization, too.

3. You’ve lost sight of the big picture.

Suddenly you’re nearing the end of the quarter, and you realize you’re still carrying too much of the workload of your team, and it could even affect your overall success for your larger corporate goals. Sometimes when you get too in the weeds with everyone else’s day-to-day tasks, you fail to see the big picture and think strategically about what needs to happen to achieve your goals. It’s also tough to hit your goals and grow in step with your company when your team isn’t growing at all.

Related: Entrepreneurs Can Save Their Startups When They Stop Micromanaging

Realistically, you can’t hit big picture goals and intricately manage every moving piece at the same time — it becomes too easy to lose focus. Similarly, helicopter parents might achieve amazing goals along the way, like getting their child into a top school or ensuring they play piano well, but they often miss the big picture goal, which is raising an independent adult.

Sometimes it’s hard to take a step back and ask yourself if you’re a helicopter boss. However, you have to recognize when it’s happening, and not just because you’re risking a bad reputation as a manager: it’s harmful to a company’s bottom line. The good news is that micromanaging is a bad habit that can be broken — it just takes recognizing it, stepping back, and training rather than “doing”. Sometimes the hardest part of parenting and managing is letting go, but doing so is key to the health and growth of everyone involved.

 

Entrepreneur.com| October 24, 2016 |  Katie Jansen, Chief Marketing Officer, AppLovin

#Leadership : 15 Social Media Podcasts to Take Your Marketing Skills to the Next Level…Take it From the Pros — these Podcasts will Help Boost your Social Media Presence.

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What should you do if you want to become the best at what you do?  There’s probably a long list, with lots of options. One thing we’re particularly fond of at Buffer when it comes to improving ourselves is listening to podcasts relevant to our niche and industry.

Free- Coffee with Laptop

In our case, that means social media podcasts!

What we love about podcasts is that they make it easy to hear from industry leaders and talented folks about their experiences and advice (which we might not be able to read about anywhere else). There are so many of these voices in the marketing space that have been influential for me and the team!

Related: How to Promote Your Podcast

So the big question is: Where to start? Which podcasts should I try? What episodes should I listen to?

I have the same questions in mind whenever I find the time to listen to podcasts. Rather than spending your podcast time finding a podcast episode to listen to, I’d love to help you skip that step and go straight to listening. Here’s a list of 15 top marketing podcasts, covering three areas of social media marketing, with some top episodes from each podcast to check out!

To make it easier to find the parts of this post that are most helpful, here’s a look at all we’ll cover:

Psst! Our new podcast, The Science of Social Media, is live in iTunes.

This is our newly-launched social media podcast for marketers and brands interested in learning about new and exciting ways to implement social media marketing across a variety of platforms and industries. Every week, Hailley Griffis, Brian Peters and Kevan Leeinterview some of the best marketers around in quick, 30-minute episodes.

Here are some recent episodes you might like:

9 Top social media marketing podcasts

1. Social Pros by Jay Baer and Adam Brown

Real people doing real work in social media. Social Pros, recently named the best marketing podcast at the Content Marketing Awards, dives into the inside stories and behind-the-scenes strategies of how huge companies and brands like Ford, Dell, IBM, ESPN and more manage and measure their social media programs.

Hosts: Jay Baer (President of Convince & Convert) and Adam Brown(Executive Strategist at Salesforce)

Format: Interviews (with its ‘The Big Two’ questions at the end: 1. What’s your one tip for becoming a social pro? and 2. If you could do a Skype call with any living person, who would it be?)

Duration: Ranges from 30 to 60 minutes

Recent episodes you might like:

2. Social Media Marketing with Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner

In his weekly podcast, Michael Stelzner interviews social media experts to find out how successful businesses run their social media and uncover strategies and actionable tips to improve one’s social media marketing.

For each episode, there’s a very detailed blog post about the content of the interview so that you don’t have to take notes while listening.

Hosts: Michael Stelzner (Founder of Social Media Examiner and the Social Media Marketing World conference)

Format: Interviews (with a quick social media discovery of the week at the start)

Duration: 45 minutes

Recent episodes you might like:

3. The #AskGaryVee Show by Gary Vaynerchuk

For each episode of #AskGaryVee, Gary Vaynerchuk answers a question from his audience about marketing, social media, entrepreneurship and startups based on his lifetime experience of building successful, multi-million dollar companies. If you tweet him your question with #AskGaryVee, you might get on the show!

The show originally started as YouTube videos only, and Gary turned them into podcasts too so that his audience can listen to them on the go. If you usually listen to podcasts on your computer or prefer to watch the video, you might find the #AskGaryVee Search Engineuseful!

Hosts: Gary Vaynerchuk (CEO of Vayner Media and co-founder of Vayner Sports)

Format: 1-2 questions from his audience and answers from Gary

Duration: Ranges from 15 to 45 minutes

Recent episodes you might like:

4. Social Media Social Hour by Tyler Anderson

This is a podcast for marketers and entrepreneurs looking to get on the social media fast track. Each week, Tyler Anderson interviews people behind top brands and influencers to discuss social media, tech and online marketing. Tyler also shares tools and processes he personally uses (like Focus Booster) to help him with social media management, marketing, productivity and more.

Hosts: Tyler Anderson (Founder and CEO at Casual Fridays)

Format: Interviews

Duration: Ranges from 20 to 50 minutes

Recent episodes you might like:

5. Online Marketing Made Easy by Amy Porterfield

In her podcast, Amy Porterfield shares how to monetize your online marketing and blogging efforts using her own tested, actionable lead-generation strategies. Amy creates educational content on social media marketing, freelancing and several other areas of online marketing and even shares free cheatsheets and guides so that you can follow along while listening to the podcast. Sometimes, she’s joined by a Facebook ad expert, Rick Mulready, to discuss all about Facebook ads.

Hosts: Amy Porterfield (Social media strategist and co-author ofFacebook Marketing All-In-One for Dummies)

Format: Mix between interviews and solo podcasting on Facebook ads, online marketing and blogging

Duration: Ranges from 30 to 50 minutes

Recent episodes you might like:

6. Social Zoom Factor with Pam Moore

With 100,000 downloads per month, Social Zoom Factor is one of the most popular marketing podcasts. The show is hosted by Pam Moore of Marketing Nutz, a company with clients like IBM and Adobe. Pam covers topics such as social media, experiential branding, digital marketing and more.

Related: How to Curate Content and Grow Your Online Following

If you are an auditory learner and prefer listening versus reading blog posts, this might be the podcast for you!

Hosts: Pam Moore (CEO and Founder, Marketing Nutz)

Format: Solo podcasting on social media strategies

Duration: About 30 minutes

Recent episodes you might like:

7. #TwitterSmarter by Madalyn Sklar

In this podcast dedicated to Twitter, Madalyn Sklar interviews amazing movers and shakers in the world of social media and online marketing to discover the best Twitter insights, information and resources.

If you are into Twitter chats, Madalyn also hosts a weekly #TwitterSmarter chat — a Twitter chat to connect, learn and share Twitter tips — every Thursday at 1:00 p.m. ET/10:00 a.m. PT.

Hosts: Madalyn Sklar (Twitter marketing strategist)

Format: Interviews

Duration: Ranges from 10 to 30 minutes

Recent episodes you might like:

8. Hashtagged by Jordan Powers

Hashtagged is a podcast all about Instagram. In each episode, Jordan Powers interviews a member of the Instagram community to uncover insights to growing a following, building a community and making an impact.

Hosts: Jordan Powers (Photographer and co-founder of Made in Mankato, a video production company)

Format: Interviews

Duration: Ranges from 30 to 60 minutes

Recent episodes you might like:

9. Manly Pinterest Tips with Jeff Sieh

In this podcast mainly for everything about Pinterest, Jeff Sieh explores best practices, strategies and demonstrations with several Power Pinners. Once in a while, Jeff will cover other social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram too.

Hosts: Jeff Sieh (Social media consultant and speaker)

Format: Interviews and answering questions from the community during the interviews

Duration: Ranges from 40 to 60 minutes

Recent episodes you might like:

Paid social marketing

1. The Art of Paid Traffic by Rick Mulready

In The Art of Paid Traffic, Rick Mulready reveals the best paid traffic tips, tactics and strategies for generating leads and sales on autopilot for your business. Together with expert guests such as Massimo Chieruzzi, founder & CEO of AdEspresso, Rick dives into Facebook ads, YouTube ads, Twitter ads, Google Adwords, retargeting and more.

Hosts: Rick Mulready (Expert in Facebook ads and marketing strategies for small businesses)

Format: Mix of interviews, case studies and solo podcasting

Duration: Ranges from 20 to 50 minutes

Recent episodes you might like:

2. Perpetual Traffic by Keith Krance, Molly Pittman and Ralph Burns

Perpetual Traffic podcast covers actionable strategies mainly for advertising on Facebook, with occasional mentions of YouTube, Twitter, Google AdWords, LinkedIn and more. Keith, Molly and Ralph interview business owners on how they overcame struggles with digital marketing and online advertising.

Hosts: Keith Krance (Founder and president of Dominate Web Media),Molly Pittman (Vice President and Traffic Manager, Digital Marketer) and Ralph Burns (Managing Partner at Dominate Web Media)

Format: Interviews and discussions on digital marketing and online advertising

Duration: Ranges from 20 to 40 minutes

Recent episodes you might like:

3. Social Media Pubcast with Jon Loomer

In each episode of Social Media Pubcast, Jon Loomer invites an industry expert to his virtual pub to discuss Facebook marketing and advertising over a beer. Jon also records audio versions of his blog posts for people who want to listen on the go.

Jon manages an exclusive community for advanced Facebook marketers, Power Hitters Club, which I thought is pretty awesome (says the Community Champion in me)!

Hosts: Jon Loomer (Founder of Jon Loomer, For Advanced Facebook Marketers)

Format: Mix of pubcasts with guests and audio version of blog posts

Duration: About 40 minutes for pubcasts and 10 minutes for audio recordings of blog posts

Recent episodes you might like:

Community building and customer support

At Buffer, the distinction between marketing and community is very blurry. In fact, we believe they belong together! An example is how our awesome social media manager, Brian Peters, has built an engaging community on Instagram.

Related: A Complete Guide to Instagram Marketing

Here are two podcasts with a strong community focus, plus a bonus third podcast with ties into customer support (a really great skill for social media marketers to have).

1. The FeverBee Podcast by FeverBee

While this show has stopped for a while now, the archive is a treasure trove of information! The podcast covers the latest in community management, social science and FeverBee news. In each episode, a community manager or social media manager of a well-known brand joins the show to share their knowledge.

Hosts: Caty Kobe (previously Head of Training, FeverBee)

Format: Interviews

Duration: About 30 minutes

Recent episodes you might like:

2. Community Signal by Patrick O’Keefe

Community Signal is a weekly podcast for community professionals, which is very community-focused. Patrick O’Keefe believes that social media is a set of tools for building a community and while “marketing brings new customers, community helps you keep them.”

Hosts: Patrick O’Keefe (Managed communities for more than 16 years)

Format: Interviews

Duration: About 30 minutes

Recent episodes you might like:

3. Support Ops by Chase Clemons

I believe it’s quite common for social media managers to receive support requests on their social channel. If that’s the case for you and if you are wondering how to get better at that, Support Ops might be just for you! This weekly podcast aims to help you deliver a better support experience to your customers.

Hosts and team: Chase Clemons (Support, Basecamp), Carolyn Kopprasch (Chief Happiness Officer, Buffer), Chase Livingston(Happiness Engineer, Automattic) and Jeff Vincent (Product, Wista)

Format: Discussions on customer support among the team, sometimes with guests

Duration: About 30 minutes

Recent episodes you might like:

 

Entrepreneur.com | October 20, 2016 |  Alfred Lua – Community and Marketing at Buffer

#Leadership : 3 Steps to a Well-Structured Presentation…Many People Struggle with Writing Business Presentations. What’s Needed is a Structured Way to Think about the Presentation.

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PowerPoint presentations are an ingrained part of the business experience: A 2015 survey by OutsidetheSlide.com found that more than 25 percent of workers surveyed said they see at least one presentation every workday.

Close-up of businesswoman holding touchpad with document

Related: Avoid the PowerPoint Trap by Having Less Wordy Slides

And that may be a problem, considering the less-than-optimal way in which today’s organizations communicate through these presentations. In short, from our observations, many of these presentations fail to deliver.

One of the major reasons for this is poor structure. As Mind Tools reminds us, without a logical, clear and well-structured presentation, your audience is unlikely to follow and remember your message.

We ourselves have written thousands of presentations and business documents in our careers. And, in our experience, the most important step is what we call “hanging the document.” In simple terms, you need an outline. However, this can’t be just a list of random points. The document has to have a structure. It has to hang together in a way that makes your point as clearly as possible.

Doug learned to structure presentations when he worked with McKinsey & Company. McKinsey used a method called the Pyramid Principal. Barbara Minto, McKinsey’s first female consultant, developed this methodology for structuring business documents, which we believe is the best in the business.

Below is a simple illustration of this powerful method. Imagine you are making a business presentation during which you hope to persuade the decision-maker to take specific action. In such situations, use what we call the “situation-complication-resolution” approach. Each of its three steps is discussed below.

1. Situation

This is a statement of the current state of affairs. It should be fact based (e.g., “Since its founding 15 years ago, the company has grown from a startup with no revenue and one employee to a robust enterprise with $15 million

 

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in revenue and 60 employees”). Because it is fact based, this “Situation” step should be something with which no one can reasonably disagree. We often use this section to highlight positives. If possible, give the person to whom you are presenting credit for his or her accomplishments.

2. Complication

This is a statement of the problem — the issue you are addressing (e.g., “Over the past three years, revenue growth has stalled”). It lays out why the company should take action. Without the “Complication,” the company wouldn’t need to do anything; There would be no reason for change.

People who are resisting the change you are suggesting may well try to take issue with the complication. After all, if it isn’t valid, there is no need to change. Therefore, if possible, you as presenter should base this section on objective facts that are irrefutable (“Sales three years ago were $15.1 million, while sales last year were $14.9 million”). People may not like hearing this, but they can’t argue that it isn’t true.

3. Resolution

This is your recommendation; it resolves the complication. It should be a single point. For example, “We should launch a sales growth program.” Each document should have only one main point. If you can’t boil your recommendation down to a single point, you should have more than one document.

Once you have identified you primary recommendation, you should support it with a series of what we call MECE (mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive) sub points. Mutually exclusive means that the points do not overlap; there is no duplication among them. “Collectively exhaustive” means that there is nothing left out. Taken together, the sub points cover all possible ways to achieve the point above it in the structure.

Related: 10 Questions to Ask When Creating a Killer PowerPoint Presentation

For example, consider that the main point is, “We should launch a program to grow sales significantly.” The supporting points then might be:

  1. We should cultivate new customers, and
  2. We should sell more to existing customers.

These are clearly mutually exclusive points; there is no overlap between new customers and existing customers. They are also collectively exhaustive; every sale will be to a new customer or an existing customer. There are no other possibilities.

You will then support each of the sub points with another set of MECE points. For example, you might support cultivating new customers with: 1) Cultivate new customers in existing sales territories; and 2) Cultivate new customers in new sales territories. Again, the sub points at this level are MECE.

If you diagram the structure of your document keeping all points at the same level in the document on the same line of your paper, you will begin to see a triangle or a pyramid emerge. The pyramid continues to grow until your recommendations are at a sufficiently granular level to make it crystal clear how you propose to accomplish your main objective.

Related: 10 Tips for Creating a Winning Business Plan in PowerPoint

Many people struggle with writing business presentations. What’s needed is a structured way to think about the presentation. Once you have the structure, hanging meat on the bones is straightforward. The pyramid principle provides that structure that’s needed.

Entrepreneur.com | October 18, 2016 | Doug & Polly White

#Leadership : Managing Conflict Is Essential to Success…A Functional Workplace of Diverse People and Ideas is Fertile Ground for Creativity — and for Conflict. Here’s How to Be a Good Referee.

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You gotta give a little. De-escalation relies on both parties being able to see another person’s point of view. They must be willing to give a little bit. By becoming able to compromise, they free themselves and each other to work toward the win/win.

red-button

 

Those of you who have read my articles before can probably envision me embroiled in numerous conflicts. To keep from being killed or killing someone, I have acquired fairly effective survival skills. I’m not a pacifist; in fact, people who say “fighting never solves anything” make me think they have been on the losing end of every fight they’ve been in. Or, it makes me think they have probably spent their lives running from fights.

In my experience, fighting solves a lot, but let me be clear here, when I say “fighting,” I am not talking about slapping around Kenny in accounting because he shorted you $2.36! When I say fighting, I am talking about conflict. Conflict is neither good nor bad; it can be handled functionally or dysfunctionally.

You can’t say that!

We’re not on the playground anymore, and in a post-Columbine, post-going postal world, even joking about workplace violence can be a serious offense. I have worked at several companies that had incidents of workplace violence that ended in death; so I don’t want anyone thinking that I am making light of the very real threat of workplace violence. But there is a right way and a wrong way of addressing it, and in my opinion, the best way to avoid workplace violence, even mere workplace unpleasantness, is by de-escalating dysfunctional conflict before it becomes a problem.

De-escalation of conflict isn’t the same as conflict avoidance. De-escalation of conflict is the act of removing heightened emotion the antagonists are feeling about their disagreement. Disagreement is healthy in an organization; moreover, squelching it leads to dysfunction, from simmering frustration to malicious obedience. Malicious obedience is one of those terms I learned when I was working for a man I still affectionately refer to as “the Devil.”

 

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You told me to!

Tired of having him second guess my every decision and then ordering me to do something that I knew would be a disaster, I would do exactly what he told me to, knowing full well that it would create chaos. Doing so made him incredibly angry and frustrated because I had in fact done exactly what he told me to do. I fully admit to doing in those days what I expect now of a benighted employee, escalating our dysfunctional dynamic.

Related: 3 Signs It’s Time to Fire the Boss

I would sit smugly in his office watching the veins in his temples bulge and throb, in hopes of seeing one burst, while he frothed at the mouth and sputtered his disappointment with my performance. I can see now I could have (should have?) handled things better. Mea culpa. But when dealing with a dysfunctional environment, it is hard to behave like an adult. Or, maybe I’m making excuses, but I know better now.

You talking to me?

It may seem silly, but de-escalation of conflict begins with the language we use. I used to work for an organization where so much as joking about violence was an offense for which one could be fired. For my money, the organization took extreme and ridiculous efforts to avoid any implication of aggression. There was an Alice Down the Rabbit Hole absurdity to its efforts.

We couldn’t use the term bullet point because bullet, it was believed, denotes violence. No, actually. In this case, the term bullet is derived from the word bulletin (a bulletin being a series of bullets), a usage that predates the invention of the gun. We had to call them dot lists. Predictably, this devolved into a bizarre workplace lexicon that would have made Aldous Huxley proud. We could say positive, butnegatives became deltas. Ironically, we could say head shot; something I never understood because it seemed not only violent but graphically violent.

You can’t say that, either!

The thing is, mincing words and weaseling around the point is not really helpful when trying to de-escalate conflict. Quite the opposite, I find it tends to infuriate an already aggravated and aggressive dynamic between the parties. Clarity, understanding and resolution become impossible. And business people want clarity, and seek it intuitively. They coin graphic terms like “one throat to choke” (look it up) to express a common business concept, even as it may create the subtle impression that workplace violence is acceptable — or perhaps only upon outside vendors.

Related: 7 Ways to Have a Difficult Conversation Without Losing Your Client

So these things don’t work, what does? I found a simple formula work of the de-escalation:

1. Begin by a acknowledging each other’s frustration.

Conflict tends to build-up and as it builds so does frustration. The primate inside us wants to either fight or flee; neither are options that de-escalate the conflict. Vocalizing the knowledge that both parties are frustrated and potentially angry allows them to stop focusing on communicating how they feel and to start focusing on what they can do to move forward.

2. Assume goodness of intention.

When we assume that the other party is perfidious, escalation results. When I think they have the best intentions we can discuss our positions dispassionately and assertively. I admit it can be very difficult to give someone the benefit of the doubt, especially if they have screwed us over the past, but you really have to get beyond that if you’re going to achieve any mastery of conflict de-escalation.

3. Make sure all parties have expressed how they feel.

This may sound soft-headed, but it’s really important. Unless we talk about the emotions we’re feeling, they will always get in the way of trying to solve a problem. Maybe you have experienced, as I have, an exchange where the other person keeps deflecting or trying to change the subject, to rationalize their own dysfunctional behavior. As goofy as it may sound, too many people get so wrapped up in winning that they cannot see a compromise is anything but a defeat.

4. Apologize.

An apology can go a long way in mending a relationship, even when you’re too pig-headed to admit you’re wrong. You may actually feel as if you have done nothing wrong, and maybe you haven’t, but the fact remains that your actions created the perception of an attack or insult, and I think we can all agree that we want to prevent kind of this perception.

5. Fess up when you mess up.

Sometimes our egos prevent us from doing what’s right — in this case, admitting when we screwed up. Something this simple can greatly reduce the heightened emotional state.

You gotta give a little. De-escalation relies on both parties being able to see another person’s point of view. They must be willing to give a little bit. By becoming able to compromise, they free themselves and each other to work toward the win/win.

 

Entrepreneur.com | October 18, 2016 | Phil La Duke 

 

 

#Leadership : Doing Good While Doing Well: 3 Ways to Bring Purpose to Your Business…Donating Money Helps, but, Nothing Compares to Hands-On, Thoughtful Philanthropy.

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Writing a check might take only a minute, but it could never accomplish the results that hands-on, thoughtful philanthropy achieves.

donation

Corporate philanthropy is a great way to grow your network, build your brand and influence a cause dear to your company. In 2015, corporate philanthropic giving saw a 3.9 percent increase from 2014, reaching $18.46 billion. This figure indicates that, for busy entrepreneurs, it’s easier to write a donation check than it is to bring philanthropy deeper into your company.

Balancing work and goodwill takes effort, but a purpose larger than a donation can deepen your company’s mission and impact — while connecting your brand to your community.

Related: 4 Reasons You Should Host a Philanthropic Event

Nick Gross, entrepreneur and musician, is one example of someone who is successfully bringing a deeper purpose to his business initiatives. While working on his creative-branding company, Milky Agency, Gross founded the Find Your Grind Foundation, which works with underserved youth to develop their skills and goals.

These young people have talent in music, the arts or technology, but they often don’t have the resources available to reach their potential. Find Your Grind connects them with materials, space and even financial assistance to take their talents further.

“With a goal of teaching young people how to network, learn from each other’s experiences and define success for themselves, we ask, ‘How do you find your grind each day, and how can you share that with others?’” Gross says.

Although he acknowledges that an auxiliary benefit of philanthropy is the networking and inbound branding Find Your Grind’s efforts garner, philanthropy is about more than the potential boost to your brand or the tax write-offs.

For entrepreneurs looking to make a difference, here’s how to get started:

1. Actively partner.

Business might be competitive, but philanthropy is collaborative. If you notice another company taking on a similar cause, don’t try to outdo it — make it your ally. You’ll be able to achieve more together, while making connections.

Related: 5 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Enhance Local Communities

Gross’s first philanthropic priority is Find Your Grind, but he participates in similar organizations’ efforts to empower youth. This summer, Gross’s band, Half the Animal, played at Clayton Kershaw’s annual ping-pong tournament to raise funds for at-risk youth. Kershaw’s organization’s mission aligns with Find Your Grind’s, but partnering — not competing — puts more power behind each organization’s goals.

Keep an eye out for opportunities such as this and take advantage of them when they arise. Who knows — you might have complementary skills that take each other’s missions even further!

 

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2. Make better decisions with data.

One of the leaders at the intersection of philanthropy and technology is Fluxx, which has built innovative solutions to create a more accessible and transparent ecosystem for foundations and nonprofits.

“When funders and nonprofits have more access to data and an easier ability to share stories, greater impact is realized,” says Jason Ricci, founder and CEO at Fluxx. “Leveraging technology and the insights it produces empowers organizations of all types and sizes to better assess their strategic priorities, track dollars to measurable results and produce fresh perspectives.”

3. Generate interest.

Bringing purpose to your business means your employees need to play a role. Doing service takes passion. The amount of enthusiasm your employees have for your cause can make or break your influence — especially today, as one of the top three factors that motivatesmillennials to get involved in a philanthropic cause is passion.

They may work for you in the office, but treat them like partners in your philanthropic efforts. Learn what they’re passionate about. Would they rather partner with local communities or global ones? Do they want to work with youth? Environmental causes? Find common areas of interest that will excite everyone, and you’ll have a team ready to serve with passion.

Related: The Mindset and Skills That Millennial Entrepreneurs Need for Success

Taking time to connect with a cause and bring purpose into your business is what makes a true impact. With a driven team, likeminded partnerships and work that doubles as goodwill, making those connections should come easily.

Writing a check might take only a minute, but it could never accomplish the results that hands-on, thoughtful philanthropy achieves.

 

Entrepreneur.com |  October 17, 2016 | Deep Patel