Archive for the ‘boss’ tag
The Content Omniverse [Infographic]
We all know content marketing is extremely important for an infinite amount of reasons, but do you know how much various forms of content are shared? Copypress created The Content Omniverse which offers statistics on social sharing, video, images, and “copy content”. You can use the data below to help you (or your boss) decide [...]
Tell Your Boss Anything Anonymously Emails Your Boss [Webapps]
Ever wanted to give your boss feedback, but didn’t want to do it to their face? Tell Your Boss Anything is a simple webapp where you can anonymously email your boss, and they can respond right back to you. More »
Medal Count Keeps an Obsessive Eye on the Olympics When You’re Too Busy to Watch [2012 Olympics]
If your boss insists you work rather than watch live Olympic streams all day, you probably have a terrible boss and I feel sorry for you. Luckily you can still keep a watchful eye on the Game’s progression with webapp Medal Count. More »
Product Management for the Web
Whether we prototype, write, design, develop, or test as part of building the web, we’re creating something hundreds, thousands, or maybe even millions of people will use. But how do we know that we’re creating the right enhancements for the web, at the right time, and for the right customers? Because our client or boss asked us to? And how do they know? Enter product management for the web—bridging the gap between leadership and customers on one side, and the user experience, content strategy, design, and development team on the other. Learn to set priorities that gradually but steadily make your product (and the web) better.
A Reason To Behave Badly At Work This Week
One of my favourite leadership quotes is
It always makes me smile, I wish I could remember who said it! Now before you all get excited I am not encouraging bad behaviour! – but I love the idea that conformity to the norm does not necessarily bring success.
When you think of businesses, or successful leaders, they have that ability to play within certain boundaries however at the same time they manage to think differently. They work at the edge of the boundary, even redefining the boundary for the future…
They don’t ask what the market wants, or what would be safe to show the boss…No…they think how could we make this successful, what if we did this……etc and not find reasons or problems that could prevent it from happening. They play angels advocate not devils advocate!
So this week…see if you can make history..see if you can behave as someone who wants to make history!
Work at the boundary…because the middle is not just already taken…it is crowded!
Kevin Rose Is Ready To Disrupt San Francisco
So Valley veteran Kevin Rose will be at Disrupt SF on September 8th – 12th! Rose will be joining our growing coeterie of distinguished speakers, all of which now include: my former boss Michael Arrington, Marissa Mayer, Vinod Khosla, Marc Benioff, Ron Conway, Ben Horowitz, Joel Klein, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, Jessica Alba, Brian Lee, Path’s Dave Morin and Benchmark Capital’s Matt Cohler.
In his past startup lives, Rose was the founder of Digg and co-founder of Milk. He is now a Venture Partner at Google Ventures.
If you’re itching to join all these amazing peeps, and us, get your tickets now.
And there are still opportunities to showcase at Disrupt for those companies who didn’t make it into our final Startup Battlefield list. Be sure to check out Startup Alley and get your tickets here. And for all of the hardware startups out there, we’ve created a special chance for you to grab a little Disrupt SF floor space. Information and tickets can be found here.
And finally if you are interested in becoming a sponsor click on this. Until next post!
Kevin Rose
Venture Partner, Google Ventures
Kevin Rose is a Venture Partner at Google Ventures, where he primarily focuses on early-stage and seed investments.
Prior to joining Google Ventures, Kevin co-founded Milk, a mobile application development company in San Francisco. Previously Kevin was the founder of Digg, and co-founder of Revision3, and Pownce (acquired by Six Apart). In addition, Rose is the founder of Foundation, a private newsletter and podcast, and formerly was co-host of the tech news podcast Diggnation.
The circles of marketing
Most amateurs and citizens believe that marketing is the outer circle.
Marketing = advertising, it seems. The job of marketing in this circle is to take what the factory/system/boss gives you and hype it, promote it and yell about it. This is what so many charities, politicians, insurance companies, financial advisors, computer makers and well, just about everyone does.
The next circle in has so much more leverage. This is the circle of telling a story that resonates with a tribe. This is the act of creating alignment, of understanding worldviews, of embracing and elevating the weird. Smart marketers in this circle acknowledge that their product or service isn’t for everyone, but bend over backwards to be sure that some people will be able to fall in love with it.
The next circle in easily overlooked. This is the act of changing what surrounds the actual product or service, adding enough usability and support and atmosphere that the perception of the product itself changes. Zappos did this for shoes. Ikea almost willfully goes in the other direction with its furniture assembly and delivery approach. When you go to an expensive restaurant, you’re buying far more than what the chef cooked. Products and services are only commodities if you treat them that way.
And the innermost circle is the product or service itself. When the thing you sell has communication built in, when it is remarkable and worth talking about, when it changes the game–marketing seems a lot easier. Of course, that’s because you did the marketing when you invented the thing, saving you the expense and trouble of yelling about it.
When in doubt, when your marketing isn’t working, the answer is easy: go one circle in.
The Importance of Beliefs, Vision and Strategy
Maarten Albarda, vp of global consumer connections at Anheuser-Busch InBev gave a fantastic interview where he clearly and succinctly outlined what digital and social does for the business, how it approaches consumer engagement and finally, the measurement conundrum. The highlights are worth sharing here:
Core beliefs:
One of our fundamental beliefs is that the consumer is the boss. Consumer centricity is at the base of all we do.
A compelling vision:
Fans First is our mantra. Our vision in digital is to create the most celebrated, shared and talked-about beer brands in the world, and with a fan base of over 30 million across all our brands, we are well on our way. Our priorities are, however, not so much focused on the absolute number of fans but on growing in a relevant way with people who are truly interested and engaged
Succinct strategy:
Our strategy is called “Fans First,” and as a result, we have connected with over 30 million fans worldwide through a variety of digital platforms like Facebook, YouTube, RenRen and VKontakte.
On measurement
We measure ROI against a variety of key performance indicators, and we are now in a situation where we understand the relative dollar contribution of each touch point and can determine which mix of connections will yield the best result.
One of our roles as agencies to become trusted advisors to our clients and ensure that every organisation can verbalise these essential beliefs and directions.
Disclosure – Budweiser is a DDB and Tribal DDB client.
Reachable: 100 billion connections means someone you need to meet knows someone you know
It’s really, really hard to sell to Joe Blow.
Joe, who knows my former boss Frank, on the other hand … that’s an entirely different matter. That is the premise behind Reachable, a social connection tool for business-to-business sales professionals, which just updated its “enterprise social” graph to over 100 billion connections.
“Companies are sitting on a goldmine of under-utilized social assets – the relationships of all their employees, their customers, and their partners,” said Reachable chief executive Al Campa in a statement.
The idea behind Reachable is to gather all those relationship and then correlate them with the connections that the company already knows about. And then to leverage them to help salespeople make connections, turning cold calls into at least semi-lukewarm conversations.
Why?
Because, according to Reachable, a potential customer is five times more likely to return a sales call if they have some kind of personal connection with the rep.
Reachable built the social graph through analyzing online profiles of both businesses and individuals. The company says they are aggregated from “a number of sources,” which I presume but cannot confirm includes LinkedIn and Plaxo. By checking work history and educational background, Reachable creates a web of connections that could enable sales reps to find a common alma mater, a shared former colleague, or another point of connection.
The cloud-based service is integrated with Salesforce.com and Oracle CRM on Demand, so clients of those tools can use the tool right inside a familiar environment. In addition, Campa said, “Reachable supports the import of information from LinkedIn and Facebook as well as email address books.”
The company has released a free version with limited functionality and a premium version, priced at $49/user/month; a desktop version is also available.
Reachable has received venture funding from Rho Ventures, Signal Peak Ventures, and Parkview Ventures. It is based in Palo Alto and Salt Lake City.
Image credit: Alekup/ShutterStock
Filed under: cloud, enterprise, search, social, VentureBeat 
Treat Bad Bosses Like Toddlers [Managing The Boss]
Some people are just horrible to work for, which can infect not just your workday but your home life as well. Quitting isn’t the only option, though, if you have a toxic boss. One way to manage the stress is to think of your bad boss like a toddler. More »