Up Market

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• Top 10: Upmarket Articles June 3-9, 2012
• Startups: Lead with Social Marketing
• The Neurology of Motivation

Top 10: Upmarket Articles June 3-9, 2012 Posted: 11 Jun 2012 08:00 AM PDT This week we have the down & dirty practical pieces — branding, productivity, communication, sales. But we also have extremely important broader concepts — staying remarkable, coping with fear, understanding your audience, and all of this is essential to the business you’re building. This is Upmarket Magazine’s Top 10 list of most-viewed articles from last week’s selection. You won’t want to miss them, so check out the list below and tell us what you think! 1. The Difference Between a Logo and Your Brand (and why it matters to your business) Rhiannon Llewellyn explains that your brand is the essence of your business, or a particular facet of your business. Your logo is the visualization of your brand, and is a significant, integral part of your marketing. Try these exercises to get to the heart of your brand. 2. Best Project Management Tools for Small & Virtual Teams Some tools really stand out, and Michelle Nickolaisen reviews three of the best — two of which also work well for solopreneurs! 3. From Corporate To Sweet Spot: A Rising Star's Lessons Learned Lisa Berkovitz’s Sweet Spot last week: After 8 years in marketing, and working as a marketing manager with a $2 million budget, Andrea Kennedy realized that there was very little true understanding of the customer going on, or care for the user experience… 4. One Simple Way to Stand Out In Any Crowd Derrick Jones asks this question: How do you know when you hit the right spot and over deliver to a high degree? It’s the moment when your customer cracks the unexpected smile. You pleasantly surprised them and caught them off guard. 5. Book Review: What the Robin Knows It’s not often that a book comes along that offers an entirely new way of seeing the world — and Christopher Landry believes this is one of them. (So do we.) “What the Robin Knows” is for everyone who wants to experience life in a deeper, richer, and more subtle way. 6. How Many Bass Players Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb? Why Joel Canfield picked up the bass guitar — and the why behind your business — are very similar, very important questions. Let’s start at the root… 7. 102 Ways to Earn Money Writing 1,500 Words or Less Jennifer Vandenberg lays out the pertinent points; the ideas in this book can be completed quickly and may bring you money much sooner than writing a novel or starting a blog. 8. How a Mosquito Can Ruin Your Business Eric Barrett is concerned that we’re becoming obsessed with the small issues, but we’re missing the big problems. We worry about customers following our procedures and don’™t wonder if our procedures are destroying our sales. We focus on controlling our employee’s time because we’€™re so afraid of “unproductive behaviors”€ that we miss the dramatic change in motivation as employees go from being excited about work… to drones in a factory. 9. Sales Psychology: The Secret of Instant Rapport Don’t miss this piece by Peter Shallard: Rapport is the state of magical connection where communication simply flows between individuals. It’s the perfect state for selling. And here’s how to achieve it quickly and effectively! 10. Ishita Gupta: Talking About Fear This last week I had a discussion with Ishita Gupta about fear — and when it comes to understanding fear in business and getting perspective on what works, she’s one of my favorite sources of ideas and information.

Startups: Lead with Social Marketing Posted: 11 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT You're on a remote island. You have only one communication channel to get you out of there in less than 24 hours. (Yes, you have internet access.) What would you choose? Sound familiar? If you're a startup or aspiring entrepreneur, these are questions you ask yourself almost every day in the early stages. Time and money don't come easily and you — the solo entrepreneur that you are — need to make everything count for something big. Over the past few years I have written quite a few blog posts and ebooks on the subject of "Get Scrappy." The point was, and still is, to help guide startups in deciding which marketing efforts will maximize results for them on the least amount of investment, when there's a resource scarcity. And yes, ROI is possible on a shoestring budget. But today, the conversation is less about whether you should have a website or whether you should use Mailchimp versus Constant Contact as your small business email provider. Now the conversation is about how quickly and effectively you can start conversations about, with and for your new product or service. And today… the answer is to lead with social marketing. Social (media) marketing is about participating in a real and virtual world. I personally know probably about 25% of my entire social community – across Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, Quora and G+. But the things I learn and participate in with them are invaluable. The same principles of personal interaction directly correspond and apply to (virtual) professionally-oriented interactions. So why start with social marketing versus other options? It's a reach game. It's a domino effect. It's for a 30 days+ impact. Reach According to Online MBA and Social Media Today, 2/3 of US consumers spend time on one or more social network.  That's well over 800M internet users a month accessing their social communities to connect, re-connect and share interests.  Startups can participate in that dialogue – for free. The Domino Effect This is where numbers talk. We all know no startup will reach the entire (active) social community in one fell swoop. But we do know, from numbers, that the average Facebook page has a reach factor (followers + friends of followers that they influence) of between 500-1,000x. And the more influential your Friend/Follower choice is, the higher the reach factor will be.  On that note, choose your friends carefully for maximum effect. For 30 Days+ Impact Social — unlike an email, search or banner ad — has the ability to live far beyond an initial tweet or post on the web.  I have seen a lot of conflicting data on this one, but arguably most social posts (and blogs) are available forever and searchable on Google. Tweets seem to be purged, though, about every 30 days. But clearly there is a blessing and a curse interwoven into your social efforts — your actions will live on! Here are some kickstart ideas for activating your (social) online presence as a startup: Create a LaunchRock page and publicize it across the Big 3: Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin Start creating content – about your business (bios, founders photos, videos, snippets of your business plan) and about your industry interests Join conversations related to your business. Follow and start conversations on Quora and LinkedIn (and don't be salesy about it). Participate to learn, and educate others with helpful information using your expertize in xyz. It’s often your expertise that fueled your business concept in the first place, right? Photo Credit: Column Five

The Neurology of Motivation Posted: 11 Jun 2012 02:00 AM PDT In its simplest form, motivation is a choice between two outcomes. In your brain, you balance the short and long-term costs and rewards of various options, and make a decision. And oftentimes short-term interests win out over long-term interests – it’s why checking email for the 100th time and getting out one more social media update wins out over writing that proposal (that will actually bring money in the door). The dopamine hit from the short-term win is just so powerful! The rationalization process then starts in our brain: I promised that proposal to the client by the end of the week. But it's 4 o'clock now and I don't want to get sucked in and be here all night doing it. It's going to be take more than two hours. I know, I'll just start it tomorrow after my 10 o'clock tomorrow and work through lunch. Yep, I really should go through and answer those tweets and get one more update done to our Facebook page. So then we put off the proposal. The Drive Approach to Motivation If you’ve never read Drive by Daniel Pink, I can’t recommend it highly enough — especially if you are interested in what makes people tick. The Cliff’s Notes version is that he believes that for true intrinsic motivation (which is the only kind that works in the long run) you need three things: Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. And if you can combine those three things together, then you have the winning combination — which means that the proposal will win out over the social media updates. Autonomy When you have autonomy over what you do, you are considerably more likely to do it. In this case, there is no question that our industrious businessperson has autonomy over what they are doing. But, autonomy is only one-third of the equation. Mastery We all like to be good at stuff. But I have yet to see an instruction manual for running a business (or writing the perfect proposal) so it’s hard to know what to do – and what not to do. The 10,000 hour rule tells us that it takes 10,000 hours (or about 10 years) to develop mastery of any one activity – and while deliberate practice can help us cut that time in half, there is simply no substitute for doing the work. But, this is where surrounding yourself with smart people – in the form of an awesome team, supportive peers, excellent coach, and a strong community – will accelerate your road to mastery. If our proposal-writer doesn't have a lot of proposal-writing experience, he's almost certainly going to pick social media over proposal-writing until he no longer has a choice. Purpose To me, this is actually the most important component – buy-in. Understanding why you are doing something gives us the motivation to power through the 10,000 hours of learning. It can even help in situations where we don't have the autonomy that we might otherwise want. When you have something you believe in, with your entire heart, you are willing to overlook a lot of other things. The Magic of the Trifecta Now, imagine that you have all three. What sort of magic can you create? Image credit: Martin Whitmore

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