How to Grow Your Online Community

Whenever I view a blog, I like to feel captured, and feel as if I must finish reading the text in its entirety. I really love articles and blogs that make me feel like I am a more intelligent individual once I have completed the reading. That is my goal while typing out these blog posts. I want you as a reader and potential blogger to trust that when you visit my site, you are going to leave feeling like a marketing expert. I also like to incorporate humor as much as possible, because why not?

LEO

In this blog post I am going to talk about social media management. Social Media is awesome and booming. If you have not read the post that I created last week, please do. I packed in a bunch of valuable information that I believe is quite powerful and will be beneficial to your company (or for personal use). But this week I am covering social media management and the importance of growing your online community,  the do’s and don’ts of social media etiquette, Klout, and Tumblr.

I did some research on a social media management website by the name of, HootSuite. Hootsuite is pretty radical. You can monitor all of your social media platforms in one place, schedule when to post things, check out what people are saying in your communities, get certified in social media management, and much more. If this is your first time hearing about HootSuite, then I encourage you to check it out (after you have read this blog post of course).

Growing your online community

As you probably know, an online community is a group of people rallying around a shared, common interest, value, or goal. This community can take place on any social media platform, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more.

When you invest time into your community, it benefits it your company in many ways…

  1. It allows you to build deep relationships with people who are in your industry, share interests in products, services, or expertise.
  2. When you add value to your community, it creates brand loyalty among your community. They feel like you have invested your time into them, so they want to return the favor.
  3. Don’t frown upon negative feedback. All feedback is good feedback. This gives you a chance to fix the problem or at least apologize for that problem. A lot of the time the customer just wants to be heard. They want to know that you are truly sorry for whatever happened.
  4. Engage in conversation with them. When you interact with your community, they love it! When A$AP Rocky starts responding to his followers on Instagram, his fans go nuts. It becomes a huge discussion and everyone tunes in.

Below is A$AP Rocky. He is a pretty cool dude, and will be releasing his sophomore album this year (album title TBD).

RockyWhen you are growing your community it is important for your brand to have a personality that is consistent. No one wants to interact with brand that is bi-polar. It could be entertaining from an outsiders perspective but it would not be too inviting for the people who would want to interact with you as a brand.

Leverage your community. You can use this community as a way to figure out the strengths and weaknesses of your company. A way to do this is by having quizzes. Quizzlet offers great survey systems that are quite easy to use, and offer lots of user-customization. Ask good questions, and record the data. You can use reverse innovation to figure out what your company should invent next. Or even having a net promoter score system where you ask a simple question like, “Would you recommend our company to a friend or family member”, they would then rate the company on a 1-10, where 10 is highly likely, and 1 is not likely at all. The world is yours.

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Engage with influences and advocates. If you are able to get in contact with an influencer, then you are golden. For instance, when Kanye West co-signs clothing brands and wears them around town, that clothing brand blows up. All of their clothing sells out faster than you can say, “Yeezus”. Find influencer’s in your community. One way to do this is through Facebook Search Graph. This is a very interesting tool that I had no idea existed until I researched Hootsuite’s website. Essentially what you can do is, type into the search bar, “Bloggers who like Supreme”. Then it will list every blogger that likes the clothing brand Supreme. You can use this to your advantage. Find influencers that have liked your brand and reach out to them. Don’t be annoying though and expect them to promote your brand for free, a lot of the time you will have to entice them in some way. Give them something for free, or pay them!

Brand advocates can be just as good as influencers. Brand advocates are people who love your brand, and talk about it on social media. It is important to give these people recognition. Give them a favorite, or even reply to their tweet explaining that you appreciate their support. This will build a relationship with them and most likely get really excited that you communicated with them. When people who I follow get re-tweeted or mentioned by someone famous they tweet instantly right after something along the line of, “@KANYEWEST JUST MENTIONED ME”. Interact with your brand advocates, it pays off in the short and long run.

Kanye

You want to acquire followers that are going to engage with you. You don’t want a ton of followers that never mention you, or comment on your posts. I always find it funny when I stumble upon someone’s Instagram account and they will have 12k followers but only 50 likes on each photo. They either bought those followers, or they post content that sucks.

If you find that a lot of your target audience is not on social media, reach out to them offline. A good way of doing this is by interacting with customers and asking them to follow them on Facebook. This might spark their interest into setting up an account, and when they tell people why they decided to get on Facebook, they will say because of your brand, and in return check you out. Another way to reach that community that is not online is through events. When you are at trade-shows or farmers markets, talk to your community. Bring them to the world of social media. You can even host contests to entice them to join Facebook. For instance, when I first made Bellingham Marine an Instagram account, we hosted a contest. This contest was for the first 50 followers. If you were among the first 50, then you got a free prize. This triggered their curiosity and made them sign up for Instagram and follow Bellingham Marine.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Social Media Etiquette

Be yourself. As cheesy as that sounds, it’s really true. Don’t feel like you have to change the way you communicate. But at the same time, be mindful of your audience. You might not want to get too comfortable and post pictures of you and your friends partying on the weekend.

Be Transparent. Everything that you post online is forever available. My Mother always told me, “If you would be embarrassed of it being on the front page of the NY Times, then don’t post it”. This is important, especially for a business.

Play by the rules. It is a public environment and you don’t want to annoy people. Be conscious of what you are posting and don’t over post. Don’t forget the 80/20 rule.  Also check out the rules on Facebook, Twitter, and so on. Your company probably has rules about social media, so make sure to be up-to-date with those as well.

Listen Frequently and Engage. Listen to your community. Converse with your community, this is a great way to get your voice out there, especially if you want to display authority on a given subject. Consumers love and trust brands that display authority. Figure out what they like, and you can use that as a way to market to them

Be Respectful. Miscommunication is not uncommon on social media. I can be very sarcastic at times and find myself refraining from using it on social media. It can be hard to tell if someone is sarcastic online, even over text message. You want to remain courteous. If you are not, you can come off as cyber bullying. This would be a nightmare for a brand, and could create a community that would do everything they can to make sure that you don’t stay in business.

Do you have Klout?

Klout is pretty cool. It is a service that measures how influential you are online. It basically collects all the engagement you get from your social media platforms and rates your on a 1-100 scale. For instance, the image below is a Klout score of President Obama and Justin Bieber. Obama and Bieber are very influential people offline, and online.

Klout can benefit you in two ways:

  1. Klout is a great way to measure what content resonates with your audience. This is useful because you can figure out what content gets you the most engagement.
  2. Klout does a thing called, “Klout-put”. Klout-put puts you in contact with companies that want influential people using their products and basically gives them free merchandise. For instance, RedBull gave me a free subscription to their RedBulletin, because of my Klout score.

Storytelling on Tumblr with Ari Levine

Tumblr is booming as a social media platform. Hootsuite got in contact with Ari Levine, who is the Brand Strategist for Tumblr. Mr. Levine talked about Tumblr and why it is so great. I am going to summarize some of the key takeaways for you…

  • Tumblr is all about creativity. When you design your site, you have the freedom to do whatever you want. Creatives love Tumblr, because it allows them to explore and showcase their creativity skills.
  • Experiment and have fun with it. Mr. Levine thinks creating GIF’s are a great way to do this.
  • Tumblr users are highly engaged. On average, a person who goes on their dashboard to view pictures, GIF’s, videos, and etc, spends 18 minutes. Mr. Levine compared this example to TV. Tumblr users would rather spend 18 minutes online then watching a TV-show.
  • You create an audience, and you are part of an audience. Find people who love the same things you do, and use that to your advantage.

That concludes this blog post. I hope it was very engaging, and you feel like you are ready to grow your social media community, practice proper social media etiquette, boost your Klout score, and engage on Tumblr. Until next time…

GOT

 

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How to Grow Your Online Community

Why Should My Company Use Social Media?

One thing that I have learned recently is that you want your header to have something that someone would search on Google. I can picture it right now, a small business owner, or a person who is intrigued to learn about what all this talk about “social media” is, hovering over their keyboard, typing in seven words that could revolutionize the way that they run their business. I hope that person finds this exact post.

KevinSpaceyTyping

Currently I am a marketing assistant at Bellingham Marine, the world’s most comprehensive marina builder in the world. There is no lie about it. Bellingham Marine has locations all across the world, and has built more marinas than any of their competitors. I started my position as a marketing intern in June of 2014. One of my objectives upon entering this position was, “Build a social media presence”. My first thought was, “piece of cake!”. I have been messing around with social media since MySpace, and have skills in just about every social media platform. But as I started to brainstorm how I was going to build a large audience on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, I came to the realization that it was going to be a lot harder than I thought, and it wasn’t going to happen overnight.

Before I continue with my personal story about creating a social media presence at Bellingham Marine, I want discuss what social media actually is.

A fantastically cool company by the name of Moz created an eBook titled, The Beginners Guide to Social Media. This eBook give you the serious low-down on what social media actually is, how to master it, and provides countless advice on techniques to incorporate into your social media plan. There is a lot more to social media than posting pictures, making statuses, getting likes, and comments.

Social Media is a way for people to communicate and interact online. More and more businesses are using social media because it is a way for businesses to interact with their target audience. Businesses are able to come off as a human being that display empathy, kindness, humor, and authenticity. This is valuable because it really shows that you care about you customer, it show that you want to engage in legitimate conversations with them. Your customers are online. They are talking to their friends, they are talking about what they like, what they dislike, they are asking questions, and in return, they want them answered. That is where your company comes into play. I could write 5,000 words on what social media is, I could write another 10,000 words on why social media is important for your company, but instead I am going to teach you why social media is important in under 1,500 words.

If you are unfamiliar with some of the major social media platforms, well, here is a list that I encourage you to look into:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • LinkedIn
  • Youtube
  • Pinterest
  • Instagram

Three elements of social media that can change the way you run you business…

  1. Relationships. You want to build a relationship with your target audience. This should be a no-brainer. When you have built a relationship with your customer, then they feel like they are part of your company, almost like family. You want them to “like” your page, then fall in “love” with your page, and then after that “defend” your page. When a customer is defending your company, you have hit gold. Recently I witnessed a plethora of Apple customers defending Apple on LinkedIn. They were getting into it with a bunch of PC users (classic, huh?). I was so intrigued by how passionate they were. Some had weak arguments on whey Apple was better than PC, and others had very strong arguments. They loved Apple so much that they felt the need to defend them, like they were a friend of theirs.
  2. Feedback. Social media is the place for opinions. If you log onto Facebook or Twitter, you are going to read someone’s opinion. A lot of the times they are bad opinions. Ridiculing a company for their poor performance, or displeased with the customer-service that they recently received. This might at first frighten you as a company, but in reality can be extremely beneficial. You can use this feedback as a way to reach out to them to apologize. See if you can fix that problem. If you fix that problem then there is a high probability that, that customer’s friends saw you to come to the rescue. You can also learn about what your customers are frustrated about, maybe you work at RedBull, and you release a new flavor called, Pinapple Power. Your company thinks that it is the newest and greatest thing out on the market. But when you hop on Facebook and see what your customers are saying, and they are saying things like, “too sweet”, “I feel sick from all the sugar”, or “I hate how much sugar is in this RedBull”. RedBull can take this feedback and reduce the amount of grams of sugar are in each can. Feedback is good, even if it is bad.
  3. Integration. When you start using social media, don’t half-ass it. Integrate it into your marketing, branding, PR, and advertising efforts. When doing so it gives your customers a better experience. This will display consistency, and cohesion.

Now that you have an idea of why social media is so important for a company, I want to continue my personal story about social media.

Bellingham Marine’s target audience is marina owners, harbor masters, and people that are involved heavily in the marina industry. This is mainly the baby-boomer generation. A lot of this generation is not on social media. Which I found it very hard to build an audience, let alone an audience that would defend Bellingham Marine. I had to do some serious analyzing on where our target audience hung out, and how to bring them over to the different social media platforms.

LinkedIn was where they were all hanging out. LinkedIn is a networking site where professionals interact and talk about recent job openings, what is going on in the business world, promote their business, and much more. Since that was where our target audience was, I decided to really promote on that social media platform. I would post in numerous marina discussion groups, and people would comment back, and express their love for our company, as well as some frustrations. By starting these discussions, and interacting with our target audience, I started to see that the engagement percentages increased, and the number of followers. Just this past week I launched a social media contest to promote our LinkedIn company page. Just in the past week we have increased our followers by 28, sitting Bellingham Marine at 608 followers.

Facebook was a different story. Bellingham Marine already had a LinkedIn before I was hired, and they had a decent amount of followers. What they didn’t have was a Facebook page. I had to build a company Facebook page from scratch for them and perform the hardest thing; acquire likes. I tried many different things including promoting the page on Facebook groups, posting beautiful pictures, recommending people to like our page, and various other social media activities. I would find myself getting quite frustrated because I wasn’t getting the return I wanted. Then I stepped back and looked at what I was posting from a customers view. I then realized I was posting things that weren’t that engaging, posting things that didn’t ask questions, and in short, no posting great content. I started to post beautiful of marina’s with captions explaining when they were built. I started posting statuses, saying things along the lines of, “Happy Friday! Bellingham Marine hopes you have a great weekend.” These were the posts that were acquiring lots of likes. Our target audience felt like we cared about them, we truly wanted them to have a great weekend. I have acquired 99 likes in the past couple months. It is not thousands but that number is rewarding to me.

My next mission was to set up an Instagram account. Instagram is an app that allows you to share only photos, and short video clips. You can “like” the photos, and also comment on them. Instagram for Bellingham Marine was more successful and I was able to acquire more followers faster. One way I really utilized this app, and made Bellingham Marine more of a human-being, was by searching for hashtags that involved marinas that we had created in the past. To my surprise there were actually people who were hashtagging Bellingham Marine before we even had an account. This was an awesome feeling, and got the staff at Bellingham Marine really excited. Every person that would use the hashtag #BellinghamMarine, I would “like” their photo and leave a comment, expressing how thankful Bellingham Marine was for promoting our brand and the marina that we built. You could tell that when I would interact with these people they would get quite excited, and show gratitude for the work that Bellingham Marine did. Another way that I was able to build an audience was by following Instagram accounts that were in the same line of business, not competitors (which is important to keep an eye on), but companies that were in the marina business. This was quite successful, in that I was able to acquire 136 followers in just a few months.

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I recently read an article by The New Yorker titled, Virologist. This a fascinating article about a man by the name of Emerson Spartz. The New Yorker gave him the nick-name King of Click-Bait. If you are unfamiliar with what click-bait is, then check out this link. Mr. Spartz knows how to make things go viral. It’s his specialty. Spartz created a business called Spartz, Inc. where they create websites that contain interesting content. There specialty is creating headlines that will make you want to click on them, because they are so enticing and make you curious. An example of one title is, “This Dad Decidedto Embarass His Son in the Most Elaborate Way Possible. LOL”. Honestly, when you read that you want to press it to see what that Dad did. I also found it quite awesome that at Spartz, Inc. they name all of their conference rooms after the regions in Game of Thrones (GREAT show, can’t wait till season 5 airs on April 12th).

Spartz, Inc. also does an interesting thing called “hat tip” or H/T. You might see this abbreviation at the bottom of the article, this means that they are giving credit to another company for the article (basically re-posting their content and making money off of it).

Whenever you are creating content or posting on social media, create an AWESOME headline. Something that will pull your reader in. Something that they HAVE to click on because it could make them laugh, or even learn something they never knew. For example, say you write an article on how 85% of people are not drinking enough water each day. Make the title of that article, “85% of People Are NOT Drinking Enough Water, Are You?”. I myself would feel inclined to press on that link.

I truly hope you learned how effective social media can be for a business. Don’t be afraid to try out different things. Social Media is like a plant. You have to consistently give it water, make sure it gets some sun, and occasionally try different techniques on where you should place the plant. I had to learn from my mistakes and figure out what my target audience enjoyed. Until next time…

2pacPeace

 

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Why Should My Company Use Social Media?

The Three-Headed Dragon of Content Marketing

Recently I was stumped on what to receive from my parents for Christmas. I was having the hardest time deciding whether to get money which I could put towards rent, or a pair of headphones. Of course, I picked the headphones. But this didn’t happen until I performed extensive research on what was the best headphones out on the market. It first sparked my interested when Kanye West’s Creative Director, Virgil Abloh posted a pair of headphones on his Instagram page. Prior to seeing this post, I was interested in some over the ear headphones, but I couldn’t figure out where to start to find the right pair. I have owned five different types of Beats By Dre in the past, and wanted something new, reliable, and had a sense of authenticity. Mr. Abloh posted about these headphones with a caption of, “another unboxed. I lose an average of 4 of these per year. I can’t be the only one. @atrak? @diplo? Aguillaumeberg? @_benjib?”. I read that caption and my frame of reference switched from social to prospective buyer. My instant thought was, “Who makes these headphones?”. The fact that Kanye West’s CD, who is also a pretty famous DJ who travels all over the world to DJ parties, has THESE particular headphones, makes me feel a sense of trust that they are of higher quality and reliable. ESPECIALLY since he tagged famous DJ’s such as Atrack and Diplo. I read the comments that people left, and they too were intrigued by the headphones and said things like, “What headphones are these?”, and “What headphones are they?”. Luckily, people in the comment thread said things like, “Nothing better than HD25s :-)”, “At least 4-6 pairs per year. This year I lost 4 and a half”, “Are theses the HD 25-1 II?”, “Custom HD25 strong look tho”. These comments informed me of what the headphones were, as well as, that they were of high quality, and simply dope. So immediately I did a Google search and BOOM they were at the top of the page. along with a pair that were $50 off on Amazon.com. I pressed on the Amazon link, and what do you know, the comments on the page were saying that they were the best headphones ever, and so on. At that moment I knew exactly what I wanted from my parents for Christmas.

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The above story is a strong example of content marketing. Content Marketing is all about building an audience, and it was quite evident that Sennheiser did so with their brand. A very interesting eBook created by Scribe, called The Business Case For Agile Content Marketing. In this eBook they break down content marketing and talk about the importance of it, and how valuable an audience is.

Instead of purchasing access to an audience through the media, such as a commercial in between plays in the Seahawks vs. Packers game (GO HAWKS), your company actually becomes the media. ***Mind Blown*** With that said, I would highly recommend that you keep reading, and take notes.

As you know, the traditional way of lead generation and sales process has changed immensely. People don’t want to be sold too, they gather the information that they want, when they want, from who they want. They get recommendations from friends, they search the web for answers to their problems, they post on social media, and so forth. These people already have an opinion on your brand before you even market to them, and they probably don’t know there difference between your brand, and your competitors. Before I even viewed the image that Mr. Abloh posted on his Instagram, I didn’t know the difference between Beats by Dre, Bose, and Sennheiser. I saw them as being quite equal. I knew that some Beats by Dre tended to market towards the younger generation, while Bose and Sennheiser was for the more classy individual, who tends to be in an older age group. For companies that are looking to stand out among their competition,  they need to exercise content marketing.

Companies need to recognize that content marketing is VERY effective. A component of content marketing is teaching. When you are creating compelling content that speaks to the customers needs, answers their needs, and informs them why they need this particular product, you are teaching them instead of pitching. Once you have taught them, they view your company as having authority, which consumers love, because it gives them a feeling of reassurance that your product was the right choice for them.

A key component of content marketing is that you are giving away your compelling content for free, and not paying for marketing elsewhere. Obviously this is a lot cheaper, and in the long run more effective. The longer that you create compelling content, the more reliable, and authentic you come off among your prospective buyers. In result, Google recognizes this, and places your blog, or site at the top of its search results. Google also ranks the writer that is writing the content, this is called AuthorRank.

Many companies fall to a dilemma, that I like to think of as the three dragons vs. the three-headed dragon. Take for instance the three dragons situation, these three dragons named, Content, Social Media, and SEO are all flying to this village to burn it down because they don’t like how they are being treated by the village people. While they are flying, Content gets tired, and decides that he wants to stop and take a nap. Now there is only two dragons flying to the village. Then all of a sudden, what do you know, Social Media gets hungry, so he decides to stray from the mission and go find some live-stock to BBQ, now you are only left with one dragon, SEO. SEO gets to the village and ultimately gets killed because he didn’t have backup from his dragon friend’s Content, and Social Media. Whereas if they were morphed together, they would have been able to get to the village all together, and use three times the fire to take down the village. People tend to think of content marketing, social media marketing, and search engine optimization as three different categories that if you perform each one individually, then you will get a positive result. When in actuality, you need to morph all three of those categories together because each component plays off of each other.

ThreeHeadedDragon

Content

The foundation element is of course, content. This content has to be effective though. The content speaks to the audience, answers the audience’s questions, informs the audience, and teaches them. It must make them want to step away from their lives to give your product a chance. You want to create audience-focused content as if social media and search engines don’t exist. Give it your all when it comes to speaking to them.

Social

If you are able to perform effective social media marketing then it will lead to content distribution. This is what social media hubs are all about! People love compelling content, so compelling that they feel the need to share it to all 800+ of their friends. The people who are able to create compelling content are constantly having their content shared, and are the social media king’s and queen’s. When people share your content, Google gets notified, and it registers to them that it is in fact, high quality content.

Search

This is the last component that you need to master. When you are creating content, you are writing it for the people who will love it. These people give your company that positive reassurance by sharing it on social media platforms, linking it to their blogs, and content sites. Google takes all of this information in and if you’re a company that demonstrates authenticity, high-value, authority, and something that people want to see when they search Google, they place you at the top of the page. With that said, you still need to tweak the way you deliver your information, so that Google will in fact be notified that you are worthy of being ranked higher than your competitors. For instance, if you are talking about outbound marketing and instead of using the words outbound marketing in your text, you are calling it OldLawn marketing because it is ugly and dead. This would be quite funny, and your viewers might think the same, but good wouldn’t understand it. Google is smart, but not human smart.

As a marketer, you need to step into the shoes of your audience. If they are on Facebook talking to friends, they are not in the “buy-buy-buy-buy” mood. They are in the socialize mood. You as a marketer need to figure out a way to get into their conversations, so that they can relate to you as a company. Content marketing is an audience building path, not necessarily a conversion-to-customer path.

Since I like to consider myself a “Smarketer”, which is a smart marketer, I naturally like to continue to expand my knowledge on topics pertaining to marketing. Which is why I went over to the website of Content Marketing Institute, and read an article titled, The 5 Pillars of Successful Content Marketing. I encourage you all to read this article as well. One thing that really stood out to me in this article, was that 2 million blog posts are being posted everyday. Which is slightly discouraging considering that this blog post will be one in two million posts today. But you can view it as a competition. You want your creative, compelling content to be heard right? Well, practice the techniques that I have talked about, and see if you can beat out your competition, and ask yourself……

WhereAreMyDragons

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The Three-Headed Dragon of Content Marketing

Figuring Out The Best Configuration.

Here we are once again discussing what is going on in the marketing world. Not only what’s going on, but what is actually helping businesses succeed when it comes to conversion rates. The topic that I am going to discuss is A/B testing.

First and foremost, A/B testing is pretty cool stuff. In short, A/B testing is basically figuring out which web design will create the most conversions. You might be thinking, “But how does one measure the metrics for such a complex situation that originally requires one to say, ‘we think’, instead of, ‘we know’?”. Well fellow unique visitor, a fantastic company by the name of Optimizely, created a A/B testing system, so that you don’t have to guess anymore. What a great group of people.

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A/B testing allows you to figure out whether or not the new additions to your website are going to increase conversions. In the olden days, you had to play the guessing game. You would sit around with your co-workers and say things like, “I think that if we change the background color to something that eluded to happiness then the customer will purchase the item because they are in a good mood, and want to keep that good mood going, because the more you buy the happier you get, right???”. Now you can actually test the waters for the new “happy” design and see if it is worth changing the site code. A/B testing measures customer sign-ups, downloads, purchases, or whatever your goals as a business are. A/B testing takes the guessing game out of the optimization equation and backs up your decisions with data. I once had a wise-marketing professor tell me, “Marketing is all about data now”. He couldn’t have been more correct.

So how is A/B testing performed? A/B testing involves testing the original website version against the updated website version. An A/B tester basically splits down the middle of the visitors that go to your website and interact with it. Half go to the original version, and half go to the updated version. Then once they have sufficient data to say that one version is better than the other, they let you know. If you are still a little confused on the subject, take a look at the diagram below that Optimizely created.

OptimizelyI myself have a clothing company called, SomeFire. During its lifetime as a business I have sold four different articles of clothing. My first collection was released in 2012 which was a Givenchy-inspired tee shirt. My next collection was tank-tops, which was dropped in 2013. My past collection was long-sleeve t-shirts and hoodies, which was released in 2014. This year is going to be a big year for SomeFire, because I am cooking up a special surprise for the consumers. When I release my next clothing collection, I am going to use A/B testing in the checkout funnel. I am first going to try something simple, like changing the color of the “purchase” button. Usually I have a black “purchase” button but I am going to try something small, like a green “purchase” button. Once I have collected data on the most effective “purchase” button, I will move on to bigger things i.e. website layout.

Below is from the last collection of long-sleeve t-shirts.

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I like to think of myself as an aspiring soon-to-be marketing master. Which means that I go the extra mile to really learn about marketing topics. For instance, I read an article called, Practical Guide to Controlled Experiments on the Web: Listen to Your Customers not to the HiPPO. When the title mentions HiPPO, it is not talking about the ever-so ugly Hippopotamus amphibius. HiPPO stands for Highest Paid Person’s Opinion. In this article they discuss lots of different ways to make sure that the controlled experiments that you are running, are being done right, and evaluated correctly.

In the article they really get down to the nitty-gritty when it comes to the data portion of A/B testing. They evaluated two different check out processes, one had a coupon option, and then one had no coupon option. When they tested the coupon option they lost 90% of their revenue. The reason this happened was because the customers would reevaluate their order and think about if they are paying too much for this product, or possibly go browse the internet hopping that they would find a coupon. This is a valuable lesson when operation an eCommerce site. You want to make sure that the design choices that you make don’t prevent sales.

While reading this article, they used an example of A/B testing that made me really want to think of my own, so guess what? I did. A good way to think of A/B testing is through parenthood. When parents have their first born child (controlled group) they feed that child certain foods, give him/ her certain responsibilities, give them certain freedoms, and so forth. They then mentally measure the toll that it took on that child whether it was good, or bad. So now when the second child (the treatment group) is born they can try different things on that child. Maybe its less freedom, or more responsibilities, and etc. They then can compare the two and figure out which one seems “all there”. So now when the third child comes along they know exactly what to do and what not to do.

A now famous analystics mastermind by the name of Amelia Showalter opened up a new way to do A/B testing for political campaigns. Showalter was behind the “Hey There” emails from President Obama. During the 2012 election, Showalter and colleagues of her’s tested different ways to create an effective email campaign to raise money. They were very surprised to find that people liked the “ugly” e-mail format. Traditionally one might think that a potential donator wants to see the most professional email from their president, which is in fact the opposite. After extensive A/B testing they found out that the headline of, “I will be outspent” would generate the most donations bringing in $2,540,866.

Businesses can learn a lot from Showalter when it comes to A/B testing. You need to try the most unorthodox things to try and see what the outcome would be. Showalter did not think that the headline of “I will be outspent” would be a hit, until they tried it. Showalter did not think that bright yellow portions of the email to attract the eyes of the potential donator would be a hit, until they tried it out. Showalter did not think that having HTML style “donate here” button’s would be a hit, until they tried it out. Businesses need to realize that they can reach more of an audience if they implement A/B testing into their business, and try out different options. But businesses need to realize that their email list doesn’t want to be bombarded with emails 10 times a day. I myself recently had to unsubscribe to the Nordstrom email list because I was getting blasted with emails 10 times a day. In return, it made me want to do the opposite of press on them.

I hope that you learned some valuable information about A/B testing, and that you use it when you feel that it will be effective, and a great way to get more from you customers. Until next time fellow unique visitor.

ObamaKick

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Figuring Out The Best Configuration.

Inbound Marketing. The Present & The Future.

Marketing is a totally different game now. like most things, change is good. If you are unfamiliar with what Inbound marketing is, well, get like Oprah, and sit back and relax, because I am going to lay down the law and inform you like no other. OprahRelaxing Inbound marketing is one of those cool words that you drop when you are hanging w/ your friends to impress them. The kind of word that no one really knows what it means unless you are in marketing (at least that’s my personal experience). In short, inbound marketing is when you are able to bring visitors in, without having to spend money to have marketers try and grab their attention because you have dope, compelling, interesting content. Since being intrigued by marketing, and just about everything that has to do with it, I purchased an article from Harvard Business School, HubSpot: Inbound Marketing and Web 2.0. You might be asking yourself, “Why is he reading this?”, well it’s because I care about you.

One company that really utilized inbound marketing was, HubSpot. HubSpot might as well re-name their company to HubSport, because they are running this Inbound marketing game. Founded in 2006 by MIT graduates, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. Halligan and Shah noticed that the internet played a HUGE role on how small businesses operated. Once Halligan graduated, he became a VC (Venture Capitalist). While he was a VC, he noticed that start-ups were struggling on how to capture the internet to build a business. So, naturally they wanted to help them. HubSpot builds software products that help companies replace outbound marketing techniques with inbound marketing techniques. Outbound marketing is the age-old technique of throwing messages at the consumer via commercials, billboards, trade shows, telemarketing, and so on. Lets be real though, outbound marketing is becoming an archaic way of marketing. Less and less businesses are becoming successful through outbound marketing. We can screen for telemarketers with caller-id, we can record our TV shows and then fast-forward through the commercials, when we get junk mail, we toss it into the trash. Companies need to realize this!!! These companies need to try inbound marketing. An easy way for them to reach their customer is through setting up a blog and blogging impactful content. People will come straight to you when they want to learn about something and in return feel like you are a reliable company, and purchase your products. HubSpot’s vice president of marketing Mike Volpe couldn’t explain it better, “Instead of interrupting people that don’t care, why not help those who want what you’re offering to find you? We have found that building interesting tools is a more effective marketing tool than doing advertising. Things like this get people curious and draw them in”. For instance, when I am interested in purchasing a new clothing item, I often read reviews online from websites like Complex, Four-Pins, and HighSnobiety. I like to stay current with that is going on in the fashion world, and these websites write really interesting and insightful articles on the clothing companies that I find aesthetically pleasing. These fashion websites also offer an option to subscribe. So, whenever Complex posts new articles you get notified to check them out. HubSpot knows that consumers do this, so they create content that relates to their Google/ Bing search. For instance, since people strongly dislike television ads, HubSpot creates videos that potential customers want to see. Instead of buying display ads in magazines, HubSpot creates blogs that people subscribe to and read religiously.

Sidenote: The recently dropped Aimé Leon Dore x KITH collection looks like straight fire.

To really be successful at Inbound marketing, it takes three skills:

  1. You have to be able to write compelling content that will attract customers to your business. This content has to be useful and not just something that you are promoting. You can always tell when a post in Complex is promoted, or they were paid by another company to write about the most recent clothing collection. It lacks authenticity, consistency, and the people in the comment section write things like, “How much did you get paid to review this clothing brand?” and “This is why I don’t visit your site anymore”, this type of comment always cracks me up because they say they don’t visit their site anymore, yet they just read that entire article.
  2. The ability to have your content easily found on the internet. For this to happen you have to be skilled in the area of *DUN DUN DUN DUUUUUN*, Search Engine Optimization.
  3. Attract and engage lots of followers and have them interact with your content regularly. This can be hard for businesses to do, but once they are able to succeed in capturing a large, interactive following, they will be consistently cutting-checks.

Hopefully you are still with me, and you don’t feel like your head is going to explode because of all this #fire #content. HeadExploding HubSpot does the exact opposite of cold calling. They were able to figure out a way to have their consumers call them when they are in need of assistance or insight. Cold calling sucks, and can be extremely discouraging and make you feel like the gif above this post. S/O to HubSpot for finding out a way to get around cold calling. HubSpot created a software that embodies the idea of inbound marketing and makes it easy to use. The idea of the software is to generate leads more efficiently, and to convert them into sales. The software includes templates to design content for websites, blogs, and social networking sites; tools to help their customers increase exposure online; tools to get the right customers; and tools to analyze their results. This is very valuable because coding can be hard, and coming up with a way to display it in a creative way can be even harder. HubSpot does all the dirty work for you. After three years of being in business (2009), HubSpot had 1,000 very diverse customers. All of these customers had been acquired through inbound marketing. Here are the different ways that HubSpot attracted their customers…

  1. They had a powerful website that attracted more than 300,000 unique visitors in 2008. The website was full of white papers, webinars, podcasts, and a blog that provided information about Web 2.0 and inbound marketing strategies.
  2. HubSpot created and managed an 8,000-member LinkedIn group called Pro-Marketers.
  3. Employees created a TV-show that would air every Friday called HubSpot TV, a live streaming podcast, and had a YouTube channel that featured video spoofs. Below is one of them…

At the time of this blog post, this video had over 127,000 views. That is a lot of exposure, and clearly proving that what they are doing is reaching the audiences. HubSpot’s most successful software was its freeware. These software programs were free (I know big surprise) and they were small and available on the internet. The three most popular programs were:

  1. Website Grader (which I have used and is damn helpful)
  2. Twitter Grader (which I have not used, but will be trying out once I complete this blog post. *Promotion Time* Follow me at @SomeFire_Com)
  3. Facebook Grader (which I might use, but who really uses FaceBook anymore?)

These helpful programs grade your social media hubs and evaluate how your profiles are performing. Once individuals used these awesome freeware’s they would fill out a lead form to get notified when other dope freeware and articles dropped. BOOM, Inbound marketing. While increasing my knowledge on the ever so interesting inbound marketing, I stumbled across an article published by Marketo (competitor of HubSpot), titled Amplify Your Impact: How to Multiply the Effects of Your Inbound Marketing Program. Marketo discussed something that I found quite interesting called, the Inbound Marketing Multiplier. They believe that if you want to make inbound marketing work for your company, you need to have three ingredients:

  1. An outbound marketing strategy
  2. A corporate communications strategy
  3. A nurturing or marketing automation strategy

Once again, outbound marketing is any paid marketing – both online and offline. Marketo believes that if you combine outbound and inbound marketing, then you will see greater results. Corporate marketing is still a very important aspect of inbound marketing. Corporate marketing is much more than press releases, it also consists of branding, analyst relations, products launches, programs to up-sell to and retain customers, and communications, both internal and external. You want to stay consistent and come off as trustworthy, knowledgeable, and display quality. You want to create a strong brand image. For instance, Nike vs. Adidas. One might choose Nike even though they are aware of Adidas. Consumers display customer loyalty towards brands like Nike because they believe in the product, and think that it will enhance the way that they perform. As you watch the video below, you see Cristiano Ronaldo racing through cones wearing the new (at the time) mercurial vapor’s. Nike is hinting at the fact that these new shoes will make you faster than ever, which they have been hinting at since the 80’s.

The last ingredient of the inbound marketing multiplier is nurturing or marketing automation strategy. According to Marketo, “Marketing automation is the use of technology to manage and automate the process of converting prospective customers into actual buyers”. The leads you have just generated via inbound marketing are still looking around for the best inbound marketing software. They are at risk of have a short-life span for your company. This is where nurturing comes into play. You want to build a relationship with that customer. Marketing is all about emotions and relationships. You need to take care of it, feed it, or else it will go somewhere else for assistance.

If you want to learn even more about inbound marketing, head on over to HubSpot or Marketo. Also, I was not paid by HubSpot or Marketo to talk about them so highly. I truly believe that they are at the forefront of inbound marketing, and offer an excellent services. BUT if HubSpot/ Marketo wants to throw me some money, I will not turn it down. I am a college student with certain dietary restrictions (deathly allergic to wheat, chicken, dairy, and seafood) and gluten-free food is damn expensive. All in all, get with inbound marketing so that you can lay out your competition like this Michigan State player did to this Baylor Bears player. BaylorDecked


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Inbound Marketing. The Present & The Future.

Analytics Opens Doors

Web analytics, two words that can create endless opportunities for your company. So, What is Web Analytics? In short, it is the study of the impact of a website on its users.

A great article was written by The Forrest Wave, titled Web Analytics, Q2 2014. In this article they talk about the importance of Web Analytics, who is the best web analytics vendor when it comes to Adobe, AT Internet, Google, IBM, SAS Institute, and Webtrends.

I understand that you are probably extremely busy and don’t have time to read a 15 page PDF. Well, it is in fact your lucky day. Because I am going to talk about the key takeaways from this article and my personal insights. So get ready to have your mind BLOWN.

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When you want to measure your customer’s digital activity, you want to use web analytics. You may be asking yourself, well what does it measure exactly?

  • Web analytics vendors have become very intelligent when it comes to collecting data from different digital touch-points i.e. social, mobile, rich media, etc. They collect all the data and then bring it all together. They also feature application programming interfaces (APIs). You may be asking yourself what are APIs, and why should I care about them? In short, APIs essentially let one application talk to another.
  • These vendors provide insights to the business user community. This is great because you will be able to stay up-to-date on what is happening in the digital intelligence community.
  • They support an intelligent, customer-based view of digital interactions. Each vendor varies in their capabilities. All of the vendors that Forrester Wave has analyzed have implemented unique visitor volume estimates in at least some of their reports, and most can entertain different levels of intelligence within cross-channel, cross-session funnels and visitor scenarios. The vendors that offer something extra special, are the ones that can recognize individual visitors and associate them with previously unrecognized interaction trails.
  • Digital intelligence is right at the touch of your fingers. Vendors know that this something that companies want and need, but this is what differentiates them from one another. The best vendors support predictive analytics within their web analytics tools.

To figure out what vendor to go with, you need to known what your current and future digital intelligence needs are. The Forrester Wave decided to evaluate the six vendors under these three conditions.

  1. Current offering: Evaluate each vendor on each characteristic of data handling; metrics, dimensions, and correlations; reporting and analysis; application usability and administration; integration; and service and support.
  2. Strategy: Compared the product and corporate strategies of each vendor.
  3. Market Presence: Evaluate each vendor’s financial strength, current clients, and employee base.

Aaaand the leaders are, Drum roll please.

DrumRollPlease

  1. Adobe
  2. IBM
  3. Webtrends
  4. AT Internet
  5. Google
  6. SAS Institute

Adobe is the cream of the crop. Adobe has packaged web analytics into a broader digital analytics offering the largest number of enterprise web analytics clients. Adobe offers SiteCatalyst with Discover, Genesis, Data Warehouse, Report Builder, Dynamic Tag Management, and Insight into a premium offering. Adobe has invested a lot of energy into creating a powerful software option. If Adobe wants to maintain its front-runner position then they need to make the more advanced analytics more usable for business users.

IBM offers a more broad range of options that are marketing, commerce, and customer experience platforms. IBM supports cross-channel engagement tracking through all of IBM’s platforms. Since IBM acquired Coremetrics they have had the opportunity to strengthen digital analytics by continuing to build out core analytics and data collection capabilities, supporting stronger integration of behavioral analytics, eCommerce platforms, and the recently acquired Xtify mobile analytics solution. One thing that IBM should work on in the future is not forgetting about its original web analytics customers feeling left in the dust.

AT Internet is a new leader because they have been persistent into breaking into the European market and into high growth areas such as Russia, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.

Webtrends offers a product that introduces data through APIs and real-time data streams. One of the highest revenues, produces innovative products, customer support, and partnership ecosystem.

Google takes pride in its ease of use while delivering data as fast as possible. Before I read this article I always thought Google was the A1 steak sauce of Analytics. Being a strong performer is still a huge accomplishment.

SAS Institute has a strength in customer analytics, SAS offers something different for its current customer base. Out of all the vendors that were evaluated SAS Institute finished last. This does not mean that SAS does not offer anything great, they are still a contender, they just don’t compete with the likes of Adobe, IBM, and etc.

Since being intrigued by Google Analytics, I adventured over to the Analytics Academy and watched the videos that they have provided. One video in particular I thought was quite interesting. The video was called conversions and conversion attribution. The reason that I found this so interesting was because they talked about something called last-click attribution which is actually the most common type of attribution. “Last-Click” means that whatever the consumer pressed on to lead to that ending transaction, gets the credit. During high school I played soccer competitively for Emerald City Football Club and Seattle United. I would play center-midfield, and I would often pass a beautiful ball to someone and then they would pass to the forward, and then the forward would score. The two people who would receive credit was the person who got the assist (not even that sometimes!), and the person who scored the goal. In result, I wouldn’t receive credit for my beautiful pass even though I was a major attribute to that play. Justin Cutroni, Google Analytics Evangelist said during the video, “That’s why it is important to understand the value of each channel, you need to know which role it has played in your customer’s journey to conversion”. If you are able to break down the exact route that let to that transaction, you are able to figure out what channels are the most useful.

So what it really comes down to is what are your goals for your company? Hopefully by viewing this blog you will have more of an understanding of web analytics, as well as the vendors that offer the best web analytics.

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Analytics Opens Doors

Who Am I?

HEY.

Who Am I?

My name is Cody Hulsey. I am currently a senior at Western Washington University, and will be graduating after spring quarter (2015) with a major in business administration w/ a concentration in marketing. I love music, high-end fashion, abstract art, the internet, marketing, and working-out.

The reason I am taking Digital Marketing

The reason I am taking marketing 476 aka Digital Marketing, is simply because I want to further my knowledge in the area of marketing. Digital Marketing is on fire right now. I want to be able to use the skills that I have learned while taking this course to help businesses succeed.

What I would like to learn from Digital Marketing

As I stated earlier, digital marketing is on fire right now. I would like to become certified in HootSuite, Google Analytics, HubSpot, and Google AdWords. I strongly believe that having all four of these certifications on my resume will make me more valuable and desirable for future employers.

While interning at Bellingham Marine, I have dabbled in HootSuite, but I would like to enhance my knowledge of the crafty social media management dashboard.

I would also like to dip my toes in coding. I have always been fascinated by it, and would like to become more knowledgeable of the subject.

Knowledge and Skill Requirements for Marketing Jobs in the 21st Century

I thought the reading was very interesting. Especially since soon I will be looking for an entry-level job. The article written by Regina Pefanis Schlee and Katrin R. Harich is very eye-opening and something that I will most definitely bookmark for future review.

The article talks about the knowledge and skill requirements for marketing positions whether they are entry-level to senior-level. Technical skills are more important than conceptual skills. It also touches base on what industries are the most prominent in certain cities. Each city represents a region in which the study was done.

One thing that I found interesting was that Monster.com is more popular than CareerBuilder.com because Monster.com filters out duplicate listing of the same job. After viewing Monster.com, the user-face seems to be quite inviting (aside from the fact that the company is called, Monster). While CareerBuilder.com seems to be more boring, and the color scheme is nothing exciting, very similar to Facebook. I have not used either of these sites yet to hunt for a job, but I am confident that I will have to in the future. With that said, Monster.com will be my first choice.

Something that I thought was interesting and compelling was the fact that Internet and technology companies dominate the Seattle metropolitan area. I am very aware that the Seattle area is the stomping grounds of Microsoft, and Amazon. But I was unaware of the fact that Nintendo is considered one of the big dogs when it came to technology in the Seattle metropolitan area.

When viewing the technical skills (Table 2), it was quite evident that an entry-level employee must have MS Office skill (58.4% of job postings). But as you climb the ladder to upper-management positions, you will find that only 25% of the postings require MS Office skills. Which makes you think that they assume that you already have those skills, or if you never have to use them.

While viewing the meta-skills (table 3), I found it interesting that 13% of job postings for entry-level positions require that you have ethics. But for upper management only 4.7% require ethics. Once again, it makes you wonder whether or not it is assumed that you already have strong business ethics, or if you are not in a position where business ethics are not required (doubtful).

Marketing graduates need to obviously be able to possess oral and written communication skills. But also have technical skills that they can use to perform business analytics. Marketing graduates need to be able to use CRM systems and be able to understand the information and data that they are finding/ receiving.

Constantly stay abreast of the industry trends, and don’t be afraid to try the newest things. Fortune magazine has described a phenomenon called, “50 and Fired”. One of the reasons this happens might be because of age discrimination, but it also can be the fact that they are not staying at the forefront of the technology industry. They are staying in the past and using out-dated software programs. For their career to be profitable and healthy, they need to be able to get with the times.

DBM aka Database Marketing is something that needs to be taught in marketing curriculum’s. Universities need to recognize the fact that there is a massive benefit to offering a marketing technology degree. This will prepare their students for the real world, and will generate a lot of positivity for the university, and in return have higher amount of students applying to their university.

In the article written by Maureen Morrison for Advertising Age, called What’s Required of the Next Generation of Marketers, Morrison states, “At one time ‘you could be a functional expert in one very narrow area of marketing tactics,’ said Tome Collinger, associate dean and department chair-integrated Marketing Communications at the Medill Schoolat Northwestern University. ‘Back in the day, if you were a direct or data marketer or PR specialist, that was enough.'” I thought this was very interesting and relates to what I mentioned above about “50 and Fired”. Back in the day you didn’t have to be highly diverse to make a living. Now you have to a wide range of skills that you are able to use in an effective matter.

Forrester Interactive Marketing Forecast 2011 to 2016

The article written by Shar VanBroskirk is quite interesting, and truly makes you think about the future of marketing. 10 years ago, people would not have been able to predict where we are right now with marketing. For instance, social media is the way to go (for most businesses, but not all) and was not foreseeable 10 years ago. Every time I hop onto Facebook (which is honestly becoming quite infrequent) I see numerous ads, and they get thousands of likes. So it was quite obvious that consumers are enjoying this type of marketing.

Social media is quite inexpensive. I have promoted my own clothing brand, SomeFire.com, and I am able to reach thousands of potential customers all over the world for as little as $20. When businesses use social media to promote their business, they are cutting costs, and can use that saved money elsewhere.

Another interesting and important form of marketing is e-mail marketing. For the longest time I thought that sending ad campaigns through e-mail is the most archaic way to get businesses voice out there, especially with the option of ad campaigns getting sent directly to your spam folder. But recently I have noticed that I have been clicking on e-mails that have enticing headlines which at times can be click-bait, but for the most part are offering something that is of my interest. Businesses can utilize e-mail in so many ways. They can have you subscribe to their e-newsletter, or find out when they have new products. I believe e-mail marketing has come a long way and is only going to get better.

Forbes writer Jayson DeMers wrote an article called, The Top 10 Benefits of Social Media Marketing. In this interesting article Mr. DeMers says, “According to Hubspot, 92% of marketers in 2014 claimed that social media marketing was important for their business, with 80% indicating that their efforts increased traffic to their websites. And according to Social Media Examiner, 97% of marketers are currently participating in social media but 85% of participants aren’t sure what social media tools are the best to use.” I found this to be quite compelling. In the fact that, social media is something that is very prominent in our marketing world right now. I hardly ever watch TV, but I love to browse the internet, and that is where I see the most commercials, whether if it is a friend of mine that shared a comical Old Spice commercial, or if it is one of those mandatory commercials that you have to watch while you wait for your YouTube video to play.

State of Digital Marketing Talent

One thing that really stood out to me while reading this article was that there is a talent gap in digital marketing. Having a digital marketing team that is homogenous, and doesn’t rely on others to do certain aspects of the job for them is powerful, and in return your company will produce A1 marketing. After a survey was created, they found that only 8% felt strong across all digital areas. That is quite a small percentage. I believe that if the other 92% of they respondents analyzed what they were weak in, how they could fix that problem, then they will see a significant change in their marketing as a company.

I also found it interesting that one-third of the companies have groomed interns into full-time employees. I believe that if they created a system that really prepared and trained the interns and raised that percentage, then they could save money on hiring and training new people, as well as, produce the cream of the crop level entry employees.

Entitlement is becoming popular around young employees. I recently had this conversation with my boss. My boss thinks that college graduates come out of the gates and want to climb to the top as fast as possible. They watch movies like Wolf of Wall Street and they think that all that success and money came to Jordan Belfort over-night. They need to realize that you need to struggle, put in your 10,000 hours and prove that you deserve that raise, or promotion.

According to an article written called, How college students think they are more special than EVER: Study reveals rocketing sense of entitlement on U.S. campuses  states, “Psychologist Jean Twenge and her colleagues compiled the data and found that over the past four decades there’s been a dramatic rise in the number of students who describe themselves as being ‘above average’ in the areas of academic ability, drive to achieve, mathematical ability, and self-confidence.” I believe that it is important to believe that you excel in all four of those categories but I also think that it is important how you present yourself in the workspace. I believe that it is important to show your ‘above average’ capabilities in your work and not just talk about it.


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Who Am I?