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As July comes to a close (hard to believe the summer is more than half over), it’s time for my monthly round-up of articles on business, social media, and technology. These are the stories from my content sources that are helping me re-tool outdated ideas, and in turn shape the future.
The first installment of this column for the month of June was very well received. Once again a word of thanks – I appreciate all the positive feedback. I’m hopeful there will be some information in this month’s articles to help you shape the future of your design-centric business.
I’ll start the month’s round-up with an interesting assessment of what’s required for a region of the country to be truly entrepreneurial, and a post about the 10 books every entrepreneur will find eye-opening (including my personal favorite #9: The No Asshole Rule.) Just starting a company? Or perhaps you’re growing your existing firm? Then you’ll want to avoid these 9 common (and painful) mistakes.
I found an article that explains the 6 core principles for successful business building – I think there are many more as I’m sure you’ll agree – but it’s a great synopsis. Do you consider yourself a good negotiator? It’s not my strong suit so this post was very helpful. And would you like to learn to write better follow-up emails in the interest of landing your next big client? Or perhaps you’ll take a page from my friend Shane Inman‘s playbook and pen a handwritten note.
On the social media front I learned what FOMO means (enlightening stuff for a SM junkie like me) and that 25% regret something they’ve posted (seems like the number should be higher – no?) Then there’s the growing trend toward taking a SM vacation, and some good reasons you might consider deactivating your accounts. You might also be interested to learn that you actually don’t have more than 150 friends on Facebook, or that the new search tool they’ve rolled out could actually help, instead of simply confuse. A second more in-depth post on that subject seemed to confirm the facts. But before you get overly excited – take a moment to read about it’s limitations.
Want a Facebook Fan counter for your business? I’m betting Mr. Zuckerberg would love that. I mean honestly, if these 11 celebrities could re-invent themselves via social media, surely you can build a business by utilizing it. Along those lines you could learn about how these 30 creatives excel in social media marketing – because as Facebook extends it’s influence into emerging economies there will be more consumers – or so they’re betting.
As design professionals you may have noticed that blue is the preferred color of technology companies, here’s some insight as to why. You may also have noticed that Drop-box is rapidly gaining market share in image sharing, but you may be interested in the 10 things you didn’t know about how the service can help you run your business. (Seriously helpful stuff here!) And on the subject of gaining market share, do you realize that a full 19% of all websites on the internet run on WordPress? The plugins alone are reason enough to make the switch.
Like most everyone these days I’m trying to raise my Google ranking, so here are 10 things to do that might help, and 14 Google tools (certainly some more esoteric than others) that you have likely not heard of.
In other scattered tech news, it turns out there’s a company that’s developing an NSA proof communication app through a crowd-funding platform (good idea or bad?), and a post about Kickstarter (the father of crowd-funding) which talks about the 13 largest projects that got there cash there. You may find it interesting to learn where those projects are now. I checked, and as of last September more than $250 million dollars has been raised there – not chump change so it’s clear the idea is picking up steam.
And finally the best article of the month – a post that includes an embedded podcast which explains – in great detail – how to most effectively use a hashtag on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ (yes, you can use them there now as well.) It’s a must read/listen.
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Written by CJ Dellatore