5 Tricks to Stand Out on LinkedIn

1. Personalize your job title and summary. Don’t use the default job title as your headline, instead opt for one that is unique. It should be customized to include keywords that can help people find you. That means, no gimmicky titles that will ultimately render you unsearchable. For instance, my title is "Maren Hogan, Chief Marketing Brain at Red Branch Media.

Related: What Types of Photos Should You Share on LinkedIn?

I chose this title for a few reasons. Marketing is the keyword that will help people find the professional they are looking for. "Chief Marketing Brain" is my way of letting potential clients know working with me is fun. (That said, if you are just starting a new career or trying to find work, keep it as professional as possible and save the personality for the interview.) Then I include the unique name of my firm and a summary that highlights not only my activities, but HOW I achieved those things.

2. Become an instant influencer. If you’re using the right tools, creating and maintaining a LinkedIn profile, along with status updates, doesn’t require a ton of upkeep.

For instance, social-sharing software like Buffer or Sprout Social allows you to fill up a queue for the week or month and schedule publishing times and dates. You can hammer out shared LinkedIn content in just one cup of coffee over the weekend. Also if you select "Public + Twitter" from the shared with dropdown menu, you can automatically share updates.

The most popular LinkedIn pros also generate a mix of original content. This could be from posting blog-like posts on the LinkedIn Publishing Platform or from linking a SlideShare account to the network and posting content that way. Make sure to add a picture and a call-to-action like "please share" to every third or so post. Here are a few other ways to build up your credibility:

• Share others' posts when you think they'll be relevant to your network's interests
• Like posts from those who took time to craft them.
• Join groups for your profession and also for your target market.

3. Throw away business cards. Well, throw them away after you make the connection. While I always recommend a personal email to important new contacts, I realize that sometimes that just isn’t feasible. Get through that stack quickly by connecting with them on LinkedIn with a short and simple note. You should also always customize your connection requests. 

Related: Stranger Danger: 3 Good Reasons to Reject a LinkedIn Connection Request

I would recommend writing why you want to connect with them. My most interesting interactions on LinkedIn have started with a genuine request or offer like: "I would like to buy you coffee and discuss working for your firm," or "Your blog post made marketing seem simple, can you show me how to do that?"

4. Make yourself accessible. Rule No. 1 of LinkedIn Club is make yourself so easy to find that users will virtually trip over you. A simple way to do this is to customize your profile URL. (Click here and the help center will assist you in claiming your vanity URL.) Other tips include: 

• Put "Connect with me on LinkedIn" badges up on your site.
• Use the Slideshare integration to show off your most recent PowerPoint presentation.
• Once a week, take a look at who is looking at your profile and introduce yourself to the most promising folks.

5. Use LinkedIn trending content and content score tools. Don’t have time to sort through it all? No one does. Use the trending content tool to weed through the posts and updates to find information relevant to you and your connections. You can also use this tool to gauge what topics might be hot to create your own content around. Then, you can use the Content Score Tool to find out how you’re doing and what you can do to strengthen your reach.

The more you invest in building and maintaining your LinkedIn profile, the more useful and effective it will become. 

Mercedes Doubles U.S. Luxury-Auto Lead Over BMW on New CLA Coupe

The German automobile giant Mercedes-Benz sold 4,895 of its $29,900 CLA coupe in the car’s first full month of availability, helping the brand post a 25 percent October gain and double its U.S. luxury-vehicle lead.

Total sales for Mercedes rose to 30,069 vehicles, as E-Class deliveries climbed 23 percent from a year earlier, Stuttgart, Germany-based Daimler said in a statement yesterday.Bayerische Motoren Werke AG’s BMW brand reported selling 27,574 vehicles, a 4.2 percent increase.

The CLA, the lowest-priced Mercedes in the U.S., helped the brand widen its year-to-date lead over BMW to 4,986 vehicles, from 2,491 through September. The tally stands at 245,125 to 240,139 as Mercedes seeks to end BMW’s two-year reign in annual sales. Daimler Chief Executive Officer Dieter Zetschesaid in July he expected his company to come up short again in 2013.

“We’re a bit surprised at how successful the CLA has been right out of the gate, but it’s had a positive reception from a lot of consumers, the price is very, very attractive and it’s a great-looking car,” said Alec Gutierrez, an auto analyst at Kelley Blue Book in Irvine, California.

BMW’s October gains were aided by its 5 Series sedans, with a 19 percent increase, and the X1 compact sport-utility vehicle, with a 60 percent jump, according to a statement yesterday from the Munich-based automaker.

The figures don’t include Daimler’s cargo vans and Smart cars and BMW’s Mini brand, which aren’t luxury vehicles.

BMW’s status as annual leader for 2012 was based on reported sales. By vehicle registrations, Mercedes topped BMW last year, according to researcher R.L. Polk & Co. Through this June, owners had registered 141,724 new BMW vehicles in the U.S., compared with 134,326 from Mercedes, 

link:BloomBerg

Pinterest now at a whopping 3.8 billion $

"We hope to be a service that everyone uses to inspire their future, whether that's dinner tomorrow night, a vacation next summer, or a dream house someday," CEO Ben Silbermann said in a statement. "This new investment enables us to pursue that goal even more aggressively."

The funds will be used for international expansion, mobile, acquisitions, growing its IT infrastructure and monetization – something the startup desperately needs to support its valuation.

While this injection of capital may seem high, the funding is in line with other social networks. Private (and struggling) social network Path has raised $41.2 million, location-based Foursquare has locked in $112 million, Facebook raised $2.33 before its IPO and Twitter is no small fry, raising $1.16 billion before it goes public.

link :entrepreneur

Billboards-A Profitable Concept

In the past couple of years, outdoor advertising has increased its share of ad spend in Pakistan. So why is this medium so popular? Cost-effectiveness is obviously a key benifit.Many advertisers are attracted by the fact that billboards can be rented over long time frame at reasonable prices, with the added flexibility that the message can be changed at a minimal cost.

Clearly, outdoor media appears to have becomea popular ad cost effective marketing tool.The increasing time spent commuting has made billboards an important vehicle to reach the public without the threat of being zapped or overlooked.That is until every household has a Scotty who can punch in the coordinates and energize us all to our Destinations.
     
                                             

5 Ways to Become a Social Media Rock Star

1.   Be a good communicator. Social media is really a crowd of people talking -- usually to each other. So, you'll need to figure out how to cut through the noise and really engage with people.

2. Buy advertising. 
Don't be shy about paying to promote posts on networks like LinkedIn and Facebook. On Facebook, your posts won't even appear in all of your followers' newsfeeds without paid promotion, so promote if you can afford it.

3. Avoid me, me, me. 
Don't have every post be about yourself or your company. Instead, I recommend posting 80 percent non-promotional, 20 percent promotional. 

4. Expand beyond your customers. 
In social media, you want to attract an audience beyond potential customers. Focus on people who are compelled to respond -- the "weird," as Seth Godin calls them. Even if they never buy from you, they'll tell others about you.

5. Flattery will get you everywhere. 
Using tools like Followerwonk or Topsy will help you find the top people in your industry and major influencers. Then find the people who follow them and follow those folks, rather than the industry celebrities. They're far more likely to respond.

link : entrepreneur

The Single Most Important Trait for Any Successful Entrepreneur

Weather its Apple’s Steve Jobs to Twitter's Jack Dorsey, certain entrepreneurs seem to spring from the womb predisposed to success. Not only are they exceptionally smart, but they also have a dogged belief in their own abilities and a similar unrelenting passion for achieving their vision.

Put simply, they don't do things like "regular" people. Case in point: Los Altos, Calif.-based Aaron Levie, the 28-year-old co-founder of online data-storage company Box, now valued at more than $1 billion. As a student at the University of Southern California, Levie shunned the typical college social scene. "If people were going out on Saturday night, I preferred to be on my computer and working on the next internet idea," he says. "I just recognized that I was a bit different than everyone else."

While Levie is hardly alone, he's certainly not in the majority among entrepreneurs. "They're a different breed," claims Jeff Cornwall, Belmont University's director of the Center for Entrepreneurship in Nashville, Tenn. "In the last four years, I can only identify five undergrad students [like Levie] that could fit into that high-growth entrepreneur category."

With odds like that, the question isn't whether founders like Levie are different or special -- it's obvious that they are -- it's whether mere mortals like the rest of us stand a chance at helming fast-growth, trailblazing startups. Fortunately, the answer is a qualified yes.

link: entrepreneur

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs from Fame to Fired

They innovated their brand, silently bartered and accused one another of ripping ideas. Nevertheless, there was an underlying respect between the two competitors. Both endured the explosive field demand of computing, and they met that demand. Steve Jobs was eventually ousted from Apple in 1985 and now Bill Gates is being eyed by executives to be removed, after Steve Ballmer’s exit. How quickly these men went from fame to being fired.

Jobs was fired and by the fall of 1985, he left Apple behind. While the Apple brand took a different path after job’s departure and continued to explore innovation development, Jobs was looking to distinctive  presence in the industry. One of his largest successes was growing the animated development behind Pixar.  By the late 90′s the fired CEO was welcomed back with open arms, more experienced and fully ready to take on the reigns. From iTunes, iMac, iWork and iPhone- Jobs was the creative mind behind Apple. Sadly, in 2011 Jobs died from pancreatic cancer – a hit to the industry and to Apple.

Gates was always more of a man of action , in 1972 he became a congressional page for the House of Representatives. Thereafter, the young brilliant mind connected with Paul Allen and the two men registered Microsoft. By 1980 Steve Ballmer joined the small yet mighty Microsoft team, within a year from that time Microsoft Corporation was born, naming Bill Gates as CEO. By 1987 Bill Gates became the youngest billionaire at the age of 31-years-old.

link: guardianlv

Apple Sells Record-Breaking 9 Million New iPhones in First Weekend

Steve Jobs startup company Apple sold more than nine million new iPhone 5S and 5C models this weekend due to 'incredible' demand, though hackers are already testing the iPhone 5S's fingerprint reading technology.

Apple announced this morning that it has sold nine million new iPhone 5S and 5C models since the phones became available on Friday.

"This is our best iPhone launch yet -- more than nine million new iPhones sold -- a new record for first weekend sales," said Apple CEO Tim Cook in a press release. Last September, Apple sold more than five million iPhone 5 its first weekend. The simultaneous release of two new phones -- Apple has not released separate numbers for the 5S and 5C models –- has contributed to the increase of sales from last year.

link : entrepreneur

Smartphone Wars: 5 Things BlackBerry Could Have Done to Stay Competitive

1.Been willing to embrace new hardware formats.

2.Recognized much earlier that consumer desires were changing.

3. Made more fundamental changes to its operating system.

4.Been more outwardly open and flexible.

5. Recognized the shift

Under Armour CEO Aims at Nike, Adidas, and $10 Billion

Under Armour CEO  Plank had this to humblebrag at a Goldman Sachs conference yesterday: “We believe we’re a … $10 billion brand that is doing $2 billion in business today,” he said. “So we obviously think that there’s a tremendous amount of runway.”

 In the past decade, the only year Under Armour’s sales growth dipped below 20 percent was when the Great Recession whacked the economy in 2009; the company posted an 18 percent revenue gain that year. At its current pace, Under Armour would break the $10 billion mark in the year 2020.

Still, the sportswear market isn’t just going to grow magically by $8 billion. On a market-share basis, Under Armour would have to swipe almost one-third of Nike’s annual revenue to hit $10 billion, a little more than half of yearly sales at Adidas , or some combination of both. Keep in mind that Under Armour—though astonishingly successful—has taken 17 years to hit the $2 billion mark.

link: businessweek

5 Ways to Achieve Balance as an Entrepreneur

1.Replace your to-do's with routines.
We all use tools like Asana, Evernote to manage our to-do lists. But for busy entrepreneurs, getting everything done is rare.

2. Take a break with meditation.
Entrepreneurs spend an inordinate amount of time inside of our own heads 

3. Exercise and eat right.

By neglecting to exercise, your productivity can be diminished and, in the long run, you can lose time

4. Stay in contact with friends and family.
People who own and run their own business like to think of themselves as a remote island.

5. Disconnect from technology when you can.
It might seem tempting to work all the time. Sometimes it feels like any minute not spent working is wasted.

link: entrepreneur 

Richard Branson on the Secret to Virgin's Sustained Success

Being an entrepreneur or small-business owner , If  you're an MBA or a pastry chef or an architect  one of the secret ingredients of building a business is by offering such useful products and terrific service that you disrupt the local market, winning customers away from your competitors. We at Virgin have done this with a particular focus on disruptive change. From our first ventures, like our music stores and record label, to some of our flagship businesses today, including our airlines and space tourism companies, we have approached business development proactively and opportunistically, looking for openings where we can surprise and delight customers by offering something truly different.

We have gradually refined this approach over the years, and we experienced our share of failures along the way. But by any measure, Virgin has been successful: Eight businesses that we've created, in eight completely different sectors, have an enterprise value of more than $1 billion.

Once we had that momentum going, success in one area tended to lead to success in other fields, and so it has been sustained. We built up an extensive network of relationships, and now entrepreneurs and companies often approach us with ideas for partnerships that will help them to start a new business, or to attract new customers. Other offers come from business leaders who are attracted by Virgin's profile, in hopes that their companies will benefit from our brand.

While we still rely on experience and our own reaction to a prospective pRuninroduct or service to decide whether or not to go ahead with the launch of a new company or partnership, these days our teams also use data about economic, consumer and population trends to evaluate the consumer experience and assess potential opportunities.

Link : entrepreneur 

11 Business Lessons from Bruce Wayne

Lesson #1 – Don’t let past circumstances dictate your future

Lesson #2 – Learn how to endure

Lesson #3 – Hone in on your skills

Lesson #4 – Assemble a winning team

Lesson #5 – Identify the tools you need

Lesson #6 – Look for the root cause of problems

Lesson #7 – Resolve disputes ethically

Lesson #8 – Always answer the call

Lesson #9 – Do what you believe in

 

Lesson #10 – Your image matters

Lesson #11 – Use your superpowers to make the world a better place

 Link: sujan

America's Most Inspiring CEOs

Jon Feltheimer, Lionsgate

Headquarters: Santa Monica, California
No. of Employees: 575
Sales: $1.6 billion (2011)
Market Capitalization: $2 billion
First Exposure to Work: Server at Baskin-Robbins
Size of Office: 494 sq ft

Tony Hsieh, Zappos.com

Headquarters: Las Vegas
No. of Employees: 1,200
Sales: $1 billion-plus (2009)*
First Exposure to Work: Ran a photo business out of his bedroom
Size of Office: 16 sq ft (cubicle)
*last available data is for 2009, before acquisition by Amazon

Reggie Chandra, Rhythm Engineering

Headquarters: Lenexa, Kansas
No. of Employees: 43
Sales: $7.8 million (2011)
First Exposure to Work: Tutoring high school students
Size of Office: 240 sq ft

Meredith Whitney, Meredith Whitney Advisory Group

Headquarters: New York
No. of Employees: 10
First Exposure to Work: Paper route
Size of Office: 500 sq ft

Lanham Napier, Rackspace Hosting

Headquarters: San Antonio
No. of Employees: 4,335
Sales: $1 billion (2011)
Market Capitalization: $5.6 billion
First Exposure to Work: Paper route
Size of "Workspace": 60 sq ft

John Mackey, Whole Foods Market

Headquarters: Austin
No. of Employees: 68,000
Sales: $10.1 billion (2011)
Market Capitalization: $15.4 billion
First Exposure to Work: Ice cream server
Size of Office: 300 sq ft

Link: esquire

BlackBerry CEO Stands to Make $55.6 Million in Event of Sale

That’s the amount he’s entitled to receive if BlackBerry has a change of control and Heins is pushed out by the new owners, according to a May proxy filing. The figure, which includes salary, incentive payments and equity awards, is based on BlackBerry’s stock price at the end of the fiscal fourth quarter. The plan was approved by shareholders at bits annual meeting on July 9. Shares of BlackBerry have surged 19 percent in the past week on speculation that the struggling Canadian smartphone maker will be bought, broken up or taken private, bringing a windfall to investors. The Waterloo, Ontario-based company announced plans on Aug. 12 to form a board committee to consider a potential sale, as well as joint ventures and partnerships.

The board probably shouldn’t have created an exit package that offers so much money for selling the company, said Sameet Kanade, an analyst at Jacob Securities Inc. in Toronto.

 link: business

Every entrepreneur fails before succeeding- Richard Branson

There's often a very thin dividing line between success and failure.

My daughter Holly reminded me how I sat her down when very young and told her I would likely have to take her out of school. We were struggling to make ends meet and my wife Joan offered to sell our old car to help.

Fortunately we were able to make it through and Virgin has gone from strength to strength. But for every success story there are hundreds of near-misses.

Every entrepreneur usually fails several times before succeeding, and the important thing is to keep getting up and trying again.

Source: Virgin

Facebook Courts Small Businesses to Drive Mobile Ad Revenue

second-quarter earnings of Facebook beat analyst expectations, registering a profit of $333 million on revenue of $1.8 billion, up 53 percent from one year ago. Much of that revenue growth came from a dramatic increase in sales of mobile advertisements, which accounted for 41 percent of the company's $1.6 billion in ad revenue in the second quarter.

Mobile traffic was up as well, with 819 million users accessing Facebook from a smartphone or tablet. That represented an increase of 51 percent from the second quarter of 2012.

As mobile grows, small businesses are steadily buying a larger share of ads, Facebook said. In the second quarter, Facebook surpassed one million active advertisers on its platform, many of whom are local businesses. This is no coincidence; Facebook has reportedly been wooing small-business owners as of late as it seeks to compete with Foursquare and other companies whose apps help users interact with businesses in their area.

Facebook's stock shot up 17 percent in after-hours trading on Wednesday. It has continued to gain since the market opened Thursday, now trading near $33 a share. While still shy of the initial $38 share price at its IPO over one year ago, investors finally have reason to feel good about its prospects.

Source: Entrepreneur

Two Women Entrepreneurs Share the Hardest Part of Growing Fast

Bottle and Bottega business partners Stephanie King-Myers and Nancy Bigley say that the hardest part about turning a small business into a franchise is finding the right people.

"You have to be diligent about saying, 'no.' There are people who will want to buy into your brand, but we say 'no' more often than we say 'yes,'" Bigley said. "It has to be the right person, and if we're not comfortable with that person, it's better to say no for the long-term. That's tough when you're trying to build."

Started by King-Myers as a mobile model in 2009, Bottle & Bottega brings art lessons and wine together in a single space (Bottega is an Italian word for a studio where a master artist paints and students come to learn).

The start-up quickly hired Bigley, a franchise industry veteran who has worked for corporations like Dunkin' Donuts and The Dwyer Group.

Within two years, Bottle & Bottega had undergone a name change (previously "Bottle & Brushes"), started franchising, and hugely over-performed: their three-year business projection paled in comparison to their actual growth.

Though the duo has eight -- soon to be nine -- franchise and corporate studios under their belt, they continue to pursue "slow, but aggressive growth."

King-Myers also weighed in on the challenges of working remotely, a trend gaining traction in some workplaces and losing ground in others.

Source: entrepreneur

The Top 10 Emotionally-Intelligent Fortune 500 CEOs

What do the most successful CEO’s have in common which distinguishes them from the others, it’s EI (Emotional Intelligence) Which is understanding other people emotions very well, and It is why they have the best workforce . Here are top-10 CEO,s with high EI

• Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com): With his quirky laugh and self-deprecating style, Bezos doesn't sound like a Fortune 500 CEO and that's probably to his benefit. His obsession with the hearts and minds of his customers and his long-term perspective on relationships

• Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway): "Success in investing  with IQ once you're above the level of 25. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble investing."

• Ursula Burns (Xerox): In tandem with Anne Mulcahy who moved up to Chair, Burns transitioned to CEO as the first woman-to-woman CEO leadership transition in a Fortune 500 company in what has become a pivotal case study in organizational development. 

Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan Chase): At Harvard Business School, Dimon said: "You all know about IQ and EQ. Your IQ's are all high enough for you to be very successful, but where people often fall short is on the EQ. It's something you develop over time. A lot of management skills are EQ, because management is all about how people function."

• John Donahoe (eBay): Donahoe inherited a difficult situation from Meg Whitman with the need to truly alter the company's business strategy. 

• Larry Fink (BlackRock): Called "psychologically astute" in a Vanity fair feature article, Fink created the largest money-management firm in the world based upon self-reflection, teamwork and direct communication.

• Alan Mulally (Ford): Walk around Ford's corporate campus and you will see office cubes featuring handwritten notes that Mulally sent to employees... praising their work

• Indra Nooyi (Pepsi): Nooyi is a conscious capitalist whose "Performance with purpose" agenda has helped move employees from having a job to living a calling.

• Howard Schultz (Starbucks): He says that the main reason he came back was "Love": for the company and its people.

• Kent Thiry (DaVita): Leaders with high EI/EQ create culture-driven organizations that perform at their peak due to the power of mission and teamwork. 

Source: huffingtonpost

Google Android event on July 24

Google Event is taking place at San Francisco, Calif, next Wednesday on 24.July.2013 at 19:00 GMT.

This Event will cover new developments in Android. New OS version—4.3 is also expected which is said to still carry the Jelly Bean name. Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie might also unveil at this event. There is also a possibility of launch of new ASUS-built Nexus tablet and newly-Googlified Motorola could drop in to show as well. Google will reveal new changes to Android.

The event will also be live streamed on YouTube for those who can't be there.

Source