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5 Steps for Making Your Brand Identity More Consistent

Use these steps to get your branding identity back on course to projecting a clear and concise message. With so much content flowing through an organization, from ad campaigns and branded marketing materials to digital media content and social media updates, it’s easy to see how a company could get a little lost while trying to maintain a consistent brand identity. Multiple people creating many branded elements can make it difficult to keep things aligned. For both big corporations and small business, it can be easy to veer off course, sometimes without even realizing it. The lack of consistency may not be noticeable at first, but failing to identify and stick to a consistent brand identity can eventually have a negative impact. The brand can become disjointed, unreliable and divided so much that it confuses customers, clients, employees, and even the executive team. So, if you feel like you’re starting lose the identify of your brand throughout your organization, use

The Ways Your Brain Manages Overload, and How to Improve Them

Information overload is   everywhere , from non-stop news to rat-a-tat email inboxes. At the receiving end of this deluge of verbiage is   thehuman brain — your   brain— metaphorically endowed with a vacuum cleaner that   sucksup information;  a container for   short-termmemory;  a blender for   integratinginformation;  a memory bank for storing   long-term information;  a garbage disposal for   getting rid of information;  and a   recycling machine   extraordinaire. Using each of these functions effectively is critical if one wants to manage information overload ̶ simply using your brain for crossing items off your to-do list is poor use of a very sophisticated machine. Yet few people build the habits and lifestyles that allow for their brains to function at their best. At the core of managing information overload is the ability to know which function to use, and how and when to use it. The six principles below can serve as a guide to the proper brain hygiene for managing infor

Great Businesses Scale Their Learning, Not Just Their Operations

Ronald Coase nailed it back in 1937 when he identified scalable efficiency as the key driver of the growth of large institutions. It’s far easier and cheaper to coordinate the activities of a large number of people if they’re within one institution rather than spread out across many independent organizations. But here’s the challenge. Scalable efficiency works best in stable environments that are not evolving rapidly. It also assumes that the constituencies served by these institutions will settle for standardized products and services that meet the lowest common denominator of need. Today we live in a world that is increasingly shaped by exponentially improving digital technologies that are accelerating change, increasing uncertainty, and driving performance pressure on a global scale. Consumers are less and less willing to settle for the standardized offerings that drove the success of large institutions in the past.   Ourresearch   into the long-term decline of return on a

4 Ways to Boost Your Social Media Creativity Game

You don't have to be Tinder to light a fire under your customer base, with word-of-mouth marketing tactics. Leave it to a dating app to demonstrate the instant success a creative social media marketing approach can bring to a new business. Tinder -- the location-based dating service that facilitates matchups between interested parties -- used a tactic best described as word-of-mouth advertising in a digital format To successfuly launch its app. In a recent   podcast , Tinder co-founder and CEO Sean Rad revealed that the company grew by 50 percent the day after it texted 500 individuals a link to its app. That tactic and other word-of-mouth campaigns grew Tinder's customer base from 20,000 to 500,000 users in less than a month. Clearly, entrepreneurs hoping to quickly reach and grow their own customer bases must embrace social media in all its forms. Social media's free word-of-mouth nature can attract and engage potential customers at a stage in the compan

Don't Be Afraid to Embrace Boring Ideas

Kikkerland's annual design competition results in an unexpected bestseller. Dutch design firm  Kikkerland  is known for bringing whimsy to utilitarian products -- say, a cocktail shaker in the shape of a maraca, or a portable barbecue in the shape of a suitcase. So it was surprised when one of its most successful products of the past year was a… cord organizer.  The product, the Cable Loft, was born out of Kikkerland’s annual Design Challenge, in which the brand partners with a retail company and a team of student designers, who submit problem-solving ideas for one particular challenge. For 2016, the challenge brought together The Container Store and students from the Rhode Island School of Design, who were asked to create a product for the digitally connected home. Students went through multiple rounds of presentations and  critiques  before final prototypes were submitted to buyers for consideration. Cable Loft -- an organizational home for a power strip and the

11 Free Marketing Tools Every Entrepreneur Can Use

Reach your audience effectively without compromising quality. If you're an entrepreneur just getting started, you know the meaning of a budget. You also probably know that in order to get your business idea off the ground, you have to reach your chosen audience at the right time. To help you do this cheaply, without compromising the quality of your marketing efforts, I've put together a list of the top 10 free marketing tools every entrepreneur should know. 1. Chattypeople Chatbots  have made their mark in the marketing world this year. Despite many still believing that the chatbot is just a customer care tool, others are seeing it as a must-have in their marketing strategies. Chatbot technology has improved significantly in the past decade, allowing marketers to create bots without any coding knowledge.  Chattypeople  is the perfect tool for those wanting to quickly create a Messenger chatbot. The platform allows entrepreneurs to create a bot that not only works s