The Wall Street Journal recently had a pretty damaging article about influencer marketing. The challenge is two fold a) do they really help and b) do they disclose the relationship. I've been a "small business influencer", what I'm often called in the industry for many years. As such, part of my business is to...
Sure, Kevin Plank founded a $5 billion dollar company, Under Armour, that is struggling a bit, in the eyes of the publicly traded markets. However, reading this news today got me thinking. When should a founder step down, if ever. Some of us hope to sell our company. I sold two companies. But are there other...
Over the past 20 or more years, we've been inundated that technology is the "be all" for our businesses. Technology IS important. However, don't think that just by implementing technology you'll have success business. The WSJ writes about the tech treadmill that many companies are on. Once they implement a great technology they must...
The Smart Hustle Growth Conference is an experience bringing together entrepreneurs who are hustlers, Smart Hustlers. Join Ramon Ray for a full day of networking, learning, inspiration, and connections. There are many reasons to mark your calendar, but below are the top 3. 1. Business Growth {And Your Growth} It's not every day you get access...
As a small business owner, local consumers are the lifeblood, and getting your business on Nextdoor is a tech-savvy way to reach the neighbors – especially with the company announcing Local Deals for businesses. What makes the launching of the Local Deals exciting is the fact that the power of recommendation from one’s community...
Business networking is a fun time — mingling, eating, chatting about business. But do you walk away with solid connections? Many business owners attend networking events but don’t utilize the time or crowd as well as they can. They walk away having spoken to a lot of new people, but not having made any...
Video is powerful. It humanizes and personalizes your brand. There's a lot of tools you can use to enhance your video production and one of my favorites is Hey Mic, a wireless microphone, which uses Bluetooth to connect to your phone. One of the most powerful things you can do to start creating video is...
There's no better force to carry and extend your brand than your employees. Even more than your customers are employees who are in LOVE with your business. LinkedIn now enables you to notify your employees, via their LinkedIn profile and encourage them to share that notification with their networks. This is powerful. By leveraging your employees...
LinkedIn recently added an "Events" button to enable you to promote events. It's on the left of your desktop version under "groups". Although event marketing is tough, events are a powerful way to promote your brand, get new leads and overall engage you community. The book "Celebrity CEO" notes that events are a powerful...
For years many have relied on Mailchimp for simple and feature rich email marketing. Over the years it has expanded to marketing automation. This week Mailchimp is expanding its marketing suite to include much more, including social posting, marketing calendar, targeting and websites. More and more companies are quickly moving away from being ONE...
