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When Is the Best Time to Start Building Your Social Networks?

Start Building Your Social Networks

When Is the Best Time to Start Building Your Social Networks?
The answer to that question is "Right Now".  The next questions is
"Why?" Read on to find out.

No marketing effort should begin without a plan
or an approach that involves understanding key pain points of target customers and what the journey from awareness to consideration to purchase typically involves. Even an intuitive mapping of those customer insights is better than a pure product feature/benefit focus.

Part of the problem to be solved in this situation is awareness and education to overcome misperceptions and communicate the enhanced features. One of the most efficient and effecting things a small business owner (aka resourced strapped marketer) could do to create content that is compelling, that stands out, is easy to find and share would be to create a blog with videos embedded of the business owner answering common questions. Answers that empathize with the customer would be most effective vs. a simple product demonstration. What causes people to need the product? What misperceptions are there that can be addressed? How can it be used outside the normal scope?

Content wouldn’t need to be limited to video of course. Creating text, image and video content that is focused on the customer’s point of view about the product will go a long way towards attracting social shares and links.

But, the question remains: How will people know that this great content exists? Without an active social network or advertising budget, it could take weeks or months before attracting significant sales.

More on this story:  When Is the Best Time to Start Building Your Social Networks?

Do Indoor Plants Really Clean the Air?

                      Do Indoor Plants Really Clean the Air?

We knew about indoor plants cleaning the air at least as far back as the late 60's, maybe the early 70's, but is worth revisiting. My spider plants' lineage go back to '72.


Sure, that potted fern is pretty, but can it really spruce up the air quality in your home? Studies by scientists at NASA, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Georgia and other respected institutions suggest that it can.

Plants are notoriously adept at absorbing gases through pores on the surface of their leaves. It's this skill that facilitates photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert light energy and carbon dioxide into chemical energy to fuel growth.

But scientists studying the air-purification capacities of indoor plants have found that plants can absorb many other gases in addition to carbon dioxide, including a long list of volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

Indoor plants cleaning the air has always been a wonder to so many including myself.   

More on this story: Do Indoor Plants Really Clean the Air?

How to Minimize Risk When Crowdfunding on Kickstarter

       How to Minimize Risk When Crowdfunding on Kickstarter

               Reduce the risk of having your fledgeling project fail. Reduce the financial                            
               risk to the public who are supporting your efforts by donating to the campaign.

For a young, bootstrapping startup, crowdfunding is often seen as fast money that will help you build out the product or app you and your team have always dreamed about. Whether or not a project ultimately reaches its funding goals, it’s still relatively quick and easy to post your pitch and see what happens.

However, amid all of the hype and excitement surrounding crowdfunding, some of the less glamorous (but extremely important) aspects of running a business often go overlooked — particularly taxes and liability.

The bottom line is that if you’re looking to raise more money via crowdfunding than you usually earn, you should turn to a professional tax adviser or accountant for help understanding all the nuances and implications. There’s no sense in trying to navigate the murky and evolving reality of crowdfunding and taxes on your own. Read more...

              My own business advisors all have guided me along the same avenues Ms. Alkap. suggests.
              The next step is to let the Crowdfunding campaign work it's fundraising magic.


How to Minimize Risk When Crowdfunding on Kickstarter

Anthony Weiner Spent Absurd Sum to 'Investigate' His Own Sexts

  Anthony Weiner Spent Absurd Sum to 'Investigate' His Own Sexts

Over $136,000. Yup, this is the kind of man I want to put in congress. A man fiscally responsible with the money his constituents entrust to him to put him in a position to make a better world for...who?

Back in 2011, then-Congressman Anthony Weiner tweeted a photo of his crotch in a botched direct message. The recipient, of course, was not his wife, Huma Abedin. At first, Weiner claimed he'd been hacked and that someone else had thrown the intimate image onto his feed.

After the scandal received widespread press attention, Weiner pledged there would be an investigation into how the outrageous incident occurred. It was clearly an attempt to save face — and his congressional career.
Read more...

Does the blood ever make it up to his brain?

                           Anthony Weiner Spent Absurd Sum to 'Investigate' His Own Sexts

When Journalism Becomes a Game of Drones

                              When Journalism Becomes a Game of Drones

Most think scrutiny is a good thing as long as it's not aimed at them. Can we benefit from the good Dr. Jekyll does and at the same time limit Mr. Hyde's activities?

In just five years from now, 7,500 licensed unmanned aircrafts — commonly known as drones — will fly the skies above United States soil. By 2030, there will be 30,000.

However, these numbers are conservative. At this very moment, the popular drone hobbyist community DIY Drones boasts 40,000 members.
Drones are not the technology of some unknown future. They are a fact of our lives.
Read more...

Traffic cams, communications monitoring in all formats, most new vehicles have GPS as standard equipment and now drones: I'm guessing the cold war never will be over. Surveillance is just expanded.


                              When Journalism Becomes a Game of Drones

A Tech Park in Spain for Birds, Frogs and Turtles

                       A Tech Park in Spain for Birds, Frogs and Turtles

                   We save what we love, We love what we know, We know what we're taught:
                   Alejandro Fernandez has much to teach.


It's the goal of every tech entrepreneur to hatch new ideas. Alejandro Fernandez is just as interested in hatching endangered birds.

The co-founder of Fractalia Remote Systems, a maker of device management software, has spent about a half-million euros of his own money to build a high-tech zoological research lab with the capacity to support up to 200 species of birds, mammals, amphibians and other creatures at risk of extinction.

The lab — due to be fully operational next summer — will use audio, video and sensor technologies that allow biologists from around the world to study the animals remotely at low cost.
 "Researchers from — let's say Australia — will be able to monitor and study their animals from their homeland," said Fernandez, 38, whose goal is to make the lab one of the most advanced facilities of its kind in the world. Read more...

I spent 36 years as a zookeeper and never saw this combination of entrepreneurship and environmentalism and rarely this level of commitment to wildlife.

A Tech Park in Spain for Birds, Frogs and Turtles

Where Does $122,874 Go ?

Where Does $122,874 Go After Its Kickstarter Is Canceled?

Do your homework before you put money at risk, but don't let risk keep you and the people you help with crowfunding from moving forward.

Kickstarter is the go-to crowdfunding site for people hoping to launch ambitious and oftentimes niche projects. But it takes more than money to turn ideas into realities, and sometimes Kickstarter campaigns — even ones that raise more than three times their goal — fail. That's what happened to the now-appropriately-named board game, The Doom That Came to Atlantic City!
 

The Doom was by all accounts a successful campaign. It launched with a goal of $35,000 and crushed it by nearly $90,000. It had 1,246 backers expecting rewards ranging from branded desktop backgrounds and T-shirts to custom art from the game. In an update emailed to backers and posted on the project's Kickstarter site July 23, creator Erik Chevalier wrote: read more...

If you investigate it, you'll find the cold fact is most start up businesses fail, even those that could be very successful, because of insufficient funding.
Take a chance with a small amount of money for a product you'd really like to have. You'll help a struggling business, boost our economy and chances are you'll be the first kid on the block to have something really cool.

Where Does $122,874 Go After Its Kickstarter Is Canceled?