We have had some fun at my office recently, creating a video that will help to generate a feel and personality that represents our company. Mainly, it shows that we can let our hair down (or put some on) and just have some fun. We did this by putting together a rap video in the imitation of a rap song out there called “Thrift Shop.” The reasoning for this video is two-fold: Making it helped to create fun in our company, and it shows you how you can have fun by using contesting in your company’s marketing strategy.

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/64913817″>Rap For Your App</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user17964486″>Tori Rose</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

We produced this video in conjunction with a contest we created, because that is what we do for clients – we create contests. Contesting is a very good approach to marketing for a number of reasons. This Mashable article highlights the four main ones.

1) Contests are a great tool for building your fan base.

2) Contests enable you to engage your audience.

3) Contests are a rich source of data.

4) Contests empower your customers to do your marketing for you.

You can check out the full article, but to sum it up, contesting helps you to build your likes on Facebook very quickly. You can double your likes, even if you have a lot already, with a contest. If you only have a few, you can take this up multiple times. You can engage your audience with user-generated content, which is what we did with creating a video and asking for a video in return to win a prize. This competitive nature is part of the human drive, and when others share their personal material, it invests them in your brand.

Getting data is crucial to building relationships, and contests are a key way to do that. This data will help your company to learn a lot about your potential clients during this interaction, so you can better understand their needs and how to provide value to them. It is also nice to have your clients share your story and to help you market. That is what a good contest can do – allow your customers to share with others and help foster name recognition.

When coordinated with an overall social media marketing plan, a good contest can be a powerful tool. What are you doing to create a contest that people will talk about and share with others? Oh, and feel free to enter our contest and Rap for Your App. You just might be the winner of a free mobile app for your company – built by Efficience, of course!

As we continue to build mobile apps for clients, the advantages resulting from these apps are appearing limitless. I have been in Charlotte this week for the EO Nerve Conference. When I called for a taxi, they said that I can download an app that will send a taxi to me. Not only that, but I can follow the taxi’s location as it comes to pick me up. How cool is that? This is the new wave of location-based services that is getting more popular and will help create a lot of conveniences, marketing opportunities and productivity.

Chris Shaffer, our technology lead at Efficience, says “The convergence of technologies, such as GPS and mobile broadband, allows users to leverage resources in ways that were unthinkable only 10 years ago.” According to Shaffer, “Geo-fencing is one such feature that allows devices to become ‘location-aware’ by tracking through GPS or location-based services.”

We will devise a lot of new ideas and reasons to have this working for us in all kinds of situations. Geo-fencing has created a new source of information that will revolutionize the way we interact with the world around us.

When you have the app of your favorite restaurant, it will know when you cross the virtual fence that they will designate, say like 3 miles from them. Restaurants will have ability to send you a notification of the special dish they have tonight or some type of discount. You already love to eat there and they just entice you to come back to spend more money with them, instead of all the other options you may have.

According to a study done by Pew Charitable Trust, 58% of adults access the internet through their mobile devices, which has been a big conversion away from the desktop. Smartphones are allowing us to get info and make choices that we didn’t have the information to do on the fly before. We check prices, watch movie trailers, and read about competitor choices as we are making decisions to spend our dollars.

Those that are connecting with their customers this way will have more flexibility, since a marketing campaign can be day-to-day or week-to-week. It can be tailored to the data that customers choose to give us so that we can meet their direct needs. Small businesses with limited budgets will have a much better way to compete with the big boys who wield massive budgets, just by having access to this technology. This will be mainstream in the not-too-distant future, but those getting in first will have a competitive advantage to attract customer dollars and grow their revenue sooner.

What are you doing to be ahead of the curve and benefit from location-based marketing?

A few weeks back, I shared what we are dong to move forward on the path of concentration around a certain focus with mobile. We have built a mobile app platform that is customizable and appropriate for our focus of working with marketing companies. This has been an evolution for us, and one that recently has had a lot of the details come together.

As I shared before, mobile is growing and the smart phone is being adopted with exponential growth. It has provided opportunity for businesses to connect with their customers that has not been possible before. With the build-out of an app, you can have relationships with your customers or employees that is right in the palm of their hands. The convenient access to knowledge, specials, promotions, events, sales and customer data is significant.
I am in Charlotte for a few days to meet with marketing companies and build relationships that will benefit each of us. We will discuss our approach and platform to make their lives easier, shorten the time to production, and create more profit opportunities. With each of us focusing on what we do best, there are lots of positive aspects to this type of partnership. We focus on building and incorporating the design, and the marketing companies focus on their strengths of design and creativity.

This gets us back to the area of focusing around a certain vertical and making the business process one that is scalable. This approach allows the process to be repetitive and efficient. When you produce different custom software projects, like we have in the past, they require a lot of effort to ramp up and go through a learning curve. But when you do, there is no long-term benefit for that extra effort. This focus will allow us to get a benefit from the learning curve of building the platform and using it again and again.
I am excited about this change in direction and having a certain type of client to focus on – a client with the need to fill a gap that is present when their own clients tell them they want to have a mobile app for their businesses. This will allow us to say “no,” when we are approached to do things that will take us down a path of lost investment and cost, instead of being profitable.
How are you staying focused, scaling and saying “no” to the things you shouldn’t be doing?

Why is it that so many of us don’t like meetings? I personally like the feeling of getting a bunch of innovative people together generating better and smarter ideas than any one of us could come up with on our own. Most people have a hard time seeing a meeting as a game changer. Would you think a meeting could speed up change or push you ahead of the competition to become the global leader in the industry?

Well that is exactly what happened with Wal-Mart. Their Saturday morning meetings created a lead time in the industry and catapulted Wal-Mart up to one of the highest grossing companies in the world. You might say, “Excuse me, a meeting did that?” Well, in Verne Harnish’s book “The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time,” Hank Gilman makes that case.

It began back in the beginning when Sam Walton started this Saturday morning meetings in his first store in Bentonville, AR. He held these meetings to gather all of his people in one place to figure out what was selling and what was not. He would look at different metrics and determine what needed to be changed based on what had happened over the previous week. Then, with the managers brainstorming, they would make changes, put items on sale that needed to go, and move things around to get noticed. After this, they immediately went out and implemented these ideas to take advantage of the strong weekend activity.

Stay ahead of the competition. This was key. By simply staying days ahead, they eventually zoomed past the industry leaders, such as Sears and Kmart. When interviewed, Walton’s friend and successor David Glass explained that a big accomplishment of the Saturday meetings was to collect and distribute information to all of those in the company, so it could be shared. Sam felt that everyone should work together as partners and should know what was going on.

This meeting allowed Wal-Mart’s people to gather and discuss ideas, and they could have all the corrections in place by noon on Saturday. This would put Wal-Mart ten days ahead of the likes of Kmart and Sears. How did the meetings work? The employees would share their best ideas and concepts. The idea of a Wal-Mart greeter came from this. Some executives would show best practices videos. To top it off, if the meetings were getting stale, they would bring in guest speakers like Bill Clinton, Adam Sandler, and Oprah Winfrey.

What are you doing in your meetings to stay just ahead of the competition and share information with your employees? How are you making them feel like partners? And yes, even the best of us can have stale meetings, so what are you doing to make sure they are interesting?

An analyst I used to follow in my investment days, Henry Blodget, is now an editor for Business Insider, and his own company has been on top of the internet space since the beginning. I like hearing what he has to say because he has had so many years watching the ups and downs of the firms in this space, and he offers good insight into where these companies are going.

Business Insider recently held its annual IGNITION conference with great speakers from LinkedIn, Google, Groupon, and Time Warner. With so many people in companies that are on the forefront, you have the opportunity to enjoy a great perspective at what is happening now and where things are going.

Here are some of the key observations that Blodget made from the conference:

With 1/3 of the world population now online, it leaves 2/3 of the market left to grow. However, since this 1/3 earns 85% of the world’s income, the growth and commercial opportunity may not be so strong. As I have discussed before, the smartphones and tablets are now outselling PCs. Mobile should be the focal point because that is where growth and activity are coming from.

Mobile devices have hit the half-way point in developed countries, which usually means growth slows down somewhat. Surprisingly, consumers are willing to pay for content. Blodget says digital content revenues are exploding! He points out that digital advertising is growing just behind TV advertising, with most of this growth is going to Google and Facebook.

Another observation is that Google is a better source of adverting than Facebook because Google is like advertising at a store and Facebook is like advertising at a party. He also notes that the internet has already taken out the newspaper business, so the question is: Will television be next?

Mary Meeker recently released her presentation on the state of the web, and she had similar observations. Internet growth is robust, and mobile adoption as many upsides. Global internet users are growing at 8% year over year, and the USA has 78% penetration, while China has 40%, and India holds 11%. Smartphones are interesting. She shows smartphones as a percentage of total subscribers, and China was at 24%, the USA at 48%, Japan at 65%, and India at 4%. Where do you think you’ll find the most opportunity?

All this data continues to support what we have been discussing for a while, that mobile and all the connectivity it will bring is the major wave we need to be riding right now. What are you doing to get on that wave?

Back in 1995, when Robert Loest and I were telling the world about our new mutual fund IPS Millennium, we told a story explaining that, historically, change within a civilization first occurs at an inflection point and is followed by big change and then a long plateau period.

We shared how civilization started with hunter-gathers, and people maintained that lifestyle for over 100,000 years. Then, we had an inflection point, learning to plant seeds and grow food. This was the Agricultural Revolution of the Neolithic Era, and it went on for a few thousand years. Then around 1439, Gutenberg invented the printing press, and the advent of real sustained knowledge accumulation and transfer took place.

Sharing information through books led to the invention of the Watt Steam Engine in the 1760s or 1770s, and this really kicked off the Industrial Revolution, which lasted about 100 years. The transistor was then invented around the 1940s, and the Information Age was born. This lasted for about 50 years.

Then in 1995, we entered the Wired Internet Age and dawn of connectivity in real time, all the time, which has lasted around 15 years. Now, we have kicked off the Mobile Era and the dawn of wireless connectivity.

As you can see, the timing of our mutual fund and the start of this new era lined up perfectly. Even though we proclaimed that investing in a connected world would create value, we were unaware of just how connected the Netscape browser was going to make us.

I am sure you noticed how each era has gotten shorter and shorter. Change progressively occurs faster, and some of the issues for business today center around this disruption which happens when we hit a new inflection point, and the game suddenly changes for everyone. However, this also creates massive opportunity for entrepreneurs! Anyone listening . . . especially with the new inflection point of mobile?

I was reminded of that story we told when I read a blog by David Meerman Scott on what he calls the 2^nd most important communication revolution in history. When you step way back and, as David says, take a “view from the moon,” you see that the first communication revolution was bolstered by Gutenberg’s invention of mechanical movable type. This allowed books to be mass produced and freed people to more easily share information around the world, so they could go out and invent things and build on one another’s ideas. This changed the world, a world that had not changed much since the beginning of time.

We are now in what David calls the 2^nd communication revolution, which started in 1995 with the invention of Netscape, allowing us to have easy web browsing capability. We are living through this time and the major changes that are occurring. We’ve gone from a few million online to billions in short time frame, and it continues to grow.

David explains how real time communication is vital in this new age and that “you are what you publish.” So, are you putting content out there on the web in real time? Check out his video.

Marketing and Leadership Speaker David Meerman Scott from David Meerman Scott on Vimeo.

I would like to thank David for inspiring me. When we met about 4 years ago, he was the one who told me to start writing a blog. It took a little while to sink in, but about 3 years ago, I started blogging sporadically, and shortly after I began posting a blog every week. We are living in the times of sharing content. Are you?

I have written before on finding your purpose and discovering why you do what you do. It is important to understand your “why” because it changes the way you communicate with your target audience in order to sell your products or services. Most of us communicate with others by discussing our features and benefits, which is the “how” and “what” of the work we do.

Discovering and sharing your “why” with your audience connects them in an emotional way that motivates the decision making process. In Simon Sinek’s TED video, “How Great Leaders Inspire Action,” he shares his discovery of the “why” and understanding why you do something and why your organization exists.

Simon says, “People don’t buy what you do . . . they buy why you do it.”

The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe. Simon uses Apple, the Wright Brothers, and Martin Luther King, Jr. to show examples of the power of WHY!

This is all grounded in biology. The human brain is broken into three major areas. The neo cortex corresponds with rational and analytical thought and language. The middle two sections correspond with our limbic brains, which are responsible for our feelings, such as trust and loyalty, as well as for all behavior and decision making. When we are communicating to the inside part of the limbic brain, we are talking to the area that resonates with our decision making ability.

This is done by stating what you believe. Instead of talking about all your benefits and features, tell them what you believe. Tell them your “why” of what you do. Those that you resonate with will look at you with their decision making limbic brain and will more likely choose to do business with you.

If you don’t know your “why” and are having a tough time figuring this out, there is a process that has been developed by my fellow EO Forum mate Ridgley Goldsborough that shares the WHY Marketing Formula. Watch his video here. This powerful approach can help you discover your “why.” Use this to connect with your target customers in such a way that business explodes.

Are you connecting with the “why” and the decision making part of the brain for your customers? How do you share your sales and marketing language? Do you share with benefits and features or with the “why” of who you are?

As I write this blog, I am waiting in the Frankfort airport and traveling to Istanbul, Turkey to join the EO University and about 700 of my fellow entrepreneurs, including some of my very close friends. I have been looking forward to this conference for a while and have been intrigued with Istanbul for as long as I can remember. I suspect it has something to do with a movie I had seen when I was younger. I look forward to sharing some of my experiences from exploring the city and attending the conference in upcoming blogs.

On the plane, I was reading “Crucial Conversations: Tools For Talking When Stakes Are High.” What makes this book so interesting is its implications for all areas of your life, even though it is a business book. It has really challenged me to think about why we tend to mess up conversations in important situations, like requesting a raise, discussing a big business deal, determining if your relationship will last, or trying to rekindle an estranged family relationship.

Why do we mess these up? In a crucial conversation, our natural fight or flight response kicks in, so blood leaves our brain and travels to the extremities in preparation for fight or flight. The blood leaving the brain decreases our cognitive ability to consider how to say the important things we want to say in a respectful and appropriate manner given the situation. In my experience, our words typically come out in the wrong tone or in a way that does not get the desired positive outcome.

The authors have researched thousands of crucial conversations, and they say having effective discussions is a learning process. When you understand what happens to your brain, you can combine this knowledge with some of their key findings and learn and grow in this area.

Their findings conclude people skilled at having productive conversations:

• Start from the heart. This means they start with the right motives. Winning is usually not the right motive. We are brought up to want to move forward and get ahead. When this is brought into the crucial conversation, it leads to bad outcomes.

• Focus on what they really want. When you are starting to move toward a position of silence, defensiveness, or punishing the other, ask yourself, “What do I want for myself, for others, and for the relationship?” By clarifying what you do and do not want, you free your brain to start searching for better and healthier options.

I know I need to work on this, so I’ll focus on it until I grow my awareness and really improve. How about you? Are your crucial conversations productive and healthy?

As I have discussed in many past blogs, we are seeing a major shift in how people access technology as more people move toward Smartphones. I see a world where business will be driven by the connectivity we all have with one another based on that little device that acts as an extended appendage for most of us.

We all have an internal desire to be connected. As I spend time with my family in Rochester, NY, I listen to the conversations of my nieces and hear their infatuation with the latest phone technology and getting a new or upgraded phone. At this point in their lives, they consider that to be a major accomplishment. Why is that? I would say it has to do with the knowing that they can share and connect more with their friends and the world around them.

If you think of this from a business perspective, you’ll see the opportunity to connect with your customers as well as their friends, which will create more business prospects. You can connect with your sales people on the road to update them on all your products, services, and even competitor products, so they can be more effective. People working on projects in the field can update software, coordinate with others, and access so much more information to get the job done.

Web 3.0 is mobile! Web 1.0 was about connectivity with the likes of Netscape, AOL, Google, and Yahoo, and Web 2.0 was all about social media with Facebook, Linked In, and Twitter. The main elements of Web 3.0 will be:

Real Time

Location-Aware

Ubiquitous (everywhere at the same time)

Sensors

Smaller Screens

The key for the 3.0 mobile world is real value for customers and real commerce for merchants.

At Efficience, we are building an infrastructure to help companies get a mobile platform up for themselves along with a strategy to make money using their mobile app.

I’ll have more on real examples of how consumers and merchants can be mobile in order to get real value in the next blog.

How are you using mobile to reach new customers and realize more business?

What is the opportunity that you find yourself in today? What people did you meet to get here? What are you going to do to create more such opportunities?

I am on my way to Ft. Lauderdale to meet with my EO Insignia Forum. My close friend Joe has a place there, so we are going to spend some time at his condo. I really enjoy going to meet up with my EO friends and spending time with them. It is always a very stimulating and worthwhile experience.

I come away with a greater connection and understanding for their struggles and successes, as each one walks their own path. It opens me up to what life has to offer and awakens me to my limited perspective when the diversity of these successful entrepreneurs come together to share their minds, experiences, and visions.

You rarely understand the true power of these interactions in those specific moments. I have witnessed not only the financial but also the immense emotional impact of these exchanges. The emotional benefits of not feeling alone when leading a company is very comforting, and I look forward to spending time with these dynamic people.

Last week, my local EO Forum participated in a Forum boost. We brought in a forum trainer who exposed ways to share and go deeper with your forum mates. Sharing very personal things, like those that you may not even tell your spouse, is very powerful and humbling to the participants.

I once read that the two things that will impact your life the most are the books you read and the people you meet. My life experiences allow me to see the power and reality of that statement in action.

Think about this example. Joe has hired a personal trainer, Jess, to be with him for a month to focus on healthy habits in nutrition, cardio, weight training, and overall healthy balance. Jess lives in New Jersey. A mutual friend introduced her to Joe, and because of this new connection with him, she made a decision to leave her home and travel with us. This will have her meeting new people, experiencing new situations, making new connections, and opening doors to new opportunities. Who knows what this one connection and one decision could mean for the many forks that will appear in her life and where they will take her?

Do you seek situations to meet, learn, and grow with other people? What are the opportunities there?