Top 10 Marketing Charts of the Month – October 2013

This month’s quick-hit set of top charts includes the following topics: Facebook’s waning appeal among teens; B2C & B2B content marketing trends; “most-loved” brands and failed consumer-brand connections; US household income trends; social media ROI and company involvement; online video budgets; the time for digital transformation; and the demographics of Instagram users.

Click the image above or the link below for the pdf: MarketingCharts-Top-10-Charts-of-October-2013

Lizbon is One of the Major Economic Center on the Continent

We can imagine how Lisbon takes a place in the economy with a short collection of Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 547,631. The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million, making it the 9th most populous urban area in the European Union. About 2,831,000 people live in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (which represents approximately 27% of the population of the country). Lisbon is the westernmost large city located in Europe, as well as its westernmost capital city and the only one along the Atlantic coast.

Lisbon is recognised as a global city because of its importance in finance, commerce, media, entertainment, arts, international trade, education, and tourism. It is one of the major economic centres on the continent, with a growing financial sector and the largest/second largest container port on Europe's Atlantic coast. Lisbon Portela Airport serves about 13 million passengers per year. Lisbon is the 25th most livable city in the World according to lifestyle magazine Monocle. The city is the seventh-most-visited city in Southern Europe, after Istanbul, Rome, Barcelona, Madrid, Athens, and Milan, with 1,740,000 tourists in 2009. The Lisbon region is the wealthiest region in Portugal, GDP PPP per capita is 26,100 euros (4.7% higher than the average European Union's GDP PPP per capita). It is the tenth richest metropolitan area by GDP on the continent amounting to 98 billion euros and thus €34,850 per capita, 40% higher than the average European Union's GDP per capita. The city occupies 32nd place of highest gross earnings in the world. Most of the headquarters of multinationals in the country are located in the Lisbon area and it is the ninth city in the world in terms of quantity of international conferences. It is also the political centre of the country, as seat of Government and residence of the Head of State. The seat of the district of Lisbon and the centre of the Lisbon region.

Lisbon is one of the oldest cities in the world, predating other modern European capitals such as London, Paris and Rome by hundreds of years. Julius Caesar made it a municipium called Felicitas Julia, adding to the name Olissipo.

Lisbon hosts two agencies of the European Union: the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) and the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA). Called the "Capital of the Lusophone world", the Community of Portuguese Language Countries has its headquarters in the city, in the Palace of the Counts of Penafiel.

Lisbon has two sites listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site: Belém Tower and Jerónimos Monastery. Furthermore, in 1994, Lisbon was the European Capital of Culture and in 1998 organised an Expo '98 (1998 Lisbon World Exposition).

 wikipedia

Glance At Michael G. Rubin's Success Story

Michael G. Rubin, renowned Internet entrepreneur, recently founded Kynetic, a private company singularly-focused on building consumer Internet businesses. Kynetic includes three brands at the forefront of innovation in the online commerce space: Fanatics, the world’s leading online retailer of licensed sports merchandise, Rue La La, a leading online private sale destination in the U.S., and ShopRunner, an innovative members-only service which aggregates shopping benefits from the top retailers and brands. Kynetic expects more than $1 billion in revenue in 2012, immediately making it one of the largest private tech companies in the world.

Prior to Kynetic, Rubin was Founder and CEO of GSI Commerce, which was acquired by eBay for $2.4 billion in 2011. Over the past 12 years, Rubin built GSI into a formidable global network of e-commerce, multi-channel and digital marketing businesses servicing 150 of the top 500 Internet retailers and, in totality, over 2,000 customers, including Toys”R”Us, Dell, Polo Ralph Lauren, Estée Lauder, Aéropostale, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Bath & Body Works and PetSmart. Rubin pioneered an innovative pay-for-performance business model that fueled GSI’s organic sales growth, which he then complemented in recent years with 11 strategic acquisitions. GSI became one of the largest publicly-traded Internet companies, facilitating billions of dollars of merchandise sales for its customers, with 2010 revenues of $1.4 billion and 5,000+ employees. As part of the transaction, eBay divested certain assets to Kynetic, specifically all of GSI’s online licensed sports merchandise business (Fanatics) and 70% ownership in Rue La La and ShopRunner.

Rubin began his entrepreneurial career in 1985, when he opened a ski-tuning shop in his parents’ basement at the age of 12. He earned $25,000, which was sufficient to rent space in a strip mall for “Mike’s Ski Shop.” By the time he was 14, he had racked up sales of $125,000. Within a year of graduating high school, Rubin had opened several retail ski stores in Pennsylvania and New York. He went on to found KPR Sports, a leading distributor of off-price sporting goods and footwear. In 1997, he merged KPR Sports with publicly-traded Ryka, a branded athletic footwear company he controlled, to form Global Sports Inc. (GSI). The following year, Global Sports generated sales exceeding $100 million and, at age 25, Rubin became one of the youngest CEOs of a NASDAQ-listed company in the exchange’s history. The success of GSI Commerce and Rubin’s outstanding achievements landed him a spot on the inaugural season of CBS’ hit show “Undercover Boss,” as well as recognition in numerous media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, The New York Times, BusinessWeek and People. Forbes named him one of 2010’s “15 Most Powerful CEOs 40 and Under.” In 2011, Rubin was part of the ownership group that purchased the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers.

10 Things Great Bosses Do

Even after 100,000 years of natural selection, the human race has evolved to the point where our organizations are nearly as effective as a colony of ants with defective antennas. That's right, we still have a long way to go. Sobering thought, I know.

And yet, for all the Yahoos, HPs, RIMs, Sprints, Sonys, Kodaks, Nokias, Bank of Americas, and all the executives that turned these once-great brands into laughing stocks, there's still the occasional Apple or IBM to give us hope.

It may be an imperfect world, but there are still managers who more or less know what they're doing -- after they've had their morning coffee. Here's my take on what high-performance managers do -- or are at least supposed to do -- to motivate their teams and deliver results:

- Help the company achieve its strategic and operating goals by making smart business decisions and managing their team effectively.

- Entrust their employees with as much responsibility as their capabilities will allow and hold them accountable for the same.

- Behave like a mature adult -- genuine and empathetic -- even when their employees or their management are acting out like spoiled children.

- Provide their employees with the tools, training, and support they need to effectively achieve challenging but reasonably attainable goals.

- Promote a can-do, customer service attitude with customers and stakeholders by walking the talk and leading by example.

- Promote their team's accomplishments and take the heat for their failures.

- Provide genuine feedback, both good and bad, to their employees, peers, and management. Request the same from them.

- Work their tail off and be hands-on when necessary. If they don't, they can't expect anybody else to do it either.

- Don't compromise their ethical principles in the name of "the ends justify the means" or for any other reason.

- Strike a balance between shielding their folks from the ripples of dysfunctional management and openly communicating events that may affect them.

Overall, the best managers create a work environment where people feel challenged, do their best, and are held accountable for meeting their commitments. But most importantly, they're key components in an organization that exists to serve its customers and shareholders. We're all happiest working for a successful company.

Google+ Adds New Local Listings Tab for Businesses

Google's fast-growing, if only still nascent, social network Google+ has rolled out a new tab dedicated to providing information on local businesses. Located on the right-hand side of the Google+ page, Google+ Local allows users to search for businesses that are nearby, read reviews and find them using Google Maps.

For instance, if you search for "cheeseburgers" on Google+ Local, it will generate a list of restaurants near your location that serve cheeseburgers. If you click on one of the listings, you'll be taken to a local Google+ page that includes photos, reviews from people in your Google+ Circles and other information such as address and opening hours from the company's Google Places for Business listing.

For business owners, this means that a company's information on its Google Places for Business listing will now be available to users across Google search, maps, mobile and now Google+. It can be even more important now for business owners to verify their basic listing data, make updates, add photos and respond to customer reviews.

Related: What You Need to Know About the New Google+ Design 

Additionally, Google has integrated a business's Zagat score into its Google+ Local listings. Google purchased the popular business survey rating service last fall for more than $150 million.

"For example, a restaurant that has great food but not great decor might be 4 stars, but with Zagat you'd see a [score of] 26 in Food and an 8 in Decor, and know that it might not be the best place for date night," Google product management director Avni Shah wrote in a blog post announcing the Google+ Local launch.

The search giant also hinted that it will be further integrating Google+ business pages and Google+ Local listings.

"We know many of you have already created a Google+ Page for your business, and have been hosting hangouts and sharing photos, videos and posts," Jen Fitzpatrick, Google's vice president of engineering, wrote in a separate blog post. "We're excited that we'll soon extend these social experiences to more Google+ Local pages in the weeks and months ahead."

Related: Chris Brogan on How Businesses Benefit from Google+ (Video)

5 Ways to Master Social Media Multitasking

Managing social media accounts across Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and other sites can be overwelming for some business owners. Posting to each can simply require too much attention for time-crunched entrepreneurs.

But you don't need to be all things to all people on the social Web. And you don't need to hire a social media manager to handle it all. There are a number of cost-effective ways for you to have an active pressence on more than one social media site without devoting all your time to it.

Here are five tips and tools for how you can get your message across on multiple social platforms without wasting a ton of time -- or breaking the bank.

1. Have a strategy.
Try spending your limited time and resources investing in only the social media sites you know that your customers use. It can be better to build one or two strong profiles than to dilute your influence with a scattershot effort across four or five.

Once you determine which sites to be on, creating a social media content strategy can help you stay organized. Maybe you tweet only five times a day, post to Facebook once a day and update your business blog once a week. Laying out a strategy and sticking it to it can help take some of the haphazardness out of managing multiple social accounts.

Related: How to Create a Social Media Content Strategy (Video)

And the good news is there are plenty of free and inexpensive Web apps that can help. Bliss Control is a free tool that offers shortcuts for you to manage account settings such as privacy, profile pictures and passwords from one place. Social media dashboards such as HootSuite and Buffer are free options for managing and scheduling posts across multiple accounts.

2. Don't blindly recycle content.
Managing different accounts from the same location can create the temptation for you to use the same updates over different platforms. The problem in doing so is that customers often follow you on multiple sites and don't want to find the same content from site-to-site.

In general, form follows function. Twitter can be effective for sharing links, thoughts and quick updates about your company. Facebook can be better for creating and sharing photo albums, longer summaries of your links and customer comments. Don’t automatically Facebook everything you tweet or syndicate your blog on LinkedIn.

Related: Finding the Best Time to Post to Social Networks

3. Don't be shy about cross-promoting posts across sites.
While social-media multitasking usually means creating content that’s unique to each platform, that should not stop you from cross-promoting content without annoying your followers. The trick is to direct users to unique or helpful content. For example, ask your Twitter followers to check out new pictures on your Facebook wall.

One free option for building automation into your social networks is a tool called ifttt, which stands for “If This, Then That.” Users can build automated tasks for more than 40 social networks and Web apps using simple conditional statements.

Sendible which starts at about $10 per month also pushes content to various platforms. It also includes metrics to track who is talking about your business and on which sites.

4. Use analytics tools to know what's working and what isn't.
Don't waste time socializing content that isn't resonating with your followers. Analytics apps can be key to figuring out which of your posts are successful and why.

Consider starting with SocialBro which is available as a free desktop app or a browser extension. It includes information on which cities your followers live in and when they’re likely to be online. Free apps such as Tweriod and TweetWhen can also help you determine optimal posting times for different networks.

Related: 10 Little Known Social Media Tools You Should Be Using -- Now

Link-shortening tools such as bitly can offer statistics on who is clicking through on the links you post. Another option is to monitor your website analytics through tools such as Google Analytics or Yahoo! Web Analytics to see how many referrals you are getting from social media sites. Web hosting services often offer this capability as well.

5. Treat followers like customers.
Try using Twitter, Facebook and, for instance, Instagram's mobile posting features, to put faces to your employees and give a behind-the-scenes look at your company. Your followers are real people and they most likely will apprecaite seeing the people behind your business and your social media pressence.

There are free Facebook apps for interacting with customers via polls and surveys. Poll for Facebook comes with the ability to add custom code, multiple-choice or written questions and extra privacy settings. Promotion Builder, by Redwood City, Calif.-based Wildfire, starts at $5 per promotion plus 99 cents per day and lets users run contests and promotions such as coupons, group deals and sweepstakes across multiple sites.

The 5 Stages of Leadership Development

By Steve Tobak

 

Everyone goes through the same stages of human development on the road to adulthood and maturity. Unfortunately, some of us get stuck in one stage or another, stunting our growth and rendering us dysfunctional.

We look just like ordinary adults, but we actually behave a lot more like children, acting out, throwing tantrums, and generally making life miserable for everyone around us.

It's pretty much the same thing with executives and business leaders. The only difference is that, instead of just messing up their own lives like ordinary people, dysfunctional leaders influence the lives, livelihoods, and investment portfolios of hoards of employees, customers, and investors.

7 signs of a dysfunctional boss
How to deal with a bad boss
7 signs of a dysfunctional company

If we took a virtual snapshot of all the boardrooms we've been in over the years, we'd estimate that maybe a quarter of the executives and directors we've worked with have gotten themselves prematurely stuck in one of the following stages of leadership development:

Stage 1: Sponge. You listen and learn from everyone and every situation as you try to figure out how things work in the real business world. Just like a baby learning to walk, you look really cute stumbling around like the clueless neophyte you are. The good news is you have no real responsibility, so you're not in a position to cause any real damage. You just fall, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and try again until you get it right.

Stage 2: Proof-of-concept. Believing you're actually capable of accomplishing something besides making a complete fool of yourself by promising the world and delivering next to nothing, you set out to prove yourself worthy of the management title that, in all likelihood, you've already been granted.

Stage 3: Delivery. Congratulations, you've somehow managed to deliver the goods and succeed in doing something that can credibly be viewed as a business success. In other words, you made money for somebody and got rewarded with a nice fat bonus. You think you've finally arrived. Won't your spouse be thrilled?

Stage 4: Reset. A little full of yourself, you try a repeat performance using the same tricks that worked the first time and realize--too late--that you're going to need a bigger playbook to consistently make it in the big leagues. Failure doesn't sit well with you. In fact, it's downright depressing. So you set out to make sure that never happens again.

Stage 5: Maturity. After a few iterations of the third and fourth stages, you finally begin to get how the real world works. You realize you're just like everybody else, meaning you succeed at some things, fail at others, and learn from everything. It slowly dawns on you that being a mature leader isn't that much different from the first stage, except experience has given you confidence and, with any luck, a sense of humor and humility. Win or lose, you look good doing it -- and deserve that bonus, right?

So, think it over. Are you stuck in one of the stages or know somebody who is? Fill us in.