Posts Tagged: branding
12 Hiring Tips For Your Early Stage Startup
Startups live or die based on their ability to attract talent. All other factors that can affect startup success are secondary. This is even more pronounced when you are an early stage startup (read ‘resource constrained to the extreme’) as you have little or no room for bad hiring decisions. Having said that, everyone makes hiring mistakes and it is a process that you hope to get better at with experience. If you are like me and most other entrepreneurs, you would dump conventional wisdom and techniques, and build your own set of hiring rules that are driven by your unique style and situation. Over the years, I have been involved in several startups and here are some of the things I have learned in hiring during early days of the startup (i.e., first 2-5 employees).
Founder Brand Void Is Killing More Startups Than You Think – MassChallenge Blog
The following is a guest post from Jasmeet Sawhney of MassChallenge Finalist, Worklife.io.
I was recently browsing our own people directory at MassChallenge. My goal was to see how many people have good web presence, so I picked some random names and did searches on Google and other social sites.
As I went from 1st name to the 30th, a pattern had emerged – one of the 3 things was happening for every person I searched (in decreasing order of frequency):
- One or more social accounts of the person showed-up without any consistent presence in search results
- It was difficult to locate the person on search and social sites
- Only 2 people had 5 or more (out of 10) results on the first page of Google results
via MassChallenge.
What Can Retailers Do To Build a Brand (And a Loyal Customer Base)? – Retail Spokes Blog
Social media
It is not rocket-science to understand that the web is becoming increasingly social. Most retailers have a social media marketing strategy, but campaigns are mostly geared towards putting deals on Facebook and Twitter. What would really make a difference is content that can enhance experience on these social touch points. The goal is to enable your most influential existing customers to spread word of mouth that would bring in more traffic. Soon, online shopping will be the same friends and family experience as it is in a traditional brick and mortar store.
Multi-channel
It is now common understanding that retailers have to provide consistent products, pricing, information, and experiences across all their channels. Multi-channel retailers have an advantage over pure-play retailers in that they have more opportunities to convert shoppers. This includes features such as ‘ship to store’, ‘ship to home’ (if not available in-store) or in-store access to content and community over mobile devices.
Building a Loyal Brand Following – a New Focus For Online Retailers – Retail Spokes Blog
If there is one thing to be learned from Amazon’s dominance in eCommerce, it is the importance of building a brand. It is phenomenal that 33% of all shoppers visit Amazon for research, according to a recent study by e-tailing group and PowerReviews. Although, it is apparent that Amazon does not provide best product choices or shopping experience for many product segments. Nonetheless, their ability to attract direct traffic is unmatched. This is where most eCommerce sites need to become better in that they have to build loyal customer bases.