With caucuses and primaries in full-swing in the United States, there is a lot of talk about political leadership in our country. At Fierce, we are very interested to explore the traits and characteristics for ideal leaders, in both business and politics.There is so much commentary for what makes great leaders like this and this and this. And the question is: What do you think? AND Does your view on leadership change depending on the position - for the boardroom and Capitol Hill?Please take our brief survey today, by clicking here. The post New Survey: Business & Political Leaders - What Do You Expect? appeared first on Fierce, Inc..

This week’s Fierce resource was originally published by Forbes and discusses different tactics with regards to retaining top talent in a competitive marketplace.Old-school retention tactics such as competitive salary, stock options, and cash bonuses are not necessarily key motivators for keeping top performers at your firm from moving on. Companies need to start looking ahead instead of behind, and to do so, it is important to understand the changing demographics of your firm’s staff. Employees nowadays seek recognition and collaboration just as much as a competitive salary with stock options.  An employee’s progression towards an annual bonus should be publicized and encouraged, not measured in a board room behind closed doors.So what will you do to retain your best performers?"There are ways to motivate other than creating a dog-eat-dog macho workplace environment. Collaboration rather than competition; praise rather than punishment."Read the article.The post Fierce Resource: Retaining Talent In A Competitive Economy appeared first on Fierce, Inc..

I’m constantly intrigued by what makes leaders the most effective. We talk with leaders constantly. A couple weeks ago, a Harvard Business Review article came out about the most important leadership competencies according to leaders around the world. When 195 global leaders were asked to rate 74 qualities, the number one was strong ethics and safety, meaning a leader has high ethical and moral standards. 67% said this was the most important quality to great leadership. To put it simply: Walk your talk. Don’t do something that you don’t believe in.To quote the piece, "This competency is all about behaving in a way that is consistent with your values. If you find yourself making decisions that feel at odds with your principles or justifying actions in spite of a nagging sense of discomfort, you probably need to reconnect with your core values." I think about one of my first managers who would always ask me: What decision most aligns with you? I remember thinking - What the heck? What do you mean aligns with me? I wanted to make the best decision. Just tell me what IT IS. Stop putting me through this (ha).I had no idea how lucky I was to be asked those questions early in my career. Some of us work our whole lives and are never asked. It is a tough question, because a lot of times with decision-making, you want to take into account others. Take into account how others perceive you. Take into account what’s at stake when you say "this" or "that".Now is the time to take a stand for your beliefs and make decisions accordingly. This week’s tip is to do what you say you will do. Don’t look outside of yourself in the days ahead. Yes, you really do know… now just walk your talk.The post Fierce Tip of the Week: Walk Your Talk…Now appeared first on Fierce, Inc..

April is Stress Awareness Month. When reflecting on your life, how would you rank your stress level from 1-10? Under wraps? Off the charts? What causes it?Among U.S. adults, work is the second most common source of stress, just behind money, according to the 2014 Stress in America survey from the American Psychological Association. And yes, those go hand in hand, so it is a double punch.With all of the obligations and demands of leaders today, it is more critical than ever for you to make some time for yourself and your goals.Leaders, to bust your stress, find your magic hour each work day. Find an hour that you can focus on specific deliverables of your own. Block this time on your calendar and keep it precious. It is quiet time. Time where there aren’t meetings, one-on-ones, and all of your team’s demands. Do not allow the distractions to creep in  . Yes, most things can wait.For me, 7-8 AM is my magic hour when I focus on completing a bigger project or reaching out to someone on my list. Starting my day off like this is rejuvenating, because I feel I have already accomplished something to kick off the day. For non-early birds, any hour can really be this time. Perhaps for you it is before you leave the office. Or before you go to bed.Whichever hour you choose, here are a few tips:Experiment with different hours. You may want to be an early bird, but if that time doesn’t work best for you, let it go. Maybe afternoon or evening will work better.Physically block it on your calendar. You don’t have to call it your "magic hour" (people may wonder what you are up to). Call it whatever you want, and physically reserve the time for yourself.Have an accountability partner. Ask someone close to you to keep an eye on your schedule and check-in with you for the first month of your new schedule. Ask this person to not allow any excuses from your side. Answer the questions: How is this hour helping me? What gets in my way if I don’t have it?While stress can be all consuming at times, find your space. Find your time. And protect it. Will you choose a magic hour? Or do you have another tip to bust your stress?The post Leaders, Curb Your Stress - Find Your Magic Hour appeared first on Fierce, Inc..

Creating a learning-centered work culture isn’t that important unless you want to attract top talent, give your workers the tools they need to be successful and grow your business. Oh, but you do want those things? Well, in that case, providing the right kind of training to your employees is pretty crucial and, unfortunately, many companies are dropping the ball big time.  Recent studies show that the vast majority of workers want career growth and to feel as if their current work is preparing them for their next position but because of poor or nonexistent training only 13% of all employees were considered "highly engaged" and twice that number were completely disengaged[1]. Companies just aren’t putting enough resources into expanding or improving the way things are taught in the workplace or in developing talent to promote to higher positions. Most, around 70%, of learning and development is still done through a traditional instructor. These days, this is not a very effective way to get workers or learners to retain and indeed engage with information[2].  This article explores the components of what a company learning culture must be in order to break out from this tired style and become and stay true contenders in even the most competitive industries. The company in the spotlight? Google, of course. Here are four actions your company can take to build a strong learning culture like Google's -- without spending millions: 

Infusionsoft is a pretty powerful marketing automation tool for advanced marketers. By connecting your online school and courses to Infusionsoft, you can pass student data back and forth to trigger targeted emails based on the actions a student took on your site or course. InfusionSoft is an amazingly powerful tool for marketing and sales for online businesses, in particular for small businesses looking to automate their marketing and sales processes. It’s a great way to take leads and turn them into revenue or turn them into customers. And I see a lot of people now with Infusionsoft creating their own online courses and looking for online course solutions. Thinkific is now directly integrated with Infusionsoft! You can tie your Infusionsoft account right into your Thinkific account, passing information back and forth when people sign up for your courses in Thinkific. Their information is automatically sent over to Infusionsoft, where you can tag your contacts, launch campaigns and marketing automation funnels, and create custom email sequences for your students. So if you are using Infusionsoft or you’re using Thinkific, check out the other, tie them together and start building that amazing marketing funnel around your online courses. The post Teach Online TV #21: Connecting Infusionsoft To Your Online School appeared first on Thinkific.

This post is by Kenn Costales, a growth hacker and founder of growthhackerkit.com. Kenn loves finding new ways to marketing products online without spending a dime, and he shows us some of his tactics in this post. Take it away, Kenn! So you have it all planned out. You have discovered that there’s a gap in your space, you have made your lesson plan, and you’re pumped up and passionate about it all. You may be even done with building the course. But a question looms: how do you spread the word to potential students? How do you make it more known to your target community? To which sites should you post links on? I have good news for you: this is a solved problem. Many authors before you have developed online courses for all types of content; and I’ll teach you the best practices that you need to take your course from 0 students to 1000 students. All without spending anything on advertising. First, however, I will dispel a common mistake teachers make when they set out to build their course. And that mistake is that they pursue a build-first approach rather than an audience-first approach. The reason that the "build-first" approach is suboptimal is because you are assuming a lot of things to be true, which exposes you to a lot of risk in your course. Especially around what content to write and how your course structure should be. And I understand where you’re coming from: you’re an expert in your field. You’ve talked to old students offline and you know your stuff. I’m not disputing that. Instead, what I’m saying is that you can reduce your promotion risk significantly by taking an audience-first approach. And by doing it audience-first, you will know where to promote before you’ve even started. You will have clarity on what specific topics people want to know. This eliminates your risk of low interest significantly, setting yourself up for a wave of organic traffic to your course. That said, here are the 4 key parts to this mini-tutorial to ensure steady, consistent traffic to your course: How to Discover Where your Ideal Audience Hangs Out How to Read your Audience’s Minds How to Build Respect and Reputation among your Audience How to Share Your Course to an Audience that’s Ready to Buy your Product How to Discover Where your Ideal Audience Hangs Out Let’s pretend that you’re a consulting client of mine and you want to promote a course around Marketing Analytics. The first thing that I’ll state to you is that you’ll need to ask the right question — you need to ask first "who do you plan to serve" rather than "what you plan to serve". In the Marketing Analytics case, you will then have to make a choice: do you want to target CMOs, Marketing Managers, Marketing Newbies, or Entrepreneurs? Say that you’ve chosen to target entrepreneurs. If that is the case, then the first task is to start googling for "where this audience hangs out". The best way to do this is to look for "online lounges". Online lounges are spaces in the internet where people discuss things related to their topic of interest. These can be forums, blogs, and mailing lists. The way that I do this is to do the following steps: Open up your search engine (eg. Google, Bing, Yahoo!) Do a search query using any of the following combinations: - {Profession} + {topic} + forum - {Profession} + {topic} + mailing list - {Profession} + {topic} + blog - {Profession} + {topic} + industry forum - {Profession} + {topic} + link-sharing site (Eg. Reddit, stumbleupon) - Example: Entrepreneur + Marketing + forum And just right there, I get to discover 10+ potential forums to target: It doesn’t end there yet. Once you select a specific forum, you need to drill down further and make another search query using your topic of choice. In this example, we search for discussions revolving around marketing within reddit.com/r/entrepreneur. What you want to look out for here is any indication of pain or trouble from the original poster. From the initial query of just "marketing" within the subreddit. We don’t have any luck. So how do we refine our search to really dig for pain? Let’s add "pain indicators" like "help" or "advice needed". Let’s check out the results. We can see that in just the first page, we get a lot of potentially useful threads. If you have found specific threads with LOTS of expressions of pain, then you know that you’re in the right online lounge to promote to in the future. As you dive in and do more research, you will find that some forums will work for specific topics and some forums won’t. This will help you focus your promotion efforts only in areas where your ideal target audience hangs out. This is critical to the success of your course. From the above 15 minute exercise, we just got evidence that reddit.com/r/entrepreneur is a great place to promote our marketing course. Try it out for other forums! My advice is that you need to identify at least 10 online lounges. Blogs work too (especially with its very active comment sections). How to Read your Audience’s Minds By now, you have a long list of threads with clear indications of pain. Let’s underline all of them and let’s really understand who are audience is. Once you collect enough data, you’ll start seeing patterns on who your audience is. Once you identify these patterns, you start to get a strong instinct of what your audience feels and thinks about marketing in general. From the above, there are some small patterns emerging (we’ll need 10+ more painful threads to really know) that entrepreneurs really want 3 things: a highly efficient digital marketing strategy with low cash outlay, tips around local or city-wise marketing, and how to position oneself to get high-value clients. Earlier, in our hypothetical example, you wanted to build a product around Marketing Analytics. But it turns out it may be too advanced (at least for the Reddit online lounge). It is better to pursue a course focused on low-budget, high-efficiency advertising, local marketing, and seeking & closing high-value clients. My course structure for these samples of pain will then start to look like this: How to Use Facebook Interest Targeting to find High-Quality Clients at a few dimes a Click How to Build a Referral Machine by using these Pitch Scripts in Your Next Local Chamber of Commerce Event How to Discover the Needs only High-Value Clients Have Course Name: "How to Get High-Value Clients Using with Hyperlocal and Hyper targeted Marketing" If you dropped that course within the Reddit space, I’m sure that will get traction. See what evidence-based marketing gives us? How to Build Respect and Reputation among your Audience Beyond discovering pains, however, you need to establish yourself as an authority within these online lounges. That means giving bite-sized advice whenever you encounter these pains. By bite-sized, I mean something that’s from 1 to 10 sentences but is actionable enough for the person to use. As an example, I would answer the person who said "haven’t found FB to be useful" and "need an efficient strategy" in this way: "I understand that you need an efficient digital strategy given your low budget. I am surprised, however, that you find FB ads to be NOT useful. I do FB ads a lot in my consultancy, and here’s how I suggest you do your targeting to get quality clicks at $0.40 - $0.80 per click: ONLY use interest targeting. Leave everything else at defaults. When you use interest targeting, make sure to use 10+ interests and leave out interests with a large reach. Reason being large reach per interest will equate to high cost per click. If I were targeting entrepreneurs into marketing, I would use interests by using gurus like ‘Neil Patel’, ‘Derek Halpern’, ‘Darren Rowse’, etc. I would leave out ‘Gary Vaynerchuk’ because his reach is way too big! Make sure that the TOTAL reach does not exceed 800,000 people Start your test! Make sure your test is locked to $5 per day. NEVER use the lifetime budget option. If you exceed $1 per click, you need to cut off interests with the highest reach and add more ‘niche’ interests If you need ideas on ‘niche’ interests, google for tools, influencers, and software then try it out" If you give advice at such low-level and actionable detail, you will gain respect and authority within the space. How to Share Your Course to an Audience that’s Ready to Buy your Product "Isn’t it spammy to post links?!" "What if I get banned?!" I’m sure you had these thoughts. And these are fair assertions. In order to to solve for this problem, what you can do is to use inline links in your comments and you pair this with other links not related to your site. This helps drive the sense that you intend to be helpful and not be spammy. Here’s a personal example when I tried to help someone having trouble with landing pages: Apart from sharing these comments, you need to do this consistently, day-after-day, for only 1 hour a day. The thing with marketing is that it’s a frequency game. With paid ads, the ads work for you — it generates reach and frequency at the click of the button. With these organic efforts, you need to build the reach and frequency yourself. So you are your own ad. But as long as you dedicate 1 hour a day, you should start to get a good flow of leads to your landing page. By doing these 4 broad, strategic steps, I was able to build GrowthHackerKit.com to around 4k-5k organic visits a month, 89% from direct links. Check out the stats below from SimilarWeb. No dollar spent on advertising at all. Give lots of free, actionable value to the world, and the world will love you back. I wish you great results in your journey! P.S. If you like the idea of getting super-actionable marketing advice, hop on over to GrowthHackerKit.com, and join the community of growth hackers! I’m building more and more content and I’d love to share what I’ve learned with you. To start with, you can go for our Expert-led Growth Hacker Course, where folks from Close.io, Onboardly, and Salesfolk share what has worked for them! The post How To Go From 0 To 1000 Online Course Students With No Ad Budget appeared first on Thinkific.

Cross-Post from sylviaduckworth.com With as much confidence as you have about your subject area of expertise, for a new presenter, it's normal to feel nervous about sharing your ideas in front of a group of strangers.The tips below, written by GAFE Summit presenter Sylvia Duckworth, can help you knock your presentation out of the park!1. Go over your presentation days before. Make sure all the links and videos work. Try opening all Google Apps documents with a different Google account. (Note: see this sketchnote for some EdTechTeam tips on a great presentation).2. Practice your presentation. Ask a friend/colleague to watch and provide feedback.3. Earlier in the week check that you have all the equipment necessary for your presentation (dongle, clicker, power bar, projector, speakers, etc.) and put them in a bag by your door. (Note: GAFE Summits will have projectors and speakers already set up in presentation rooms).4. Try to get a good sleep the night before. If you suspect that you’re not going to sleep well, try to get a good night’s sleep two nights before.5. Charge your devices the night before.6. At the venue, ask someone in charge who you can contact in case you have a technology glitch. If possible, go to your presentation room early in the morning before anyone arrives. Plug in your laptop/speakers/projector and make sure that everything works.7. Make sure you know how to set the proper resolution for your laptop to maximize projection on the screen and to be able to view all of your open tabs. If you don’t know how to do this, find someone who can help. (NOTE: Every projector will display your screen in a different way which is why I recommend you check this early.)8. Internet connection: Sometimes there will be a special wifi network for presenters only, so ask about this. But if you have a hard-wired option, take it. In fact, it's a good idea to have your presentation (and videos) in a non-internet-dependent form in case you lose all internet connection.9. If the room and audience is large, ask for a microphone. Wireless clip-on is best. If going with clip-on, avoid wearing a long top/shirt (or dress) without a belt to clip the receiver onto.10. At a conference, try to get to your presentation room at least 15 minutes before your presentation. Sit at the back of the room, and as soon as the previous presenter has wrapped up, start setting up for your presentation. You might need to be assertive and that’s okay.11. When people start to arrive to your session, be friendly and say hello (it will relax you). Ask them how they are enjoying the conference, etc.12. Make sure you have lots of water nearby: you will get very thirsty!13. Just before your presentation, take a few deep breaths and remind yourself why you are there: You have something to offer and the audience appreciates you being there to share your expertise.14. Apply to present again and again. The more you do it, the less nervous you will be.There's so much to gain from stepping out of your comfort zone and sharing your knowledge with others. What are some of your tips to overcome the jitters?

[Post by K.M. Lowe, Writer & Corporate Communicator] BDO is a professional services firm that has been providing financial and consulting services for more than 100 years. Each year it publishes reports related to the economy and business. These reports analyze filings by top publicly traded companies in various industries. Most of the reports that have been published in the past few years list talent in the top risk factors. In some cases the issue is acquiring and retaining talent. In others it is regulatory compliance. As anyone in the talent or learning management world knows, meeting compliance is as dependent on employees and their training as it is on processes and technology. The 2015 BDO Life Sciences RiskFactor Report cites FDA approvals and compliance at the top of the list of risk factors. "Not only do life sciences companies operate in an intensely competitive environment, they also face many hurdles when it comes to bringing their product to market… Companies also perceive compliance requirements as potential roadblocks. All 100 companies analyzed cite risks associated with FDA approvals and compliance, up from 94 percent in 2014…" To read more about the report or download it in PDF visit: BDO Life Sciences RiskFactor Report According to the 2015 Technology RiskFactor Report competition triggers a battle for talent and acquisitions in the technology industry. "…all of the 100 largest public technology companies in the U.S. mention risks related to competition in their annual filings. However, competition isn’t limited to only product development and pricing. Increasingly, competition for human capital is really heating up as hiring becomes a top priority for leading technology firms. As such, 95 percent of companies mention concerns over their ability to attract and retain key personnel, up from 81 percent in 2014." To read more about the report or download it in PDF visit: BDO Technology RiskFactor Report The 2015 BDO Retail RiskFactor Report asserts that a tightening workforce boosts concerns about the labor market. "Labor risks remain top of mind for a full 96 percent of retailers. With strong overall job growth so far in 2015, retailers are facing an increasingly competitive labor environment, and are struggling to hire and retain qualified store associates and distribution center employees… Competition for top industry executives also remains cutthroat. On the hunt for dynamic leaders that understand both the industry and its digital evolution, four-in-five retailers cite risks related to attracting and retaining key management personnel." To read more about the report or download it in PDF visit: BDO Retail RiskFactor Report Reports on other industries can be acquired from the BDO website: www.bdo.com

[Post by Justin Hearn, President of GeoMetrix Data Systems Inc.] Over the past few years, many organizations have switched their enterprise applications to cloud versions. You’ve probably heard the benefits of cloud or software-as-a-service (SaaS): low start-up costs; instant implementation; no hardware to install or maintain. So with all these advantages, why are some organizations returning to installed systems? While cloud-applications can be inexpensive initially, they can be costly as time goes on. One consultant we work with said, "Cloud applications can be great for many organizations, but continuous monthly fees add up over time. With installed software, the up-front costs are usually the largest: licensing and implementation. Maintaining the system gets less expensive over time, and the longer you keep it, the cheaper it is." A large county government that bought our LMS had initially wanted a SaaS system but in the end the agency chose an installed solution. "It was cheaper for us in the long term to own software than to pay an ongoing subscription to SaaS, since we are a large organization with 8,000-plus employees. Also, we can customize the software’s functionality to meet our diverse departmental needs." Many of the organizations that choose our installed software over a SaaS system have data security and integration concerns that can’t always be met in a cloud-based system. A consultant who advised his client to choose our installed LMS over a cloud version said, "Even though I’ve observed much improvement in how a customer can configure SaaS systems, generally, cloud applications must be designed to meet the needs of the many." The consultant noted that the organizations he works with are mandated to protect all employee data. "I feel it is difficult, even with well-written data security agreements, to trust outside vendors with sensitive data. From my experience, clients are more reassured when the sensitive data stays in house." But many organizations still complain that the up-front costs of an installed solution are prohibitive. Consultants in the know say there are ways to mitigate those costs. "First, buy only what you need. If you only need learning management, don’t buy a full talent management suite that has onboarding and compensation." These same specialists suggest avoiding big software vendors who are well-known for high prices. "Find a vendor with low implementation costs… you may need to look outside the top sellers for this. Just because the software is installed doesn’t mean it needs to take two years and two million dollars to implement." Wow — two years and two millions dollars? We’ve heard of such projects but we’ve never participated in one, and we’ve got some pretty big implementations (100,000+ users). If that’s what the marketplace is used to, it’s no wonder some organizations are scared away by the prospect of an installed solution. Typically, our implementations take weeks or at most a few months, and the implementation costs are two-figure never even three. We specialize in offering an in-house LMS that won’t break your budget. And ours has both the functionality and customizability that you might not find in a run-of-the-mill cloud LMS. But what if you need the functionality, security and customization of an installed solution but don’t want the issues of hardware or the staffing required to maintain an in-house enterprise system? That’s where hosting comes in. The hardware is installed at a third-party hosting facility and the ISP is responsible for maintenance. Single-tenant hosting is even available, which means that the hardware is dedicated to your organization with no sharing of services with other users. You retain complete control and exclusive access. Is an installed LMS more of a commitment than a cloud version? Certainly. Is it worth it? Many organizations still say yes. If you’re a beginner in the LMS market and it’s your first time investing in an LMS, you may want to start with a SaaS subscription to a cloud LMS. That way you can learn what works and what doesn’t without a large financial commitment. Then when you’re ready to move to the next level, take a look at what an installed LMS can offer. We think you’ll be surprised.