My Two Cents – Yelp App Updates

Disclaimer: This is an opp ed piece.

Who has the Yelp app on their phone? Raise your hands…

I do, and I honestly never ever use it.  Back when I was eating and breathing social media I would write reviews on there all the time and hence I felt the need to get the app on my phone.  Besides the fact that I never use it, it is also INCREDIBLY annoying that the frickin thing needs to up updated at least twice a week.  If they are minor updates, at least gather them up and do it once a week if you really need to.  But how many issues does the thing have?  And if they’re not issues and every single developer on their staff just updates things whenever they think of something new, perhaps there should be a funnel of approvals.

That is just my opinion.  Anyone else have a gripe about an app?

How Fitness Fits in to Being Creative

You can take a look at my Fit Momma section for my additional tips, and my take, on how to stay active as a mom, or as anyone who tries to juggle too much.   But today I wanted to share an article that I came across that fits in to the business portion of my blog.

The article, pushed through on LinkedIn, shares the idea that those who get up and walk around during work hours are more creative than those who just sit at their desk.  I would tend to agree, as I come up with random thoughts and ideas, mostly while I’m not at work, or when I’m not thinking about work.  So get up, move around, and be creative!

 “The study [done by Stanford researchers] found that walking indoors or outdoors similarly boosted creative inspiration. The act of walking itself, and not the environment, was the main factor. Across the board, creativity levels were consistently and significantly higher for those walking compared to those sitting.”  Click the photo to read the article.

LinkedIn for B2B

 I’ll admit it, I’m struggling to keep up with posting weekly updates for my two company pages.  There used to be a time when social media was eating up the majority of my day.  I could look into ROI, learn best practices, try out new things and hope to grow our web traffic and lead numbers.  These days it has become just another task on the to do list that I need to get better at managing.

We have lots of great content to share I just need to be more diligent about sharing it.  So, I was happy to see a recent article about improving your LinkedIn content strategy.  Did you know that you will soon, or might be able to already, essentially blog on your site?  Apparently this was something that was open to just the chosen few but LinkedIn is opening up the functionality to more people and companies, it seems.  Learn more about it HERE.

So what’s your trick or tip to keeping on top of social media?

 

Being a Helper vs. Helping & the Importance of Marketing

I recently heard on the radio that children – not kids, who are baby goats 🙂 – respond better when they are asked to be a helper rather than being asked to help with something.  Isn’t that interesting?  It all comes back to how you market what you’re trying to sell.  If chores need an enticing proposal to get done, and when don’t they?, then trying to market something someone needs and wants in real life is equally as important. 

You can’t just build it and hope that they’ll come, you have to create an interesting and enticing marketing campaign. 

Which leads me to the newest McDonald’s coffee commercials/slogan/ads.  When I first saw the billboard encouraging people to own the coffee run, I immediately thought of the dunkin’ donuts “America Runs on Dunkin” slogan and thought to myself, “oh Mickie D’s, way to be creative.”  But when I heard the radio commercial, I initially thought about the Budweiser champions of beer commercials.  Sounds to me like McDonald’s ad agency isn’t being too creative, or are hoping to trump the other two brands by combining two effective messages.

What are your thoughts? 

A) Do you agree that marketing is an essential part of any business. 

B) Do you think you always need to create somehting from scratch or can you borrow from other success campaigns…from competing brands?