How to Market Your App Successfully (Work Management Roundup)
Welcome back to the weekly Work Management Roundup, where we grab the week's best articles concerning work, productivity, entrepreneurship, and startups and hopefully inspire you to work smarter and be more successful. This week, we take a special look at startups in general and app developers in particular, with three meaty articles on finding app success. Read on! Life and Death in the App Store (The Verge): An eye opening story about how an app startup has to struggle not just with plummeting app sales but with customer fatigue. The average person spends 80% of their time on mobile using only 3 apps. So successfully selling a new mobile app right now is like hitting the lottery. 10 Killer App Store Marketing Tips (Slideshare): Despite the 1.5 million apps currently available to consumers, there are ways to increase customers and drive down the cost of user acquisition. This deck by StoreMaven examines a year's worth of data from leading developers worldwide such as Kabam, Zynga & Google, for these 10 solid tips on app store marketing. Facebook viral marketing: When and why do apps “jump the shark?” (Andrew Chen): Growth hacker Andrew Chen shares a technical discussion on how your app can go from success to epic failure. It delves into user acquisition, "virality," network saturation, and user retention. And it's got a downloadable spreadsheet. Motivating Millennials Takes More than Flexible Work Policies (Harvard Business Review): While having flexible work schedules is critical to attracting millennials to your organization, you have to go further to keep them engaged. Here are 5 tips to engage more with this demographic. How to Win at Medium (Medium): If you're blogging on the Medium platform, bookmark this blog post now. It presents a complete series of tips and tricks for writing your posts and making them both more readable and more visually appealing. Want to show your remote colleagues some love? Find fun ways to liven up conference calls and get to know each other. Just because you’re not all in the same physical location, doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy team bonding activities. #Wrike See more tips for including your remote team in your activities in this blog post: -------->>>> http://bit.ly/RemoteTips A photo posted by Wrike (@wriketeam) on Mar 14, 2016 at 3:40pm PDT More Work Management Reads Think About This: Some of the Best Things Lazy People Do (Conversation Agent) BYOD continues to add challenges for IT leaders (Computerworld Hong Kong) The Tricky Business of Conversion Optimization (Huffpost Business) Go Try This: 5 Methods of Collecting Project Requirements (PM Tips) The 8 Slack Communities Every Marketer Must Join (Klear) Improve Your Critical Thinking With This Five-Step Process (Lifehacker) Browse Productivity Works on Flipboard If you use Flipboard on your laptop or mobile, then you'll enjoy our magazine on productivity tips. Check out Productivity Works or click on the widget below: View my Flipboard Magazine.
Key Findings on How to Succeed in Managing Internet Marketing Projects
Want to know what it takes to successfully manage online marketing project? Rich Byrd, the President of Fast Forward Marketing, Wrike’s new client, and Nic Bryson, Wrike’s VP of Customer Care, are sharing their key findings and long-term expertise on how to best keep projects and your team organized: Break a project down into discrete, clearly defined tasks, instead of having one complex task. This will sharply reduce the chances of team members misunderstanding what they were supposed to do on a project. One project is to have neither too many nor too few tasks. Divide your project into subprojects with 5 to 15 tasks to detail just enough things that go into its successful completion. Put all tasks in one place. This way, you’ll make sure the areas of responsibility aren’t blurred, and two people aren’t both working on the same task on some days, while on other days, no one is. Assign tasks whenever possible to a single team member. So there will be no question as to who is responsible for it. To back the assignee up and make task completion easier, use the descriptions and comments. Request a status update on uncompleted tasks with approaching deadlines – this is a one-click action in Wrike, so it won't take long, and it will help you to avoid neglecting tasks. Set up dependencies and reasonable durations for tasks to easily see when a project is getting stuck on something. I love the ease of seeing what’s holding the project up and adjusting these things on Wrike’s timeline! Work backwards from the hard deadline. If your project has a strict due date, start from that and move back on the timeline to when various tasks must be completed in order to meet the overall deadline. Big thanks to Rich for his excellent input. Experiences are best when shared, so if you too would like to share your best project management practices and tips with other Wrike users, let us know, and together we’ll think of a creative way to feature it in our blog. ”— Rich Byrd, President of Fast Forward Marketing Boutique marketing company, specializing in websites and Internet marketing for small businesses and startups
How Do You Hire the Best People? (Work Management Roundup)
Welcome back to the weekly Work Management Roundup where we bring you the week's best reads in business, work, productivity, and management. This week, we take a look at startup hiring and how the search for the best is fraught with the best intentions but because we use the same old playbook, we often overlook more obvious ways to find the best, most creative talents. Plus we have tips on pitching to investors, and strategies for being more creative. Read on! We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else (Coding Horror): Interesting opinion piece by Jeff Atwood on how all startups say they're hiring the best and yet, statistically speaking, 80% of those startups will likely fail... so how do you measure "the best?" And how do you ensure you don't turn away people just because of hidden biases? Perhaps the objective should be: hire the nuttiest risk junkie adrenaline addicted has-ideas-so-crazy-they-will-never-work people no matter where they are in the world? You Must Chill! 4 Ways to Keep 'Social Road Rage' Out of the Workplace (Entrepreneur): If you've ever argued about politics on Facebook, then you know what "social road rage" is. But how do you keep this type of incendiary misunderstandings from happening at work? Here are 4 tips for communicating and especially delivering feedback online. Creative People Say No (Medium): A Hungarian psychology professor once invited 275 creative people to be interviewed for a book he was writing. And a full third of them said "No" -- often with the best responses possible. The truth is, we have to say No to some things in order to stay creative for our real priorities. Tips for Producing the Best Investor Pitch (Tech.co): Here are three major tips for when you're ready to pitch your company to investors — based on what top VCs and successful entrepreneurs advise other young companies. If you want your team to work at velocity, then Andrew Schrage, CEO & Co-owner of Money Crashers suggests: “Clearly designate who is responsible for each segment of your project. Your staff needs to know exactly who is in charge of what, regarding the project in question. That way, they’ll know who to go to for help and who to follow up with as they move towards project completion.” #wrike Copy and paste the URL into your browser to read more tips for teamwork in the full blog post:------->>>>>>> http://bit.ly/18TeamTips A photo posted by Wrike (@wriketeam) on Feb 25, 2016 at 6:47am PST More Work Management Reads Think About This: Top Agile Marketing Resources: 50 Examples, Training Resources, and More (Docurated) Google Ventures On How Sketching Can Unlock Big Ideas (FastCo Design) The Rise, Fall, and Rise of Bitly: How a Free Link Shortener Became a Real Business (Medium) Go Try This: Become a Super Connector: How to Work With 1,000+ Influencers (Sumo Me) 3 Super Simple Gmail Hacks to Boost Productivity Now (The Next Web) 10-3-2-1-0 Formula to Get More Done (Early to Rise) Browse The Work Management Roundup on Flipboard If you use Flipboard on your mobile device, then you can check out these links via The Work Management Roundup magazine. View my Flipboard Magazine.
How to De-Stress by Building Relationships & Deleting Apps (Work Management Roundup)
In this week's Work Management Roundup where we bring together the best reads in the last seven days (or beyond) concerning productivity, working more effectively, mindfulness, management, and more. This week, we look at how to get rid of stress by deleting addictive apps and making time for nurturing relationships — whether it's with friends or your direct reports. Read on! How I Cleared My Mind and Became Less Stressed: Deleting All My Apps (The Next Web): Sound too extreme for you? If you can't delete them, here are some concrete steps to disentangle yourself from your apps. Hint: use the mobile browser. Happiness Hack: This One Ritual Made Me Much Happier (Nir and Far): Science proves it: having high quality friendships keeps you healthy. But how do you make the time for nurturing these relationships instead of simply giving them what's left over after your to-dos are done? Productivity author Nir Eyal shares his answer, and it lies in the Hebrew word: kibbutz. A Brief Guide to Better 1:1’s — For Makers and Managers Alike (Medium): If you keep canceling or moving your 1:1, you're sending the message that work is more important than your people. Here are 8 tips to starting, and sustaining your one-on-ones with your direct reports. How to Keep a Bullet Journal (YouTube): This analog method of journalling or keeping your to-dos needs only 2 things: a pen and a notebook. But what it gives you is an effective way to capture your tasks on paper rapidly, record work done for the day, and organize items for future action. In short, it's an analog version of Wrike for people who like working offline. Tech Companies Need English Majors Just As Much As They Need Engineers (LinkedIn): In this interview with LinkedIn New Economy Editor Caroline Fairchild, she says that you need both liberal arts graduates as well as technology experts to build and sell products people want to use. More Work Management Reads Think About This: 4 Common Mistakes New Employers Make (AllTopStartups) 5 Great Invisible Apps - Apps with no UI (Medium) Building a Growth Machine - The Scientific Method: How to Design & Track Viral Growth Experiments (Slideshare) Go Try This: How To Manage Your Time: 5 Secrets Backed By Research (Bakadesuyo) How to Pull Employees Out of Hibernation this Winter (HCM Essentials) Browse The Work Management Roundup on Flipboard If you use Flipboard on your mobile device, then you can check out these links via The Work Management Roundup magazine. View my Flipboard Magazine.
30 Startup Founders Share Their Entrepreneurship Advice
When you've formulated a new business idea in your head, where do you go for advice on how to make your dream a reality? Your parents? Best friend? Google? These sources almost always have opinions to share, but unless your BFF is an entrepreneur, you might be getting just that — an opinion. It's better to take your advice from experts instead. We asked 30 experienced business founders and CEOs to share their best piece of advice for new entrepreneurs in any space. If you're confused about what to focus on, how to hire a great team, or ways to prove you're a worthy leader, skip the Googling and read what these successful founders have to say. On Following Your Passion The only thing that will get you through the tough times of being an entrepreneur — and there will be many of those — is being very singular and passionate about what you are doing. If you're not, if you're chasing money or anything else, then the highs and lows of startup life will absolutely wear you out. —Andrew Filev, Founder/CEO @ Wrike If your only goal in your business is to make money, don't bother. Find something you can be passionate about and run with it. Find other people who are committed to the same cause or passion as you, and divide and conquer. —Blair Nastasi, Founder/CEO @ Media Moguls PR Give it your all. You really can't try and start a business and give 50% effort. You need to dedicate as much time and resources to your endeavor as possible. I would also recommend having some skin in the game. Obviously, your time is important but when you invest your own money into the business, it will just make you work even harder. —Jason Parks, Owner @ The Media Captain On the Mental Hardships of Being a Founder There's nothing better than starting your own business but you have to be OK with the ups and downs. You are going to have higher highs and lower lows than you've ever had before. From an emotional standpoint, you need to be ok with this. But in the end I'd advise "just do it." —Will von Bernuth, Co-founder @ Block Island Organics You will have setbacks. They are normal, but the ones who will be successful think outside the box and figure a new way around the setbacks to push them ahead. You need to be innovative and have a different state of mind then the rest. —Marc Appelbaum, Founder/CEO @ Global Branding Central On Smart Business Planning and Change Keep a nimble mind. It's good that you want to stick to your vision, after all it's your baby, but things change along the way. Don't be afraid to embrace change and mix things up. —Brad Zomick, Co-founder/Senior Director of Content @ SkilledUp Double everything. It's like a home remodeling project. If they say it will take 2 weeks to complete a project it will probably be 4 weeks. Same goes for money. If you think it will cost $5,000 it will probably be $10,000. —Kimberly Rath, Co-founder/Chairman @ Talent Plus, Inc. On Growing Your Business I think the most important thing for young entrepreneurs to have is focus. It's not a lack of capital that kills startups, it’s lack of bandwidth. If the idea is good enough, there will be plenty of time to leverage it out to other aspects of the market. Stick to your knitting in the early stage and give yourself the opportunity to expand focus once you have the credibility of the core idea’s success. —Luke Schneider, CEO @ Silvercar [Don't] scale too quickly. It can be appealing to try and get your product out there as fast as possible, but it doesn't always work out. Repositioning and improving your product cannot be considered failures. —Nabeel Mushtaq, Co-founder/COO @ AskforTask.com Have patience. Ideas and businesses are not created overnight. Things will tend to take longer than expected, whether that is fundraising, product development cycles, customer acquisition, etc.... In Silicon Valley, this is tough, because the whole culture here is built around a short-term focus of how quickly you can grow. Have resilience and don't give up so quickly. Survive another day and keep at it. Those who have patience and resilience will eventually find success. —Jonathan Tang, Founder/CEO @ Vastrm Understand what market segment you service and market only to that segment. Become the leader in some aspect of your industry such that no competitor can ever come close to replicating your model. —Louis Altman, Founder/CEO @ GlobaFone On Carefully Accepting and Incorporating Feedback Get plugged in with the entrepreneurship community in your city/state. There are a lot of people there who have done it before and can give you rock solid advice. —Sean Higgins, Co-founder @ ilos Videos Be careful who you choose to listen to. Too much of the wrong feedback and ideas can choke your creativity and your beliefs. Feedback is the lifeblood of a startup, but you need to be able to put the feedback in context. Does the person giving you feedback share your lens? Do they fit your target persona? —Nick Kellet, Co-founder @ Listly Everybody will tell you what you're supposed to do, if you ask them. Don't ask, just figure out what kind of company you wish existed — and make it. Maybe it'll succeed, maybe it'll fail, but either way your odds are best if you trust your instincts and ignore the naysayers. —David Barrett, Founder/CEO @ Expensify On Talking to Your Customers If you haven’t spent at least as much time talking to your customers as you have building your prototype, stop and go have as many conversations as you possibly can. Ask open-ended questions about people’s experiences and challenges and listen very carefully to the words they use. You’ll get more game-changing insights about your product, messaging, positioning and sales strategy than you could ever learn from reading business books. —Alex Turnbull, Founder/CEO @ Groove On Failure and Success “Act more. Think less.” I believe that many entrepreneurs can suffer from “analysis paralysis” and overthink themselves to inaction, which lets valuable opportunities slip through their fingers. I encourage my employees to be proactive in their roles and learn from their experiences — good and bad. Failure isn’t a negative, as long as you learn from what you did! —Rob Bellenfant, Founder/CEO @ TechnologyAdvice It's so important to celebrate the small wins. When you venture into entrepreneurship for the first time, experiencing the frequent and unpredictable ups and downs can be unsettling. Every day is a journey and the low moments of uncertainty and doubt are inevitable. You will question yourself, your model, your team. When that tide turns again (which it will), take the time to celebrate and reflect on that win. It will serve as your foundation for the next bumpy ride. —Samantha Laliberte, Co-founder @ Ezzy Lynn On Leadership The secret of leadership is to create more leaders. You do that by giving up responsibility and [letting] the other person fail on their own. We never learn from others' teachings, we learn from our experiences; please let your managers/leaders grow the same way. —Annkur P. Agarwal, Founder @ PriceBaba.com I really encourage any aspiring entrepreneur to view themselves as the archetypal member of the team — focus on building habits and behavior that they want to see in others and that will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. —Colin M. Darretta, Founder/CEO @ WellPath Solutions Read, learn, and read some more! The amount of information that can be found on the web is incredible. And don't forget about books — How to Win Friends and Influence People, Lincoln on Leadership, and The Big Leap are great places to start. As a leader, you need to be good at a lot of stuff. Start rounding out your hard edges so that you can make yourself easier to work with. —Arsham Mirshah & Chris Mechanic, Co-founders @ WebMechanix On Hiring a Great Team Never, ever, settle on a co-founder. If it's not right, take a pause. Even if you have to drop the project entirely for a while. Even if you fall far behind. Because a great co-founder will just take you to so many amazing places, so much faster. —Jason Lemkin, Co-Founder/CEO @ Echosign and SaaStr Get great at recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding. Building a world-class team is perhaps the single greatest talent a leader can have, but in my experience, few new entrepreneurs recognize it — let alone work deliberately to develop their skills in this area. —Ben Landers, Founder/President/CEO @ Blue Corona Build a team of people that aspire. You don’t want the person who is the best in the field, you want the person who desperately wants to be that person. —Jessica Jessup, Co-founder @ Giftovus Hire for the person and personality first, specific work skills second. Does the person have the smarts and people skills? Do they have the hunger and determination to succeed? If so, their specific prior work experience is less important, particularly because in a startup everyone wears so many different hats. —Alex Moazed, President/CEO @ Applico My one piece of advice for budding entrepreneurs is to hire people who compliment each other. Not everyone needs to have the same personality to have a great culture. Find complimentary people who work well together. Make sure that the team is involved in the hiring process so there is buy-in. —Deborah Sweeney, CEO @ MyCorporation.com On Remote Employees Actively embrace remote working and invest in the right tools that make it easy. Location shouldn't matter anymore. Embracing this means that you can hire the best people — not just the best people in the vicinity. —Sam Bruce, Co-founder @ muchbetteradventures.com On Nurturing Your Company Culture Culture is something that you should manage intentionally. Culture is not a ping-pong table, beer, and a dog-friendly office. Culture is a competitive advantage and it will be the thing that helps your employees deliver great work. Start by taking the time to identify your values as a company. Then write them down, post them on the wall, and revisit them on a quarterly basis. —Chris Ostoich, Founder @ BlackbookHR Your employees are your most valuable asset. Even more important than your first funding round or your attempts at going viral. You must focus on creating a work environment that is empowering, flexible, and enjoyable, especially if you’re looking to hire millennial-aged (or younger) talent. Also focus on hiring people much smarter than you — if you’re not, you’ve got it all wrong. —Clayton Dean, Co-Founder/Managing Director @ Circa Interactive A culture will naturally evolve and as a business owner it's your job to pay attention and be a catalyst for that culture. If you see employees all heading to the gym over lunch, offer to pay for gym memberships. Try and recognize culture shifts and help your employees bloom. —Jim Belosic, CEO @ ShortStack Share our slideshare! 12 Founders Share Their Entrepreneurial Wisdom What's your best piece of business advice? You may not be a business founder or a startup whiz, but we know you have business lessons to share. Hit the comments and teach our readers something new. Related Reads: The 7 Deadly Sins of Bad Startup Leaders Top 10 Reasons Startups Fail (Infographic) 7 Ways to Fund Your Startup (Infographic)
Remote Work: Why Reddit and Yahoo! Banned It
When an internal memo from Yahoo! leaked to the public back in February 2013, there was a collective groan not just from people working in the company, but also from supporters of remote work in general. The memo banned remote work for all Yahoo! staff and cited that more effective collaboration would happen face-to-face — that it all begins with being physically present in the office. A Yahoo! spokesperson clarified that banning work from home was not a blanket repudiation of remote work, rather, it was a move that was right for the company's individual situation. They were not the last ones to try to put an end to the practice of remote work. Best Buy followed suit in March 2013 by getting rid of their flexible work program and making employees hold to a more traditional 40-hour work week. Even more recently, Reddit announced the closing of two branch offices in Utah and New York, giving employees two months to relocate to the San Francisco Bay Area; then-CEO Yishan Wong cited that while remote work was good for some workers, in the macro scheme of things, the company just wasn't able to collaborate and coordinate efficiently. Why Ban Remote Work? So what has been prompting this about-face regarding work-at-home policies? Why are top technology companies pulling the plug on one of the hottest perks for today's workers? Some clues can be found in the Yahoo! memo. It claimed: "Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home." The implication being that remote work slows down overall productivity and lowers quality of output. The memo also positioned the policy as a way to unify the forces physically, stating that the best ideas usually come from face-to-face interaction around hallways and office water coolers. The truth is that there are many challenges with remote work, we can't pretend otherwise. We blogged about the 8 biggest challenges for leading virtual teams and found that according to our survey, the top two challenges were (1) poor communication, and (2) a lack of access to expertise needed to support the work. Jennifer Owens of Working Mother Media says that the move stems from fear: “Fear that if I can’t see you, I don’t know what you’re working on. It’s a distrust of your own workforce.” What it boils down to is that these companies decided against remote work because they believe virtual collaboration is inefficient. Instead of overhauling their work-from-home policies and investing in better collaboration technology, they'd rather herd their people back into a single physical location to enhance teamwork. But... People Love Remote Work! Even though companies like Yahoo!, HP, Best Buy, and Reddit have returned to more traditional work schedules from centralized locations, a thousand more startups and technology companies continue to fly the flag for remote work. Allowing remote work means teams can take advantage of the resources brought by distributed team members who do not want to pack up and move to company headquarters. And people value the perk! According to our remote collaboration survey of over 1,000 respondents, 25% of workers value remote work so much that they’re willing to accept a reduction in salary in order to enjoy it. Other sacrifices they're ready to make include: free meals, reduction in vacation, and paid cellphone plans. How to Make Remote Work Work So what do we say to the companies who have given up on remote work? How can a company successfully implement their work-from-home policy and avoid possible negative repercussions? You have to weigh up the working from home benefits and drawbacks. Terri Griffith, Professor of Management at Santa Clara University and author of The Plugged-In Manager, says: “It takes a thoughtful combination of people, technology, and process to gain the value of virtual work.” We've put together a free eBook on the reasons you should embrace remote work, and the entire second chapter deals with how to successfully implement the policy at your company. We included relevant case studies from companies that have thrived on distributed teamwork, including Johnson & Johnson and Zappos. Want to find out more about how Wrike can help your organization make working remotely work for them? Read more about our flexible work management platform here. Photo Credit: Asher Isbrucker on Flickr. Some rights reserved. Photo edited.
Perfecting Your Startup Investor Pitch Deck: 3 Essential Links
One of the highlights of being an entrepreneur is telling people about the amazing startup you've built — whether to attract investors, users, or prospective hires. It's a highlight as well as possibly the most nerve-wracking moment of an entrepreneur's life: that moment when you're before an audience, alone with your pitch deck, trying to communicate why they should care enough to invest their time or money in your company. The art of creating your startup's pitch deck is one that has wrought a thousand and one blog posts. There is a lot of advice out there, given out by angel investors and successful startup CEOs alike. You can even access a host of decks written with startups in mind on Slideshare. Having combed through a myriad of resources, we've concluded that these three links below are absolutely essential to crafting and polishing your startup's pitch deck. Ignore them at your own peril. 1. Reid Hoffman & LinkedIn's Successful Series B pitch to Greylock A decade after it was presented in 2004, this deck is still essential. It's an amazing resource, showing each slide along with accompanying insight from Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn's co-founder (and current investor at Greylock Partners). Hoffman offers advice on how entrepreneurs should approach the pitch process, while providing context for the tech climate of 2004. Best Tips: Open with your investment thesis: what prospective investors must believe in order to want to invest in your company. Steer toward objections. There will be a few issues that could present problems for your financing — address them head on. 2. Guy Kawasaki's Pitch Deck Template Pitch Deck Template by Guy Kawasaki from Quintin Adamis Back in 2012, author, noted entrepreneur, and chief evangelist Guy Kawasaki posted an alternative pitch deck template on his blog. You can download the full PowerPoint here. He discusses the pitch deck formula in depth within the post, giving pointers that he says no investor will actually tell you, because it's always easier for them to smile and say, "That's interesting." Best Tips: When it comes to PowerPoint pitches for your company, think "Hot Or Not", not eHarmony. Your investors decide if your company is “hot or not” in a matter of seconds. According to Kawasaki, the best-case outcome of a pitch is not a request for money wiring instructions. There is a more important goal: rising above the noise and avoiding elimination. You want to “live another day” and get to the next stage: due diligence. 3. Crowdfunder's Investor Pitch Deck Template Over on Forbes, Chance Barnett, CEO of Crowdfunder.com, contributes a downloadable PowerPoint deck template that distills the investor pitch formula down to 11 core slides every deck needs in order to get its point across clearly. Barnett's pitch deck formula is based on his extensive experience raising money for his own ventures, as well as looking at over 10,000 pitch decks on Crowdfunder. You can download his Investor Pitch Deck Template (PPT) here. Best Tips: Including too much information in your initial pitch can be counterproductive. You want to leave some questions unanswered, hit the big points in a clear way, and avoid over-sharing. Put key numbers and traction at the very beginning. This grabs attention and clarifies the market opportunity, especially if the numbers are good. What other pitch deck advice do you have? Do you have suggestions of pitch decks that should join this list? Hit the comments and show us the light.