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Thursday 26 May 2016

The Greatest Will Smith Quotes About Success

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In today’s entertainment world, there are very few individuals who have the type of career and the name recognition that Will Smith has. The award-winning actor and chart-topping artist has proved he is truly a Jack of All Trades with successful television runs, Blockbuster and Academy Award-winning films and millions of albums sold around the globe. Even if you aren’t in the entertainment industry, there is no denying that Will Smith knows a thing or two about success. This is why when it is time to look for inspirational quotes from others for an extra boost of motivation, there is no better celebrity to turn to than Will Smith.

How Much is Will Smith Worth?

As if his numerous accolades and world-wide recognition wasn’t enough to convince you of his success, Will Smith is also one of the highest paid and richest celebrities working today. Although numbers can vary from outlet to outlet, it is estimated that his total net worth is valued around $250 million. He is estimated to earn, on average, around $30 million per year. While the number varies from publication to publication, there is no denying that Smith has earned a great deal of money and is showing absolutely no signs of slowing down any time soon. His business ventures, his profits from movies and music and the high paycheck he demands for every movie has helped the performer earn the title of one of the richest black male celebrities of all time, according to several publications.

Will Smith’s Business Ventures

In addition to acting and performing, Will Smith also has a history of making big investments in different companies and management solutions. He is also an investor in Carol’s Daughter, Fancy, Stance, Julep, BioBeats, Chromatick and the video sharing program Viddy. He is also a partial owner of the Philadelphia 76ers. Will Smith has been very active in all of his investments and has developed a knack for finding up-and-coming business opportunities and investing early on. He has made several joint-investment ventures with fellow performer Jay-Z. With so many business ventures under his belt, it should come as no surprise that Will Smith is hailed as one of the most successful and respected businessmen in the industry, in addition to his credits and success as an actor.

Will Smith’s Inspirational Quotes

Whether you are personally a fan of Will Smith, or not, there is no arguing that he is a successful man. He is also a very poised and driven individual and has delivered a number of impressive, and inspiring quotes during his decades of experience in the entertainment industry. Here are a few of our personal favorites.
“Whatever your dream is, every extra penny you have needs to be going to that.”
“I want to be the person that is the first person there and the last person to leave. That’s who I want to be, because I think the road to success is through commitment, and through the strength to drive through that commitment when it gets hard. And it is going to get hard and you’re going to want to quit sometimes, but it’ll be colored by who you are, and more by who you want to be.”
“So if you stay ready, you ain’t gotta get ready, and that is how I run my life.”
“I’ve trained myself to illuminate the things in my personality that are likable and to hide and protect the things that are less likeable.”
“Never lie, steal, cheat, or drink. But if you must lie, lie in the arms of the one you love. If you must steal, steal away from bad company. If you must cheat, cheat death. And if you must drink, drink in the moments that take your breath away”
“And where I excel is ridiculous, sickening, work ethic. You know, while the other guy’s sleeping? I’m working.”
“I’ve always considered myself to be just average talent and what I have is a ridiculous insane obsessiveness for practice and preparation.”
“If you’re not willing to work hard, let someone else do it. I’d rather be with someone who does a horrible job, but gives 110% than with someone who does a good job and gives 60%.”
“In my mind, I’ve always been an A-list Hollywood superstar. Y’all just didn’t know yet.”
“The first step is you have to say that you can.”
“Throughout life people will make you mad, disrespect you and treat you bad. Let God deal with the things they do, cause hate in your heart will consume you too.”
“Being realistic is the most commonly traveled road to mediocrity.”
“I know how to learn anything I want to learn. I absolutely know that I could learn how to fly the space shuttle because someone else knows how to fly it, and they put it in a book. Give me the book, and I do not need somebody to stand up in front of the class.”
“If you’re not making someone else’s life better, than you are wasting your time. Your life will become better by making other people’s lives better.”
“The separation of talent and skill is one of the greatest misunderstood concepts for people who are trying to excel, who have dreams, who want to do things. Talent you have naturally. Skill is only developed by hours and hours and hours of beating on your craft.”
“If you’re not making someone else’s life better, then you’re wasting your time. Your life will become better by making other people’s lives better.”
“Don’t ever let someone tell you that you can’t do something. You got a dream, you gotta protect it. When people can’t do something themselves, they are going to tell you that you can’t do it. You want something, go get it. Period.”
“Fear is not real. The only place that fear can exist is in our thoughts of the future. It is a product of our imagination, causing us to fear things that do not at present and may not ever exist… Do not misunderstand me danger is very real but fear is a choice.”
“The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be out-worked, period. You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me, you might be all of those things you got it on me in nine categories. But if we get on the treadmill together, there’s two things: You’re getting off first, or I’m going to die. It’s really that simple.”
“When you’re running and you are there, there’s a little person that talks to you and that little person says “Oh, I’m tired”, “My lounge’s about to pop”, “I’m so hurt”, “I’m so tired”, “There’s no way I can possibly continue”. And you wanna quit. Right? That person, if you learn how to defeat that person when you’re running you will learn how to not quit when things get hard in your life.”

Will Smith’s Kids are Successful, Too!

In addition to having a great deal of success in his own right, Will Smith also unsurprisingly has very successful kids as well. His two kids Willow and Jaden Smith with wife Jada Pinkett Smith has already found a great deal of success in their own right. Despite being just young teenagers, the two famous teens have already found success in their own right. Will and his wife have taken a “hands-off” parenting style that give their children a great deal of freedom of expression, according to Smith.
This has helped both of his kids find success as recording artists, designers and artists. Willow Smith has had successful singles with her record deal at Roc Nation, including “21st Century Girl” and “whip My Hair.” She has also acted in several fills including I Am Legend and Kit Kittredge: An American Girl. 
Jaden is best known for his role in the major motion picture remake The Karate Kid. He has also starred in The Pursuit of Happyness and The Day the Earth Stood Still. By the time Jaden turned 12 all three of the films he had been in had debuted at the number one spot on their opening weekend.
Although the two Smith children have come under fire for their artistic lifestyles and mostly for choosing to “educate themselves” they are also two of the most noticeable young people on the planet, constantly covering magazines and being named models and brand ambassadors for some of today’s biggest brands. With so much potential in their young careers and only being teenagers, the two award winning performers are already on their way to greatness.
After all, with a successful and inspirational father such as Will Smith who is one of the most successful and honored actors in Hollywood today, it should come as no surprise that these two young people are already following in the footsteps of their successful father.

Monday 23 May 2016

6 Important Skills of Self-Made Millionaires

A successful man is successful not because he is lucky, but because he has the skills and characteristics that make him successful. Boosting your finances isn’t so easily done, and the frustrations and challenges that come your way may even drag your money  and morale down. Most millionaires have many things in common—aside from lots of money—and they are skills that you should uphold as well. Here are some skills or characteristics most successful people have.
  • One of the characteristics you should have is being an Opportunity-Seeker. Always be careful and wise in analysing your environment and the situations around you. Know when you can knock on doors of opportunities and also be able to weigh out the risks and benefits before you take chances. Learn to identify which opportunities are manageable. Avoid deciding immediately until you have weighed the risks and benefits well. Manage your money well, and be wise with your investments. Otherwise, your money will go down the drain.
  • Another characteristic is always starting with the end goal in mind. Having a clear vision of success is essential because it constantly reminds you to do your best to achieve your goals. There may be times when challenges are hard to overcome, there may be times when you want to quit and pursue other things, but your vision of success will keep you motivated and will keep you on track to achieve your goals no matter how difficult situations are.
  • The third is focusing on action over words. When running a business or a project, what’s important is not just being able to understand and relay what should be done. You must make things work and ensure that everything is planned and implemented properly. A successful man is organized in the way he does things and expects to have the best product. When working with people, choose those that are excellent and determined in doing their work with quality. Always remember that actions matter more than words. Hire the best possible people to get your jobs done. With proper management, you can make a great team.
  • Never stop learning. No matter how much you have known over the months or years of experience you have with your job or business, keep in mind that there is always room for improvement and additional knowledge. A successful man does not stop learning when he achieves what he wants. He, instead, will be more open to opportunities to learn and invest in new ideas and innovations. Listen to the opinions and suggestions of other people and make the most out of them. Catch, improve and innovate new ideas into parts and parcel of a new successful work.
  • Get your work done as soon as possible. Delegate the work. Divide among the group the tasks to be done and communicate with each other from time to time for everyone to be updated with what’s going on. Avoid procrastinating and being distracted with trivial things while you are doing your work. However, this does not mean that the quality of your work can be sacrificed for the sake of being finished early. Never compromise when you can have excellent works laid down the table. Set aside possible distractions and focus on what needs to be done. This goes along with what has been mentioned above. Bear in mind that: Fewer distractions—more work done.
  • Last but not the least, know how to create win-win relationships and situations in everything that you encounter. There may be times that you will be forced or tempted to sacrifice things on hand to achieve something that you want. Before you compromise, search for deals and transactions where both sides “win” or acquire what they wanted without a big loss of their parts. For example, if you’re running a business, a win-win relationship comes in when you help your colleagues and office mates achieve their goals, and in turn—they help you achieve your goals. Win-win situations are often discarded and overlooked easily by businessmen and entrepreneurs. But, the successful man always looks back in search for situations where both sides benefit.
Again, becoming a Millionaire is not a walk in the park. It is not simply walking past a bridge. Becoming one requires the skills and characteristics mentioned above. Many people have grown successful in their own set of fields, and no matter how different their fields are from each other, if we take a closer look—they have similar characteristics and principles that they follow in the way they handle things. It just takes the will of a thinking man for him to pause and review what he is doing and how he is doing. We must all be open for little changes in our lives—positive changes, specifically—and then we will transform into wiser, wealthier individuals.

Thursday 19 May 2016

Our bias for paid marketing

A few rhetorical questions:
Is a physical therapist with a professional logo better than one with a handmade sign?
Are you more likely to stay at a hotel that you've heard of as opposed to an unknown one, even if 'heard of' refers to the fact that they've run ads?
Do you believe that companies that rank higher in search results are better than the ones a few pages later? And if you don't, then what's the reason we so often stop clicking after one page?
There are more ways than ever to spread the word about your work, but we live in a culture where paid ads still have clout.
"As Seen on TV" was such a powerful phrase that companies brag about it, right on the box. And that connection between paying for attention and quality still remains.
Over time, we've been sufficiently seduced by marketers that spend on the surface stuff that cognitive dissonance has persuaded us that we must be making those choices for a reason.
Find the discipline to build your projects like you won't be able to run ads to make them succeed. A product that sells itself, that's remarkable, that spreads.
Then consider running ads as if you don't need them

Monday 16 May 2016

Google tries its hand at social again with launch of group chat app, Spaces


Google is not giving up on its social ambitions, it seems, despite its failures with Google+. The company announced this morning a new social app called Spaces, which focuses on group sharing. The app allows small groups of users to tap into other Google services, including Google Search, YouTube and Chrome, in order to post links and share content without having to move in between apps. They can also have conversations around that content in a group chat-like interface.
This makes Spaces more of a competitor to something like Facebook’s Messenger or WhatsApp, perhaps, because of its focus on chatting and its mobile-friendly nature. (The app is available on iOS, Android and mobile web, though it will also work on the desktop).
What many of the top chat apps today lack are deeper integrations with web services – while posted links may offer rich media previews in some cases, Google Spaces’ users can not only find and share web content from Google Search and YouTube, that content can also be viewed by others without having to leave the app.
Another decidedly Google advantage is that the content shared in a dedicated space becomes searchable. Users can search their Spaces by keyword, which returns both links and images – the latter thanks to Google’s image recognition technology already live today in other products, like Google Photos.
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The interface to the app is fairly simple, too. It’s just one tap to create a new space, for example. Then you can invite anyone else to join via messaging, email or another social network. Once inside a Space, there’s a box at the bottom of the screen where you can tap buttons to post links and images and other content to your chat room. A conversational view lets you see what the group is talking about easily.
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The company suggests the app could be used for a variety of purposes, like study groups or trip planning on fans of a particular subject like comic books or tiny homes. This makes Spaces sound a lot like Google+’s own “Communities” feature – in fact, it’s sort of odd to see so much overlap between the two products.
Google, however, is kicking off the launch of Spaces by rolling out a space for each session at its Google I/O developer conference this week. That will allow anyone attending sessions to chat with each other and other Googlers, it says. The company promises other surprises in store as well, for those who download the app.
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This is not Google’s only attempt at trying something different in terms of a mobile and social experience, however. In addition to Google+, the company last year also launched an app for arranging hangouts called “Who’s Down,” for instance. And it’s been adding more social features to Google Photos, as well.
Google Spaces’ website says the app will be available “shortly,” but it has yet to hit the app stores as of the time of writing.

Monday 2 May 2016

How To Solve Your Businesses ROI Woes On Social Media?

How To Solve Your Businesses ROI Woes On Social Media?
Some of the largest barriers to Social Media are the Return on Investment (ROI) questions that go along with it. One of the biggest misconceptions that I see as a digital marketer, primarily in Social Media and Social Media Advertising is that people still believe that Social Media doesn’t produce a good enough Return on Investment.
What are the ROI questions exactly? How do we generate leads using Social Media? How do we translate fans or followers into paying customers? I’ll do my best to answer these questions in this blog post.

How To Generate Leads Through Social Media?1

The first step to generating more leads is to evaluate what your business currently generates from Social Media efforts. Determining ROI on social is difficult, especially if you’re not setting up the proper tracking according so Social Media Examiner. Some of the questions you should ask yourself as a social media manager or internet manger in regards to social are as follows:
  • Are we tracking website behavior in Google Analytics from Social Media?
  • Are we obtaining calls from Social Media?
  • How much foot traffic are we generating from Social Media?
  • What are our goals for Social Media?
If you said “No,” or “I Don’t Know,” to any of the above questions, you may be missing some of the leads your business is generating with Social Media.
In order to ensure that all of our campaigns are optimized for lead generation and measuring ROI these are three rules that I follow when I start a new campaign:
  1. Add UTM Tracking to all your campaigns to more easily track behavior in Google Analytics.
  2. Utilize Call Forwarding/Tracking software to measure calls specifically from Social Media, and other outlets.
  3. Use unique offers on Social Media, so that when customers come into the store, or call, your business will know they came from Social Media specifically.
In addition, utilize Facebook tracking to see who your page is reaching, what posts are performing well, and month to month engagement.
Alice In Wonderland Quotes Facebook page post reach
Pictured: Post Reach sample from 101 Famous Quotes from Alice In Wonderland Facebook Page.
Social Media is a valuable advertising tool because it allows businesses to connect with their potential customers and determine what they like, and what they don’t like. There’s an opportunity for businesses, one which most of them miss, to cater their advertising to smaller groups of people that are already engaging with their product on their Facebook, Twitter, or other Social Media networks.

Translating Facebook Fans Or Followers Into Paying Customers1

“One of the hardest things to do is translate Facebook Fans into paying customers.”
I see and hear this quote or a variation of it all the time. One of the responses I have is this, “How did you acquire your Facebook fans or Twitter followers?” One of the most common problems with having 10,000 fans on Facebook is that most of the fans are not going to purchase anything from your company.
I apologize for the reality check, but if you’re reading this, your ROI is not where you want it to be, so I can guarantee that for one of the following reasons, your business is not going to convert the vast majority of your fans into paying customers.
  • You paid for “Fake Likes” during the beginning of Facebook Business Pages.
  • You ran a contest. People “Liked” your page to enter, that’s where the relationship ends.
  • They’re not close to your location (For businesses that this applies).
  • Your posting strategy is focused around getting engagement instead of engaging the users that are worth going after.
If you want to get Facebook Fans that Translate to Paying Customers, go after fans that will buy your product.
Utilize Facebook’s robust ad targeting and reevaluate your posting strategy to focus around your products. I’m not saying you should sell, sell, sell, but your posts should be somewhat related to what you’re trying to sell. The occasional “Pure Engagement” post is okay, but posts should appeal to people who will potentially buy your product. For instance, in the automotive industry, we focus around industry news, content, and media to engage users who find the brand interesting and are looking to buy a new vehicle down the road.
On contesting, I know most people will tell you that it’s a great way to get new fans to like your page, which is true. The more fans you have, the greater probability, you’ll generate more leads is not necessarily true if you use contesting. What digital marketers and advertisers have discovered in the past few years, and Facebook as well, is that people like pages to win the prize, and will never engage with the page again after the initial contesting period ends.
One example of a bad Social Media contest according to Spark Reaction, on a large scale is #EsuranceSave30 promotion a year ago at the Super Bowl. It was widely successful at first, with over 200,000 entries, but what happened after was exactly why Social Media contesting fails.

The Esurance campaign goal was to increase brand awareness, but after a week, Esurance lost over 15% of the 100,000+ followers they gained on Twitter, and users hijacked their hashtag posting offensive material and spam which is always a risk when utilizing a hashtag for campaigns.
The Greatest Lessons From Epic Social Media Fails 2015
Instead of contesting, my suggestion is to give your customers a product “Test Drive.” Give them a discount on your product or incentive to test it out, for larger purchases. By doing this, your business achieves two objectives:
  1. You just acquired a new fan and
  2. This new fan is also a qualified lead because they liked your page to get the product discount/incentive.
Acquiring fans in this manner might be more expensive, but the user knows why he’s like the page, and the business knows the user likes the page because they want to engage with the product.

What Are Your Opinions On Social Media ROI?

Within the past few years, we’ve seen Social Media become a more viable advertising medium for businesses to increase sales and reach more people in their area. In my next post, I will discuss how your business should evaluate what Social networks to utilize for lead generation.