Accomplishments

In this post, I would like to highlight some things that I accomplished and learned during my internship at ContentOro. I would like to mention how exciting and rewarding this journey has been for me. I met a lot of amazing people that have great experience in marketing and networking. I learned how to be more confident when networking and I found my passion for digital marketing.
Some of the projects that I worked on during my internship at ContentOro were:

- Researching competition for ContentOro and writing out a report on each of the four competitors. After the research, I also created a comparison grid that included ContentOro and the other four companies.

- I learned a lot more about Google Analytics. During my internship, I completed Google Analytics Certification.

- I worked in Google Analytics for the company and created 5 custom dashboards and 6 custom reports based on companies needs.

- I helped put together report for clients based on Google Analytics data.

- I grow ContentOro social media accounts, mostly worked in Twitter and tripled their followers from 80 to 250 followers within a couple of weeks.

How to Expand your Creativity in Business

It happens when my mind is open, receptive and quiet. It can happen suddenly. There’s almost a joyful laziness to it. Kind of an “Hmm… wait! what if I tried this…”  I am here to tell you a little about how to expand your creativity. We tend to associate creativity with arts, but it is also important in business. Creativity influences the way business gets done. But how do you expand your creativity? You have to be able to restrict yourself, to have an internal motivation, and to embrace something absurd.

Try limiting your work in some way and you may see the benefits of your brain coming up with creative solutions to finish a project around the parameters you’ve set. This can boost creativity because it forces people to work outside of their comfort zone.

Not all motivation is created equal. An inner passion to solve the problem, to create something new, leads to a solutions far more creative than do external rewards, such as money. So do it for yourself, not just for other.

The mind is always seeking to make sense of the things that it sees, and surreal/absurd art puts the mind in “overdrive” for a short period while it tries to work out just exactly what it is looking at or reading, which can help with creative thinking. As Jonah Lehrer once wrote, “In fact, the only way to remain creative over time--to not be undone by our expertise--is to experiment with ignorance, to stare at things we don't fully understand”.

If you have difficulty with coming out with an idea, or finishing a problem, try limiting your working process, have an internal motivation or passion for what you are creating, and go out and embrace something weird. It will expend your creativity and lead to an amazing results!

So go on now...unleash your creativity to the world!

Six Tips for In Person Networking

 A Harvard University study shows that 15% of the reason a person gets a job, keeps a job, or advances in a job is related to technical skills and job knowledge... 85% has to do with people skills. In my last blog post, I talked about how important it is to network in person. There is a true value in networking. In this post, I would like to share five tips for successful in person networking. Due to our current employment rate and downsized companies, working the 85% is never more important than when networking. 

1. 1. Do your homework prior to attending an event. Google attendees or find them on LinkedIn to see their photos, learn a bit more about them. 
2. 2. Remember and pracitce your “elevator pitch”. Elevator pitch is the short description of yourself and what you do/what you hope to do. You never know when you meet the CEO of the compay you would like to work at, and you might only have a few minutes to make the right impression.

1. 3. When you meet someone new, say the other person’s name two or three times during the conversation. You won’t forget it, and it shows that you are actively engaging with him/her. 
2. 4. Ask questions of the other person to show you are paying attention. Make it your mission to discover the value in each person you talk to. Ask questions and listen with interest. 

1. 5. Write yourself notes on the back of business cards you receive. This will help you when you leave the event, you won’t be asking yourself, “who was that person again? What did they say?”

1. 6. Say thank you when leaving a conversation. Consider following up afterward with a personalized LinkedIn connection request. 

Hope these tips help you at your next in-person networking event! 

Offline Networking

Jeff Mason is a founder of Groundspeed Analytics, Inc. Groundspeed automates data management for commercial insurance brokers and carriers by using machine learning to extract and structure information from documents like loss runs and submissions. Groundspeed is a cloud-hosted application that enables clients to request, receive, process and analyze policy and claim information automatically. They use optical character recognition, machine learning, and natural language processing to classify insurance carrier documents, extract and categorize data, and populate a user dashboard and reporting platform. Jeff started Groundspeed Analytics in early 2016 and he already has a lot of success. 

He talked to CDE on July 29th and one thing that he said really stood up to me:

“My career was built on the fact that I was able to walk up to anyone and start a conversation with them.”

Nowadays, people are so caught up in the internet world that they don't see all of the opportunities that they might be missing by not spending more time talking to people offline. Networking is not just done online, the most important and successful networking happens when you talk to someone in person and make an impression that they won't forget. Most people get nervous about networking situations, especially in person. The power of personally connecting and human interaction accelerates relationship building. While reaching out to new people may be much less intimidating when we’re sitting behind a screen, face-to-face networking is an extremely valuable skill to hone if you want to build strong relationships with potential investors, managers, employees, partners, mentors, clients, etc. Communicating in person showcases your personality & helps people connect with you in a genuine way. That is why networking in person is so important. 

My Journey is Almost Over

It saddens me that there are only two more weeks left for me at ContentOro Internship. Over the past couple of month I have learned a lot of things that I truly believe will help me to advance in my future and get ready for new opportunities. One thing that was really exiting is helping a new company progress and see have a company develops from the ground up. I never thought I would have such an experience at my young age. This internship helped me find my passion for Digital Marketing and helping small businesses. For anyone who ever gets an opportunity to work with a small business or do an internship at a start up company, I would definitely recommend it! 

Failure = Success

Cash Butler

Cash Butler is the founder and CEO of ClariLegal. He has over 20 years of management experience in the banking and legal vertical markets, including SaaS eDiscovery vendors, SteelPoint, Zantaz, Lextranet and Merrill Corporation. He holds an MBA in E-Commerce from Bentley and an undergraduate degree from Boston College.

Joe Nashif

Joe Nashif is the president of online retailer US-Mattress.com that he started in 2001. He worked at General Motors for 15 years with various management positions. For twelve years he was a president and founder of US-Appliance.com He holds an MBA in E-Commerce from Carnegie Mellon University and an undergraduate degree in Economics from the University of Michigan.

One of the main things that Cash and Joe talked about was how they started their business and why. Both of them have a passion for creating something new and helping people. But being an entrepreneur is not an easy road. Both of them are very successful, but that didn't come without failures. 

Cash: “You’ve got to figure things out as you go and keep punching until you get there. You learn a lot when you fail. It’s a hard and expensive lesson but it’s good learning experience.Everyone has a different tolerance for the entrepreneurial drive.”

Joe: “It’s a balance of sticking with something, but at the same time, not being married to something that doesn't have any hope. You have to be open minded and remember that most things you try, won't work. You’ve got to look at the day to day problems and frustrations, then take a step back and see if the trend line grows to see if your efforts are worth it.”


What I took away from these two successful entrepreneurs is: 

 Don't let the fair of failure stop you from doing great things. 

Engaging on Twitter

Let me ask you one simple question, when was the last time you engaged with someone on twitter? I don’t mean just posting something or retweeting something. But actually engaging and talking to people, asking them questions, commenting, and starting out a meaningful conversation? If the answer is never, then you might be using Twitter wrong. Of course, you might be a person who just goes on Twitter and reads it like a newspaper in the morning, then this will not be that helpful to you. BUT. If you are someone who wants to generate business leads, or network to find a job or an opportunity, then I’m going to share a couple of useful tips on how to use Twitter for your advantage and actually getting the results you need/want.

There is a couple of different thing you can do on Twitter, aside from posting links to your blog or promoting your product (that is just being lazy and boring). Here are some tips on what to post:

Question: Ask an engaging question to stir conversation

Fact: Share a fact.. then share an opinion about it.

Quote: Grab a quote from article & turn it into social message

Add Intrigue: Write a teaser message that grabs the attention (Maybe from your upcoming blog post)

Add Image: Post an engaging image to grab attention to the content

If you want to build a relationship with people…  the best way is to grab their attention and help them first:

·       Make them look good by congratulating them on their successes, sharing their “earned media”, referencing them as experts, and recommending them to others.

·       Get them more visibility by writing about your top influencers, quoting them in blog posts and bylines, and amplifying their social content on a regular basis.

·       Solve a problem for them by answering their questions, giving access to your products and services, and helping get the word out about their upcoming passion project, product, webinar, blog, etc.

Then they would want to help you in return.

You don’t want to be that person who just asks for help and uses people to gain attention or profit, you need to care. One of my favorite things to do is to follow up with people who follow me or people who I follow to gain their attention to me. You want to send them a message and include:

-Warming hello

-Comment about their recent post

-Invite to connect on LinkedIn

-Also a link to your blog or an interesting post that might be of value to them.