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How to Handle Difficult Decisions in 4 Easy Steps

 

In business, as in life, you often need to make decisions even if you have a limited amount of information. But making decisions needn’t be a gut wrenching process if you follow the four tips below from your friends at Dale Carnegie Training of Western Connecticut:

 

1. Find the Facts – Before you can make a good business decision, you need to gather as much information as possible while remaining objective. Additionally, fact-finding will help you analyze a problem and uncover any underlying issues as well as possible short and long-term solutions. Determine and execute the most efficient way to collect and analyze any data that can help you.

 

2. Brainstorm Solutions as a Group and Establish a Deadline – As you review the pros and cons of each of your options, make sure you do it as a group, and with a deadline. This will allow you to stay focused and maintain efficiency. Consolidate your information onto a chart or spreadsheet. It also helps to have at least one associate assisting with your analysis. While the decision is ultimately yours, others can provide insight and/or pros and cons that you may not have noticed.

 

3. Evaluate Results – Once you have decided upon a decision and implementation schedule, you need to analyze how you have done. Do not be afraid to make adjustments or take notes for future decisions.

 

4. Remain Consistent – As you tackle the decision making process, keep in mind that you always want to remain objective in your analysis while managing your stress and stress of others. And of course, good decisions come from staying focused on what the options are-both short and long term.

 

While there are a myriad of ways to handle decision making processes, you cannot overlook this one key element: Work on problem solving as a group. Although the ultimate decision will be yours, an organization cannot move forward or remain innovative without decisive decision makers. By taking action and carefully streamlining your decision making process, you will improve the organization by just making a decision.

7 reasons why marketers should be using video

2014
People using video

by Kristen Lunman

Video is now the preferred medium for consuming and sharing ideas. Thanks to advancements in technology, an increase in the quality of consumer cameras, and the speed of the internet, individuals, companies and governments are increasingly using video to educate, entertain or inspire. Globally, IP video traffic will be 79 percent of all consumer internet traffic in 2018, up from 66 percent in 2013. Visual content is the most powerful medium to cut through web clutter. Here are seven reasons why video is the king of content.

1. Exponential growth in consumer consumption

Video is not going away. 85% of internet users in the United States watch online video. Not only have large companies such as Nike, Virgin Mobile and American Express capitalized on the explosion in this medium, but smaller companies such as Etsy and Shoes of Prey understand that they must deliver content in the way their customers want it. Video consumption is also the fastest growing activity on mobile channels; every day 6.5 million smartphone users around the world watch online videos on their devices.

2. Power of storytelling

Video has educational and entertainment merits. Video can easily teach a new idea or concept, or it can be purely instructional. It can also be the most powerful way to tell a story and to stimulate an emotional reaction. At a loss of what to use video for? How about testimonials, training, internal communications, external communications, social media ads, PR, new feature announcements, product demonstrations, product reviews, recruitment…

3. Viral and disruptive nature

Video has the most viral potential of any content medium. What happens when you are able to stimulate an emotional reaction (positive or negative)? Your viewers share the experience. Video is palatable and easily passed on, thanks to social media share buttons and embedding functionality. It can be the most effective way to increase your reach and exposure and it breaks through the mundane clutter of words, words and more words.

4. SEO

Search engines love video. 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute; it is no surprise that YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world. Search engines reward relevant and engaging content, and video can be highly relevant, keeping visitors on your site for longer than text only. Social shares of your video further increase engagement, all helping to get your content ranked higher on search engine results pages.

5. Entry barriers are low

Video is not as expensive as you think. For certain videos, you don’t have to spend a lot of time and money. High-production-quality equipment is now in everyone’s hands, and can be as cheap as $500 yet still last 7–8 years. Nowadays, anyone can shoot a video on an iPhone and thanks to apps such as Vine, Viddy and Klip, making video can be a fun and creative process. For those who require a more polished feel, freelancers are increasingly generalists who can often produce an entire video from storyboarding to post production in a few days.

6. Persuasive

Video influences buying decisions. Videos allow people to see what you are offering, allowing them to evaluate product merits without a hard sell. The brain is wired to decode visual cues up to 60,000 times faster than text so it is no wonder that people grasp concepts in a video much more easily. Videos on landing pages increase average page conversion rates by 86% and more than half of consumers say that watching product videos makes them more confident when making online purchases.

7. Humanizes your brand

Video fosters trust. Video has the ability to break down boundaries by making communication more personal and human. Most people would rather communicate to a person face to face; the same rings true for developing a relationship with a brand or product.

Video content consumption will be spurred on by more companies understanding how to use it, and creating more of it. Video is going to be the preferred method to share everything, from hiring people, to sending updates to customers, to running board meetings and sharing the corporate vision. Increasingly, video will dominate marketing content, and marketers will need to get creative to integrate their content into more online videos. 64 percent of marketers expect video will dominate their content strategies in the near future, making it a higher priority than all traditional outbound tactics. This is highly exciting, though it does beg the question, what are the other 36% up to?

Three Key Elements of Video Marketing

1. Building Relationships

Video is a great tool for increasing page views, traffic, and click-through rates. But it’s important to understand how to use video marketing to retain that traffic. Unfortunately, video views don’t always translate into sales. The trick is to appeal to viewers who are most likely to buy what you’re selling.

Videos that promote brand awareness and inspire goodwill in viewers can establish a longer-lasting relationship between a company and its clients. User engagement is the key top retaining and expanding your customer base.

2. Caring Means Sharing

Video sharing increases brand awareness.You’ve surely noticed how “viral video” has become a commonly heard phrase spoken by even infrequent online users. Everyone talks about a video they’ve seen that touched them personally, and the people they’re talking to will want to see itfor themselves.

This is the advantage video marketing has, to make a personal connection with the viewer. The intimacy of that connection, whether through comedy or a tug at the heart strings, inspires people to share videos — and it’s that process of sharing that makes them go viral. When people care about a video, they share it.

3. Video Smashes TV

The culture is shifting from television to video. With more than 200 billion online videos viewed each month, television is increasingly becoming the out-of-touch, chicken-dancing uncle to the trend-setting, twerking youngster of online video.

What this means for video marketing is an ever-expanding viewership. More desirable demographics can be identified and targeted more easily than ever. Your online videos will find more viewers — and best of all, they’re the viewers you want to find, the ones who will be receptive to the message of your business.

Digital Media Insights – July 21, 2014

 

Today’s video production professionals have to do more than make solid, well-crafted videos. With video becoming one of the fastest-growing segments of online marketing, successful production companies have to be experts in video marketing as well.

That means today’s video production professionals have to know it all, from shooting to editing to marketing.We have to know the customer, understand what they want, and figure out how best to reach them with a video that offers succinct solutions to their problems and needs.

More and more, we’re hearing that the future of online marketing is centered on video.
Well, guess what..

   
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