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Tag: family

Five Focus Areas for Content

The most popular question we receive, no matter which social media platform, centers around producing content. We are constantly asked, “What should I post about?” To help, we’ve created the five areas of focus for all of your social media content:

  1. The main thing that you do. This is content centered around how you add value to the world at large, and specifically to your community. This helps you establish yourself as an expert in doing YOUR thing. This should be the focus of about 40% of your content. This doesn’t mean that you should post 40% of your content focused on YOU. It means that you should focus 40% of your content on the topic that is the pillar of your business.
  2. Something related to your “main thing.” This related topic bolsters your expertise in your main focus topic and highlights that you aren’t singularly focused on just one aspect of the business. This content should make up about 20% of what you post. Again, this is a topic that you are posting about, not something about your business’s offering in that area.
  3. Something else related to that “main thing.” Another related topic will further bolster your expertise to those who find you. With this third business topic, you have a base for 80% of your content. Remember, this isn’t 80% of the content you create about YOU, it’s 80% of the content you create about this topic.
  4. Something that is interesting to YOU, but is NOT directly related to your business. Yes, you should post content that isn’t directly related to any of the other topics you’re already creating content about that was outlined above. You’ll do this to offer some personality to your business online. Otherwise, you appear robotic and uninteresting. To offer an example of this type of content, you can share and create about where you went to college, where you are from originally/if you’re a native of your community, a sports team you support, or hobby you enjoy. This should not monopolize your content, making up only about 10% of what you share.
  5. Something else that is interesting to YOU. This should be another interesting topic to YOU, yet something that is not directly related to your business topics. You’re furthering yourself from robotic and flat. This should be about 10% of the content that you share. Often, this can be your family, faith, or your volunteer work to offer a few more examples.

That should be a good place to start for your upcoming posts to social media, keeping in mind that you may want to change it up a bit depending on the platform you’re using.

How Millenials Will Save Your Business

I have led millennials in the workplace, and that experience makes me optimistic about how they will save your business… If you adapt it to becoming a more sustainable endeavor.

It’s 2019.

Three years ago, millennials became the largest generation in the American workforce, making up more than 35% of American workers. While you may see “hit pieces” on millennials, poking fun at them with stories about avocado toast, laziness and mooching, and participation trophies, these stereotypes don’t live up to my observations of the millennial generation.

The list of products, businesses, and industries millennials are “killing” grows with each writer and blogger’s need to put words to page. Any businessperson worth their salt will recognize that some of these killed items are simply the inevitable outcome of creative destruction, an economic idea that industries change for the better by destroying the old to bring about the new. It’s why we no longer have buggy whip makers in an age of automobiles.

I’m not a millennial, writing to defend my generation here. Even by the most generous timeline, I miss being one by about two weeks. I have, however, led millennials in the workplace, and that experience makes me optimistic about how they will save your business… If you adapt it to becoming a more sustainable endeavor.

Millennials take over as dominant generation

As millennials overtook Baby Boomers as the dominant generation at work, a Gallup poll found that only 34% of American workers are engaged at work. That means that nearly seven of the ten sitting just outside your office are likely not. This disengaged workforce certainly isn’t helping productivity, though there is hope, and it rests on the shoulders of our largest segment of the workforce, the millennial generation.

Luckily, I’m not alone in seeing the high-quality attributes of this cohort. Millennials excel when working as part of a team. They use the latest technology and adapt to innovations with ease. Most importantly, they want their efforts to have meaning and purpose. They value their work with as much or more importance as their family, when thinking about their dream. To not tap into this passion is a big mistake.

After decades of management practices focused on reports, endless meetings, and performance reviews, we find ourselves unable to tap that potential in this generation. They feel ground into dust by the aforementioned interactions with their boss. Their desire for meaning and purpose in their work requires that we move away from the WHAT that we do to focus on the WHY that motivates us to do it. If you’ve read Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why,” you already have a head start on understanding how to lead your team, especially the youngest players on it.

Vision, Mission, and Purpose

By sharing, exemplifying, and leading the mission and purpose of the work, you motivate them to buy into the vision of your team, rather than seeing it as a quick stop on their journey to their ultimate career. Their buy-in leads to a stronger affective commitment to the organization. Couple that commitment with their blended work and social spheres and the skills they bring with them, and you can build a company swimming with talented millennials onboard for the long term. Their desire for the work they do to have meaning is met when you cast the vision of your mission.

Luckily, this desire for purpose goes beyond the workplace into purchase decisions. In addition to having your team unified behind your mission, you will also have an edge when marketing your brand to the millennial generation. Not only that, the rock star millennials on your team will also be your greatest evangelists. This is key to a demographic who doubts the advertisements they view and hear, preferring the recommendation of someone within their network.

So, when do we start outlining your mission and communicating that to your team?