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Month: April 2015

4 Ways To Market To Millennials

According to the Pew Research Center, there are approximately 80 million Millennials in the United States today.

By educationworkadmin
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According to the Pew Research Center, there are approximately 80 million Millennials in the United States today – this surpasses Generation X by nearly 20% and has already overcome the Baby Boomer generation. With these staggering numbers, it’s no curiosity as to why our culture is changing. That’s not the case for many companies and that’s why their marketing strategy has gone stale. Most Millennials are just beginning to enter the workplace and are entirely active consumers. However, the older generations are still using traditional methods to market to them.

I am a Millennial.

As Millennials, we like to think of ourselves as forces to be reckoned with and have an abundance of pride in our character. Understanding is the key. We have a conscientious mentality – always keeping up with what’s new, taking eco-friendly initiatives, thriving on entertainment, etc. With this in mind, here are a few tips to spice up your marketing mix for Millennials:

Be Remarkable

A millennial can easily separate the puffery from the truth and, on top of that, they are keen researchers on a brand they interact with. They’ve grown up in an era where the truth is rare and the information is plenty. They are conscientious and align their purchases with a sense of right or wrong because they act when emotionally engaged.

Millennials go for the products that will help them become more than their actual selves. They want something that can help their pride and do something to contribute to an inspiration. If you can promote a product that’s trendy, healthy, and high-quality, they will only praise your brand. Help them out and they will help you.

Always ask yourself: “Would I buy this?” and “What else is this helping?” This is a great way to start thinking about how to position your brand and develop your product. Analyze your processes and believe in your brand. Provide a sense of social obligation and justice with it – Millennials all want a brand attached with a benefit beyond utility. Own it – don’t just participate.

Practice Word of Mouth

Traditional advertising has little effect, if any. A typical Millennial doesn’t pay attention to a billboard, changes the radio station when an advertisement comes on, or changes the channel when a commercial is on (or just watches Netflix). As a matter of fact, research from Clickz Marketing News and Expert Advice shows that 84% of Millennials do not trust traditional forms of advertising.

One of the most important brand characteristics for them, however, is word-of-mouth. The recommendations from their friends and family have the biggest impact on Millennials. According to Moosylvania.com, approximately 61% of Millennials agree that that one of the most important characteristics of a product is whether or not it’s a recommendable product. Millennials won’t answer your call to action, but they will answer a call from their friend.

How can this be effective? Well, always engage with your customers and become part of the conversation. Give them reasons to talk about you with great products and services, deals, or customer service. Finally, let them know that they are important. Nothing makes a Millennial feel better than ensuring their voice is heard.

Strong Social Media Presence and Real-Time Marketing is Key

Millennials are the most tech-savvy of any generation and are the most active on any social media. Companies have noticed this trend and are following along, but there’s a difference between good social media marketing and bad social media marketing.

There is no single way to utilize social media perfectly, but the best way to reach your audience is to analyze what posts get the best engagement, know when to post, and develop entertaining content that tailors to what gets the best engagement for you. The majority of Millennials spend their time being entertained or informed – they tune out advertisements that they can’t engage with.

According to Evergage, 88% of digital marketers find real-time marketing to be one of the most important aspects of their strategy. If you know the trends, then you’ll know your audience. Rapid, real-time content on social media makes you more competitive and seen – otherwise your content is lost in the feed. However, Facebook runs differently. Engagement on Facebook is earned through payment, not organically. For many major brands, organic engagement on Facebook is about 2%!

Be Their Friend

Would you ask a favor from a stranger? Not everyone has the charisma to just go up and ask someone a favor out of random. Even if you did, not many people would perform that favor for you. Now, what if you asked a favor from a friend? That’s different, right? You know a friend would support you. Knowing this why wouldn’t you want you want your brand to make friends?

Millennials are a greatly interconnected generation, but appreciate a close friendship more so than most. This can go along with all generations, but Millennials can be impacted the most. If your brand can create those close relationships, you’ll have the utmost loyalty out of any Millennial. The best way to do this is to ensure you are engaging them with an empathetic approach, letting them know they are contributing to your cause and beyond, and make them feel valued. A great practice to build friendship beyond that is to have Millennial brand ambassadors. It’s much less intimidating when your brand has a face – a face they can relate to nonetheless. Once you build those friendships, you’ll have loyal Millennials that will defend your brand and praise your brand.

Article by Michael Howard – for original, click here

 

Why It’s Important To Like Your Job

You know those people… the ones who come home after work and spend the rest of their evening complaining.

By educationworkadmin
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You know those people…the ones who come home after work and spend the rest of their evening complaining about how awful their job is. I’m sure everyone knows someone that fits this description, whether it’s a friend, significant other, or a family member. Or, even worse, you fit this description. If that’s the case, here are 4 reasons why it’s important to love your job!

You spend a lot of time at work.

Let’s face it, we spend a lot of time at work. If I had to take a guess, an average person probably spends over half of their waking hours at the workplace. This is reason number one why it is extremely important to love what you do. If you are a person who hates your job, consider this: You probably spend over half your waking hours unhappy. That’s no way to live. When choosing a career path, really evaluate and consider what you enjoy doing most and apply this to a career. For those currently employed and hating their jobs…FIND A NEW ONE! A career you love will make a world of difference when it comes to your overall happiness.

It’s good for your health.

Having a career you love is extremely good for your health. Think about it…if you spend your daymiserable at a job you can’t stand it will cause you a lot of stress. While stress can be positive for our bodies, sometime there are negative effects.WebMD says “Stress that continues without relief can lead to a condition called distress — a negative stress reaction. Distress can lead to physical symptoms including headaches, upset stomach, elevated blood pressure, chest pain, and problems sleeping.” This is why it’s important to pursue a career you will enjoy and look forward to everyday. If spending a day doing something you hate can lead to health problems, it’s not worth it.

It increases confidence, motivation, and happiness.

Think about it. If you go into work every morning with a smile on your face, knowing that you’re going to be spending your day doing something you love it just makes sense that you would feel more confident and motivated. In a blog written by D.P. Noe, it explains that “Confidence is a necessary component of anyone looking for success in their career.” Employers look for candidates who are passionate about the opportunity and motivated to succeed every day. Having a career you love also leads to happiness. If you hate your job, you most likely also bring some of that unhappiness home with you. This can lead to unhappiness in other parts of your life as well. Basically, the bottom line is that finding confidence, motivation, and happiness in your career will benefit other aspects of your life as well.

You deserve it.

Last, but definitely not least, you should pursue a career you love because you deserve it. Don’t sell yourself short. No one deserves to spend their day doing something they don’t enjoy. If you hate what you do then you’re likely to lack fulfillment in your career. You’ll constantly watch the clock and count down the hours until it’s time to go home. Time is valuable, and it makes no sense to waste yours thinking about everything else you would rather be doing than your job. In order to be sure you end up with a career you love, really assess your passions and what you enjoy doing most. Figure out how your skills can be applied to that passion and make a career out of it.

Article by Kaity Norcross

 

How Call Center Supervisors Can Create Dialogue With Millennial Agents

Working and communicating with almost anyone can have its challenges in the contact center.

By educationworkadmin
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Working and communicating with almost anyone can have its challenges in the contact center. As a millennial with the responsibility of supervising a group of twenty or so millennials from the same decade, the challenge increases tremendously.

My journey to being a better supervisor for millennials showed me there is one common theme millennials appreciate: honesty. If you communicate with authenticity and transparency with millennials, you are almost sure to receive the same in return. This has been a large part of my success at Education at Work, a non-profit contact center in Cincinnati, Ohio, where we help millennials learn customer service skills and graduate with less debt.

Understanding what drives and motivates millennials provides a fonder consideration of their goals. Learning about my agents and their endeavors are huge factors that dictate how well my weekly one-on-one sessions go. Working together and communicating effectively not only improves performance, but also helps us meet and deliver our client’s goals.

Here are ways contact center supervisors can create thoughtful and empowering dialogue with millennial agents:

Personalize communication to meet millennials where they are.

Be relatable. This cannot be stressed enough. Millennial agents desire to feel comfortable in order to communicate with their superiors. Set the tone for feedback by truly getting to know your agents and being a “hoarder” of relevant details. When you remember aspects of your agents’ lives or goals, it helps show you support their endeavors and have gratitude for their presence. Remembering details also create a sense of accountability for you and agents to refer to when setting new goals or evaluating performance.

Take the “scary” out of supervisor.

Contact centers are notoriously known to have tense environments and supervisor styles equivalent to Mr. Scrooge. When interacting with millennials, understand the overly authoritative figure will demotivate them from performing their best. Take the scary out of supervisor and be an advocate and advisor to bring millennial agents towards their best work. Assess agents’ strengths and consistently find ways to celebrate their victories – no matter if they are small improvements or major metric scores. Create dialogue that helps agents move toward professional development by focusing only not only on the present state of their performance, but also concentrating on future successes.

Use scores and metrics to motivate instead of intimidate.

Agents’ scores and metrics are huge drivers and indicators of how well a contact center is flourishing. Ensure that millennial agents see the bigger picture when it comes to scores – it will help them understand the pains of verification, following a script, and showing empathy. Help agents create personal goals based off of metrics to help personalize their work experience and set the framework for goal-setting. In addition, candidly offer client feedback to help garner improvements and display team accomplishments.

Article by Brad Drew – For original link, click here

10 Ways To Solve A Problem

Whenever you have a problem, most of the time you don’t know what the heck is going on.

By educationworkadmin
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  1. Find and understand the problem: Whenever you have a problem, most of the time you don’t know what the heck is going on… until you are slapped in the face and told something is wrong.  When that happens, stop and think: where did things go wrong and why are things going wrong? I often ask myself these questions before I freak out.
  2. The level of the problem: Throughout my travels around the world (lol), I have found out that whenever I can locate the source of a problem it’s easier to gage the magnitude of the problem. Here is how you should gage it:
  • level one: I don’t care about this. Go away, problem!
  • level two: I might have to take this thing a little more seriously!!!
  • level three: It just got real.
  1. Talk about it: I bet you heard someone say something like “A problem shared is a problem solved.” The ones that said that forgot to mention to not share your problem with dummies. If the person you’re sharing your problem with freaks out, you will freak out and then you both look foolish. So make sure you share your problem with someone smart and sound-minded.
  2. Should the police intervene? If you got beat up, mugged or shot, please stop reading this and call 911 immediately! Make sure they come with an ambulance.
  3. Start reflecting on everything: How did this start? Why not your neighbor or his annoying god? What can you do to solve this? How far are you willing to go to solve this problem?

(PS: remember that killing and kidnapping is illegal)

  1. Eat a lot of ice cream: Whenever I have a problem like a crazy girlfriend, a math problem or a work related issue, I eat a lot of ice cream. Don’t judge! It helps with the nerves and allows me to get a brain freeze… okay that sounds worse than it actually is. I suggest that whenever you have a problem try to do something that is a stress reliever for you – it could be taking a walk or just listening to music. Doing something that is a stress reliever for you will allow you to relax and think more calmly for a solution to your problem.
  2. Confront your problem head on: Imagine yourself confronting your problem. For instance, a bully stole your money. What will you do? Clearly fighting is not an option unless you want a free trip to the hospital. Be the bigger person.
  3. Face your actual/ real problem: Remember, being the better person is always the best way to go and the best thing to do. It might not seem like it, but it is. I mean, would you rather get 4 or 5 of your teeth knocked out of your mouth in one punch or walk away not so proud but with all your teeth in your mouth?
  4. Did you make the right choice? How do you feel about it? It’s easy to get lost and confused but doing what is right in the end is all that really matters. Whichever way you look at it, at the end of the day you saved yourself from a trip to the hospital, saved yourself from getting fired or, if you want, you can say that you live to fight another day.
  5. After all this is done you have successfully solved the problem. Now you can focus on other issues.

Article by Jess Mayambi

 

What’s Your School Ranked?

College ranking is an important step in determining what college is right for you.

By educationworkadmin
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College ranking is an important step in determining what college is right for you. We all want to go to the best college… for the right price. However, what’s the underlying value of your college? Here’s an infograph that explains the ranking and value of colleges:

For original URL: http://www.collegechoice.net/the-doe-and-college-rankings/

Article by Michael Howard

 

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