Dr. Daryl D. Green

Good Content in a Digital World

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With this quick pace of technology and increasing access to information, the world is a land of opportunities for those who have the knowledge. An individual in the 21st century has the opportunities to influence millions of people across the globe. Unfortunately, many do not know how to do it. With the rapid fire of social media interaction and engagement, businesses need to know how to write great content in order to sustain success. The internet has made it necessary for online platforms to keep fresh content or customers will eventually dismiss them from relevancy. You don’t think content matters? Below are some digital statistics to observe:

• 92% of online consumers don’t intend to buy during a first visit
• Nearly half of consumers won’t spend time with branded content if it’s not relevant to their interests
• 46% of marketers say photography is critical to their current marketing and storytelling strategies
• 88% of consumers say that, personally, relevant content improves how they feel about a brand
• 60% of consumers feel more positive about a company after reading their custom content

With that said, customers will not come to your website or your social platforms if your content (i.e., articles, videos, or podcasts) aren’t any good. Therefore, individuals need to be strategic about their content.

Businesses need to write good content that matters to their constituency. With that said, organizations should think in the best interest of its target audience. When I wrote my first book My Cup Runneth Over: Setting Goals for Single Parents and Working Couples, my goal was to assist working families with the issues of how to balance work and family. I had a lot of experience with this subject being a working parent.

I wrote lots of content on this subject and got plenty of attention from the media. People were amazed at my publishing accomplishments. It changed my life. I was asked to speak at events. Co-workers wanted my advice. The audience wanted to listen to my messages. Since that time, I have given insights to thousands of people.

This new market success was due primarily because my content was focused on a critical problem that appealed to a specific group of people. In fact, becoming an author is one of the quickest ways to be recognized as an expert in a field or industry. Sadly, many businesses undervalue a well-written piece.

Content marketing allows businesses to develop content relevant to their audience. Content marketing can be defined as “a form of non-traditional marketing communications whereby a brand produces or designs contents in various forms (e.g., text, images, video, audio) and disseminates that content to targeted audiences or customers.”

Today’s marketers understand that good content is essential for their brand awareness and market sustainability. In fact, marketers like to utilize content marketing in social media platforms for the following reasons: (a) High level of control over content design; (b) Low cost of content dissemination; (c) Increased opportunities for audience interactivity and engagement; and (d) Increased opportunities for real-time feedback.

Jeff Larson and Stuart Draper, authors of Digital Marketing Essentials, argue that customers do take notice of content on organizations’ websites. They explain, “For good or ill, consumers are talking online about companies’ brands. Online review sites, directories, social media sites, Wikipedia, blogs, and forums all allow users to express their opinions about a brand… This content can appear in so many places online that it is impossible to monitor this conversation by visiting each site and sifting through the billions of comments left by web users.”

Given the high risk of failure, businesses should not be careless in creating content for their customers. If individuals do not have the talent nor the foresight for developing content, they should consider to just contract this talent out. Even when businesses have the necessary skill set, they must make sure their content is effective and efficient.

Video (Click Here)

In the book Digital Minds: 12 Things Every Business Needs to Know About Digital Marketing, the authors stress the importance of good content: “Customers are online and looking for products, services, and solutions to their problems. It’s up to you to grab customers first (and make no mistake – the competition from other companies trying to do just that is huge.” The authors offer the following steps to create great content for customers:

• Focus on your specific target audience.
• Solve the problems that your customers care about.
• Become a trusted source to address their problems.
• Write fresh content.
• Make it easy for them to shop with you.

With the high stakes for today’s businesses, organizations can stand out in the crowd with good content on all of their social media platforms. Adding content marketing into a seller’s arsenal of marketing tools can provide relevant, useful content to customers. This article demonstrated that good content is essential in a digital world.

Today’s marketers are constantly developing content to meet the needs of their constituents. If companies do not take the development of good content seriously, they will not be able to compete with a more demanding and engaged customer base. Pray that it is not too late.

© 2018 by D. D. Green

Activate An Effective Personal Brand

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Ben was stuck in his dead-end job as a waiter at the local restaurant in town. By day, he was known as the nicest, more courteous server in the area. By night, Ben attended a local college with the ambition of starting his own social media serves. Ben understood stereotypes and bias. People had the tenacity to put individuals in pigeon holes with their biases. Therefore, Ben started building his online personality with writing insightful articles about social media and running a video blog. He wrote an e-book about social media that received Internet acclaim.

He quietly started a radio talk show. With his persistence, Ben started seeing his effort pay. The restaurant was packed with a bus of college students headed to a convention. Ben was helping out the servers with the big crowd. Suddenly, there was a big commotion in the crowd that involved Ben. Another server came to get the owner about this situation. The owner was afraid that Ben had done something wrong. He didn’t. These college students from out of town were overwhelmed with excitement in meeting the online celebrity “Ben the eWriter.” His online presence had repositioned his personal brand. 

With the impact of the Internet and social media platforms, like Facebook, working professionals can reenergize or rebrand themselves in a matter of minutes. In fact, individuals can actually reposition themselves into new careers with the right strategies.  In today’s job market, people need to understand the concepts of personal branding and how to develop their own personal strategy for employment.  In this discussion, we will examine the concept of personal branding. Individuals will learn how to reenergize yourself and make gain more influence in the process. 

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Know Your Worth: Compensation Negotiation

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As I contemplated my next career move, I knew it was important to know my worth in the market. In a sense, the concept was foreign to me since I had worked 27 years in engineering for the public sector. In securing that job, the only thing that was negotiated was the time of employment.

My desire to have a second career outside of engineering into academia drove me to get meaningful experience as an adjunct professor. Of course, I felt my core competencies were strong as a professor. I had about ten years in academics working part-time. Yet, I also knew that obtaining a full-time tenure track would be highly competitive due to the limited amount of these treasured positions and the number of applicants. 

I personally knew of qualified business professors who could not obtain a full-time faculty position. To increase my marketability, I continued to secure new skill sets and to follow market trends. One of the biggest trends working for me was that many institutions were looking for new faculty who had demonstrated working experience.

Yet, in order to determine my worth, I had to actively apply for academic positions and go through the interview process. With every interview, each prospective employer provided me with a missing piece of my market worth. However, I got this insight by being assertive by asking meaningful questions like “what part of my application package attracted you to me as a candidate.”  

This transparency was contagious. One dean even told me my prospective rank (i.e. salary) in his organization. All of these pieces were critical in helping me negotiate my final position as a full-time faculty because I understood my worth in the marketplace.

In today’s competitive environment, working professionals need to know their worth so that they can be compensated appropriately and they can market themselves toward better jobs. In fact, professionals need to know how to market themselves and promote their personal brand in order to maintain their market worth. Downsizing and layoffs are a way of life for most U.S. businesses.

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The Future of Digital Marketing – Small Business Help

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Today’s customers can purchase a variety of items online with minimum effort. Given this scenario, brick and mortar companies are fighting to stay alive with the fierce internet competition. According to a 2017 survey conducted by Square and Mercury Analytics looking at 1,164 U.S. business owners, the following observations were made:

  • 96% of Americans with internet access have made an online purchase in their life, 80% in the past month alone.
  • 51% of Americans prefer to shop online.
  • 67% of Millennials and 56% of Gen Xers prefer to shop online rather than in-store.
  • Millennials and Gen Xers spend nearly 50% as much time shopping online each week (six hours) than their older counterparts (four hours).
  • 51% of seniors have shopped on marketplaces, 66% at large retailer sites, 30% on web stores or independent boutiques, and 44% at category-specific online stores.

Marketing professionals understand the importance of the internet and how to effectively leverage this power. According to Socialmedia.com, 90% of marketers use social media for their businesses. Sadly, many small businesses do not recognize this fact. Many businesses had opted to bury their heads in the sand in hopes that this ‘internet thing’ will go away. It hadn’t!

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Disruptive Change: How Leaders Navigate Uncertainty

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As companies continue to wage war with global competition and attempt to figure out their next steps due to advanced technologies, organizations are dealing with unpredictable change that is disruptive. In fact, disruptive change is impacting everyone in all walks of life, from Wall Street to entertainment. The casualties of disruptive change are evident.

In a statement to the Associated Press about joining a Silicon Valley boardroom, Serena Williams said, “I feel like diversity is something I speak to. Change is always happening. Change is always building. What is important to me is to be at the forefront of change and to make it easier for the next person.”   we will examine disruptive change and what leaders can do to navigate the resulting uncertainties.

Disruptive change is wrecking traditional thinking of industries and institutions. Long-standing organizations have long attempted to maintain the status quo, allowing flagship institutions like Harvard University and Princeton lead the pack. Non-traditional institutions, like the University of Phoenix, were frowned upon by academics because it was a for-profit university growing by using non-traditional models like online learning.

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New Product Development Strategies

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With the aftermath of globalization, companies are carefully thinking about the best ways to extend their product and service offering. Thus, product development strategy is critical for their success. Yet, many companies are in defensive mode and merely want to maintain the position in the market place.

However, staying in a holding position is a definite way for companies to be left behind. Innovative thinking that allows for product/service growth is a too sure way for sustainable success. In today’s discussion, we will explore the importance of product development for the growth of businesses, especially in a competitive market.

Launching into new product offerings is not easy. According to one market research, approximately 75% of consumer-packaged goods and retail products fail to earn even $7.5 million during their first year.[1] Harvard Business School Professor, Clayton Christensen, who is the world’s foremost authority on disruptive innovation, suggests that the failure rate of new products may actually be as high as 95%. Product failure rates relate to the number of products that are launched commercially but fail. Continue reading →

Cultural Intelligence: How Leaders Can Navigate the Racial Divide in America

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Racial Divide-2017

In June of 1995, the Jury in the OJ Simpson trial announced a verdict of not guilty. The aftermath of dismal reactions highlighted significant conflicts and diverging views in America’s workplaces. In fact, white and black people had a different perspective on the OJ Simpson Trial and life in general. Eighty-three percent of whites stated that Simpson was “definitely” or “probably” guilty while only fifty-seven percent of blacks agreed with this assessment. Rather than carefully assessing one’s own viewpoint when evaluating a different culture, most individuals make assumptions about other cultures definitely.

Sadly, we still have not learned this lesson in the United States. The last several days have been very hectic as I try to answer students’ questions and address my own concerns about a recent Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary gaff that has provided another headwind for others sharing the Good News. Let me say that we have all done foolish things and have suffered the consequences. Most of us have had to debase the impacts of this photo on our popular culture to our students and others.

In the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth (TX), five seminary professors, including the dean of the School of Preaching, put on gangster-style clothing (perhaps dressing like urban rappers), flashing their gold chains and one holding a handgun. Written above the photo were the words “Notorious S.O.P,” which was a reference to the seminary’s School of Preaching and to the black rapper, Notorious B.I.G.

the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary-photo

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The Power of Gratitude for Professionals

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I watched people get on and off the elevator at work. It was crowded with working professionals. Being a young employee, I and the janitor were strategically located in the back of the elevator. I greeted the janitor since I routinely would speak to all employees, regardless of their pecking order in the organization. Other professionals ignored this janitor in the elevator as if his existence didn’t matter. When the janitor or other service folks would do something for me, I would say ‘thank you.’ Well, I’ve done this act of gratitude as part of my learning from my parents who were hardworking class people. My mother would tell us (children): “You can’t go wrong doing good for others.” I believed her.

Yet, we live in a selfish world where the needs for themselves supersede the needs of others, with gratitude and thanks being a rare commodity in today’s working culture. When I talk with my college students, I attempt to show them how the little things like ‘thank you’ cards to guest speakers in class is more than a cute idea. For me, gratitude is a connection with humanity. Gratitude shows that you care. In fact, those individuals that master this act of kindness will have a competitor advantage over those who do not practice this virtue. Let’s examine the concept of gratitude for today’s working professionals in society.

Professionals must overcome a world of selfishness in order to appreciate gratitude. Employees face a gloomy landscape before them with global competition reducing their standard of life and wages stagnant. People aren’t feeling thankful and grateful to be moving backward to the standard of living that their own parents had. Statistics support this ingratitude emerging before us. According to a 2014 Conference Board Job Satisfaction survey, the majority (52%) of US workers are not satisfied with their jobs. In 2010, worker dissatisfaction was at an all-time low of 43%.

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Marketing students (MKTG 3303) take photo with Enterprise Manager Jackie Lovejoy. The students thanked her.

Columnist Susan Adams has been tracking this unhappiness trend: “What worries workers most: layoffs. Even though hiring has picked up, only 46.6% of employees say they feel satisfied with their job security, compared to 48.5% before the recession.” Working professionals have many stressors to consider including layoffs, family issues, health care cost, career advancements, and wage compensation. How in the world can gratitude be at the top of their list for developing?

Gratitude is an invaluable trait in a world built of self-promotion and personal gratification. President John F. Kennedy said, “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” Management expert Brian Tracy further expounded on this concept of gratitude: “Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step towards achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.”

Gratitude can be defined as ‘the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.” Some people will argue that gratitude is rooted in biblical truths and communal relationships in society. From a faith perspective, gratitude is not taking. It is about giving to others despite how others have treated you.

II Corinthians 9:11 reads “You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.” Even if you don’t possess a religious bone in your body, showing individuals appreciation who do good for you can’t be foreign. Yet, the concept of gratitude is difficult to implement in the face of trials and tribulations in life. If people are able to look at others who are in a worse situation and appreciate the fact that they are better off, it is possible for gratitude to grow in people. Given the fact that gratitude is connected to relationships, words like gratitude, giving, and thanks are themes of helping and appreciating others in life.

Unfortunately, developing gratitude in working professionals is a difficult task. Many organizations are built on power structures that reward takers and those individuals who are great at putting situations at their own advantage. Most of who are only vaguely interested in recognizing or thanking others if doing these actions will benefit them professionally.

Some business-oriented individuals may argue that this gratitude characteristic is a weakness in a corporate rat race and that takers are at the advantage. In contrast, Dr. Adam Grant, author of Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drive Our Success, explains the different mentality of givers and takers in the workforce: “Takers have distinctive signature: they like to get more than they give. They tilt reciprocity in their own favor, putting their own interest ahead of other’s needs…If you are a giver, you might use a different cost-benefit analysis; you help whenever the benefits to others exceed personal cost.”

Dr. Grant’s research further demonstrated that givers are more successful in the long-run. Helping others provide leverage and influence in life. Givers are better at giving than takers because of their genuineness in striving to be generous in their time, energy, skills, knowledge, and connections to benefit others. How do I grow my gratitude in my life? That’s a great question to consider.

Unless it’s Thanksgiving or a special occasion, most professionals will not consider the merits of gratitude in helping them in life. This article demonstrated that employees are unhappy in the workplace and face many hardships in life that causes them to look inside themselves instead of helping others. Gratitude is a soft skill that has a positive effect on others.

Even celebrities like Marilyn Monroe realized the importance of gratitude: “When you have a good friend that really cares for you and tries to stick in there with you, you treat them like nothing. Learn to be a good friend because one day you’re gonna look up and say I lost a good friend…Always remember to smile and look up at what you got in life.” Life is a like a blade of grass that passes with time. Gratitude is something that you can use for a lifetime. Don’t wait until it’s too late.

© 2016 by Daryl D. Green

How Small Businesses Can Deal With Competition

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handshakes-business

Jay Cain was a promising engineering student at Georgia Tech. Coming into his sophomore year, Jay was ranked in the top of his engineering class. Having two high successful parents who were engineers themselves didn’t hurt his image among his peers. However, Jay was not happy with his projection in life. His passion was deejaying in front of an audience.  He had garnered a reputation in his high school and his local community for being a good talent in music. He even found himself deejaying parties in college while he was preparing for engineering exams and assignments. 

He told his parents several times he was thinking about leaving school in order to start his business full-time deejay. His parents dismissed the thought because they felt it was not realistic or practical given his abilities in engineering.  When the semester started at Georgia Tech, the school was missing one bright talented student…Jay Cain.  Leaving Georgia, Jay went to New York to make it big. Using money he saved, Jay found himself roomed with three unfamiliar roommates where the rent was cheap.  Jay found that working as a deejay was difficult because of the large competition among established deejays in the area.  Yet, Jay wasn’t about to give up with his dream. He just couldn’t go back to his parents or college.  Jay sat by himself trying to figure out how to meet the competition.

 As many millenniums start flooding the employment landscape, young adults are considering starting their own businesses.  Corporate downsizing and layoffs have thrust many individuals into a tough employment market while other employed workers who are unsatisfied with their jobs plot to fix a plausible exit strategy which will land them into their ideal job.

Sadly, many people run with these well intended ideas about starting a business with little insight into how to implement their plan so that the idea can be successful.  Most folks don’t realize that there is nothing new under the sun and found someone else who is doing what they set out to do. In fact, some people find themselves in a highly competitive environment with little or no plan for navigating this climate. In this issue, we will  examine the concepts of competition for small businesses fighting in global environments. Individuals will learn more about starting a business with competitive environment. Continue reading →

Humility in Leadership: The MIT Principle

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I just sat and listened. Bob, the director, talks about how the universities wanted to give back to the society. In fact, this prestigious university opened its doors to young engineering students who were a part of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE). Faculty and staff were all communicating that the impossible was possible. The place was the highly regarded Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory. Everyone goes by their first names, doctorate or not. Egos are checked at the door (well everyone is brilliant).

One MIT staff member explains this reality, “Everyone here is smart.” If someone comes in cocky, there is someone who is smarter than him in another area. That keeps people ‘in check’. I was a little stunned. I had imagined an MIT culture where innovative mavericks were left to their own devices independent of others to produce incredible solutions for society. Yet, sharing, service, and working together appeared to carry a lot of weigh on campus.

Many people feel that leadership is about being the brightest and sharpest ‘cat on the block.’ At times, I have worked with some of the most brilliant people in the world, having federal oversight of two national laboratories in my career. This article examines the concepts of humility in today’s leaders. Additionally, the MIT Principle is developed so that all leaders understand that even high achievers need a sense of humility to work in high performing organization.

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Even brilliant students at MIT need humility in order to be successful on campus. The MIT Principle, as I dubbed, can be an important lesson to learn. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a special place filled with innovators and overachievers. MIT is a private institution which was founded in 1861.1 In 2016, MIT was ranked 7th best university in the nation in the 2016 edition of Best Colleges is National Universities.

The school’s mascot is a beaver, which MIT chose because of its “remarkable engineering and mechanical skill and its habits of industry.” High achievers from across the nation flock to MIT to gain great tutorage in their disciplines and make their market on society with their ‘geniusness.’ MIT boasts in highly regarded programs in engineering, management, and sciences. Additionally, research expenditures generally exceed $650 million each year. 2

In MIT culture, students are expected to be leaders in their respective fields and problem solvers with new novel ideas. Yet, collaboration is a high principle at MIT. In fact, sharing and service are part of this culture. Students, faculty, and support institutions are expected to work together for a common good. Given this scenario, each student must find a valuable contribution that he/she can make to the student project, teams, and industry collaborations. Even the most brilliant individual at MIT must apply some humility in being successful because they must submit to the good of the organization instead of their own selfish ambitions. The MIT Principle states that in order to achieve overall success for the organization or team, individuals at some point will have to sacrifice their own personal goals for the organization.

Dr. Green’s Visit to MIT (Animoto video) – Click Here

Humility is a character trait that will serve leaders well in a knowledge-based economy. Humility can be defined as ‘a modest or low view of one’s own importance.’ When one thinks about humility, one of the first adjectives that come to mind is humble or humbleness. Some ideas come to mind about a humble individual; not proud or arrogant. If you are a sport fan, you have probably seen star athletes that ‘show boat’ and bring attention to themselves that they are great.

Certainly, some of the greatest like Muhammad Ali used this attitude to build his own confidence. Ali noted, “At home I am a nice guy; but I don’t want the world to know. Humble people, I’ve found, don’t get very far.” Humility often requires a person to defer or submit to other people.

Jonathan Edwards, a Puritan theologian in the 18th century, examined the matter of humility in human existence; he defined a humble man as one who is sensitive to his natural distance from God.3 Thus, man has a dependency on God that shows humans their insufficiency of their own wisdom and power. Edwards explained: “Some persons are always ready to level those above them down to themselves, while they are never willing to level those below them up to their own position. But he that is under the influence of true humility will avoid both these extremes.

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On the one hand, he will be willing that all should rise just so far as their diligence and worth of character entitled to them; and on the other hand, he will be willing that his superiors should be known and acknowledged in their place, and have rendered to them all the honors that are due to them.” Leaders are no exception. Leadership guru, John Maxwell notes, “A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit.” The following are ways that leaders can cultivate a humble spirit:

* Have a faith that supersedes your wisdom.
* Learn lessons from each defeat, dejection, and heartache in which you have no control and are forced to humility.
* Respect others regardless of their position and title in your organization.
* Seek wise counsel from folks you trust and who have an interest in your success.
* Learn how to listen to others.

As organizations research ways to be more effective and productive, leaders explore how they can navigate uncertainty. Leaders can start by applying some humility in the manner that they relate to their employees, managers, and other stakeholders. Like MIT, individuals often need to control their own personal ambitions in light of the organization. If organizations are willing and capable to infuse their organizations with a good sense of humility, they will be infusing their organizations with a healthy trait that will serve them well in the current climate of uncertainty. I pray that it’s not too late for them!

© 2016 by Daryl D. Green

Sources

“Massachusetts Institute of Technology” by Colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com

“Jonathan Edwards” by Theopedia.com