We all are selling something. Maybe you don’t realize it but you are selling something . Consultants are selling their time, candidates are trying to sell themselves, men and women constantly try to sell themselves to the other (or the same) sex. We are all marketing something, some better than the other. The moment you realize that everyone is trying to market themselves, the scale of competition automatically becomes clear. It is huge. There are a lot more people trying to market the same thing that you are trying to push and all of them are your competition.

It is scary.

To be told what whatever you did was a failure or had shortcomings is one of the worst nightmares of many people. This feeling is sometimes so strong that some people don’t even do anything that is worthy of a feedback let alone criticism. These are the sheep I talked about in my last post. (Never be a sheep). Some people still do step out of their comfort zones and try to do something that is innovative and challenges the status quo. Yet a majority of these people are afraid of reviews. Fear is one of the most powerful emotions of us humans. It at times prevails when even love and passion fail. Being criticized is one of the biggest fears many people have. Although this fear of criticism is harmful for everyone in general, it is extremely dangerous for an entrepreneur to have such fears. Young entrepreneurs and even brands need to realize that reviews and especially the bad ones are their best friends. A bad review is as good as, or even better than, any metric you might be using to determine how you are performing. Sure you can neglect the bad reviewers labeling them as naysayers and move along the path that you deem fit but that is only going to hurt in the longer run. Let me clarify here, I am not talking about negative or unfavorable response. I am talking about a proper bad review. Someone used your service/product and then took out time from their lives to write a subjective description of his (dis)satisfaction._ In the age where people assume that by not pressing the (Facebook) like button they have expressed their dissatisfaction a review is like a pot of gold._ You should be thankful if someone comes to your Facebook page and tells you how unsatisfactory your service was. So what if it is on a public forum. No one can help you improve better than a disgruntled/unhappy customer. At this point all you have to do is pay attention and work on rectifying the problem. A review by a customer can help you find out the issues which would have taken much analysis and god knows how much time for you to figure out on your own. At this point the worse thing you could do is choose to not do anything. Not only does your inactivity lose you a customer, you will also lose trust in the eyes of other customers and prospects.

Enable the process of review. Cherish the positive review. Embrace the negative review. Thank the reviewer for taking out time for you and make sure that you work on those. In this competitive world when customer loyalty is extremely expensive you just cannot afford to not act on bad reviews.

No matter how neatly it has been segregated into seconds, minutes, hours, days; time is still a relative phenomenon. It flies fast if you are doing something you like and crawls if the company is not right. Today we have completed three years of our existence as Green Apple Solutions. To start with a cliché, it seems like yesterday that I had quit my job to prepare for CAT (yeah). But maybe MBA was not meant to be. Even before appearing for the test I had formed a special bond with my colleagues from my first and last job- Naveen and Lakshdeep which was based on a single common factor – that we will never be able to realize our full potential if we keep working under someone else. We were all rebellious, in a way and wanted to be recognized for the awesome work that we did (anonymously till then). And this is how Green Apple Solutions was born. How we reached the name is a story for some other time. Maybe the universe wanted this as well. We quickly gained our initial clients (btw they still are working with us. Yes we are that good). Since then we have grown a lot, moved 2 offices, worked with many amazing clients. Every day is a challenge and every challenge is worth the effort. The journey has been made even more enjoyable by my hardcore awesome partners. Naveen is like a sea of calm and a superman of sorts. There is nothing under the sun which, in my opinion, he cannot do. He is super hardworking and he never says no. Lakshdeep is super energetic and a crazy go-getter. He is always up for almost all shenanigans I want to pull. He is a great conversationalist and an awesome speaker. At this point I am really not sure what I bring to the table but there 2 gentlemen bring enough metal to the fights. Simply stating you cannot find better partners. I am also very happy that we have been lucky enough to have worked with some very talented people. We are more of an extended family than a usual company. We would not have been where we are today without the hard work of all these extraordinary colleagues.

I am sincerely grateful to our parents who not only approved of our crazy ideas but have been with us in the thick and thin of it. No problem was ever a major problem as there were so many people to bear the burden. Thank you mom and dad (also uncle and aunty) for all your love and support. We are nothing but dirt without you.

You have to be different to be noticed. That is the rule. There is nothing remarkable or noteworthy in doing what everyone does. Everyone knows this and yet we don’t try to stand out. We try to comply with the rules and the norms of the society even if we don’t fully agree. We crave acceptance more than recognition and company more than the idea of being alone at the top. We have been told that the society functions when all agree with the same things and anyone opposing this idea would be a traitor. This makes us afraid. This makes us weak. We don’t feel comfortable thinking outside the box and we do not want to innovate if the masses don’t agree with us. The fear of standing in front of a disagreeing crowd makes us kill any idea that comes into our mind. Conformity and hunger for acceptance makes us weak. They turn us into sheep. And we are happy that ways. We have other sheep for company.

But we forget its the sheep that get sheared and slaughtered. The sheep are the prey and will be hunted soon. Only the lions rule. Those who don’t worry about fitting in. Those who can live alone with just themselves. Those who can live with the decisions that they make and accept the oath they choose. No one remembers a sheep. No one forgets a lion. It’s your choice. What do you want to be?

We like to be praised. We want our blogs to be shared, wall posts to be liked and tweets to be retweeted. To fulfil this desire we start to create content which we think would be liked by others. Sometimes it works but mostly it doesn’t. It doesn’t work because our writing stops representing us. According to Seth Godin, the marketing guru, a marketer has to firmly believe in the story he is telling to sell his product. We are all marketers trying to sell our posts and jokes to gain likes, shares and tweets. It is hard to believe a story which you made up just for others. You do not live it and it does not represent you. And when it doesn’t represent you your readers will know. At that point the quality of the post will not be sufficient for them to appreciate it.

David Ogilvy, the advertising legend, said never make an ad that you wouldn’t watch with you family ( I am paraphrasing here). I have a derivative of this. Never write anything you wouldn’t want to read yourself. Even if writing is your job, you can only succeed as a copywriter if you truly believe in the topics you write about.

I once read a great quote on the whiteboard at a client’s conference room – “_What cannot be measured, cannot be managed_”. Anything that needs to be managed should have at least one quantifiable aspect. If you are running a business you have your bottom line to manage and for that you need all sorts of growth numbers. The same is true for our personal lives. And yet most of us don’t think of our personal lives in the way we see our jobs and businesses. Though there are some aspects of our personal life that we do quantify and manage, like finances we do not try to quantify soft qualities like knowledge, satisfaction, expectations and a combined personal growth. Maybe it is because we think these factors cannot be measured or maybe we are ignorant of the fact that these aspects of our lives can be managed as well. In both the cases we continue to live our lives and by the time we realize that something went wrong it is too late. I feel that quantifying our lives is key step in better managing it as it helps in identifying and fixing the inefficient areas and concentrating on our strength. I follow a system of daily introspection in which at the end of the day I ask myself a set of questions and based on the response I rate how the day went. This system not only helps me in quantifying the success/failure of a day but it also motivates me to work hard as at the end of the day I have to answer to myself. Also a positive outcome mostly leads to a good night’s sleep.

When I say “a system”, I don’t mean an elaborate questionnaire with many subjective questions. That would be counter-productive. The idea is to have a set of questions that can be answered with a simple yes/no. You can keep a journal if you want (I don’t). Just to give you an idea, I will share with you the questions I ask myself. You can use the same if you want, skip a few or add your own.

I have fallen in love with brevity. With the reduced and ever decreasing attention span of an average individual not only is it required but I think it is one of the key attractive features of any form of communication. I feel that if there is something worth communicating then it must be communicated in the best possible way. It should neither be long and boring, nor should it be terse and incomplete. Some people think brevity means just using fewer words but it is not that. It means to be able to communicate the complete message in meaningful yet short way. Like a doctor’s prescription. It will always tell you everything you need to know in the shortest way possible.

When you try to shorten the communication, your focus shifts to the message. By trying to keep it short you work harder on sending the right message which gives the communication clarity and better direction. It also usually ends up in the message becoming simpler.

You have just started. Your idea is new and your startup is young. You want to run it in the “lean” mode and try to cut all costs that you possibly can. You become the HR guy to manage the existing employees and hire new ones. You are smart and good with numbers so you take up accounting too. It’s your venture after all; it makes sense for you to be doing the accounting. You take care of maintenance of the office because hiring a manager would be too expensive. You try to do everything when you are in the startup mode.

Well you shouldn’t.

Email marketing is one of the oldest and yet most effective ways of generating business online. It is extremely cheap compared to any kind of advertising and if done correctly can generate a lot of revenue for you. But off lately it has lost a lot of reputation due to unscrupulous marketers spamming people to generate business. People are shying away from email marketing fearing that their domains will get blocked without actually understanding how it happens. As an internet marketer I am a big fan of email marketing and I think if done correctly it can be great source of revenue. In this post I would like to share a few don’ts which if followed will lead to an effective email marketing campaign

• Don’t SPAM : this is the first and the biggest don’t that is to be followed. Never send marketing emails to an email id which has not subscribed to your email lists. As a matter of fact, never send emails to an email id that you haven’t yourself verified. By following this you would achieve a very low bounce rate and you would never run the risk of getting your domain blocked by major email providers.

• Don’t buy lists: There are a lot of services out there that will sell you premium verified data with a guarantee of minimum bounces. Do not get tempted by this. This is still SPAM. If a lot of people in your email blast mark your email as spam, you run the risking of getting your domain blocked. Don’t buy;build.

• Don’t forget/hide the unsubscribe button: A subscriber always has the right to unsubscribe from your emails if he feels that they are of no use to him. Not only is it your responsibility to provide him the ability to subscribe but also to honor it. The damage to your brand image is beyond repair if you continue sending mails to a subscriber who has unsubscribed.

  [caption id=”attachment_536” align=”alignright” width=”240”] Poor Unsubscribe Form[/caption]

• Don’t ask an unsubscriber for his email: Many a times when I click the unsubscribe link in an email, I am taken to a web form which asks me to fill my email id. This is a strict no-no as it projects your reputation as a spammer. It also gives an impression that you might not do anything about the unsubscribe request. Always use a system which can handle unsubscribes effectively.

• Don’t try to fool the customer: A lot of unscrupulous marketers now a days add fake “report spam” link in their emails so that the customer does not report the email as spam through the official channels. Unless you are actually going to collect this data and take actions against it do not try to fool the customer just to keep your domain unblocked even when you know you were spamming.

• Don’t try to fake your identity: If you are not spamming, which you never should always send emails from an email id of the domain name that is being represented in the email.

• Don’t keep your lists dirty: Every now and then you will get bounces in even your properly and ethically built email lists. These could be anything from soft bounces due to temporary unavailability or permanent bounces due to expiry of email. In any case, always make sure that you keep your email list clean. Use a good system that can detect and handle bounces.
  If as an email marketer, no matter how big or small your list size is, you take care of these few points you will never face the wrath of email providers and will be able to enjoy the fruits of this efficient and economic online marketing channel for a long time.

Only men. She already regretted her decision. But this was the last bus. There was no other mode of transport. No metro. No Auto. She sat near to the door. Her hand was in her purse clutching her pepper spray. It was a 25 mins ride. Her stop arrived and she got off.

Nothing happened.