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OK... SO GUYS . TIME IS UP. TIME IS FOR SOME DISCUSSIONS .TIME IS FORE SOME GREAT FACTS THAT U MUST KNOW, I MUST KNOW, ALL MUST KNOW..

SO AS I SAID , I WILL BE STARTING MY NEW SESSION FROM THE ENTREPRENEURSHIP BASICS AND MANAGEMENT BASICS. I WILL TELL U HOW U CAN CHANGE UR MINDSET TOWARDS THE CORPORATE WORLD..  people... see , the CORPORATE WORLD IS THE MOST EXCITING FIELD U WILL EVER HAVE. WE COME TOGETHER WITH AN IDEA, CONVERT THESE IDEAS INTO PROCESS AND WE MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE TO LIVE IN.. SO HOPE U GUYS WILL ENJOY THE SESSION..THE SUBTOPIC IS INTRODUCTION SO.. RELAX, EAT WHATEVER U WANT,  DO ANYTHING U WANT BUT IT SHOULD BE CREATIVE AND POSSIBLE...TILL THEN STAY ACTIVE ,  STAY STRONG.

STARTING 20TH AUGUST 2014
TIME: 4: 30

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The Psychological Price of Entrepreneurship......do not ignore this story guyss

No one said building a company was easy. But it's time to be honest about how brutal it really is--and the price so many founders secretly pay...

lets do this..

This article won an award in the Magazine Personal Service category in the 2014 Annual Awards Contest of the Deadline Club, the New York City chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

By all counts and measures, Bradley Smith is an unequivocal business success. He's CEO of Rescue One FINANCIAl, an Irvine, California-based financial services company that had sales of nearly $32 million last year. Smith's company has grown some 1,400 percent in the last three years, landing it at No. 310 on this year's Inc. 500. So you might never guess that just five years ago, Smith was on the brink of financial ruin--and mental collapse.

Back in 2008, Smith was working long hours counseling nervous clients about getting out of debt. But his calm demeanor masked a secret: He shared their fears. Like them, Smith was sinking deeper and deeper into debt. He had driven himself far into the red starting--of all things--a debt-settlement company. "I was hearing how depressed and strung out my clients were, but in the back of my mind I was thinking to myself, I've got twice as much debt as you do," Smith recalls.

He had cashed in his 401(k) and maxed out a $60,000 line of credit. He had sold the Rolex he bought with his first-ever paycheck during an earlier career as a stockbroker. And he had humbled himself before his father--the man who raised him on maxims such as "MONEY doesn't grow on trees" and "never do business with family"--by asking for $10,000, which he received at 5 percent interest after signing a promissory note.

Smith projected optimism to his co-founders and 10 employees, but his nerves were shot. "My wife and I would share a bottle of $5 wine for dinner and just kind of look at each other," Smith says. "We knew we were close to the edge." Then the pressure got worse: The couple learned they were expecting their first child. "There were sleepless nights, staring at the ceiling," Smith recalls. "I'd wake up at 4 in the morning with my mind racing, thinking about this and that, not being able to shut it off, wondering, When is this thing going to turn?" After eight months of constant anxiety, Smith's company finally began making money.

Successful entrepreneurs achieve hero status in our culture. We idolize the Mark Zuckerbergs and the Elon Musks. And we celebrate the blazingly fast growth of the Inc. 500 companies. But many of those entrepreneurs, like Smith, harbor secret demons: Before they made it big, they struggled through moments of near-debilitating anxiety and despair--times when it seemed everything might crumble.

  "It's like a man riding a lion. People think, 'This guy's brave.' And he's thinking, 'How the hell did I get on a lion, and how do I keep from getting eaten?"

Until recently, admitting such sentiments was taboo. Rather than showing vulnerability, business leaders have practiced what social psychiatrists call impression management--also known as "fake it till you make it." Toby Thomas, CEO of EnSite Solutions (No. 188 on the Inc. 500), explains the phenomenon with his favorite analogy: a man riding a lion. "People look at him and think, This guy's really got it together! He's brave!" says Thomas. "And the man riding the lion is thinking, How the hell did I get on a lion, and how do I keep from getting eaten?"

Not everyone who walks through darkness makes it out. In January, well-known founder Jody Sherman, 47, of the e-commerce site Ecomom took his own life. His death shook the start-up community. It also reignited a discussion about entrepreneurship and mental health that began two years earlier after the suicide of Ilya Zhitomirskiy, the 22-year-old co-founder of Diaspora, a social networking site.

Lately, more entrepreneurs have begun speaking out about their internal struggles in an attempt to combat the stigma on depression and anxiety that makes it hard for sufferers to seek help. In a deeply personal post called "When Death Feels Like a Good Option," Ben Huh, the CEO of the Cheezburger Network humor websites, wrote about his suicidal thoughts following a failed start-up in 2001. Sean Percival, a former MySpace vice president and co-founder of the children's clothing start-up Wittlebee, penned a piece called "When It's Not All Good, Ask for Help" on his website. "I was to the edge and back a few times this past year with my business and own depression," he wrote. "If you're about to lose it, please contact me." (Percival now urges distressed entrepreneurs to seek professional help: Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.)

Brad Feld, a managing director of the Foundry Group, started blogging in October about his latest episode of depression. The problem wasn't new--the prominent venture capitalist had struggled with mood disorders throughout his adult life--and he didn't expect much of a response. But then came the emails. Hundreds of them. Many were from entrepreneurs who had also wrestled with anxiety and despair. (For more of Feld's thoughts on depression, see his column, "Surviving the Dark Nights of the Soul," in Inc.'s July/August issue.)"If you saw the list of names, it would surprise you a great deal," says Feld. "They are very successful people, very visible, very charismatic--yet they've struggled with this silently. There's a sense that they can't talk about it, that it's a weakness or a shame or something. They feel like they're hiding, which makes the whole thing worse."

If you run a business, that probably all sounds familiar. It's a stressful job that can create emotional turbulence. For starters, there's the high risk of failure. Three out of four venture-backed start-ups fail, according to research by Shikhar Ghosh, a Harvard Business School lecturer. Ghosh also found that more than 95 percent of start-ups fall short of their initial projections.

Entrepreneurs often juggle many roles and face countless setbacks--lost customers, disputes with partners, increased competition, staffing problems--all while struggling to make payroll. "There are traumatic events all the way along the line," says psychiatrist and former entrepreneur Michael A. Freeman, who is researching mental health and entrepreneurship.

Complicating matters, new entrepreneurs often make themselves less resilient by neglecting their health. They eat too much or too little. They don't get enough sleep. They fail to exercise. "You can get into a start-up mode, where you push yourself and abuse your body," Freeman says. "That can trigger mood vulnerability."

So it should come as little surprise that entrepreneurs experience more anxiety than employees. In the latest Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, 34 percent of entrepreneurs--4 percentage points more than other workers--reported they were worried. And 45 percent of entrepreneurs said they were stressed, 3 percentage points more than other workers.

But it may be more than a stressful job that pushes some founders over the edge. According to researchers, many entrepreneurs share innate character traits that make them more vulnerable to mood swings. "People who are on the energetic, motivated, and creative side are both more likely to be entrepreneurial and more likely to have strong emotional states," says Freeman. Those states may include depression, despair, hopelessness, worthlessness, loss of motivation, and suicidal thinking.

Call it the downside of being up. The same passionate dispositions that drive founders heedlessly toward success can sometimes consume them. Business owners are "vulnerable to the dark side of obsession," suggest researchers from the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. They conducted interviews with founders for a study about entrepreneurial passion. The researchers found that many subjects displayed signs of clinical obsession, including strong feelings of distress and anxiety, which have "the potential to lead to impaired functioning," they wrote in a paper published in the Entrepreneurship Research Journal in April.

Reinforcing that message is John Gartner, a practicing psychologist who teaches at Johns Hopkins University Medical School. In his book The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (a Little) Craziness and (a Lot of) Success in America, Gartner argues that an often-overlooked temperament--hypomania--may be responsible for some entrepreneurs' strengths as well as their flaws.

A milder version of mania, hypomania often occurs in the relatives of manic-depressives and affects an estimated 5 percent to 10 percent of Americans. "If you're manic, you think you're Jesus," says Gartner. "If you're hypomanic, you think you're God's gift to technology INVESTING. We're talking about different levels of grandiosity but the same symptoms."

Gartner theorizes that there are so many hypomanics--and so many entrepreneurs--in the U.S. because our country's national character rose on waves of immigration. "We're a self-selected population," he says. "Immigrants have unusual ambition, energy, drive, and risk tolerance, which lets them take a chance on moving for a better opportunity. These are biologically based temperament traits. If you seed an entire continent with them, you're going to get a nation of entrepreneurs."

Though driven and innovative, hypomanics are at much higher risk for depression than the general population, notes Gartner. Failure can spark these depressive episodes, of course, but so can anything that slows a hypomanic's momentum. "They're like border collies--they have to run," says Gartner. "If you keep them inside, they chew up the furniture. They go crazy; they just pace around. That's what hypomanics do. They need to be busy, active, overworking."

"Entrepreneurs have struggled silently. There's a sense that they can't talk about it, that it's a weakness."

No matter what your psychological makeup, big setbacks in your business can knock you flat. Even experienced entrepreneurs have had the rug pulled out from under them. Mark Woeppel launched Pinnacle Strategies, a management consulting firm, in 1992. In 2009, his phone stopped ringing.

Caught in the global FINANCIAL crisis, his customers were suddenly more concerned with survival than with boosting their output. Sales plummeted 75 percent. Woeppel laid off his half-dozen employees. Before long, he had exhausted his assets: cars, jewelry, anything that could go. His supply of confidence was dwindling, too. "As CEO, you have this self-image--you're the master of the universe," he says. "Then all of a sudden, you are not."

Woeppel stopped leaving his house. Anxious and low on self-esteem, he started eating too much--and put on 50 pounds. Sometimes he sought temporary relief in an old addiction: playing the guitar. Locked in a room, he practiced solos by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Chet Atkins. "It was something I could do just for the love of doing it," he recalls. "Then there was nothing but me, the guitar, and the peace."

Through it all, he kept working to develop new services. He just hoped his company would hang on long enough to sell them. In 2010, customers started to return. Pinnacle scored its biggest-ever contract, with an aerospace manufacturer, on the basis of a white paper Woeppel had written during the downturn. Last year, Pinnacle's revenue hit $7 million. Sales are up more than 5,000 percent since 2009, earning the company a spot at No. 57 on this year's Inc. 500.

Woeppel says he's more resilient now, tempered by tough times. "I used to be like, 'My work is me,' " he says. "Then you fail. And you find out that your kids still love you. Your wife still loves you. Your dog still loves you."

 But for many entrepreneurs, the battle wounds never fully heal. That was the case for John Pope, CEO of WellDog, a Laramie, Wyoming-based energy technology firm. On Dec. 11, 2002, Pope had exactly $8.42 in the bank. He was 90 days late on his car payment. He was 75 days behind on the mortgage. The IRS had filed a lien against him. His home phone, cell phone, and cable TV had all been turned off. In less than a week, the natural-gas company was scheduled to suspend service to the house he shared with his wife and daughters. Then there would be no heat. His company was expecting a wire transfer from the oil company Shell, a strategic investor, after months of negotiations had ended with a signed 380-page contract. So Pope waited.

The wire arrived the next day. Pope--along with his company--was saved. Afterward, he made a list of all the ways in which he had financially overreached. "I'm going to remember this," he recalls thinking. "It's the farthest I'm willing to go."

Since then, WellDog has taken off: In the past three years, sales grew more than 3,700 percent, to $8 million, making the company No. 89 on the Inc. 500. But emotional residue from the years of tumult still lingers. "There's always that feeling of being overextended, of never being able to relax," says Pope. "You end up with a serious confidence problem. You feel like every time you build up security, something happens to take it away."

Pope sometimes catches himself emotionally overreacting to small things. It's a behavior pattern that reminds him of posttraumatic stress disorder. "Something happens, and you freak out about it," he says. "But the scale of the problem is a lot less than the scale of your emotional reaction. That just comes with the scar tissue of going through these things."

"If you're manic, you think you're Jesus. If you're hypomanic, you think you're God's gift to technology INVESTING."

John Gartner

Though launching a company will always be a wild ride, full of ups and downs, there are things entrepreneurs can do to help keep their lives from spiraling out of control, say experts. Most important, make time for your loved ones, suggests Freeman. "Don't let your business squeeze out your connections with human beings," he says. When it comes to fighting off depression, relationships with friends and family can be powerful weapons. And don't be afraid to ask for help--see a mental health professional if you are experiencing symptoms of significant anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder, or depression.

Freeman also advises that entrepreneurs limit their financial exposure. When it comes to assessing risk, entrepreneurs' blind spots are often big enough to drive a Mack truck through, he says. The consequences can rock not only your bank account but also your stress levels. So set a limit for how much of your own money you're prepared to INVEST. And don't let friends and family kick in more than they can afford to lose.

Cardiovascular exercise, a healthful diet, and adequate sleep all help, too. So does cultivating an identity apart from your company. "Build a life centered on the belief that self-worth is not the same as net worth," says Freeman. "Other dimensions of your life should be part of your identity." Whether you're raising a family, sitting on the board of a local charity, building model rockets in the backyard, or going swing dancing on weekends, it's important to feel successful in areas unrelated to work.

The ability to reframe failure and loss can also help leaders maintain good mental health. "Instead of telling yourself, 'I failed, the business failed, I'm a loser,' " says Freeman, "look at the data from a different perspective: Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Life is a constant process of trial and error. Don't exaggerate the experience."

Last, be open about your feelings--don't mask your emotions, even at the office, suggests Brad Feld. When you are willing to be emotionally honest, he says, you can connect more deeply with the people around you. "When you deny yourself and you deny what you're about, people can see through that," says Feld. "Willingness to be vulnerable is very powerful for a leader."

JESSICA BRUDER | Columnist

notification

ok...guys.. i know i m in hurry.... i have posted so much articles that i m not getting a single comment...so decided that i will start my new session when we wil have some discussions, reviews etc..

till then take care...

thank u

notification...

starting from the basics of managemrnt as well as entreprenuership , i m going to start a new session from 25th july.. it will also include the case studies , inovation in management field and reaserch....

good luck guyss... i promise u will feel great after reviewing commenting clarifying question and lots of fun games...

thank you

warren buffet

Why Warren Buffett wouldn't invest in Apple or Google

 

The Oracle of Omaha has a second rule: Don’t buy companies you don’t understand

Buffett with University of Nebraska cheerleaders Saturday. Photo: Lane Hickenbottom/Reuters

FORTUNE — Some 18,300 people — more than attended Barack Obama’s massive campaign kickoff Saturday — showed up for Berkshire Hathaway’s brk.a 0.15% annual shareholder’s meeting in Omaha yesterday. And judging from the New York Times‘ live blog, it was a lot of fun. There were cartoons and comedic skits and celebrity appearances, including Bono, Bill Gates and Debbie (“Buffett Rule“) Bosanek, his now-famous secretary.
But what made the headlines Sunday were Warren Buffett’s remarks about Apple AAPL -0.37% and Google GOOG -0.45% :

• “I would not be at all surprised to see them be worth a lot more money 10 years from now but I would not buy either one of them.”
• “I sure as hell wouldn’t short them either.”
• “We couldn’t predict what would happen to Apple 10 years ago and we can’t predict what will happen to it 10 years from now.”
• “The chances of being way wrong in IBM (IBM) are probably less, at least for us, than the chances of being way wrong in Google or Apple.”
•  “I just don’t know how to value them.”

That last remark, as Reuters points out, echoes Item No. 5 (out of 6) in Berkshire Hathaway’s Criteria for Acquisition:

(5) Simple businesses (if there’s lots of technology, we won’t understand it)

Good rule.

The 120 Most Trusted Brands

1. Sephora
2. In-N-Out Burger
3. Publix
4. Patrón
5. Trader Joe's
6. The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company
7. Panera Bread
8. Virgin America
9. Southwest Airlines
10. Apple Store
11. Whole Foods Market
12. Wynn Las Vegas
13. Bellagio
14. Nordstrom
15. Target
16. Four Seasons
17. Chipotle Mexican Grill
18. Maker's Mark
19. The Glenlivet
20. Costco Wholesale
21. T.J.Maxx
22. Ulta Beauty
23. Embassy Suites Hotels
24. Residence Inn by Marriott
25. Chick-fil-A
26. Morton's the Steakhouse
27. The James
28. The Venetian
29. Ruth's Chris Steak House
30. Tiffany & Co.
31. Courtyard by Marriott
32. Starbucks
33. St. Regis
34. Bacardi
35. Royal Caribbean International
36. Johnnie Walker
37. Tanqueray
38. Hampton Inn
39. Macy's
40. The Macallan
41. MAC Cosmetics
42. Enterprise Rent-A-Car
43. Marshalls
44. Doubletree by Hilton
45. Meijer
46. P.F. Chang's
47. Seabourn
48. IKEA
49. Captain Morgan
50. Hyatt Place
51. Subway
52. Maggiano's Little Italy
53. Five Guys Burgers and Fries
54. Grey Goose
55. Mondrian
56. The Cheesecake Factory
57. Tito's Handmade Vodka
58. Hilton Garden Inn
59. Delano
60. The Standard
61. Aveda
62. Williams-Sonoma
63. Jamba Juice
64. Sur La Table
65. Hyatt House
66. W Hotels
67. California Pizza Kitchen
68. Woodford Reserve
69. Crate and Barrel
70. MGM Grand Hotel & Casino
71. Uno Pizzeria & Grill
72. Norwegian Cruise Line
73. McCormick & Schmick's
74. JW Marriott
75. Cracker Barrel Old Country Store
76. HomeGoods
77. Mandarin Oriental
78. Hendrick's Gin
79. The Capital Grille
80. Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
81. TownePlace Suites by Marriott
82. Verizon
83. Hy-Vee
84. Glenfiddich
85. Hertz
86. Silversea Cruises
87. Houston's
88. Tequila Don Julio
89. Regent Seven Seas Cruises
90. Windstar Cruises
91. Joie de Vivre Hotels
92. Crystal Cruises
93. MGM Grand at Foxwoods Resort Casino
94. Wendy's
95. Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa
96. Zipcar
97. Cunard Line
98. Restoration Hardware
99. Rita's Italian Ice
100. Knob Creek
101. Michael Kors
102. Hilton Hotels & Resorts
103. Ketel One
104. The Original Pancake House
105. The Container Store
106. Carrabba's Italian Grill
107. Hyatt
108. Chivas Regal
109. Aria Resort & Casino
110. Princess Cruises
111. Jose Cuervo
112. White House | Black Market
113. Cost Plus World Market
114. JetBlue Airways
115. Life Time--The healthy way of life company
116. Fleming's Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar
117. Bed Bath & Beyond
118. Einstein Bros. Bagels
119. Homewood Suites by Hilton
120. Cold Stone Creamery 

Survey Methodology

On behalf of Entrepreneur Media Inc., Emotographics of Princeton, N.J., conducted e-mail surveys of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial intenders. The purpose of the surveys was to establish the distribution of customer emotional engagement with individual brands across entire markets and to form the statistical basis for ranking the brands in total and within competitive categories.
A total of 5,090 responses were generated across nine surveys that included 52 competitive subsets and produced a 98 percent confidence level, plus or minus 5 percent, an industry standard. More than 900 brands were rated in the surveys.
The categories were selected for their relevance and inclusion of entrepreneurial brands, and for their usage and familiarity by entrepreneurs.
Each question was designed to elicit an expression of emotional engagement with the brand, ranging from loyalty to passivity, ambivalence, disengagement or outright anger. Respondents were asked to rate only brands with which they had done business or about which they had a firm, informed opinion.
Respondents were also asked about influences that are essential or unessential to their commitment of loyalty toward a brand, as well as demographic and regional information.
The data were plotted to show the distribution of loyalty, market share in play, customer alienation and customer passivity by brand, and by the total market for each competitive subset. The findings were also analyzed by demographic unit, including gender, age, income and region.
The ratings considered two primary factors that determine a brand's competitiveness and prospects for growth. The first factor is the amount of loyalty a brand and its customer experience generates, the prime indicator of the amount of organic growth it can expect to be created by its current customer base. The second is the efficiency with which it generates that loyalty, weighted by the level of ambivalence, passivity and alienation its brand perception and brand experience also produces.

Entrepreneur

The 7 Most Powerful Women to Watch in 2014 

 

The Bridge-builder

A Google executive acts as liaison with the public sector

Michele Weslander Quaid

Photo © Scott Suchman

The U.S. government isn't exactly known for its efficiency or speed. But during her nine years at various national security agencies, including working with the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense, Michele Weslander Quaid acted like an entrepreneur. She shook things up by dropping archaic software and hardware and convincing teams to collaborate via web tools. Basically, she treated each agency like a startup to transform the sclerotic federal agencies for which she worked.
That chutzpah caught the attention of Google, which hired Weslander Quaid in 2011; she now serves as innovation evangelist and CTO for its public-sector division. Based in Washington, D.C., she regularly meets with agency directors to map technological paths they want to follow, and helps Google employees understand what's needed to work with public-sector clients. "A big part of my job is to translate between Silicon Valley speak and government dialect," she says. "I act as a bridge between the two cultures."

It could have been easy for Weslander Quaid simply to accept that federal agencies don't share information or collaborate on decisions, but she wouldn't. She started by convincing higher-ups at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which provides maps and pictures for military intelligence, as well as execs at the National Security Agency, which collects audio feeds, to collaborate on combined reports so that military decision-makers could better understand the data. Her efforts paid off, and she became one of the youngest people appointed a senior government executive. "I call it a wartime promotion," she says.After earning undergraduate degrees in physics and engineering science and a master's in optics, she joined a commercial company that did work for consumers, businesses and the government. But after 9/11, she was asked to join the government to help fight the war on terror.
In her later roles, Weslander Quaid pushed for an early version of cloud-based software that people could access from outside their D.C. offices. She standardized platforms across agencies and streamlined a technology-testing and procurement process that reduced time and costs--all cutting-edge ideas among the closed fiefdoms of Washington. "My goal was to reduce timelines for getting things done, and making sure decision-makers in the Pentagon and the White House got the information they needed," she says.
Her latest effort: a series of programs open to developers (not just Google's) to show them how to create products based on Google's open-source technology that best fit government agencies' needs. The idea is to show government agencies and technology startups that by working together they can enjoy a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship.
"The government is risk-averse and likes the status quo, but it needs to keep up with the pace of innovation," Weslander Quaid says. "Tech companies are there to help. My job is to help both work within and around the rules and regulations, so that the public sector gets the best technology solutions of the day, and spend less of taxpayer dollars." --Vanessa Richardson

Rana El Kaliouby, The Translator

Rana El Kaliouby

Photo © Brett Affrunti

The Translator

Facial recognition tech puts marketing to the test

Rana el Kaliouby can read your face like a book--and her insights could rewrite the rules of consumer engagement.
El Kaliouby and her MIT Media Lab colleague Rosalind Picard are the minds behind Waltham, Mass.-based startup Affectiva, whose flagship Affdex Facial Coding integrates automated facial-expression-recognition technology to measure and interpret viewers' emotional responses to brands, advertising campaigns and other digital video content. Forget focus groups, telemarketer surveys and other traditional audience research tools hamstrung by self-reporting variables: Cloud-based Affdex probes even the most subtle nonverbal cues to reveal what consumers really think about a program or product.

El Kaliouby has dedicated her career to leveraging technology to improve interpersonal communication and expression. Affectiva spun out of her research into how facial-coding technologies can ease autism spectrum disorders. "Many people with autism struggle with reading nonverbal cues and acting on them," she explains. "When you lose that ability to understand and process nonverbal cues, you're at a huge disadvantage socially.""You can understand so much about how consumers perceive a brand by analyzing their spontaneous, subconscious responses," says el Kaliouby, Affectiva's chief science officer. "If you're a content creator looking to elicit a certain emotion, we can validate that. In cases where an ad is trying to elicit humor, we can tell you if people get the jokes or not by the number of people who smile, the intensity of the smile and the timing of the smile. There are so many cases where self-reported responses get it wrong. Facial response is more accurate."
She and Picard--director of MIT Media Lab's Affective Computing Research Group--launched Affectiva as an independent company in 2009, encouraged by interest from MIT sponsors including Procter & Gamble, Google and Microsoft. "We realized there are a lot of ways we can use [Affdex]--in cars, in mobile phones and in market research," el Kaliouby says. "I remember thinking, I don't know if I want to be in business! But what sold me was the vision of our technology becoming ubiquitous. It works in all sorts of contexts."
Affectiva has since raised more than $21 million from investors including the National Science Foundation, WPP and Kleiner Perkins, and inked partnerships with brand agencies Millward Brown and InsightExpress, both of which offer Affdex to their clients. The software integrates with any standard webcam across connected laptops, tablets and smartphones, capturing consumers' expressions as they view video content. All footage is streamed for processing to the Affdex cloud server, where computer-vision and machine-learning algorithms or techniques evaluate emotional states like surprise, disgust and concentration. From there, analytics tools slice and dice the aggregated data to generate overall emotion scores, complete with near-real-time, scene-by-scene facial-data playback.
Most Affdex consumer insights are derived from paid panel participants who are given the option to share their responses or disable the webcam. About 50 percent leave the webcam running, el Kaliouby says. "The incentive is that you're getting value back," she explains. "We're optimizing your content. Maybe we're making your favorite game more engaging by tracking your emotions over time. That's a powerful value proposition."
Affectiva is taking steps to get its facial recognition tech into even more hands. This fall the firm introduced a software development kit for Apple's iOS mobile operating system, enabling third-party developers to bake Affdex features into their iPhone and iPad apps.
"People check their phones an average of 150 times a day. To us, that's an exciting opportunity to capture your emotions at each of those moments," el Kaliouby says. "Emotion-enabling apps also opens up a ton of ideas around gaming, usability and messaging. Education is another big, big place to make a difference. Our hope is the SDK will allow us to bridge the gap into a number of new markets. Emotions are core to everything we do." --Jason Ankeny

Nina Nashif, The Healer

Nina Nashif

Photo © Kevin J. Miyazaki

The Healer

A business accelerator helps advance the lagging healthcare industry

Perhaps no one understands the inefficiencies plaguing the global healthcare industry better than Nina Nashif. After more than 15 years of experience in healthcare management, Nashif believes she has found a viable solution to the sector's woes: entrepreneurs.
In 2011 she founded Healthbox, a business-accelerator platform for early-stage healthcare-technology startups, to "advance innovation in the industry and to speed the pace at which it's identified and implemented."
Large healthcare organizations traditionally innovate from the inside out--a labyrinthine process that stalls progress. Nashif believes that if these organizations become early adopters of entrepreneurial solutions, co-creation will allow for faster advancement and, ultimately, more effective patient care. Healthbox's model aims to put together an ecosystem that allows entrepreneurs to access the industry resources and knowledge they need to build their businesses.

One Healthbox portfolio startup addressing the growing patient-engagement space is 3Derm Systems in New Haven, Conn. Its low-cost platform lets users take photos of moles on their skin and send them to a dermatologist for remote monitoring and checkups."Part of the challenge is that the system is so complicated, and often as an entrepreneur you don't even know where to enter. Every hospital and healthcare organization is different, so we spend a lot of time early on in the program helping entrepreneurs find where they fit in the context of the industry, really getting down to the details of how their solution would impact the operational process within [that organization]," says Chicago-based Nashif, who spoke at the TEDMed conference last year and was named a "Young Global Leader" by the World Economic Forum. "At the same time, we're out evangelizing in the industry, talking about how to become an early adopter."
"As we move toward different payment models in the industry and the need to provide value and outcomes, and large providers are needing to take risk for the population they're managing, we need to empower patients to care for themselves … and manage health in a more effective way," Nashif says.
Since its launch, Healthbox has supported 54 health-tech companies and 134 founders through its accelerator programs in London, Boston, Chicago, Nashville, Tenn., and Jacksonville, Fla. Beyond the training and support they receive in exchange for up to 7 percent equity, all startups that participate in the 16-week program receive up to $50,000 in funding, office space and access to healthcare experts.
The companies that have completed the program have, on average, doubled their number of partnerships. They have secured some 130 pilot programs and early customer relationships and were projected to affect the lives of more than 1 million people globally in 2013.
"We're not trying to come in and disrupt the industry; we're trying to work alongside it," Nashif says. "We're going to be seeing new delivery models, new partnerships, new ways that we manage populations and risk. I'd like to see that there are more entrepreneurs at the table and new solutions being brought in, vs. just the big players. In healthcare we need to start taking more small bets instead of [looking for] the one solution that's going to solve all our problems." --Michelle Juergen

Leila Janah, The Humanitarian

Leila Janah

Photo © Eva Kolenko

The Humanitarian

A nonprofit takes on poverty by bringing digital jobs to emerging markets

These seven innovators are having a major influence on technology, healthcare and the government. Their ideas are changing the ways we do businessand addressing broader issues of national security, gender bias, world poverty and the state of the startup community at large. We've got our eye on these powerful women. You should, too.
Leila Janah didn't launch Samasource to make it rich. She did it to make a difference.
Samasource creates living-wage digital jobs for women and youths in emerging markets, including sub-Saharan Africa, southern Asia and the Caribbean. It collaborates with in-country partners to recruit prospective employees and tackle client needs such as data augmentation, digital transcription, image tagging for SEO and machine learning. On average, Samasource workers more than double their incomes after only a few months on the job, and 92 percent stay out of poverty after leaving the nonprofit.
Six years after its founding, San Francisco-based Samasource directly employs more than 4,000 people across the globe. It has generated more than $5 million in contracts from enterprises and academic institutions including Google, eBay, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Eventbrite and Stanford University, and in early 2013 announced a 400 percent increase in accounts over fiscal 2011.
"Something has to be done about extreme poverty," says Janah, Samasource's CEO. "It's an abomination that half the world's population lives on $3 to $4 a day. It's disgusting to me. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't do something about it."
Janah traces the roots of her activism to her extended family's efforts to combat poverty in India: Her great-uncle, celebrated photojournalist Sunil Janah, earned international renown for a series of images documenting the 1943 Bengal famine that claimed some 3 million lives. Leila joined the American Civil Liberties Union at age 15 and two years later earned a $10,000 scholarship that funded a volunteer stint in Ghana, where she taught English as part of the American Field Service student exchange group.
"The more time I spent in developing countries, and the more time I spent talking to poor people, I realized what they want more than anything is a good job," she says. "We spend billions on international aid annually, but we don't find ways to connect people to dignified work. I realized that if we don't think about ways to harness private capital to solve problems, we're leaving large amounts of money on the table and doing ourselves a disservice."
Samasource--the name derives from sama, the Sanskrit word for equal--took shape after Janah graduated from Harvard and worked briefly at the World Bank. While meeting clients in Mumbai, she befriended a young call-center employee who commuted each day from his home in Dharavi, the notorious slum featured in the Academy Award-winning film Slumdog Millionaire.

I wanted to create a digital work model that disintermediates the middlemen that take up all the margins.""I knew there were more people like him capable of doing quality work, but connecting poor countries to richer companies historically benefits the elite," Janah says. "That's where we had a lot of opportunity to change things.
The Samasource model leverages a proprietary micro-work platform called the SamaHub, which transforms large digital projects into a multitude of smaller tasks assigned to individual workers via the internet. Samasource carefully vets computer centers and internet cafes in each market to identify staffers and house each project. Once new hires complete a two- to four-week training program and demonstrate proficiency on trial assignments, Samasource turns them loose on client work, with SamaHub software recompiling each project and checking the work against five steps of automated quality assurance.
"We tell [clients], 'You're going to spend this money on an outsourcing company anyway--why not end poverty and save the world without spending more money than you already spend?'" Janah says. "It's critical that we convince business leaders to see the potential. We have to convince them that this model makes business sense."
Samasource has paid out more than $4 million to workers across nine countries and earned financial support from MasterCard, eBay, Cisco Foundation and the U.S. Department of State. Janah is now turning her focus closer to home--last year, she kicked off SamaUSA, a pilot program that offers an 80-hour online boot camp to community-college students in low-income areas around San Francisco and Merced, Calif., and helps them find work online.
"The theory is that if we can get community-college students an extra $1,000 or $2,000 a semester, they're more likely to graduate," Janah explains. "And even if they do drop out, they now have this other skill set. We're optimistic this is a model that has widespread application to populations across the U.S."
That optimism is the central tenet of Janah's life and work. "What propels me is conviction," she says. "It's a joy spending the majority of your time in concert with your deepest values. There's immense pleasure in doing something that comes out of your heart." --J.A.

Michelle Rowley, The Tech Teacher

Michelle Rowley

Illustration © Brett Affrunti

The Tech Teacher

Code Scouts is overturning the male-dominated programming world

Michelle Rowley knows all too well how one ill-placed string of code can cripple an entire piece of software. Then again, a single mention in the local newspaper was all it took to kick-start the biggest project of her life.
A May 2012 Willamette Week story about the lack of women in the Portland, Ore., tech scene referenced Rowley's plan to hold a Python programming workshop for new female programmers. More than 100 would-be coders expressed interest. It was the impetus Rowley needed to launch Code Scouts, a nonprofit with the potential to change the makeup of the software industry.
Computer-related employment is growing rapidly, but gender diversity is woefully behind other industries. Although women made up 51 percent of 2012's professional work force, they accounted for only a quarter of computer-industry staffing. Women make up 34 percent of web developers, 23 percent of programmers, 20 percent of software developers and 15 percent of information-security analysts. Perhaps most shocking, only 1.5 percent of open-source code--the backbone of the web--is programmed by women.

So she started hosting coding workshops for women, which caught the attention of Rick Turoczy, co-founder and general manager of the Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE). Turoczy encouraged Rowley to turn her workshops into a business, but she was adamant that her operation be nonprofit, helping underserved people like single mothers, who can afford neither the time nor the money to attend months-long software-development boot camps. Incubators like PIE generally fund for-profit startups in exchange for equity and a taste of future revenue. "But we also are very much of the mind that PIE is an experiment," Turoczy says. "Given her focus on trying to create more development talent for the Portland startup community, it seemed like a perfect fit, so we took it on."Rowley learned to code through friends and self-teaching, and once she got work as a programmer, she entered a primarily male work environment. She was often asked to represent the female perspective. "That is a weird dynamic--being the only woman in the room--and they are all staring at you because they have to," she says. "I thought, I wonder how the dynamics would change if we could get more women involved."
In July 2012, PIE granted Rowley $18,000 to launch Code Scouts. Armed with a shoestring budget and an army of volunteers, the startup has pulled together a welcoming and accessible learning community for women, with 110 students (and a waiting list) and 30 mentors. Students work through projects such as building simple software like web scrapers and chat bots; they are also paired with mentors who evaluate completed projects and advise on career paths. Some even receive professional experience by interning with partner companies.
As Code Scouts wraps up its first year, word has spread. Rowley has heard from potential supporters in San Francisco, Austin, New York, London and other cities, and is hopeful that Code Scouts will open more chapters soon.
"We are not going to just stay in Portland--this is going worldwide for sure," says Rowley, who is building a kit for future Code Scout programs. "I just need some people in other cities that want to step up and make it happen."
--John Patrick Pullen

Nicole Glaros, The Matchmaker

Nicole Glaros

Photo © Julia Vandenoever

The Matchmaker

A Techstars leader guides startups to glory

A prolific entrepreneur might start a handful of companies over the course of a career. Nicole Glaros is involved in launching 10 to 20 a year. As managing director of the Boulder, Colo., and New York City programs for the Techstars accelerator, Glaros selects the 1 percent of applicants who are chosen for the three-month programs and guides them through the often-painful learning curve between inception and success.
The fast-talking Glaros is in some ways an unlikely kingmaker. She's a powerful woman in an insular industry overrun by men. And unlike many of the other mentors in Techstars (there are close to 1,000), she doesn't come with an inspirational startup story.
After launching a successful e-commerce company focused on the property-management industry with her father in 1997, Glaros' next two tech startups were "dismal failures," she admits. "What I learned was the [entrepreneurial] magic wasn't with me; it was with my dad."

She joined Techstars in 2009 after co-founder David Cohen noticed her deft ability to play matchmaker between startups and outside mentors. The program provides business services and modest financing for the startupsStill, her failures led to a job with a tech accelerator, the Boulder Technology Incubator, where she discovered that her ill-fated entrepreneurial attempts, combined with her strengths as an executor and networker, made her ideally suited to guiding others. "I don't have all the answers," she says. "But I do believe I know someone who does. My job is to find people who can be most helpful to that company."
it selects ($18,000 in seed funding and an optional $100,000 convertible debt note). But Glaros says the accelerator's most important role is not capital, or even connections to capital, but guidance.
"I hear all the time, 'Oh, if we only had $250,000, if we could only raise $1 million, our business would be so much better,'" she says. "That's not true. What's important, even in fundraising, is getting the right people around you who are passionate about your success."
Techstars' roster of mentors includes a wide array of entrepreneurs, industry experts and venture capitalists, such as Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, angel investor Esther Dyson and Vimeo and CollegeHumor.com co-founder Josh Abramson.
Glaros, like other managing directors at Techstars' seven campuses, serves as the networking hub of her programs, connecting startups with mentors, experts, investors and anyone else she believes could help. Such connections, she says, are Techstars' "killer app," the one that results in roughly 90 percent of graduates building sustainable businesses or being acquired.
"Nicole has an eye for talent," says Techstars' Cohen. "She has great instincts about people, and early-stage startups are almost exclusively about the people."
Would she ever start a company again? Has she found the entrepreneurial magic? "I get tempted every single year," she admits. "But every year I ask, 'Where's my biggest reward?' and it's here. I get to help 10 companies instead of just one." --Joe Lindsey

Caryn Seidman-Becker, The Fixer

Caryn Seidman-Becker

Illustration © Brett Affrunti

The Fixer

An investor brings biometric ID back to airports

In Caryn Seidman-Becker's world, it takes just one hour to get from downtown Orlando, Fla., to the airport and into a seat on the plane just before the door is closed and the flight takes off. "One hour, door to door, done," says the chairman and CEO of Clear.
How does she do it? Her company allows users to circumvent the biggest bottleneck in air travel: the security line. Wielding chip-embedded membership cards, Clear subscribers are fast-tracked past the queue by checking in at special kiosks where their identities are biometrically authenticated through either fingerprints or iris scanning.
Founded in 2003 by entrepreneur and journalist Steven Brill, New York City-based Clear (then called FlyClear) had won the hearts of 200,000 paying members, contracts with at least a dozen airports and $75 million in venture capital before the economic downturn, an unattended laptop full of customer data and $33 million in debt bankrupted the company in December 2009.
Seidman-Becker was a hedge-fund investor with stakes in companies like L1 Identity Solutions, the technology firm that powered Clear's technology on the back end. Unfazed by Clear's collapse, she believed that biometrics still had the potential to change the way people live, work and travel. She had built a successful career working closely with management teams to understand how to allocate capital and create long-term value, and in cracking open Clear's books, she saw that buying the company would make great business sense.

Her investment firm, Algood Holdings, bought Clear for $6 million in April 2010. Her first decision: keep Clear's easily identifiable blue-cube branding, which the former owners spent $40 million rolling out. "Customers knew it, so it was about rebuilding the trust and the integrity of that brand with them," Seidman-Becker says."The company died from self-inflicted wounds. It shouldn't have gone bankrupt. It had a lot of debt; it had a big core structure," she says. "We saw that Clear could be very successful if we ran it like other businesses that we had been involved with, and that's about thinking about the lifetime value of a member … and how to run an efficient organization."
To that end, Clear pulled out all the stops. The company honored the curtailed memberships from the previous ownership. Seidman-Becker listed her e-mail address on the company website, sent signed letters to former customers and called the most critical members to chat personally. "People can write anything in e-mail," she says. "But when you get them on a phone, they're far more docile."
She also had to convince airports and the Transportation Security Agency that the new Clear was different. "She's tenacious--she doesn't give up," says Brigitte Goersch, former deputy executive director of Orlando International Airport, the first to reinstate the service. Since relaunching in 2010, the 200-employee company has opened 30 lanes in nine airports, verifying the identities of its 250,000-plus members--each of whom pays $179 per year--at least 1.3 million times. "It's really very rapid improvement," Goersch says, "and that's because of her personal involvement--that's what's been a key to their success."
That involvement extends to her family life. When Seidman-Becker takes her three children on business trips to Orlando, they're able to use Clear to squeeze in a little extra time for fun. "That efficiency, it makes you feel so differently," she says. "I was with my kids at Disney World and I was like, 'Oh no, we can stay longer.' That's just a great feeling." --J.P.P.

Discontinued Cars

10 cars you won’t see on sale after 2015

The Ford Mustang is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, but where are the Pontiac Firebird, Plymouth Barracuda, or AMC Javelin? Long-lived car models are a rarity, and the changes coming with the beginning of the 2015 model are particularly bumpy.
When a nameplate is discontinued, multiple explanations are invoked: Its platform may have become obsolete, rendering future upgrades uneconomic (the reason Ford offered when it took the original Taurus out of production in 2007); Its body style may have fallen from fashion (such as full-size two-doors like the Chevy Monte Carlo); Or it may simply not have caught on with buyers (like the Honda Element).
Then there’s a CEO like Fiat Chrysler’s CEO Sergio Marchionne who likes to shuffle the deck–no nameplate is safe. His use of multiple brands combined with his insistence that FCA products be sold under only one brand apiece has caused him to eliminate many of the badge-engineered models that used to keep Chrysler and Dodge dealers afloat.
The following is list of models that have been declared defunct or are on the endangered list from FCA and a number of other automakers. They’ve suffered from a variety of ills, but they all share one thing in common: You won’t see them for sale in new car showrooms much longer.

Jaguar XK

 

Courtesy: Jaguar

Scarce resources are given as the reason behind Jaguar’s decision to halt production of the XK coupe and convertible after the 2015 model year. . The spiritual successor to the famed XK-E, the XK had been on the market since 2006, but Jag has decided to put its product development capital somewhere else. "We have other things that we need to spend our time and money on," a Jaguar executive told Automotive News. The success of the sportier F-type had taken some of the pressure off the statelier XF but also sopped up some potential sales.

Chevrolet SS

 

Courtesy: General Motors

Chevy thought it had exploited narrowing white space in its model lineup when it began importing the Commodore, a rear-drive sedan, from GM Holden in Australia and renaming it the SS. Powered by a V-8 Corvette engine, the SS won rapturous reviews from buff book writers, but didn’t fit in Chevy’s front-wheel-drive lineup, and with a base price of $44,470, it never found an audience. All but D.O.A. on arrival in 2013, the fate of the SS was sealed when General Motors GM decided to shut down production of the Commodore and everything else in Australia in 2017.

Ford Flex

 

An innovative if unsuccessful attempt to blend SUV style with minivan packaging, the Flex has been on the endangered list almost since it went on sale in 2008. A cult favorite with young Californians, much as its Lincoln counterpart, the MKT, has been pressed into livery service as a car-for-hire, the Flex has never found the wide audience at which it was intended. Although Ford F hasn’t made any announcement regarding its fate, no replacement for the Flex or the MKT appears in John Murphy’s influential 2015-2018 “Car Wars” report.
Courtesy: Ford Motor Co.

4

Dodge Durango

 

Courtesy: Fiat Chrysler Automobiles

You would have figured Durango for a long run--and you would have been wrong. Surprisingly, it is being discontinued in 2016. The reason is less than intuitive: Dodge is being reconfigured as FCA’s performance division, and Marchionne figures he can squeeze more margin out of the Durango platform if it can be reconfigured into a three-row, seven-passenger Jeep. So the SUV that was attractively restyled as recently as a year ago will make its last appearance in 2015.

Dodge Grand Caravan

 

Courtesy: Fiat Chrysler Automobiles

Dodge will drop another popular stalwart from its lineup in 2016 when the Grand Caravan is euthanized in favor of Chrysler’s Town and Country. A descendant of the original Dodge minivan introduced in 1984, the bargain-priced people hauler didn’t fit Marchionne’s definition of the new Dodge, and he figures he can find more profit by focusing his minivan sales on the higher-priced Chrysler model.

Chrysler 200 convertible

 

Courtesy: Fiat Chrysler Automobiles

Production of the 200 convertible, the latest iteration of the old Sebring, ended last October. Convertibles are undergoing one of their periodic sales depressions, and with the phase-out of the previous 200 platform, FCA declined to invest in a new drop-top for the reengineered 2015 model.

Dodge Avenger

 

Courtesy: Fiat Chrysler Automobiles

The Avenger nameplate, which enjoyed a short run from 1995-2000 as a coupe and was revived in 2007 as a four-door to replace the Dodge Stratus, has died for a second time. The platform that the Avenger shared with the old Chrysler 200 was discontinued, and FCA wants to focus its midsize business on the Chrysler brand going forward.

Acura TL

 

Courtesy: Honda Motors

If you blinked, you missed it in Acura’s alphanumeric mashup, but the TL is being replaced by the new TLX midsize sedan. The TL was Acura’s bestselling car model in a division dominated by crossovers, and had been around since 1996. Longevity is no guarantee in the car business however. In yet another attempt to jumpstart Acura sales, the 2015 TLX with more aggressive styling goes on sale soon.

Mini Cooper Paceman, Coupe, and Roadster

 

Courtesy: Mini

Since its launch in 2001, Mini has spawned nearly as many varieties as Heinz, and now it is going back to its roots. According to Automotive News Europe, BMW is retiring the three slow-selling models: Paceman, Coupe, and Roadster (above). That would still leave Mini with four variants, two of which, the hardtop hatch and the Countryman, account for 75% of its sales. Making fewer models should help Mini improve its perpetually dismal showing in JD Powers’ initial quality survey.

McLaren MP4-12C

 

David Cooper/Toronto Star—Getty Images

Supercar makers like long production runs to amortize development costs over small volumes,but not McLaren. It ended production of the MP4-12C in April after only three years and 3,500 cars, and replaced it with a car called the 650S. Reason: Orders dried up for the old car as soon as potential buyers saw the new one. Prices start at $265,500 for the 650S, which will accelerate to 60 mph in 2.9 seconds. The old MP4 takes just a tenth of a second longer and cost $35,000 less.

FACEBOOK MARKETING

10 Tips for Mastering Facebook

When it comes to social media, Facebook is a behemoth. Earlier this year, the big blue social network had 1.28 billion monthly active users. That is head and shoulders above other popular sites like Twitter or Pinterest.

Translation: Using Facebook correctly can be a huge opportunity for both individuals and businesses. Post the right types of content at the right times of day and you can see a flood of new customers or fans of your brand.

But as with any opportunity, Facebook has a number of moving, sometimes confusing parts. Facebook marketing is one part art, one part science, mixing bits of human interaction with actual product marketing.

The tips below aim to answer some of the questions you might have about creating and getting the most out of a Facebook page. Give these some thought and start rocking it on Facebook -- now.

1. When posting, don’t forget the pictures.
They say a picture is worth a 1,000 words. On Facebook (and on Facebook-owned Instagram), a picture must be worth at least 1,000 text-only posts.

People engage with compelling images. Yes, this is an opportunity to showcase your products, but it’s also a chance to share pictures of your team, your facility and of your customers’ best experiences with your brand.

It’s also a way for you to interact with your customers. Encourage them to share their own pictures using your product or service. You can monitor these images and contribute to the conversation by liking or commenting on them or by sharing them on your own page.

2. Know when’s best to post.
There are numerous reports out there that claim the best times of day for posting content to specific social networks. While some of the information can vary from report to report, it appears posting to Facebook on Fridays is a smart idea, as engagement rates tend to be highest.

Productivity starts to dwindle on Fridays. It’s no secret. You can capitalize on people killing time by surfing their Facebook feeds instead of, you know, doing more important things.

3. Attract customers and increase engagement by asking questions and creating contests.

A big part of the reason you’re on Facebook is to engage with people and attract them to your brand. Only broadcasting marketing messages isn’t going to cut it.

One way to attract people to your Facebook page is to run a simple contest. More than a quarter of fans say they’ve liked a page in order to participate in a contest. Using words like “winner,” “win,” “entry,” “contest,” “enter” and “promotion” are most likely to get people interested.

Once people start liking your Facebook page, you can ramp up human interaction by asking questions. Question posts get 100 percent more comments than ones without questions.

4. Let your emotions out.
Within reason, of course. Why? Studies show that emotions are contagious on Facebook. If something in your industry has you excited or riled up, don’t be afraid to express your thoughts and emotions about it (without being hurtful to anyone else, obviously). These types of posts are often shared more and can increase engagement.

While you’re at it, you might as well ask your fans to share their opinions and emotions, too.

5. Encourage employees and fans to ‘check in.’
Facebook’s check in feature can be a fun and useful way to raise your company’s profile on the site. Some employers require their employees to check in when they clock in for a shift. Some also softly suggest that their customers check in. Others make the check in mandatory if a person wants to use in-store Wi-Fi.

6. Remember, niche is more important than numbers.
Sometimes social media can become a popularity contest. Entrepreneurs shouldn’t become obsessed with having more fans and followers than the competition. What’s the sense in having 100,000 fans if the majority of them aren’t engaging with you or spending their money with you?

Creepy or not, Facebook collects an enormous amount of demographic and behavioral information on its users. You can tap into this wealth of data to target specific types of people who are most likely to be your customers in the real world.

7. Etiquette should be a top priority. 
You should be the template for your typical Facebook fan. You know your brand inside and out. You should also know the type of content you’d want to see each day and how often.

If your plan is to flood the zone with marketing content, repost the same thing over and over again or to directly solicit likes and shares then, well, you might need a new plan. Not only do your followers not want to see spammy posts, neither does Facebook. The company said recently that it would start decreasing regular distribution for repeat offenders.

Consider yourselves warned.

8. Don't panic if your organic reach isn't crazy high.
If you’re not paying for advertising on Facebook, your posts might only be reaching a small portion --perhaps as low as only 6 percent -- of your overall followers. And, it turns out, this is completely normal. Also, completely frustrating.

In a recent blog post, Facebook explained that the nosedive in organic reach is due to increased “competition” on the News Feed. In other words, there is so much content being published to Facebook, only so much can be featured in people’s feeds.

If you’ve seen your reach plummet in recent months, there are steps you can take to increase it a bit.

9. Consider giving Facebook Advertising a try.
Experts say that advertising on Facebook can be a huge opportunity for some brands. You pay for ads and Facebook promises to expose you to people you might not have been able to reach on your own.

If your company is paying for Facebook ads, be sure to track your results and measure your ROI. Advertising on Facebook isn’t for everyone.

10. Speaking of ads, you can personally opt out if you want to.
This is great for individual users and potentially also beneficial for companies that pay money on the ads that people can now block. Facebook recently started giving users a way to better customize what advertisements pop up on their pages.

So, instead of letting Facebook mine every step they take on the site and elsewhere online and serving that data up to its advertisers, people can opt out and change their personal settings.

For advertisers, this means your ads might be seen by fewer people, but it will be delivered to those who will be more inclined to interact with your ads. Again, niche is better than numbers.