How to Build a Brand That Attracts Die-Hard Followers

They are the envy of every brand strategist: brands who have a community of die-hard cult followers -- you know, the people who go out of their way to evangelize and share the brand with everyone they know.

How did these brands build this audience of loyal followers, and what can you do to build this same type of loyalty around your brands? It all begins with knowing what exactly branding is.

Branding is the process of forming memories, emotions and a relationship around your brand in the consumer’s brain. The goal is to build such a strong connection and such strong belief that the consumer take on your brand identity as their own. They use your brand to help define who they are as a person.

A great example of this is Harley Davidson. Harley has done such a phenomenal job building memories, emotions and a relationship with their audience that those audience members take on the “Harley rider” persona and get decked out in leather, bandannas and even permanently tattoo Harley’s logo on their bodies.

Creating these deep connections is far from easy and is something that takes time. However, there are some strategies you can start implementing to develop to start turning your customers into cult-like brand advocates.

Brand your customers. One of the most powerful things you can do is to create a branded term to refer to all your employees and customers. Link it back to the core idea of your brand and promote the idea as they are a part of eome exclusive “tribe.” Create a special celebration process to praise them for joining your tribe and get them excited for being a part of something bigger than themselves.

At our marketing agency, Savvy Panda, we call all our employees and customers “pandas” and when we bring on a new client we send them a welcome pack with panda apparel, stickers and even a stuffed toy panda.

Random acts of kindness. It’s fairly common for a business to have some sort of rewards program to help encourage repeat business. However, a more powerful way to make an impact on your customers is to establish a “random acts of kindness” program. Getting something unexpected helps spark emotions deep within an individual.

Create some criteria to identify your most active and enthusiastic customers and send them care packages to appreciate them for being such great customers. You can take it one step further and identify various influencers in your customer base and fly them out to your business to meet the people behind the brand.  

Many organizations have a dedicated community manager whose sole responsibility is to help implement these tactics discussed. Their goal should be to create and strengthen the relationship between your brand and your audience.

Disconnect from digital. It’s easy to keep communications solely in digital formats like email or social media. However, digital communications lack one of the critical brand building elements: Oxytocin. Oxytocin is a chemical released in the brain when we personally interact with each other. This is what helps spark emotions and memories -- the exact thing we're trying to create.

Personal, non-digital interactions of genuine goodwill are a great way to spark oxytocin release. This could be as simple as picking up the phone and calling your customers to tell them you appreciate them or more complex strategies like hosting an event where you can meet and get to know all your customers in person.

Digital communications are nice for working at scale, however, it’s important to keep in mind that they are not the best advocate-building methods. Where possible, put in the extra effort to connect offline or in person (even if it takes more time or costs a bit more).

Personalize. As Dale Carnegie famously said, “The sweetest sound in any language is one’s name.” As powerful as someone’s name is, it’s equally important to have context around that name. Tailoring your brand experience around an individual consumer is what will start building those deep branding connections.

Find ways to start personalizing everything you do in your business from the products to customer service experience and messaging on your website. Make a point to learn each customer’s name, interests and hobbies, among other things and then tailor your messaging and interactions around those items.

To some this might not seem scalable, however, with the power of data, social logins and simply building knowledge gathering steps into your processes, it’s easier than you think.

There’s no question, branding is a long-term commitment that requires unwavering discipline and confidence in the idea your brand stands for. The brands which are true to their ideas and are successful in building that emotional connection are the brands who enjoy the cult-like followers we as marketers all try to achieve.

From Entrepreneur

By Luke Summerfield

Managing the Family Business: Leadership Roles

Poorly designed leadership roles set up a family business for failure. John A. Davis offers a system that produces the decisiveness and unity needed for long-term performance.

PART TWO: STRUCTURING LEADERSHIP ROLES

My previous article outlined what we know about leadership in family business systems worldwide, including how leadership affects performance. As an example of very capable leadership of a high performing family enterprise, I introduced Nelson Sirotsky, Chairman of RBS, who two years ago successfully passed the baton after leading his family's media business as CEO for decades.

Whether you adopt the one-leader model for your own family enterprise, as RBS has done, or whether you build a team of leaders, you still need to design, structure, and allocate all the necessary leadership roles. Why? Because wherever I see poorly designed, badly structured, and slap-dash leadership roles in action, I hardly ever see the decisiveness and unity that a family business system needs for long-term performance. How do you design, structure, and allocate all the leadership roles you need? That's what this article will focus on.

First recognize that for any group or organization to be successful, it needs to be led, managed, and governed well.

LEADING, MANAGING, AND GOVERNING

Governance provides a broad sense of purpose or mission for the group and gives the group a sense of stability. Without stability, we cannot plan long-term. Family business systems have an enduring advantage over all other kinds of enterprise in large part because of their long-term goals, plans, and commitments. Without stability, you lose your built-in advantage. Without adequate governance, you don't have adequate stability. The family business system absolutely must be governed, and governed well, for success.

Good governance for any group assures us that plans can be made, problems solved, leaders developed and chosen, and disputes settled in a way that preserves the purpose and unity of the group. Discipline and trust grow. Good governance is the product of having useful rules, policies, agreements, and plans, as well as forums (like boards, family councils, and annual meetings of the owners) to develop the plans, agreements, rules, and policies, to address important issues and to work out differences.

One very wise person with legitimacy, a lot of authority, and good intentions can provide good governance for a business, family, and ownership group. But unitary leaders, like the rest of us, only have so many hours in a day, and they can only focus on so many individual concerns before losing effectiveness. So in one-leader systems, governing well almost always requires that key stakeholders join together into one or more groups:

A shareholders' council and an annual meeting of the owners to serve the governance needs of the owners.

A board of directors to serve the governance needs of the business and owners.

A family council to help provide governance for the family.

These groups all need their own good leaders to function well.

So you can see that a family business system leadership team could number four or more people: a leader of each governance forum plus an ultimate leader. The business leader could be different than the chairman of the board. The leader of the owners tends to be either the business leader or a group of leading owners. Often, the family council leader is different than the real family leader. Often the family leader is also the business leader, but not always. Even where there is a strong unitary leader of the family business system, there are usually deputy leaders that lead the different parts of the system in close coordination with the ultimate leader. This was the case for the RBS system.

LEADING

Besides developing, supporting, and participating in the governance system, leaders need to lead people, and this is different from managing their work. Leading is fundamentally about identifying where the group needs to go (developing a compelling vision for the future), strategizing how to get there, and getting people to change in order to get there. This is done by inspiring, persuading, and motivating people to work together to reach important goals, and by building coalitions to support needed change.

Leading is a very personal activity where the leader connects with people and convinces them, making use of compelling ideas and character appeal. Followers follow the leader because of their loyalty, because they identify with the leader, because they identify with the leader's cause, and sometimes because of all of those things. Followers need compelling reasons to file in behind any leader for the long-term, or for difficult missions. Since family business is focused on the long term, the family business leader or leaders must be personally compelling, not just good at making plans and managing activities. As the saying goes, you lead people into battle; you don't manage them into battle.

Effective leaders can have a charismatic style, like Nelson, or a more quiet approach. Regardless of style, the most effective leaders I have seen in family business systems are clearly "servant leaders" or more to the point, "servant partners." These leaders typically have strong ideas and principles about how their companies should be run, what their co-owners should invest in, and how their families should behave. They also have egos, personal needs, and sensitivities. At the same time, they want to do their best for their followers. They believe in partnering with others and treating partners fairly. And they behave like servants of the greater good. Finally, they are able to make tough decisions to protect the standards and aspirations of the group.

MANAGING

Managing, as opposed to leading, is about getting a group to operate efficiently and effectively. Managing is done by planning and budgeting, organizing, analyzing problems, building and using management systems, prudently allocating resources, and providing performance feedback. Managing is a complement to leading.

So much of business and family success has to do with good execution--getting jobs done well, on time, and on budget. Thank goodness for good managers of businesses and families. Like all CEOs that I teach at Harvard, Nelson Sirotsky spent a lot of his time as CEO of RBS managing (that is, developing the efficiency and effectiveness of) particular aspects of the business. He did a lot of planning, organizing, and problem solving.

Most of the family business leaders that I see are strong managers. There is room for improvement in some management techniques, but these leaders are programmed to manage things. In fact, too much--to the point where they focus so much effort on management that their companies tend to be over-managed, under-led, and under-governed. It's natural for CEOs, particularly family members who grew up in the family company and know it well, to become focused on its operating effectiveness. But too much focus here generally means they give too little attention to the leadership and governance needs of the organization. We devote a lot of effort in the Owner-President Management program at Harvard correcting this pattern.

I often wish there was an Owner-President Management program for the leaders of families! Families that own business have similar management problems. Many business families could do a better job of managing their financial life by setting clearer goals and by controlling spending better. They usually need to devote more attention to the development of the next generation. And business families, like all families, are typically poor at giving performance feedback to their members. These are all management issues.

But in my opinion, more problems in families are due to their lack of governance and leadership. In the governance area, family members are not clear about the family's mission or core values; or they lack adequate rules and policies to guide behavior; or maybe they haven't developed a forum and process to discuss important issues and mediate differences among family members fairly. In leadership, they lack a clear vision for the future; or they haven't accepted the need to change in order to adapt to the environment; or they are uninspired. It takes deep inspiration to tackle important challenges.

Governance, leadership, and management: businesses, families, and ownership groups need all three of these activities. If you observe an effective leader of a family business system, like Sirotsky, over the course of a month, you'll see him or her engaging in all three of these activities. The amount of time spent on each activity or group will vary with the leader and circumstances. Some leaders favor leading and let others manage; some leaders spend most of their time governing the system. A parent also does these three things in the family he or she leads. A good Chairman of the board or family council leader also does an appropriate amount of all three. In this way and others, leadership of a business, family, and ownership is similar.

From Harvard Business School

By John A. Davis

Managing the Family Business: It Takes a Village

Is it better to lead a family business with one ultimate leader or a team? John A. Davis, an expert on family business management, kicks off a series of articles with a look at governance models.

PART ONE: GLOBAL NORMS AND THE ONE-LEADER MODEL

A consistent finding about family business systems—the business, its owners, and the family in control—is that strong, long-term business performance also requires strong performance by the family and by the ownership group. You can't keep a family business performing well over many years just focusing on the business. Family unity, united ownership and ownership support of the business are just too important to ignore or take for granted.

We also know that strong performance of the business, the ownership group, and the family depends on the effective leadership of each group. This shouldn't be surprising: good performance of any group always depends, to a surprising extent, on capable leaders. If boards of directors of public, anonymously-owned companies didn't believe that leadership mattered so much, they wouldn't pay such huge salaries to their CEOs. (By the way, I don't think they are worth that much, but the point is: having the right leader does matter.)

Because there is not only a business, but also an ownership group and a family that need capable leadership, a family business system is much more complicated than other kinds of business organizations. Leading these systems is also much more complicated.

Family business systems have a number of formal leadership roles. The CEO and board chairperson lead the business and usually the shareholder group. Family council leaders, parents, and grandparents are the formal family leaders. These leaders don't make all the important decisions in these systems. Nor do they provide all the guidance. They don't allocate all the resources. But because they have considerable authority, influence, and control over resources, we rely on them to do their part in setting direction and guiding their group.

Because the performance of people in these roles is so important to the success of the family business system, we need to understand what capable leaders in family business systems actually do. I've spent much of my professional life figuring this out.

I've gotten to know a number of excellent family business leaders in my long career, along with some weak ones, and a couple of awful ones. To illustrate my profile of a great family business system leader, I'll use one of my favorite examples: Nelson Sirotsky, chairman of Grupo RBS, his family's world-class media company based in Porto Alegre in the south of Brazil.

I met Nelson and his cousin Marcelo Sirotsky at a seminar I led on family business management in Santiago in 1999. I've worked with their family business system ever since. Nelson, then CEO of RBS and also leader of his family branch, attended the seminar to develop plans for his family business system and to reconsider his own leadership role. As the program unfolded, Nelson came to new understanding. He realized that he needed to give more attention to his family and the owners, in order to keep pace with his tireless focus on the business.

What Nelson and his family accomplished over the last decade is very impressive. They recently celebrated Nelson's successful and smooth transfer of his CEO role at age 58 to his very capable nephew, Eduardo Melzer, 40. Nelson remains chairman of the board with clear responsibilities. RBS is stable and poised for more great performance. My colleague Vicky Bloch, a superb coach and advisor, helped them throughout this process. But much of this good work stemmed from Nelson understanding his role as a leader of the business, family and ownership group, and from his performing so well as a leader, including through the CEO transition.

Which brings me to a question I am often asked: "Is it better to have one ultimate leader of the family business system or a team of leaders?"

UNITARY LEADERSHIP VS. LEADERSHIP TEAMS

There are two basic models. A family business system can either consolidate leadership with one person, or it can choose two or more people to lead different parts of the system. Each model can work well, as long as it's clear and supported by the stakeholders. Both models have some potential weaknesses: unitary leadership can lead to excesses; leadership teams can be slow and hobbled with rivalry.

But there is no doubt that one model dominates. Having one person serving as the ultimate leader of the business, ownership, and family is the natural choice for most families (and most nonfamily groups) around the world.

The preference for one leader seems only slightly culturally driven; it's very common in Italy, for example, but only slightly less common in Finland-comparing two European cultures that couldn't be more different.

One-leader systems are also somewhat more common in younger and less complex family business systems; these systems are either in the founder stage or trying to emulate it. The parent-founder-business leader-controlling owner generally has most of the power in his or her family business system. As family business systems approach or reach the cousin stage, with diversified businesses and big ownership groups, as RBS now has, you find more systems having two or three leaders who lead different parts of the system and collaborate to keep the system united. Sibling systems have the hardest time working out who should have what leadership role and power.

“THE ONE-LEADER MODEL STILL DOMINATES EVERYWHERE AND AT ALL STAGES”

With those few exceptions, the one-leader model still dominates everywhere and at all stages. Inertia keeps families in business wedded to it, and in some situations there are measurable benefits that tip the scale in favor of unitary leadership.

So let's take a closer look at this model.

UNITARY LEADERSHIP

The person chosen for this role is generally the business leader. In some cases, the family business system leader is the chairman of the family holding company and the clear leader of the family owners. In general, family business system leaders are the individuals with the most resources under their control; typically, they are middle aged or family elders. Effective ones are appreciated for their wisdom but are not necessarily liked by all their relatives. Leaders tell me that they have a gratifying but tough and often thankless job.

Many successful family business leaders tell me that they spend half of their time working to address family and ownership issues and to maintain unity. If the business leader tries to control too much of the power in the system, he or she will often weaken and destroy it. Even founders seem to understand this. At the founder stage, I often see the wife-mother wielding significant power over the family¾and significant influence on her husband the founder, whom she advises.

That is why an accurate drawing of the one-leader model usually shows that the ultimate leader has strong deputies or allies helping to lead the business, family, and ownership group.

Recognizing the needs of his family business system 15 years ago, Nelson Sirotsky opted to maintain ultimate control but delegated much of the management of RBS to his star nonfamily EVP, Pedro Parente. Nelson shared leadership of the ownership group with his uncle and then chairman, Jayme Sirotsky (also an exemplary leader). Nelson also supported the family council and its leaders, who did much to organize and unify their large family.

It takes a strong ego to not only share leadership but also give credit to others as Nelson does. It's fair to say that no major change in the business, family or ownership group could have been made without Nelson's agreement, but also that others' support was needed for major programs or decisions to be approved. There were continuous conversations among the owners and family about important issues and these drove out consensus. Consensus never required unanimity but rather the feeling that the deliberation process was fair, combined with general agreement that the decision was the best possible course of action at any given time, given some reservations.

Through the last decade, what resulted at RBS was a decisive system with strong support for Nelson, the ultimate leader, by the family and owners. In successful family business systems with unitary leadership, you find that most important decisions are the product of a consensus process like this. The leadership model has now changed since Nelson moved to the chairman role and Eduardo Melzer became CEO: the collaboration between uncle and nephew in leading their family and business is impressive.

Whether your own system is modeled on unitary or team leadership, you need to design, structure and allocate leadership roles.

From Harvard Business School

By John A. Davis

5 MENTORS EVERY ENTREPRENEUR SHOULD HAVE

Entrepreneur. It's a tough word -- both to spell and to call yourself. Being an entrepreneur brings with it a love of leaping head first into the unknown. Life-long entrepreneurs love new challenges, and live their lives in a constant growth phase. One of the common resources an entrepreneur turns to is a mentor. Asking for advice and bouncing ideas off of others is essential to the success of an entrepreneur's journey.

I've been fortunate to have a variety of mentors over the years, and I can't imagine standing where I am if it wasn't for them. Despite all the challenges of running a business, the biggest constant in my life is those mentors, and their advice.

I also think it's important that mentors come from many different perspectives, as mine have. These are the five types of mentors I've had over the years, and the ones I think any entrepreneur can benefit from:

1. A friend that knew you before you started your own thing.

Perhaps no voice matters more than the one that knew you before you had a startup. They knew you when all this was just a dream, or when you didn't even know what a startup was. They can speak to your roots and ground you when you get lost in the startup haze.

For instance, when I go back home to the East Coast, my friends ask me about everything except tech and business. They tell me how impressed they are but remind me that I need to slow down, to live the life I want, doing what I love. No entrepreneur should lose sight of that.

2. A person with your similar skill set at your point of learning.

Having regular coffee dates or Skype chats with people who are in your similar phase of growth can lead to valuable relationships. I have a group like this, and we push each other and question each other's decisions. We have been there when things fell through and when our big days happened.

There is a confidence that can come with camaraderie like that. We understand what each of us is going through.

3. A colleague you don't love working with.

One of the biggest challenges that face any entrepreneur is justifying what you want to do and why it's going to disrupt the status quo -- whether it be to investors, future co-founders, team members, the press or others. It helps if you're good at talking to just about anyone. Fine tune your ability to take feedback and get good at turning it into positive results. There is no quicker way to do this than to push forward with a relationship that isn't particularly enjoyable or easy at first.

4. A person with the exact opposite skill set than yours.

Seek out mentors who are most unlike yourself. For me it's been coffees with product managers, and tech leads. I've met with chief operating officers and have standing chats with our office manager. Do I know much about any of that? Not really. Do I know more now than I did before I met with them? Sure as heck I do.

Having these types of mentors and encounters has motivated me to take classes in coding and financials, and it's humbling to see just how much you don't know. Life-long learning is critical to success in business, and particularly to those who have bought into an industry founded on innovation.

5. A friend who always knew you'd be an entrepreneur.

Meet often with someone who knows you as "your entrepreneurial self" and not in any other way. He or she is likely the one to say "you got this" and "this is what you do" -- even when you're doubting it yourself. That person can't imagine you ever taking the safe option or quitting. He or she would never tell you it's OK if you haven't given something your best effort, and will cheer every one of your accomplishments.

----

From Entrepreneur Week

Fresh Idea: Entrepreneur Puts Salad in a Vending Machine

A visit to the vending machine can yield chocolate, chips or soda … but what about salad?

Chicago, Illinois-based Farmer’s Fridge founder Luke Saunders says vending-machine salad isn't really such a crazy concept.

“We do Mason jar salads, so everything is perfectly layered. We keep ingredients like tomatoes on the bottom and lettuce at the top, and that keeps everything fresh in there,” says Saunders. In addition to an innovative product, Farmer’s Fridge vending machines don’t look like the typical office standby, thanks to woodsy paneling and “grass” features.

“The idea was to have a more distributed healthy food network,” says Saunders. “I was traveling a lot for work, and I realized it was hard to put up a full-scale healthy food restaurant when demand wasn’t there. But there were people who wanted this option.”

The average cost of a salad is $8. Each morning, Farmer’s Fridge restocks the machines; discounted salads are available after 6 p.m. The company's healthy-food kiosk is now up and running in three locations with open contracts for 20 more in the coming weeks.

“And from there, we’ll kind of catch our breath and see if the model is working as we scale. And then our goal is to become a national brand,” says Saunders.

From Entrepreneur

By Gabrielle Karol

My Crazy Exhausting-Yet-Exhilarating Entrepreneur Life

“Man, I'm tired. It feels like I'm running a marathon.” Those were the first few words in my conversation with the CEO of a growing software company a few days ago. What he said next made me smile.

“I just wish I knew how far along I was in the race. Am I at mile 4 or 24?“

Such is the life of an entrepreneur. You’re in. You're committed. You're running as hard as you can. But it feels like the finish line should be a lot closer.

There are a lot of lessons you can learn from being the leader of a startup. Some of them you can learn in books. Others can be gleaned from reading popular blogs or attending seminars. But there are always a few lessons that you have to learn the hard way, experiences you have to feel to fully appreciate. Here are my insights into that world:

1. You're always losing until you're not. All that work you're doing can feel so much insanity until you get it right. It's often said that doing the same thing the same way and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. But that's how you crack stone. That's how you move mountains, one hammer blow at a time, one shovel full of dirt at a time -- until it’s done.

It's going to look like it's not working. Other people are going to keep reminding you that what you're doing is crazy and unreasonable. And they will be right -- up until the point that all your hard work pays off and you become a winner. Until then, get used to “losing.”

Tune out the critics. Focus on what matters.

2. The right plan doesn't exist. Just because a successful entrepreneur told you that he or she made millions of dollars building a business a certain way doesn’t mean you should adopt that formula. Frankly, just because a particular strategy brought success in the past doesn’t mean it will work the second or third time around.

Times change. So do strategies, technology and opportunity. What used to be impossible is now as easy as speaking into your phone. What once was a winning formula might now be a horrible waste of time and money. Think about this as you're building your plan.

Success is less about getting it right the first time and more about positioning yourself for taking advantage of opportunities as they emerge.

3. Brawn beats brains most of the time. All those people telling you to work smarter need to shut up. That  is an allusion. What really matters is the truths you figure out automatically after you’ve worked hard enough. Your focus should not be on anything other than massive amounts of hard work. That's how every major breakthrough in technology, math, sports and business has occurred -- through massive amounts of mind-blowing effort.

Doing hard work isn't an excuse for wasting time or not paying attention to your effectiveness. But you'll find yourself being more efficient the longer you work and the more tired you feel. Just work hard. While everyone is thinking, procrastinating and planning, you'll be busy executing.

There is something magical about getting things done. It cures just about any problem you have.

4. People matter more than ideas. There's no technology that can replace the effectiveness of a handshake. No amount of edgy thinking or bold technology can be more powerful than looking someone in the eye when you’re talking to them. Relationships matter.

The more logical things appear to be, the less they probably are. That's the beautiful complexity of being human. We’re weird about hiding emotion. We often don't truly say what is on our mind. If you looking to believe everything you hear from people whom you're trying to do business with, you find yourself flailing around from strategy to strategy, underperforming and never quite figuring out the formula for being successful.

Remember, the same irrational behavior you find inexcusable in others is how you, yourself, are wired to react.

Being an entrepreneur is just about the hardest job in the world. You might as well sign up to be the sparring partner for Mike Tyson in his raging prime. You're going to get a black eye or a bloody nose more than once. It comes with the territory.

But there's nothing more rewarding the following your dream and bringing to life an idea that no one else thinks is possible. Along the way you'll learn a few lessons of your own.

From Entrepreneur

By Dan Waldschmidt

The Quickest Way to Deliver Your Message? Make It Visual.

Whether it's connecting with customers, closing the deal with prospective clients, or promoting efficiency within your own operation, the quest to effectively cultivate and communicate your message is ongoing. One strategy that has recently gained traction is data visualization. Given today's fast-paced, cut-to-the-chase world, this makes perfect sense. We want our information, we want it now and we don't want to have to put much thought into digesting it.

The effectiveness of data visualization goes beyond our shrinking attention spans -- it speaks to our biology, according to Noah Iliinsky, co-author of Designing Data Visualizations.

“Our visual system is extremely well built for visual analysis,” Iliinsky explains. “There’s a huge amount of data coming into your brain through your eyes. Once that data arrives at the brain, it’s rapidly processed by sophisticated software that’s extremely good at tasks such as edge detection, shape recognition and pattern matching.”

It is this pattern matching, Iliinsky notes, that makes presenting information visually so beneficial, as it helps us identify trends, gaps and outliers. In other words, it allows us to see the true meaning of the data.

For businesses, this begs the question: How do we best leverage the value of data visualization? Here are three recommendations:

Infographics: the storyteller. As defined by Mashable, a prominent tech website, infographics are“graphic visual representations of information, data, or knowledge”that“present complex information quickly and clearly.”Done well, it delivers your message by weaving together thorough research and compelling copy with an engaging design.

What makes infographics such an effective marketing tool is two-fold: First, by including SEO-friendly terms, they can drive new users to your website through increased search visibility. Second, because they can easily be shared on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, they have a tendency to go viral, which obviously extends your brand to a wider, untapped audience.

Dashboards: data central. Businesses generate large amounts of data on a day-to-day basis, from potential leads, to what products are selling best and the hours dedicated to each client. Making sense of that data can be a challenge. Spend a few minutes poring over endless spreadsheets or reading through an exhaustive report, and it can feel undeniably overwhelming.

This is where dashboards come in. A centralized command center that compiles all of your pertinent data, they make it easy to see what’s going on within your organization. Stephen Few, a leading user interface dashboard expert, explains it like this: “(a) dashboard is a visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives, consolidated and arranged on a single screen so the information can be monitored at a glance.”

Businesses enter data into the back end of the dashboard, and the dashboard then processes and produces it in a way of your choosing -- graphs, charts, tables, etc. -- that best fits your needs.

The value that a well thought-out dashboard brings to your company is far-reaching. It gives you the means to easily analyze trends, which allows you to hone your marketing strategies, helping you to optimize sales and customer engagement. It takes the man hours that would previously have been devoted to sorting through acres of data and redirects them towards growing your brand. Simply put, dashboards rid your operation of any unnecessary waste, which, in turn, raises productivity, lowers costs and increases your bottom line.        

Mobile apps: a match made in heaven. While infographics tell a good story quickly, and dashboards organize and display your data, mobile apps marry the two together. Designed with a focused flow to connect with all audiences, apps are a versatile interface for your business, giving users as much or as little detail as they desire.

For those who want to get a high-level view of your company, scrolling straight through an app from start to finish will give them what they are looking for. Working almost as an interactive infographic, successful apps utilize compelling copy and appealing visuals to construct a road map of sorts, communicating in broad terms to the user what you are about, what it is that you do and what you can do for them.

On the other hand, for those who wish to explore your brand a little deeper, taking advantage of the built-in stops along the way allows them to drill down and access additional documents, charts, graphs and other nuts-and-bolts data. It is in these sections of the app where you can show -- instead of just telling -- the true value you can provide.

Best of all, as the name suggests, mobile apps are, indeed, mobile. And once they are downloaded to a person's tablet or smartphone, they can be accessed without an internet connection. This means that no matter where users go, your brand is always right there with them.

From Entrepreneur

By Khuram Zaman