Yahoo Unveils News Digest, Digital Magazines But Without Clear Niche |  |
- Yahoo Unveils News Digest, Digital Magazines But Without Clear Niche
- 10 Tips For Organizing Your Small Business This Year
- Read “The Entrepreneurs” for Relevant Entrepreneurial Lessons
| Yahoo Unveils News Digest, Digital Magazines But Without Clear Niche Posted: 12 Jan 2014 03:00 PM PST
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and other company executives recently unveiled a News Digest feature and new digital magazines. The announcement came during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. New products look a lot like a new news brand for the Web giant. The trouble is that Yahoo’s target audience seems to be, not a small niche group, but…well, everybody! How To Build a Branded News NicheThe independent news brand can be a fertile opportunity for small online businesses and digital startups. By focusing on a small niche group, small publishers can deliver specially created or curated news and information. That content is tailored specifically for an underserved audience. Think Instapundit for Libertarian conservatives, The Huffington Post for liberal progressives, TechCrunch for the tech startup community, and Marketing Land for the online marketing community. Some of these brands have since been acquired by larger companies. But the key to their early success, and in many ways to their continued growth, has come from serving these groups. It was the same with Mashable, started as a tech blog by current CEO Pete Cahmore at 19 and run from home. But last week, Mashable announced $13 million in venture funding, its first outside investment. With the money, Mashable will open more editorial offices and hire more journalists to create more original content. The company has already expanded its categories of news coverage from primarily tech and social media to include business, entertainment and other topics. However, stories covered are still aimed specifically at a Web savvy audience. Yahoo Announces News DigestBy contrast, Yahoo’s News Digest app seems built on the notion that there’s too much information out there already. There’s also the implication that a large news company not a small independent news brand should decide what’s important to customers. Yahoo product manager Nick D’Aloisio explains:
So, Yahoo News Digest uses an algorithm and some human curating to put together the top stories (about nine of them) the company feels you should see. One digest will be delivered on the app in the morning and one in the evening. There will also be some extra stories that didn’t make the cut. These digests will be gathered from multiple sources in segments called “atoms” including text, infographics, maps, video, financial tickers and more, says D’Aloisio. But there’s no talk of giving users the content they want, or for that matter of who the news app’s target audience might be. Here’s more on the app from D’ Aloisio: Digital Magazines and Global Anchor IntroducedYahoo is also unveiling a group of digital magazines. David Pogue is a vice president of editorial for Yahoo and a former correspondent for The New York Times. He introduced one of the publications entitled Yahoo Tech at the Las Vegas event. Another magazine called Yahoo Food has already been launched with more on the way, CNET reports. But here again, Yahoo’s offering seems to suffer from a lack of purpose. Pogue describes Yahoo Tech as a publication for the 85 percent of the U.S. outside the more technically sophisticated areas of New York City and the West Cost. (In other words, the magazine will be tech for non-tech people?) Mayer also introduced Katie Couric, a former television reporter and host for all three of the major networks.Yahoo recently announced Couric as its new global anchor. Couric said she hopes to interview news makers, politicians, sports figures, philanthropists, tech leaders and social entrepreneurs. (Don’t we all?) But it was less clear what specific audience the new Yahoo content would serve. ConclusionIn short, Yahoo seems to be banking on its well-known brand to give it a large general customer base for its general news product. But company leaders don’t seem to have thought much about what niche that content is targeted to reach. It’s too early to determine whether this approach will be effective. However, it is the opposite of the strategy used successfully by most independent news brands in recent years. When creating independent branded news as part of your business, focus carefully on the audience or customers you most wish to reach. Start by targeting the customers most likely to buy the products or visit the advertisers you have on your site. Image: Wikipedia The post Yahoo Unveils News Digest, Digital Magazines But Without Clear Niche appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| 10 Tips For Organizing Your Small Business This Year Posted: 12 Jan 2014 11:00 AM PST
An organized business is a productive business. You may not consider yourself blessed with natural organizational skills, but now is the perfect time to get your business and work space organized. Below are 10 tips to help you do that and get on track in the new year. How to Organize Your Small BusinessPurge Your OfficeEven if you don't mind a little mess and dust, too much clutter can add to daily stress and chaos. Clutter exists because we think that everything is important. With the new year, toss out whatever is outdated, no longer relevant or a duplicate. For example:
When your workspace is clean and uncluttered, you'll enjoy spending time at your desk and won't waste time searching through junk or moving piles around. Organize Your Paper FilesOne study found that the average person wastes over 4 hours per week searching for papers. Go through your filing cabinets and shred anything that's out of date or no longer relevant to your business. If you're worried you might one day need four-year old notes from a client project, then scan the originals and throw out the paper files to make more room. Ditch Paper ReceiptsConsidering the IRS accepts electronic copies of receipts, there's really no reason for you to continue hanging on to all those tiny paper slips from restaurants, taxis, office supply stores, etc. Find a receipt management scanner or app for your smartphone (such as Neat Receipts) and make sure your solution lets you export data to whatever expense reporting/accounting app you use. Use the Cloud for Storage and SharingIf you haven't done so already, start using cloud-based tools to share and save documents. For example, Google Drive lets you store up to 15GB for free, while giving clients or colleagues access to collaborate. Other tools include Dropbox and Box. By housing files in the cloud, you can help clean up your personal storage, as well as save valuable time spent emailing documents back and forth when collaborating with others. Tame Your InboxIf your email inbox has become a catchall for every email you've received over the past years, it's time to clean house. It is possible to manage your email inbox so you only see the messages you still need to deal with and everything else is neatly archived for safe keeping. Start with a clean slate by filing away everything you no longer need to respond to. Next, tame the level of new emails you get each day by unsubscribing to newsletters or other subscriptions you no longer read. Create specific folders where non-essential emails go automatically, so they don't interrupt your daily flow. Get the Right Note-Taking ToolOne key to staying organized and effective as a small business owner is having the right solution for jotting down any tasks or inspirations when they strike. Whether you prefer to use pen and paper, voice recording on your smartphone or an app like Evernote, the most important thing is that the solution fits into your lifestyle so you'll use it consistently. Tidy Up Your Social Media ProfilesIt's not just your email inbox and desktop that fall prey to clutter. Your social media profiles can also become clogged and out of date. First, take stock of where your business has a social presence and drop any accounts that are no longer in use. There's no point in having multiple Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr and Instagram profiles if you're not actively posting and monitoring each account. You can also use a tool like JustUnfollow to weed out any followers who are inactive or aren't following you back. Meet with a Tax AdvisorDon't wait until it's time to file your returns to start thinking about taxes. Make an appointment with a CPA or tax advisor early in the year. If your business is still structured as a sole proprietor, now's the time to think about protecting your personal assets and gaining other benefits through a formal business structure like an LLC or corporation. Take Charge of Your BooksIf you run a small business, you already have some kind of process in place for invoicing, processing payments, recording expenses and tracking projects. But if you haven't updated your process lately, chances are there's an app out there to help make these administrative tasks easier and more efficient. Take a look at your tablet/smartphone app store for a new tool that could help you get organized and take charge of your books in the new year. For example, there's FreshBooks, Mint, Kashoo, and InDinero to name a few. Tie Up Any Legal Loose EndsThis is a perfect opportunity to tie up any loose ends you've been putting off in prior years. For example, did you file a DBA (Doing Business As) for your business name? Did you get a Tax ID number? Are all your licenses and local permits in order? Did you make any changes to your corporation and LLC and still need to file an Articles of Amendment to record those changes with the state? What other tips can you offer to get your business organized this year? Organization Concept Photo via Shutterstock The post 10 Tips For Organizing Your Small Business This Year appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Read “The Entrepreneurs” for Relevant Entrepreneurial Lessons Posted: 12 Jan 2014 08:00 AM PST
This is a book to inspire and motivate you in your own entrepreneurial journey. Most importantly, it is a book with lessons and insights from real-life entrepreneurs you can apply to your own business. Authentic and Relevant Entrepreneurial LessonsThe book contains the startup stories of 22 entrepreneurs. Few of them will be a household name to most of us. But I’ll bet you can find one from an industry similar to yours. Or you’ll find one who has faced a similar challenge to what you’ve faced. In that sense this book is relevant to the vast majority of the 27 million small business owners in the United States and the millions more around the world. And that’s exactly why you should read this book. It’s authentic about the entrepreneurial experience most of us face. It’s relevant in a way that a book about a mega-famous entrepreneur billionaire can never be. One of my disappointments when reading biographies and startup stories of famous entrepreneurs who’ve made it big is that it’s so hard to relate. Don’t get me wrong. I love reading the colorful Richard Branson’s story. I gobble up anything about how Mark Zuckerberg built Facebook. The stories of the rich and famous may be exciting and interesting, but the lessons to be learned are limited. Their entrepreneurial journeys are just so unlike the experience most entrepreneurs go through! The mega-famous rocketed to the top quickly. They amassed billions in wealth. Many of them had outside investment; however, most entrepreneurs bootstrap and will never have investors or get limited funding from friends, family or a local angel. By the time a book gets written the mega-famous entrepreneur’s business is anything BUT a startup — it’s a huge company, perhaps part of the S&P 500. An inspiring story, yes. A good read, certainly. Relevant with useful learnings? Not so much. If it’s relevance you want — if you want to draw entrepreneurial lessons to apply to your own business — you’re more likely to get that from The Entrepreneurs. What’s Inside “The Entrepreneurs”This is the kind of book you can pick up and read a few chapters in an evening, or on your lunch break. It’s easy to digest. You don’t have to read it cover to cover to get value out of it. The book is logically laid out into 23 chapters in about 133 pages. Aside from a short introduction and a recap of the “secrets to success” at the end, each chapter tells the story of an entrepreneur. The entrepreneurial stories format is not new nor even necessarily creative. Time-starved business owners will appreciate a book that doesn’t make you work hard to crack open the content. There’s a “get to the point” simplicity to this book. And the companies you’ll read about are not the Dells and Microsofts of the world. They are companies like Northcoast Senior Moving. Or Premier Dry Cleaners. Or Vacuum Systems International. Or Steris, or MC sign, or Bowden Manufacturing — the kind of businesses you find on Main Street, USA. Each entrepreneur tells his or her story, and the author presents it in a straight-forward way. At the end, there’s a lesson or tip distilled down for you. But if you’re like me, you’ll find other insights woven into the narrative of each story. In fact, each story has several lessons. Take for instance, the story of Scott Marincek, founder of Solv-All:
And while the stories are all different, most of them are like Marincek’s Solv-All story. Each is filled with struggles and an entrepreneur with a can-do attitude who doesn’t wait for someone to come to the rescue — but does whatever needs to be done. About the AuthorKip Marlow is himself a successful entrepreneur, who founded a medical instrumentation company and then 22-years later sold it to a larger company. He founded the Entrepreneurs Club Radio airing on WELW radio in Ohio (Ray Somich, the station owner, wrote the book’s foreword). The profiles are culled from his radio interviews of each entrepreneur. Bottom line: you can’t help but be inspired by and learn from The Entrepreneurs. As a business owner who has faced down countless challenges, with successes and failures along the way, the stories “spoke” to me. The post Read “The Entrepreneurs” for Relevant Entrepreneurial Lessons appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
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