Having a content calendar is a little like meal prepping for the week. Gather all your necessary ingredients, spend a few dedicated hours in the kitchen, and voila! you have set yourself up for success in the week to come (maybe more if you utilize your freezer) with good, homemade food. A content calendar works much the same way - spend a bit of time sketching out big plans for the year, and more specific plans for week by week, and you're never left wondering what your next social post or press release will focus in on. Your content calendar…

During the past couple of weeks, restaurant chain Popeyes Chicken has stumbled its way into the social media spotlight as they accidentally pulled off one of the most successful product launches in recent history. On August 12th, Popeyes announced on Twitter that they would now be selling chicken sandwiches – not exactly a front-page worthy announcement. But what ensued from this normal, run-of-the-mill product launch was far from ordinary. As this tweet shows, Popeyes’ announcement yielded some relatively respectable – and expected – numbers, but thanks to the unpredictable nature of social media virality, their mundane product launch miraculously turned…

The word “entrepreneur” derives from the French entreprendre, meaning “to undertake,” and because everyone undertakes something in their lives, however formidable it may be, everyone is an entrepreneur to some degree. The act of undertaking, however, is not easy; literally speaking, it means picking up responsibilities, placing them onto your shoulders, and willingly bearing their weight. This weight, over time, will only grow heavier, which is why managing your workload and mitigating the stress that derives from it is so important for an entrepreneur’s long-term success. One of the most important decisions an entrepreneur can make occurs before they ever…

Contributed by Bryce Ward It’s probably been a while since you’ve last written an academic essay, and if you’re like most people, this doesn’t bring you much distress. Ironically, though, those grammar-obsessed English teachers from your high school and college days – who seemed to care way too much about comma placement and paragraph structure – can actually teach us a lot about marketing. The surprising reality is that many of the thought processes that go behind writing a good essay also go behind creating a successful marketing campaign. When you begin writing an essay, before you even think about…

Contributed by Bryce Ward It’s no secret that consumers respond better to personalized emails than generic ones. When businesses treat their consumers like individuals instead of a collective group, they notice and respond accordingly. A study by Experian revealed that personalization in emails increases open rates by up to 26% – and that’s just to get your consumers’ attention. Once they’ve opened your email, the more personalized it is, the better. In an ideal world, we’d be able to send each and every one of our customers completely personalized and unique emails. But unless you have an extremely small consumer…