Is your sales seemingly glued at dangerously low levels for what seemed like forever? Are you having trouble raking in cash to cover your operational expenses? Are you left breathless catching up with your supplier obligations? Are you not attracting clients like you thought you would? Do you encounter more customer complaints for your comfort? If your answer to any, or worse all, of these questions is yes, then you are certainly in trouble.

Surely, you do not want your hard – earned savings to just dwindle away; your carefully safeguarded reputation marred due to delinquent borrowed capital; and your venture capitalists disappointed and betrayed.

Studies have shown that within the first five years, more than 5 out of 10 business start – ups succumb to the brutal forces of obsolescence, competition and bankruptcy. Guess what? This means that about half of the business start – ups do succeed. While half of Malaysia’s businesses are having a tremendously hard time staying afloat, the other half are continuously building up their income and profits.

How can that be?
The continued pressure of the global financial crisis casting a cloud over business confidence; competition transcending beyond national borders; the unstoppable ballooning of information easily accessible and available to consumers; the unending proliferation of customer options on products and services; the never-ending rapid growth of social media – these and many other national and global trends have left both start – up and veteran business owners alike breathless as they play catch up to these developments to survive and thrive.

What separates the business failures from the winners?

provides you the perfect environment and opportunity to know and discover the most profitable secrets that has repeatedly made the winners head and shoulders above their business failures counterparts – success formulas that can boost your bottom line to double, triple, and even quadruple! Learn how you can start getting the right mindset that will bring out the most innovative strategies you can use to achieve your business goals.

TDG (short of Thinking. Doing. Growing.) is Malaysia’s playground for the most successful business owners and entrepreneurs, and where success stories come together to breed even more success stories – the next one could be yours!

Here is a quick view of what you can learn during the conference:

How to develop the mindset of a multi-million dollar entrepreneur

Deadly mistakes everyone in business makes, yet often overlooks (and how to avoid them)

Closely-held secrets from the people who have been there, done that, and growing ever bigger still

The single fastest way to explode your business. Structured networking opportunities to build lucrative alliances.

Actionable information that will massively profit you once you implement them – No fluffy overviews here.

Why should you join TDG? I’ll tell you why.

You will get first-hand business success formulas from crème de la crème entrepreneurs. The most successful entrepreneurs of this generation have come up with the smartest ways and moves to overcome daunting business challenges. If they are able to do it, there’s no reason why you can’t. They will tell you their secrets.

You will be updated with the latest business trends. Say goodbye to obsolete information that takes you nowhere but the last place in the tough battle for business supremacy. While most business owners fail because of their inability to access and adapt to the latest market trends, the profitable ones remain ahead of the race because of their ability to proactively respond to market development.

You will expand your business network. You will be able to get up-close and personal with business and entrepreneurship savvy personalities, non-government entities and prospective clients, automatically growing your business network base.

Hurry! Limited seats available. Don’t miss out on this worthwhile opportunity! Reserve a seat NOW!

Social media has indeed become a very powerful tool being used by businesses both big and small businesses. Traditional marketing alone has become seldomly used by companies these days. Still, there are many ways in which traditional methods still have an edge. One of these is when it comes to regulation. Newspapers, TV and other sources of media can be controlled to some degree. Even when customers don’t like what is being advertised, their opinions can’t really have such huge effects.

When it comes to social media, there is no controlling what and how news is spread. This can be a good thing if it is in favor of your business. The problem arises when comments are negative. One unhappy client simply needs to post something negative on their site and in minutes, your ‘bad’ reputation is is spread. Shrugging off such a spread as ‘temporary’  can be dangerous. Companies must act so that they can control how this news is spread.

One very important thing to consider is how you talk to your customers on these social media sites. Talking ‘at’ them gives a selfish impression that won’t be good at all. Your customers will think of you as simply a company trying to get something from them. A better way to interact is to talk ‘with’ them instead. Try and direct these converstations to involve  youself but also be a good listener.

The way news spreads on social media isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, many defects have been identified because of customers’ complaints on these sites. The key here is to build your integrity online and get your customers to trust you.

Marketers must find creative ways of directing these conversations, involving themselves, and, most importantly, listening to what’s being said.  Using this information, adjustments can be made to more effectively serve buyers’ needs.

Read more here.

Credit: maximumpc.com

Internet rage has come to a totally new level thanks to social media. Comments that are full of obscene language, derogatory terms and all the foul speech you can think of.  If you are a company using social media to get clients and get those sales up, is internet rage good for your company? Here are some things to think about:

It’s more of a protest. When people express their disgust on something posted on your wall, it’s not like they’re just being bad. Usually, they do have valid reasons behind these comments. Social media has therefore become a place people can protest about anything they want without worrying about facing any consequences.  Is this good for your company then? Well, since many people who share the sentiments will ‘like’ or comment in the same manner, you’ll be able to determine if there is need to address their complaints.

It moves to action. Think of it-without social media, how would you know what your customers really feel about your product? How would you know if you have to change  your strategies or something?  You wouldn’t. You’d be in the dark just hoping your doing the right thing and chances are by the time you realize your unpopularity, you would  have had a lot of losses made.  With internet rage though, you get to change course before it’s too late.

What should y0u do about it? Blocking or banning people who tend to post ‘negative’ comments on  your wall really won’t get you anywhere. If you block them on your page, they simply might start a new page focused on ‘bringing you down’! Yep, a thousand ‘angry’ comments is far better and easier to deal with than a thousand ‘pages’. The truth is, internet rage can be used to  your benefit. You can address serious concerns as they come and change  your company’s direction with these comments.

Read more here.

Practically all social media sites now have some button that allows you to express your ‘approval’ or like to whatever is being said or posted. This ‘like’ button may seem to be like a way to seeing who’s popular or for companies to endorse their products but what has happened with this ‘like’ button?

Stereotyping. Let’s say your friend posts some picture and you decide you ‘like’ it. The only other choice if you’ve enable the button that is is ‘dislike’. The fact is you probably have your own personal opinion on the picture, there’s something you like about it. This is where the problem comes in-the like button has ended up stereotyping everything you say.It’s either you like it or not. That viewpoint is really narrow. It makes things too easy.

Deceptive. Getting the most likes has become a ‘popularity’ game many companies play. The fact is that some things can’t be compared! So how can you generalize them into ‘like’?

Here’s another interesting scenario:

In response to people Liking criticism of the Queensland Police Service, the QPS tried to explain how to use the Like button:

“The ‘like’ button is used to show interest in a topic and to help alert other FB friends, or even to ensure you’re informed of updates.

“It does not literally mean that you like something, please refrain from continuing this debate.”

More than 1,200 Facebook users then Liked that comment. Were all those users endorsing the same concept, and how many were being sarcastic?

Something worth thinking about right? How do you know what the person liked about your post? Were they just doing it because they had nothing to comment? Do they sincerely agree with you? Or do they just like the fact that you were able to say that? It’s a mess!

Then there’s something that I’m sure you’ve noticed especially on Facebook. My friend for example posted a status with a photo saying ‘this was the last shot I had with my cam before I heard a crack’. Obviously not good news at all but vioala-people liked it!Why?

Did they sympathize? Did they like the fact that his cam broke?

The ‘like’ button has made people lazy. Instead of really understanding something and expressing their opinion, they just ‘like’ it. Sometimes not even knowing what exactly they liked.

The social media war for your opinion, then, is also a war between institutional control of public assessment on the one hand, and personal freedom of expression on the other.

Source article here.