Oh, the joy of tech support… Just about everyone has had the experience of their computer dying in the middle of an important project, only to have to spend the rest of the day wrestling with tech support. Listening to hours of “Your call is important to us” hold music and low-level clueless employees whose advice basically boils down to “Turn it off and then on again.” Then, if you don’t mysteriously get disconnected, you MAYBE might get to someone who can actually help you with your problem, if you’re lucky. So imagine trying to deal with tech support while…
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Do you remember sitting in school as a kid, vaguely staring at the walls as your teacher droned on and on about geography, history, or math… You were kind of paying attention. Maybe take a note every now and then, but the sad reality is that your attention is elsewhere. The material just wasn’t engaging you. But why? What your teacher was saying might have been interesting, but without a visually engaging element, your attention was lost. What if the teacher had a winning slide deck? We like to think that, as adults, we have more focus. That we can…
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Do you have a business plan? Something that I highly recommend all of my clients (and pretty much every entrepreneur) do is create a business plan at the beginning of the year. Spending the first week or so in January putting together a comprehensive business plan can pay off dividends for a small business through the new year. A business plan gives you a map, with goals and strategies that may help you confront the biggest challenges facing your business. But here is the problem: plans change. Things change! Life happens! Maybe your business did even better than you expected…
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Do you remember what it was like when you were a kid during the summer? It was like heaven! Three entire months off school with no work whatsoever! I remember waking up to the smell of fresh cut grass and would scramble out of bed to get outside! Unfortunately, endless summers can’t last forever. But here’s the good news! One of the benefits of being an entrepreneur with a business is that you get to make your own schedule. Yes, you absolutely need to work like crazy during the summer to grow your business, but if you want a three…
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Do you have any tricks or tips that help get you through your daily workflow? Back when I first started my small business, my daily workflow was very different than it is now. There were very few applications out there that not only make my business easier to manage but also helped me get so much more done throughout the course of my day. Today, I have tons of programs, automated processes, and other tools that help me be super productive from the first thing in the morning until the very end of the night. If you’ve ever been curious…
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Ok, I’m going to admit it. I… occasionally… binge watch Netflix. I know, I know, I’ve heard all the arguments against it. It ruins the show, it’s a waste of time, etc. But the fact is that it’s fun to binge watch a show with your loved ones (or by yourself with a giant bowl of popcorn). Binge watching has gone from something that only those who buy DVD box sets do to something that just about everyone does. You pick a show on Netflix, sit down on the couch, and enjoy the ride. But Netflix is only one option…
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If you’re new to Jennie Lyon Digital Marketing & Virtual Assistant Services, you might not know this about me: I’m a big believer in recycling. Wait, did I say “believer?” I meant fanatic! For years, I’ve had a sister company called Sweet Greens, all about taking care of the planet. One of my favorite things to do is walk over to the beach with my son and pick up the bottles and other garbage that accumulates down there. And, as you can imagine, when you embrace clean, environmentally-friendly living, it can impact every other aspect of your life. And that…
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Remember the old adage for those with gigantic cable packages? “300 channels, and nothing’s on?” That certainly isn’t a problem anymore. You can find just about all of the entertainment that you want from Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu. Streaming video has mostly replaced traditional cable, offering people the ability to watch whatever they want, whenever they want. You no longer have to scroll through guides to see what’s on. Instead, you just type (or speak!) what you feel like watching into search, and countless results will pop up! At first glance, this seems like a massive problem for advertisers.…
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About 30 years ago, do you know where one of the best places to market to people was? Their car. The very first thing they did after they got into their car in the morning was turn on the radio. And chances are that it remained on for their entire commute to work, both back and forth. This offered advertisers a captive audience (literally, if the driver was on the highway!) Back then, radio ads were smart and inventive. Frankly, some of the most effective and brilliant marketing campaigns of all time were on the radio. But then around 15…
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If there is one thing that I’ve learned doing digital marketing over the years, it’s that yesterday’s fad is today’s “next big thing.” A perfect example is SnapChat. When SnapChat debuted a few years ago, it was treated with scorn from many marketers. Heck, even the general public looked at it with suspicion. Why on earth would you only want to take super-short, 15-second videos of yourself? And then share them? Who would watch them? Just a few years later and SnapChat-like functionality has been integrated into countless apps and social media networks: Facebook among them. But probably the most…
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