Tips to Improve Your Emotional Intelligence

Article Submitted by Herb Kimble

How’s your emotional intelligence? Are you someone who understands the value of positivity? Do you spread a positive aura in the workplace? If you feel you could be better, then this advice is for you. You’re already someone who understands that toxicity kills productivity. Let’s build on that foundation to improve your emotional intelligence.

Here’s some advice that is tried and true.

What’s Your Snap?

Learning how to snap yourself out of an emotional chaos is an important skill to know. You need to understand how to break routine, and how to stop yourself from making a small problem worse with over-worry. Try to cultivate your energy on something constructive. If you’re the type who has a busy mind, slow down with a book or a puzzle. Take up exercising, or a new physical hobby.

Create a Schedule

One way to feel more in control of your life is to physically take control. Set deadlines for yourself and hold yourself accountable. Try to schedule events in your calendar and use your phone for reminders.

When you don’t meet your expectations, figure out why and how you can get yourself back on track. Don’t let your efforts fall to the wayside!

Eat Better

Never underestimate the power of a good diet. Eating more fruits, veggies, and cutting out fatty foods will improve your energy and help with your fitness goals. Do your best to maintain a diet that is healthy and balanced.

Bio: Herb Kimble is both an entrepreneur and a film and television producer. His roots as an accomplished actor gave him a passion for the arts. Today, Herb Kimble is co-founder of CineFocus Productions and launching Urban Flix, an inclusive streaming company based in Los Angeles.

POS in Retail

POS-in-RetailArticle by How Merchant Accounts Work.

Without retail, would the POS system be where it is today? One could argue that it was, in fact, McDonalds that elevated the POS industry and increased demand. McDonalds invested heavily in technology during the 70s and 80s to try and help consumers  and servers get orders more accurate.

It’s true, however, that retail has traditionally dominated the POS over time. Most retail POS systems include the cash register, a printer to print the customer’s receipt, a monitor for the cashier to work with, a cash drawer, and a barcode scanner of some form or another. Older systems include a keyboard, with others including a mouse. Even some newer systems that use desktop computers as the base utilize these peripherals. Some newer systems utilize touchscreen technology, which can make it easier for clerks to find proper codes for items the customer wants.

Newer POS systems are also equipped to handle loyalty programs, which have increased significantly in popularity over time. Loyal customers now expect some form of discount. POS systems have also given retailers the opportunity to plan special sales, using functions to pre-sell items at a discounted price.

Older POS systems relied on a mainframe computer to manage operations, with strict limits on how many terminals could be used in the system at once. In fact, early IBM systems had a limit of 128. Today’s POS can handle a lot more than just the sale itself. Computers in the back office now manage inventory and help to control purchasing.

Without a properly integrated POS system, modern retail operations could not function at scale.

Major Positive Impacts in Digital Advertising

Ads are an integrated part of a website, and the two work hard to serve content as fast as possible. Both work on different connections, and both are trying to show the user something quickly. As a result, new technology has been developed to speed up content delivery. Coding can deliver colors and shapes now, reducing the need for assets that bog down loading times. That puts pressure on Internet service providers to create faster connection speeds. The demand for the Web, on desktop or mobile, is surging.

Better Quality

When people click the ads on their favorite blogs, they enable editing teams to spend more time critiquing work. They enable webmasters to accept guest posts for money, which attracts writers willing to put time and effort into researching posts with scholarly resources.

Advertising dollars also fuel development in other ways. If you use an application on a mobile device to access a website, for instance, that application was made possible because that site is able to generate revenue through advertising. Subscription based models can work, but they are very rare. Even Hulu must show commercials to subscribers who have paid for their service, and the New York Times has developed a similar model. Subscriptions help fund publications, but they can’t keep the lights on forever.

Even when a publisher attempts a subscription-based model, they find themselves using ads to supplement the income brought in by subscriptions. The print industry used free editions to try to entice users, the same way blogs of today use free content.

As CEO of engage:BDR, Ted Dhanik is a technology evangelist and digital advertising expert. Ted Dhanik offers his insight on media and business growth to prominent blogs like AdAge and Venture Beat. Ted Dhanik drives innovation in digital advertising with the team at engage:BDR.

Tips on Designing Video Ads for Mobile

As smartphone adoption rates rise, and video upload rates increase right alongside, the video ad is going to be an important aspect of the media landscape. We already see companies investing more money into mobile advertising and location-based targeting. Video ads are just the next logical step. They provide an outlet for a sales pitch, they can be intimate and they are effective at telling the story of a brand or its product.

For your video ads to be effective, you’ll need to master a few basic concepts and execute them well.

Have a Plan

Will your video explain the product, or will you show the product in action? Are you going to demo the product, or simply show a use case? Deciding how you want to display your product is the first step in creating a video. Try to think of videos as fitting two distinct categories for now: explainers and demos. Explainers do exactly what they sound like, they tell users what a product does and how a service works.

Demos let the user see the product solve a problem, and they can be powerful associative tools.

Get to the Point

A pre-roll ad only offers you about 10-15 seconds of time to get the user’s attention. Even if you purchase a viewable impression worth 15 seconds of time, you’re not going to stay in the user’s mind if your ad doesn’t have a hook and get to its point quickly. Try to keep that in mind as you craft ads. Keep it simple and execute one idea masterfully.
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Ted Dhanik writes on behalf of engage:BDR, where he is CEO and co-founder. Ted Dhanik is passionate about the practice of digital advertising, and blogs frequently about the changing industry. Ted Dhanik, and his pets, are based out of Los Angeles where he actively mentors start ups.

Getting Positive Results from Your First Campaign

Display advertising accounts for a significant portion of big brand spending, meaning that companies like MasterCard are still investing heavily in placements on websites. For those just getting into the business, the good news is that there are plenty of ways to get your ad in front of your audience, but launching is no simple task. Before you begin trying multiple offers, follow these steps to be sure your campaign will get off to a good start.

Determine the Quality of Your Offer

A good offer presents the user with a value proposition up front, and sells a product or service that solves a problem the user is experiencing. In order to sell, the landing page has to look convincing. A solid offer should be made, multiple benefits stated and a firm call to action with specific language should be used. Instead of “Click Here,” try “Buy Now” or some other phrase that accurately describes what the user will be doing. Reduce the number of fields until you are requesting bare minimum from the customer if your landing page utilizes a form. Start with a path you can refine, don’t try to do too much your first try.

Continue to the next phase once you have a strong landing page that directs a customer toward an action.

Identify Targeting Opportunities

The next phase deals with your target audience, so you need to perform some market research to form a clear picture of your ideal customer. Google Trends is a good place to start. You can use this tool to search keywords related to your topic and get an idea of the buzz and interest surrounding your subject. This informs a lot about your target market. You’ll get an idea of what blogs they are interested in, what other topics they read about and begin to form a clearer picture of their browsing habits.

Use this data to inform your targeting decisions. Some specifics to look out for include:

  • Geographic location
  • Income level
  • Interests
  • Web browser
  • Device (tablet or desktop)

Once you have some idea of how you want to target your audience, move on to the final phase before launch.

Purchase Quality Traffic

Advertisers depend on targeted traffic in order to get their messaging out into the wild. Quality traffic can be judged with a few key metrics, like conversions and clicks. You must also consider size of potential inventory, and which offers are popular at the moment. You can have the most interested buyers in the world, but if you’re not selling something they want, you’re wasting money.

Bio: Ted Dhanik is a digital marketer with experience in display and video advertising. Beginning with MySpace.com in the early 2000s, Ted Dhanik has built brands online. Ted Dhanik is the CEO of engage:BDR, a digital advertising company headquartered in Los Angeles.

Customize Your Ice Cream Shop’s Supplies

Make your shop stand out with branding and custom-printed materials.

Own an ice cream shop but still serving customers with bland, lifeless utensils? This may be an area where you could great improve your customer’s experience without breaking the bank. Here are a few ideas how stocking customized cups and spoons can help your shop to stand out from the crowd.

It is much more exciting to eat with colorful cups and spoons rather than the cheap mass produced white utensils. While you mass produced white plastic spoons may be cheaper, they may not be built strong enough and break in a thick frozen product like ice cream. Specifically ordering a variety of colors of ice cream spoons is typically the safest bet to ensure that nothing can come between your customer and their treat.

If you’re ordering ice cream cups in bulk, you can also usually find a supplier that will personalize them for you. You can do almost anything. Imprinting your logo on the cup is pretty standard, and adding a unique design to the dishes the ice cream is served in will really help you stand out. The sky, and your imagination, are the only limits.

Ordering quality ice cream shop supplies that can’t be found anywhere else can also really give your business a professional look. This will help to improve your customer’s experience and hopefully make them want to return to treat themselves with you again.


 

Gelato Products offers the lowest prices on ice cream shop supplies, and free shipping within the United States.

You need to get good cushions if you like to work on the sofa

Do you often work from your sofa or bed on your laptop? If so you need to make sure you have some firm and comfortable cushions.

sofa workIf your polyurethane foam cushion is still in decent shape, but getting a bit worn or isn’t as comfortable as it used to be, you might be considering a replacement. After all, if you’re not sleeping soundly it can have lasting effects on you throughout the day. If you use this guide, you can easily save thousands now so you can afford the mattress of your dreams later.

Mattress Toppers

Adding polyurethane foam sheets as a topper to your mattress can bring a bit of support back to your mattress and allow you to continue using it for a while longer yet. The thickness should be between two to four inches, depending on your size and desired support strength. Be sure to order enough that it can cover your entire bed.

To save even more money, you can create the topper yourself. First, you’ll need to get some polyurethane foam from Canada, and a foam cutting tool. Measure twice, cut once. You can always trim the excess away, but it’s a lot more difficult to order more and glue it together.

Cut the foam to the size and shape of your bed, and then place it on top with a sheet over the topper and tucked into the corners of your mattress. If you’re using a thicker foam, you may need to have deep-pocketed sheets for it to fit.

Final Tip

One final tip for those with stiff necks in the morning. Order a memory foam pillow! The dense foam cradles the neck and provides additional support as needed.

Bio: The Foam Factory, Inc. sells superior quality foam products for home and industrial use. From packaging foam to mattress toppers, The Foam Factory offers affordable quality.