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There is a general feeling that the Social Media is making people more polarized instead of bringing all people together and “bridging the divide.” Here is an increasing trend going on that people believe what they want to believe, and they selectively filter out information contradicting their preferences.

Social Media can be good and also can be bad. 74 % of people say that social media is making us less social (source: debate .org). People are expecting more from technology and less from each other. According to a new study published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, Social Media can make you unproductive. How can spending more time on Facebook or Twitter end up making us stupider? The researcher’s ask this question. They say the time that could be spent, say, reading a book and actually learning something is being wasted on Facebook for hours clicking crops in Farmville, one of the game on Facebook. Well, I can tell you that most of my friends are always taking new courses on Coursera and Edx platforms and learning new skills and always upgrading their knowledge and watching current business trends instead of getting addicted to social media sites.

Aslam Jeelani

Senior Business Writer

& Web Contributor

Venture Capital or investors are not hard to find, but they are hard to close. First and foremost thing is that you have to have a working product or service and a proven market to attract them. The competition is getting more challenging day by day, but there are opportunities available if you are aware of the realities of venture capitalist’s priorities and what they are looking for in your start up.

The first thing to do to get Venture Capitalists consideration to get funded for your start up is to talk about your management team, because these are the people who will execute on the strategy and  make the startup successful. The next thing is the momentum, the combination of your product design or service model, revenues, customers, pricing, a growing team and evolving market positioning. The VC’s want to know that you can actually sell your product or services to the people.

Venture Capitalists are always interested about investing on big markets with ambitious teams. So you have to show them the market opportunities with verifiable research and metrics. The money factor is also an important one for VC’s to decide to invest in your startup. So you have to be ready for this final step. In the beginning, as the markets goes they would like to own, about 20-25% of your startup company.

The other important points the VC’s are looking for in your startup are your resources, Implementation strategy, financial plan and Marketing plan. It’s always better to review your plans with your team and friends, before you present it to the VC’s or investors. So understanding these simple steps of financing a startup is critical to successfully funding your company.

-M Aslam Jeelani

Sr. Business Writer

E-Commerce sales are surging rapidly in the US as more and more websites are joining this trend and this will be continuing in to coming years. The Websites which previously were providing only information and reviews and were in the category of E-Business and now moving to the next step of offering E-Commerce. Well, the difference between E-Business and E-Commerce is that you have the element of financial transaction in E-Commerce.

Here are the top five reasons for a new start-up website to join E-Commerce bandwagon. These are widely accepted payments, more convenient way to pay, Purchase protection, Quick transaction processing and safer way to pay for services and products.

E-Commerce is growing must faster than retail sales in stores. Here is an amazing trend. In quarter 2 of 2014, E-Commerce growth in US was 15.70 %,while Amazon’s growth was 26.40 %. (source: U.S. Department of Commerce, Amazon.com Inc., Internet Retailer).

If anyone is planning to start-up in e-commerce field you have to look for the niche market and think how your new ecommerce company completely changes the way people think about purchasing experiences from buying something simple to taking a cab. Uber and Scripted  were small start-ups before they became big companies.

Aslam Jeelani

Senior Digital Marketing Consultant 

& Content Writer

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Six Major models of communications are,

1. Advertising

2. Sales Promotion

3. Events & Experiences

4. Public Relations & Publicity

5. Direct Marketing &

 6. Personal Selling.

These are important because, all modes of communications, communicate something to buyers, such as establishing the brand in the memory and creating a brand image. These modes of communications can either strengthen or weaken a consumer’s view of a company.

Theses modes of communications can contribute to brand equity by creating awareness of the brand and enhancing the value and consumer’s feeling towards the brand. Some companies develop a negative image in consumers mind and general public, because of their controversial policies towards employees, negative media publicity generated by some of their activities and actions. Wal-Mart is an example of developing a negative image currently in general public. Wal-Mart is using public relations and publicity as a mode of communication and spending millions of dollars to improve its image in general public.

Companies like Dell and L.L Beans have established leadership position using direct marketing as a mode of communication, offering low prices and costs savings to the consumers. Depending on the company’s position, it can use any of these six modes of communications or a mix of these marketing communications to get successful results.

Aslam Jeelani

Senior Digital Marketing Consultant

When you think of a business start-up, first thing you do is create a Business Plan that will serve as a roadmap for your start-up in the early years of business. In general, your business plan should project approximately 2 to 5 years looking forward, the route your business takes to reach annual milestones along with the revenue projection.

Here are the essentials of step by step business plan:

+ Executive Summary

    You can write the executive summary last, so that it’s easy for you to highlight the complete plan. This will be read by the most important readers as its name suggests.

+Company Description

    Describe your strategy and show how the company will be set up and the initial ownership will be divided between the stakeholders. It has to show start-up cost and initial funding.Describe the products and services you are going to offer. Explain why people will buy these products & services and their benefits. How much it will cost to sell these products and services.

+Market Analysis

   This part should describe market trends, market growth, target market and market demographics. Write about your industry type and its competition and also mention market forecast.

+Organization & Management

Here you provide your company’s organizational structure and the ownership of your company, qualifications of your board of directors (if you have an advisory board). This section is very important to a potential investor or employee.

Explain who does what in your management team and their background and their responsibilities.

+Sales & Marketing

 Here you focus on your strategy of sales and marketing. The important part is creating and building customers and ways to retain them. How are you going to reach your customers and what are the ways to distribute your products and services.

+Funding Resources

    If you are seeking funding for your business venture, then include the amount you need now and the amount you want in future. It’s important to show here, how you are going to use the funds you receive, for example capital expenditures, working capital or acquisitions, because this will impress future creditors and also show your ability to payback.

+Financial Projections

    Well, with the start-up, creditors want to see what you expect your company to do in the next five years. For the first year you have to provide monthly or quarterly projections of cash flow statements, forecasted income statements, balance sheets and capital expenditure budgets.

You can include graphs for trend analysis to make a better presentation to the prospects.

+Appendix

    The appendix would include:

•Credit history (personal & business)

•Resumes of key managers

•Product pictures

•Letters of reference

•Details of market studies

•Relevant magazine articles or book references

•Licenses, permits or patents

•Legal documents

•Copies of leases

•Building permits

•List of business consultants, including attorney and accountants.

By: Claudio Lodes       

     Senior Business Consultant.

According to a recent report by Ernst & Young, Eighty one percent of organizations promoting their brands on social media , measure the success of their online campaigns by the number of ‘Likes’ and ‘Views’ they get on their social network pages. But the majority of business organizations do not measure their ROI through such campaigns.

One of my friend used this kind of paid method and got thousands of ‘Likes’ and ‘Views’ in just one day. So you may think that you can ‘buy’ popularity this way, but it’s not a real measure of your ‘page’ or brand popularity and is no way useful. Well, some businesses do this just to enhance their marketing image or to impress their boss or they don’t want to do the real hard work.

It’s one thing if the business organization needs a lot of facebook ‘likes’ and ‘views’ to justify their existence, but that won’t lead to sales. The best ways to promote your business is through running Ads on Facebook, running contests and sweepstakes and engage with your customers. You have to provide a reason to people to return to you page.

Aslam Jeelani

Senior Digital Marketing Consultant