The majority of Baby Boomers have become leaders in their field.  Many are law firm partners, corporate executives, or very well established in their careers.  Known to be independent and self reliant, Baby Boomers lack some of the social media and tech knowledge many of the Millennial generations now bring to the workplace.

BYOD
Bring Your Own Device.  This tech acronym is used among many businesspeople.  BYOD encourages you to bring your own computer or tablet and that one will not be provided.

(NSFW)
The acronym that means “Not Safe For Work”.  Typically used in emails or social forums as a warning that the content may contain explicit or inappropriate material unsuitable for a work environment.

#Hashtag
Many Baby Boomers do not understand what a #hashtag is or how it exactly works.  A “#” (hashtag), is used at the beginning of a word or phrase so that it can be categorized into a specific group and acts as a content and conversation topic organizer within social networking platforms.  For example, if you search #babyboomer, it will most likely take you to a group of statements and information having to do with Baby Boomers.  You can pretty much #hashtag anything which gives businesses a unique way of branding itself.

Meme
Meme’s are described as a package of culture that is imitated.  Meme’s tend to be very trendy and can become an online phenomenon.  Often referring to a funny situation or story, Meme’s are usually funny jokes that are repeated frequently.  An example of a popular meme would be “Grumpy Cat”, which rose to fame over night after a post on Reddit of a picture of a real cat that always looks like he is frowning.  Grumpy Cat memes usually say things like “I purred once…it was awful”, “There are two kinds of people in the world…And I don’t like them”, or “Good Morning?...No such thing”.

The Cloud
The Cloud is a online server-based solution to save your hardware and software online, which is easily assessable on multiple devices.  Saving all your photos, documents, and contacts to only your phone or computer can result in tragedy if broken or stolen.  Saving all your content to The Cloud allows you to excess it anywhere at any time.

Attention local businesses, Yelp is here to Help! Putting your business in the hands of every customer that walks through your door can be nerve-racking. However, word of mouth is the best kind of advertising a business for which a business could ever ask. Here are some Pro's and Con's of using Yelp.

Cons
Once you Yelp, there is no turning back.  Your account on Yelp cannot be deleted once it is activated.  So if you have un-happy customers leaving you negative reviews, they are pretty much there forever. Negative reviews on your Yelp account can definitely hurt your business.  Yelp is free, but if you pay for your Yelp account, you can conveniently hide these negative reviews.

Pros
Yelp is used by all different kinds of businesses.  The site receives over ten million visitors a month.  If your business is not included in these customer searches, you are missing out!

Everyone is looking online for recommendations in their area.  Many tourists search Yelp when visiting a new area.  Tourism has actually become a large portion of Yelp searches, which can tremendously boost a business’ appeal.  As for your loyal customers, just ask them to write a nice review for you.  This can help promote your business and stay on top of your customers wants and desires.

Another great thing about Yelp is that it is simple and free to use.  Visit http://www.yelp.com/business/unlocking to make a free profile and begin showcasing your business to potential customers.

Many in business who concern themselves with logistics understand the benefits of managing, controlling and improving business logistics.  A goal of continuous improvement is critical to the overall health of a business and can have a significant impact on the bottom line.

In business, the category of logistics refers to the network of systems that control how resources flow through a company, as well as from one firm to another, over the course of a supply chain or production process. 

Regardless of what might be happening in other areas of a business, implementing efficient logistics strategies will help keep service levels at their highest performance. But what exactly should owners, managers, and logistics professionals focus on to improve their business’ effectiveness? What methods and strategies can impact the major areas and help control costs, utilize production capacity, improve quality, and compete in the marketplace?

Identify your inefficiencies. The resources needed to hire an experienced systems expert now to fix your areas of inefficiency will save money in the long run and create long-term advantages.

Use multiple communications tools. One of the most overlooked ways to improve logistics is to improve internal and inter-department communication. Utilize tools (video chats, live messaging, Yammer) to facilitate seamless communication in the entire organization.

Meet customer expectations. Logistics is about optimizing costs while providing outstanding service. Every new strategy or tool (such as upgrading management software) should be designed within the overall objectives of the business to achieve excellent service and customer satisfaction.

Outsourcing can be an advantage. The awareness to understand your core competencies is important. Focus on your strengths and outsource what you’re not good at to avoid reoccurring issues and minimize inefficiencies.  

Learn how to delegate in-house. While you might outsource much of your logistics, it remains important to have managers and internal experts within the organization who fully understand the moving parts and every step of the process.

Build long-term relationships. Logistics is a very complicated business, and it’s vital your company surrounds itself with experts and experienced partners throughout every step of the process – even if they are outsourced – who are invested in the relationship.

Utilize the technology available. Businesses, especially small firms, can dramatically reduce costs by utilizing technology to consolidate and automate processes across multiple departments, reduce overhead, cut out middle men, and eliminate repetitive work.

Measuring and tracking your website traffic offers numerous tangible benefits. The metrics involved in traffic analytics will allow you to determine your audience, study their behavior and make the necessary strategic changes to boost traffic. You will be able to determine audience patterns and trends, better leverage your SEO strategies, and create efficiencies by devoting and allocating resources to content that drives traffic.

In layman’s terms, it’s critical to know who your visitors are, where they are coming from, what they are doing on your site, and how long they stay.

So the reasons to track website traffic, as well as the benefits, are all there. But what are the best methods of tracking your traffic, and how do you capitalize on what you find?

When tracking traffic, it’s important to remember what you are really trying to find out, rather than merely collecting data.  Knowing what the information means, and how to interpret what you have found, is also important. For example, if you’re running an email or social media campaign, it’s important to know its effectiveness and the impact on website traffic.

Here are the best methods of tracking website traffic, and the questions you should be asking:

1.       How many visitors are using your website (Hits, visits, unique visitors and page views)?
2.       How much time does a visitor devote to your website?
3.       Which are the top entry and exit pages?
4.       How do the visitors reach you? What were the referrers and keyword searches used?
5.       What is the bounce rate of the web pages?
6.       What is the average time spent on pages and the website?
7.       How are visitors navigating (click paths) through the website? What are the sequences of the web pages, and are they behaving a certain way (conversion)?

No one tool will be able to tell you comprehensively everything you need to know. Using multiple tools simultaneously will give you the most clarity to see the big picture, and there are many different tools in the marketplace available to accomplish what you need.

Here are a few lists to start: Sociable.co.uk has compiled a list of 12 killer analytics tools, while Onextrapixel.com offers a list of the ten best alternatives to Google Analytics, and SearchEngineLand.com put together a list of 25 analytics solutions.

Many marketers have nightmares about mountains of data that lead nowhere. To that end, it was Albert Einstein who once famously suggested that not everything that can be counted counts.

The amount of data, especially social data, continues to explode. The volume and variety of data can be overwhelming and daunting, leading marketers to a place where they don’t know what questions to ask or which metrics to use. There’s little sense in the urge to make sense of a mountain of data if there is no methodology involved to know which metrics really matter.

That’s where the common marketing buzzword “actionable insights” comes into the picture.

In its simplest form, actionable insights are defined as the views of data that cause people to think new questions about how processes work and then take action.

Nearly everything is measurable. But not everything is meaningful. Actionable insights is about gaining access to relevant data in context, taking action, and using it to achieve meaningful results.

The trick is to avoid drowning in big data. The current tidal wave of real-time data holds huge rewards for companies that can separate useful information from what is ultimately just noise.

On Forbes.com, DataSift CEO Rob Bailey offered seven points to help companies get real actionable insights from real-time social data, starting with industry-specific monitoring and building a demographic picture of who you audience really is. It’s important to truly understand what your audience likes, measure the social engagement of your content, and then use sentiment analysis tools to identify trends and create predictive models.

New media marketing and analytics expert Pelin Thorogood suggests a new framework – a different way of looking at the metrics that matter – is needed to differentiate what needs to be measured based on the insights that the metrics offer. To deliver more impact and marketing ROI, the focus should be on diagnostic metrics and predictive metrics. These metrics help marketers better understand the complex relationships between disparate marketing channels and how factors will change those outcomes based on analytics and statistical models.

Understanding actionable insights is to understand that when combined effectively, the right metrics can slice through the mountain of data and empower marketers to take action based on accurate insights to deliver marketing ROI and profitability.