Free Webinar: Beyond Newsletters

Beyond Newsletters: Better Ways to Inform Your Users Tuesday,  January 24, 2011, 9 am CST - No Charge! - Register

Whether you use newsletters in your marketing mix today or are considering them for tomorrow, there are innovative new ways to simplify the internal newsletter creation process. Also, there are a few newsletter alternatives that you may want to consider when deciding how best to accomplish the goal of keeping users informed. In this webinar, you'll learn some tips and tricks you can apply today to give your newsletters the lift they are looking for.

Webinar hosted by FreePint - Family of sites and publications reaching over 100,000 information workers monthly

Aflac Workforce Study

Aflac, the company that provides supplemental insurance and is best known for their silly commercials, published their 2011 Workforce Study last summer. The study examines employees' satisfaction, impressions of benefits, and beliefs about voluntary benefits. Plus, they provide information on company benefits by size of company and by industry for education, government, health care, and retail. One interesting tidbit is that 41% of those surveyed said a well-communicated benefits program would make them less likely to change jobs. And, 46% percent said their HR departments communicate too little about employee benefits. The latest white paper from Aflac the"New Normal" report addresses this issue about using benefits to keep employees satisfied and on the job, and provides insights into the latest employee benefit trends and highlights challenges businesses are facing in this new economic landscape.

We here at bizologie always tout associations for sources of information, but also check out company sites for industry statistics and any studies they may publish for public consumption. Yes, it may have some bias, but it also provides some excellent free market research!

Business Source Complete

It’s 2012, we’re back, and we mean business!  Well actually, we mean business no matter the year, so what better way to start 2012 than with one of the most fundamental business research tools:  The Business Source Complete Database, or BSC as well affectionately call it. BSC is just one subject-specific database from a vendor named EBSCO, and EBSCO’s full repertoire of subject databases spans practically every major field of study.  I looked up EBSCO in its own database (not unlike Googling for Google) and the first result, an August 2011 Datamonitor360 report says EBSCO Publishing is, “the world’s most used for-fee internet research service.”  EBSCO is so ubiquitous of a research tool that the odds of your local library having a BSC subscription are pretty good.  (Public libraries may have several useful tools beyond BSC, e.g. Reference USA.)  If they don’t, you might check with your local college/university and see if they allow guests to access their databases.

Simply put, we use BSC all the time for business research.  While it might not be updated up-to-the-minute as some other databases like Factiva, its sheer breadth of scope spans a bit of everything: all manner of trade and popular news, industry reports, popular publications like Harvard Business Review, and scholarly articles.  BSC is generally our second stop after Google.

Tips:

1.  As a friendly reminder BSC is not Google; try searching with fewer keywords at the onset, and then limit your results.

2.  If you’re doing research that spans multiple topics and your library/university has subscriptions to many EBSCO subject databases, you may see the Choose A Database button which lets you search across them.

Casual Friday: Favorite Sites for Home Design & Decor

We bizologie girls are home design junkies. We love house tours, HGTV, furniture shopping, and open houses. With a little help from our friends, we've painted our houses inside and out, backsplashed our kitchens, updated our landscaping, obsessed over any number of furniture choices and even remodeled our bathrooms. Here are a few sites we love for home design inspiration:

• Apartment Therapy--"Saving the world, one room at a time", Apartment Therapy is one of our favorites. They focus on apartments and small houses so most of their ideas seem affordable/attainable and they always have great ideas for storage. We love that the AT community is as passionate about design as we are, making the comments sections sometimes just as helpful and interesting as the posts themselves. You don't see that every day!
• retro renovation--Created by Pam Kueber, who remodeled her 1950s house, retro renovation is your "daily dose of mid century renovation resources… design inspiration… fun finds… and a growing community of people all interested in cherishing their postwar 40s, 50s 60s and 70s homes."  We love Pam's passion for maintaining the integrity of older homes.
• Pinterest (Home Decor Page)--You can't beat Pinterest for great ideas and their Home Decor section provides endless hours of decorating yumminess.
• Overstock--Love Eames chairs, but on a librarian budget? We know the feeling. Head over to Overstock, type in "plastic chairs" and presto! Fantastic Eames knock-offs for a fraction of the price. Emeco "Navy Chair" at $450 a pop too much? Overstock to the rescue again. Simply type in "metal chairs" and you get two chairs for $135 that are perfect replicas of the "Navy Chair". We love Overstock for keeping us in the lap of luxury on a shoestring.
• Ikea Hackers--We all know shopping Ikea is one of the most affordable ways to furnish your house. But to keep your living room from looking just like your neighbors', check out Ikea Hackers who share ways to repurpose and personalize all sorts of different Ikea products.
• Catalog Living--Now that you've got your house looking like the pages of a catalog, it's time to laugh about it. Catalog Living offers a "glimpse into the exciting world of the people living in your catalogs".  Not only is it fun to keep up with the antics of Gary & Elaine, it's a great place for ideas and every entry is sourced in case you want to buy the products that will  make Gary & Elaine green with envy.

The Thank You Economy

Gary Vaynerchuk of wine fame is now the guru of social media. If you are a Vayniac you may already know that Gary has taken the lessons he learned from building an online empire with WineLibrary.com and has published two books and started his own consulting firm, VaynerMedia, to help companies move into the future of business - social media. To Vaynerchuk it's actually the old way of doing things -- getting to know your customers and making a real connection. You know, like the neighborhood businesses of yore used to do. By forming a real relationship companies can humanize their brands. He says it's all based on using social media to listen to customers, not what most companies are doing now which is pushing information to customers and trying close the deal too quickly. Check out Vaynerchuk's interview with Piers Morgan about his new book, The Thank You Economy.

Holiday Greeting from bizologie

Happy Holidays from bizologie! We couldn't think of a better way to wish you the best this season than with an e-card from geoGreetings. Their slogan is "how geeks show they care." That is us! If you want to share the geeky love of Google maps and cool buildings with your friends and family it is super easy to make a card and send a link.

We'll be taking some time off so we'll see you in the new year!

University Presidents' Salaries

When we think of the phrase executive compensation, the first thing that probably comes to mind is all things banking and corporate.  Hence it's englightening to see the data compendium that one of the major trade-pubs for our nonprofit industry, The Chronicle of Higher Education, created when they trained a spotlight on the biggest fish in their university ponds- the presidents. We give them kudos for the sheer volume of research work.  They found out how much these .edu CEOs make, plus how that salary compares to the average professor's compensation for that institution, plus what percentage that salary is of the total institutional budget, plus they repeated the process 519 times.

To see The Chronicle's impressive interactive infographic (try saying that five times fast) then follow this link to the chart, which also features a series of tabs that break universities down by category.

If you want to know whether the bigwig of your alma matter is in the 99% or 1% as it were, then we recommend purchasing a subscription to the Chronicle.  To whet your appetite, here's a peek at the tip-top of that compensation list.  (Tip:  They culled this salary data from the Guidestar website, which we have also blogged about before here.)

Professional Associations Spotlight: Grocery Manufacturers Association

In our continuing efforts to provide our readers with free business resources, this week we came across the Grocery Manufacturers Association. The GMA "is the voice of more than 300 leading food, beverage and consumer product companies." Their members include several well-known food and beverage companies like Coca-Cola, Conagra, Del Monte and Hormel. But also other members from other industries like logistics, research firms, retail stores and restaurants. You can see a complete list of their members here. GMA has several freely available research reports covering topics like Shopper Marketing, Logistics and Consumer Product Fraud. There's also a recent report entitled "Economic Impact of the U.S. Grocery Manufacturing Industry".  This is a really great report that covers the economic impact down to specific industries like Grains, Sugars, Fruits & Vegetables, Dairy, etc. It also provides labor statistics like average incomes and "Value Added per Worker".

bizologie Favorite Apps: EasyBib

One of our new favorite apps is EasyBib. If only it had been around when we were in grad school! EasyBib allows users to "create accurate MLA, APA, and Chicago style citations in seconds by scanning a book bar code or by typing the name of a book." Once you've scanned your book, you can either email it to yourself or upload it to EasyBib's bibliography management site.

EasyBib works with iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, though their notes say it works best with iPhone 4. EasyBib is available free in the AppStore.

Factiva

Factiva is a global information resource providing full-text access to top local, national and international newspapers - most notably, The Wall Street Journal. This one amazing resource contains over 8000 publications with content from 200 countries in 26 languages. Use the Simple Search to find articles on a topic or use the Search Builder option to create more in-depth searches by limiting to specific publications. You can also easily browse this week’s popular newspapers using the News Pages. This database is a subscription database, so check with your local library to see if you have online access with your library card or contact Factiva for an individual subscription. Check out this video tutorial to see how Factiva works:

All The Money In The World...

...has been visually distributed in one awesomely massive chart, courtesy of Randall Munroe's profoundly entertaining & enlightening web comic XKCD.  (That's your cue to bookmark it.) He says on the poster, "Nearly every amount has a cited source- when possible, a scholarly work or government publication," and- in a move that captures our librarian hearts- he offers a link to download the impressively long list of references here.

P.S.  This is not a poster for perusing on your smartphone.

P.P.S.  We hope you had a Thanksgiving holiday as happy and fullfeeling as ours!

That's What iPad Apps Are All About, Charlie Brown

If there are two things I love, it's Christmas, Charlie Brown and technology. Wait, that's three things. Just in time for the holidays, Loud Crow Interactive brings us this wonderful iPad app featuring "A Charlie Brown Christmas". It's a digital book featuring narration by Peter Robbins, the original voice of Charlie Brown. The app lets you decorate your own Charlie Brown Christmas tree, participate in the lights and display contest and features music and sound effects from the original television special. It's available in the App Store for $6.99. And judging by the promotional video, it looks like it just may be worth the money.

Social Media and Customer Complaints

Everyone has seen the vents and rants on Facebook and Twitter but do customers really expect companies to respond? Are companies using these venues to answer complaints? eMarketer's recent articles When Consumers Tweet Complaints, Should Brands Respond? and How well Do Companies Respond to Complaints? look at the bigger picture of social media and marketing and how complaints online are being addressed or not. "According to customer experience research company Maritz Research, nearly half of consumers who tweeted a complaint directed toward a brand expected the company to respond—or at least to read their tweet. However, only a third of those consumers received a tweeted response from the mentioned brand." Interestingly, older customers 55+ expect a company to address their online complaints everytime. Younger customers and those more active on Twitter believed that companies would not respond. It seems they have they have lowered their expectations based on experience.

Companies should be paying more attention to their social media outlets and answering questions and complaints more often. "Consumers are overwhelmingly positive when brands take the time to actually respond to them on Twitter. The Maritz study indicates that 86% of Twitter complainers would have liked or loved to hear from the company regarding their complaints—and out of those who heard back, 75% were satisfied with the company’s response."

Obviously, complaints can help the company improve service but companies are also discovering that participating in this type of  online conversation can help build relationships with customers. For instance Virgin Airlines tries to respond to every question or complaint tweet @VirginAmerica. Abby Lunardini, vice president of corporate communications, told eMarketer in a September 26, 2011, interview that customers were surprised to learn that someone in the airline industry was listening and responding to the online chatter and she believes that the engagement is improving service and leading to customer loyalty with more customers choosing to fly Virgin Airlines again.

Who Says There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch? Well, Mint.com, actually.

Check out this interesting video from Mint.com, which shows how much money people spend on food and dining each month. Their information is gathered from anonymous Mint users. Some of the facts about money spent in specific areas goes by pretty quick, but it's an interesting visual of how it all adds up.

Business Research Meets…Purses?

While the bizologie authors all exhibit a weakness for Coach handbags, this entry is not a game of  guess your clients’ income by who’s not wearing a fake.  Recently I had an excellent interaction in a Coach boutique which I visited to exchange a bag, and the sales associates referenced an online consumer forum multiple times during my time there, e.g. “Oh I think the talked about this color on The Purse Forum.  They’re major enthusiasts on The Purse Forum.  They’re way ahead of the game on The Purse Forum”.  This intrigued me, so the next day I visited TPF and found a market research gold mine. Now when most people use the term gold mine, they mean “everything I wanted in one spot.”  That’s more likely the other gold analogy, the one involving pots and rainbows.  TPF, in terms of business research, comes across as a literal gold mine, with a lot of nonrelevant (to business researchers that is) information to be found throughout, and the occasional vein of free-focus-group-qualitative-information-gold.  These are serious Coach connoisseurs who are not only giving impromptu product reviews, but also candidly answering topics like:  “Do you no longer like Coach?  If, so, then why?”  (Answer: Lots of them move on to higher price point brands like Hermes or LV).  Or, “For those who own more than a handful of Coach bags, why do you buy?  (Answer: Thrill of the hunt; they often re-sell their stash on ebay and purchase their new must have).

Obviously one could create an account, insinuate themselves into the forum’s culture, and ask incognito questions.  And obviously the Coach employees are monitoring TPF, which begs the question of precisely who starts some of these more probing threads.  Hence TPF (which also discusses scads of other handbag brands and other luxury goods) and other comparable consumer forums are definitely something to consider for people doing qualitative-type business research, especially for the aforementioned luxury/consumer goods.  So long as the researcher is respectful of that community’s enthusiasm and expertise, they might find themselves a gold nugget or two.

Follow IDC Analysts on Twitter

If you've never used IDC before, it's a great database for keeping up with market intelligence for the IT world. Unfortunately, it's pretty expensive so your organization may not have access. However, lots of IDC analysts are on Twitter and following them can still help keep  you in the loop for anything from Big Data to Social Media to Apps. You can follow specific IDC analysts or industries or even different countries.

Consumer Opinions & Attitudes About Energy

The Energy Management and Innovation Center in the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin recently released their first Energy Poll. The groundbreaking poll measures and reports on consumer opinions and attitudes toward energy consumption, pricing, development and regulation. This look at public perspectives on energy can be used to inform and guide discussion, business planning and policy development. According to the Texas Enterprise "mapping how attitudes change over time is part of EMIC’s vision for the poll. It plans to repeat the survey every six months... [and] will use some of the answers to generate an 'energy sentiment index' — a single number to sum up consumer confidence about energy."

Findings from the first report show that respondents aren't feeling very optimistic about energy policy. A whopping 43% feel like we are moving in the wrong direction when it comes to energy issues that face our nation. And, 41% expect the situation to get even worse in the next 25 years. Consumers are most concerned about consumption of foreign oil, improving energy efficiency, and developing renewable energy. The good news is that the overwhelming majority of consumers (80%) are interested in learning more about how to conserve energy in their own homes. Many of them are planning on making changes in the next 5 years. Just over 30% plan to use "smart meters" and/or buy a hybrid car. A surprising 21% even plan to install solar panels in the same time frame.

Business Videos- Part Two

If you took the time to look through YouTube's business education channel from the Part One companion post, then you might already expect that this second segment on educational business videos is a profile of the KhanAcademy.  The KhanAcademy videos can all be found on YouTube, but seeing the sheer volume and breadth from the KhanAcademy mother ship is impressive.  It's even more impressive considering its founder Salman 'Sal' Khan, (who has three degrees from MIT and an MBA from Harvard) made the vast majority of them as he discusses in the FAQ. A 501c3 non-profit, the KhanAcademy is making the world a smarter and better place by spreading knowledge via freely available 10-20 minute short tutorial videos on a wide array of academic topics, including a significant concentration on (unsurprisingly) business finance.  Want lectures on topics concerning the 2009 financial crisis, or need a well-rounded view on the American-Chinese dept loop, or can't remember how to derive market capitalization?  Sal's videos provide those answers, albeit you might have to stare at his notes carefully because his handwriting is sometimes a bit messy.  Great knowledge doesn't have to come in a shiny package though, so that's hardly a reason to avoid brushing up on some business basics.  We at bizologie say kudos to Khan!

The Business of Halloween

Happy Halloween from bizologie! According to a recent Harris poll, younger Americans, ages 18-46, rank Halloween as their third favorite holiday behind Christmas & Thanksgiving. 90% of all American kids will be trick-or-treating tonight and even 15% of us will dress up our pets--though we certainly don't know anyone around here who would do such a thing. Blink. Blink.

Before you grab your plastic pumpkin and flashlight to head out for the evening, let's take a look at the economic impact of Halloween:

• According to the National Retail Federation, the average American will spend $72.31 on costumes, candy and decorations. That's up from just $66.28 last year.
• Total Halloween spending is expected to reach $6.86 billion.
• Halloween accounts for 23% of annual candy sales for the year according to the National Confectioners Association.
• Morningstar reports an increase in commodities like cocoa, sugar, dairy and peanuts, but luckily these price increases haven't been passed on to consumers just yet. Hershey expects to raise prices early next year.

On behalf of everyone here at bizologie, we wish you a safe and Happy Halloween!

bizologie's own April Kessler, Starfleet Librarian

Business Videos- Part One

On a large scale, we have generally mentioned YouTube in scads of posts throughout this blog, and on a small scale we have promoted the UT Business Librarian Channel and its tutorials on finding focused information in specific databases. Today, this post covers some of the metaphorical gooey middle of general business instructional videos that can be found by browsing in YouTube.  How do you find them?

• Select the Browse button next to the search box.
• Choose Education from the navigation bar that loads beneath the Browse button.
• Choose Business from the subsequently loaded Category dropdown menu.
• Filter by different topics that live under the Business umbrella, including things like Finance, Innovation, and Supply Chain Management.

Whether you’re looking for a refresher on Finance 301 or insights on emergent markets, you’re bound to find a useful video.  After all, staying informed of business principles and abreast of business practices is the best way to ensure a solid foundation for conducting high caliber business research.  Below are a few good videos to consider watching.

Stanford: China New Media & E-Commerce Investment Outlook

University of New South Wales: Online Trading: Creating Efficiency with Double-sided Markets

Duke University: Introduction to Energy Entrepreneurship

Stay tuned!  Next week I’ll profile another excellent compendium of business videos.