Personalized shopping used to mean that you were buying something with a monogram, but today that word is being used more and more often to mean buying items that are recommended specifically for you. I love Amazon’s recommendations engine, but I think that it could be a lot better (and I’d like to see other merchants adopt similar technology). Lela must be paying attention. They’re a New York, NY based company with a mission “to improve consumers’ online experience by helping businesses deliver a new level of personalized engagement.” From what I can tell, Lela is using their technology on their own property (Lela.com) while also offering it to other publishers and merchants.
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Despite moving in 5 months ago, I still haven’t put up most of the framed pictures and art that we have in our apartment. It’s a ridiculously easy task, but for some reason it’s always the last thing that I want to do. In other words, don’t give us art for Christmas! However, if you have friends or family who know exactly where to put every new piece on their walls, then you may want to buy them a gift from Art.com. The company is based in Emeryville, CA, and it “is a leading authority in wall décor and the world’s largest online retailer of posters, prints, and framed art.” Every single person has his or her own taste in art, and Art.com allows each of them to find the kinds of pieces that appeal to them.
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When Amy and I were looking for a new place, we had a lot of trouble sifting through real estate listings. Between the junk, spam, and properties that were of no interest to us, it was really hard to zero in on the kind of places that appealed to us. Working with a real estate agent helped us narrow things down, but the software that they used to show us listings was pretty terrible. One trick that I figured out for searching mainstream sites like Zillow and Redfin was to use very specific, high-end keywords (I bet you could adapt this to job searching). It’s almost as if the people who built RealScout had my exact experience. They’re a Sunnyvale, CA based company that “leverages over 500 datapoints to make home search more personal for clients and more efficient for Realtors.” By focusing on the little things, they help people look at the right kind of properties.
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If you want to see me act like a child, take me furniture shopping on an empty stomach. It’s weird. I really appreciate what good furniture does for a space–whether it’s home or office–I think I just get freaked out by all the fake setups in a furniture store or something. I much prefer looking in a catalog and seeing a really cool office setup or a cozy living room. Even though they’re still staged, it feels more authentic. Haworth is a Holland, MI based company that “can make your environments work harder for you.” In other words, they make and sell furniture that is stylish yet functional (and they sell a lot of it–more than $1 billion a year).
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I don’t remember what methods my teachers used to teach me how to read, but I do remember that it all came together on while my family was traveling to Florida on a train for vacation. For me it felt like a binary thing–one minute I couldn’t read, and the next minute I could. I’ll assume that’s the desired outcome, even though we all known that literacy is much more of a progression. The progression happens more quickly with the right methods, and that’s what the Children’s Literacy Initiative is about. They are a Philadelphia, PA based non-profit “that works with teachers to transform instruction so that children can become powerful readers, writers and thinkers.” While most literacy focused non-profits work directly with children who are learning to read, CLI ensures that the people working with those children are properly prepared for such an important job.
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So far Amy and I have yet to receive a single Christmas/Holiday card. I’d like to blame it on the fact that we moved a few months ago, but I fear that we may not be as popular as I had previously thought. The reason that I can’t blame the move is that we made sure to update our address with the USPS. The most shocking thing about forwarding your mail is how easy it is to do. That’s why it’s interesting that Updater uses USPS change of address as the free part of their freemium model. It’s smart. The New York, NY based company offers a slightly slicker way to do something that you can do quite easily on your own, and then they use that as an opportunity to sell you a product that helps you will all kinds of other change of address issues.
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Despite my early fascination/obsession with infomercials, I don’t think that I’ve ever bought something directly from tv. I just can’t do it. Doesn’t feel right. For me there’s some sort of stigma around buying off of tv, but I’m certain that there are plenty of people who have a different opinion. Take for example the 1.2 million customer that buy from ShopHQ. In case you’re not familiar, ShopHQ is an Eden Prairie, MN based company that creates “the ultimate interactive shopping experience by uniting live TV, online and mobile shopping opportunities with social media engagement across a variety of outlets including Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.” They used to be known as ShopNBC, and you probably have their channel on your tv (they reach 86 million homes).
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I’m pretty sure that I said this like two weeks ago, but when it comes to advertising, creative and placement are both very important. A terrible ad can sometimes be effective with the right media buys, and a fantastic ad can be effective with almost no placement. However, if you put the two together, you get outsized results. Horizon Media is “the largest independent media services agency in the world.” That “independent” part is important because so many media agencies today are held by large holding companies. New York, NY based Horizon Media’s tagline is “business is personal.” I think that says a lot about how they stand out from other agencies.
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I ate a lot on Thanksgiving, and I kept it up through the weekend. I used to be able to do that without feeling any ill effects, but those days are over. I guess it’s time to get back to a healthier lifestyle. Maybe I need to head to the store and buy some natural products. Though I’ll probably just do my typical meat cleanse instead, if I went the natural route, I’d probably be buying from clients of Pure Branding. They are a Northampton, MA based consultancy that “builds leading brands for values-based companies in the natural products industry.” They’re selective about the clients that they take, as they want to ensure that they’re working world changers.
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I often hear from readers that we cover too many opportunities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Unfortunately, I have no control over where the best opportunities pop up. San Francisco’s economy has been booming for a while now, and that makes an already exciting city even more exciting. The San Francisco Foundation is a non-profit that was founded in 1948 “to pull the community together to create pride and unity and improve quality of life” in the Bay Area. Having awarded more than $800 million in grants over the past decade, the Foundation has certainly played a strong role in making San Francisco the place it is today.
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I’m not sure how we ended up here, but Black Friday shopping seems to be the latest extreme sports craze. I’ll spend a little time looking for deals online, but you won’t find me within a few miles of any major retail store. If I somehow got duped into going shopping, I’d totally wear a helmet. It’s better safe than sorry. Easton-Bell Sports, which is based in Van Nuys, CA, is one of the biggest sports helmet companies in the world. Their brands include Giro, Bell, Riddell, Easton, Easton Cycling, and Blackburn. They all come together to help Easton-Bell Sports pursue their goal of being “a leading designer, developer and marketer of sports equipment and accessories that enhance athletic performance and protection.”
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I went grocery shopping yesterday at Whole Foods. Usually at 2 PM on a weekday, it’s a ghost town, but not during Thanksgiving week. I actually like grocery shopping, so it was fun to be a part of the madness, but I know a lot of people who hate it. Some use services like Fresh Direct or Peapod. I tried the latter once, but it feels like your groceries were picked out by a robot. That won’t cut it if you’re buying meat or produce. Instacart offers a different kind of grocery delivery service. They are a San Francisco, CA based startup that offers personal grocery shopping in a growing number of markets (Chicago and Bay Area right now), and sometimes they can get you your groceries within an hour.
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Though it was more than a decade ago, I still have very strong memories of the college application process. I knew where I wanted to go, so I didn’t do a lot of research on other options. Back then research meant requesting brochures from any college that you were interested in. There was some information available on the web, but you had to go to each individual school’s site. A lot has changed in how people seek out educational opportunities (and it’s not just about undergraduate admissions anymore). Noodle is a company at the forefront of that change. They’re based in New York, NY, and they are “the first and only life-long education related search company in the world.” What does that mean? They offer “extensive data on over 150,000 schools and hundreds of thousands of education providers.” In other words, they’re taking a much broader view of what an education search is about.
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We usually think of advertising geniuses as the people who come up with the creative, but the media side (where you show the ad) is often just as or even more important. Everyone has noticed a disastrous ad placement, but how many of us take note when a marketing message appears in the right place at the right time? The people at Crossmedia certainly do. They are a New York, NY based (with offices in LA, Philly, and Germany) “independent channel-driven agency delivering communications planning, media services and international account management.” They offer a variety of services that are built with “an equal mix of business, media and agency performance.”
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I hate to get personal, but raise your hand if you’re wearing underpants! I guess it’s not really all that personal unless you didn’t raise your hand. Most of us wear undergarments on a daily basis because that’s what we’ve always done. There are certainly some comfort and hygiene benefits, but those wily marketers really pulled one over on us when they convinced us that we had to wear clothes under our clothes. I’ll bet that the folks at Jockey International had something to do with it. They’re a Kenosha, WI based company that aims “to satisfy the human need for comfort.” They got their start selling socks to lumberjacks in Michigan in the late 1800s, and they now offer more than 600 styles of underwear and t-shirts (and socks, sportswear, and loungewear too).
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I have quite a few friends who are pursuing careers in the energy efficiency space. It’s a great industry because it allows you to make the world a better place while still working at a for-profit. Water use efficiency doesn’t get the same level of attention, but you can argue that it’s equally important. Clean water is a limited resource that is especially scarce in many areas. Conservation is one of the simplest solutions, and that’s what WaterSmart Software is all about. They are based in San Francisco, CA, and they aim “to help water utilities make it easier for their customers to save water and save money.” I always find it weird that utility companies can grow their businesses by convincing consumers to use less of what they sell, but that’s the way things work these days.
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When it comes to search engines, rankings are based on a wide variety of factors. Having content relevant to the query is probably the most important thing, but right after that comes links. Sites and pages with more incoming links (especially from sites and pages that have lots of incoming links) tend to rank better. Wikipedia gets a ton of links from all over the web, and as a result their pages rank well in almost every search result for which they have relevant content. They don’t even have to worry about getting links to rank well, they just do. But lots of smaller sites struggle to reach a wider audience through search engines because acquiring links can be really hard–especially in certain niches. TextLinkBrokers is a Mesa, AZ based company that services the “needs of professional SEM agencies and individuals looking for high quality link development.” In other words, they help site owners get more links.
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Health insurance. Need I say more? You already have your own associations with those words, and they’re probably negative. We all want to be healthy, and when we’re not, we want to know that doing whatever we can to get healthy won’t send us into financial ruin. That was the whole point of health insurance, but it seems that the opposite has happened. There’s a lot that needs to change, but where do we start? How about with insurers themselves. Take New York state for instance. They haven’t had a new commercial health insurer in a decade and a half–or at least they didn’t until Oscar came around. They are a New York, NY based startup that dubs itself “a new kind of health insurance company that is using technology to make insurance simple, intuitive, and human.”
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Today few businesses can afford to ignore online marketing. The baseline has changed, and customers expect to find an online presence. Whether you’re a local restaurant, a consulting firm, or a toy manufacturer, people want to learn about you and interact with you on the web. The problem is that most small and local businesses don’t have the expertise or the resources to make wise investments in social media, SEO, SEM, and other online marketing options. They need affordable automation, and that’s exactly what Signpost offers. They are a New York, NY based company that has moved out of the deals space (just like yesterday’s company) and into offering a “cloud-based platform that makes digital and mobile marketing simple and effective for SMBs.” Without options like Signpost, small businesses would have to hire a full-time person just to run online marketing (I know that you’d prefer that they do that).
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Happy Veterans Day. Thank you to all of our readers who have served in our armed forces. I’m not sure if it’s just me, but it seems that the holiday is getting way more attention this year than in past years. I’ve seen way more tv commercials mentioning Veterans Day, and it seems that a ton of retailers are offering special deals. There are free haircuts, free car washes, and all kinds of free meals available today for those who have served. The only awkward part about all of this is verifying one’s veteran status. Nobody wants to have to ask, but how else do you stop freeloaders from taking advantage of deals just for vets? Military IDs are only for active service members, and any other form of proof might be a bit cumbersome. ID.me is a Washington, DC based company that is trying to make the process of ID verification seamless. They started out as Troop ID (and before that they were TroopSwap, a daily deals site for military) and only focused on verifying veteran/military status, but they realized that verifying any kind of group association would give them access to a much bigger market.
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Over the past six months baby blue bikes have been popping up all over Chicago. As a driver, they’re a bit scary because many of the riders seem unsure of themselves on two wheels, but it’s an overall good thing for the city. The bikes are part of the Divvy Bikes bike sharing system. The program seems to be a huge success so far, and I’m hearing the same thing about similar programs in other cities. The company behind Divvy, CitiBike, Bay Area BikeShare, Capital Bikeshare, and quite a few others is Alta Bicycle Share. They are based in Portland, OR and have offices in San Francisco, Columbus, Chicago, Brooklyn, Chattanooga, Boston, Washington, DC, and Melbourne, Australia. They’ve been able to launch programs in such major cities because they ” provide solutions for all aspects of bike share, from location assessment and business modeling to system maintenance and expansion.”
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I cook a lot, but with Thanksgiving only a few weeks away, it’s time to make sure my skills are as sharp as my knives (doesn’t that sound like a promo for some silly cooking show?). Most of my culinary skills are semi-self-taught. Television, cookbooks, and lots of dinners out have exposed me to all kinds of new concepts, but the Internet is where I go to get the definitive answer on how to cook what I want to cook. Often all it takes is a Google search to find what I’m looking for, but sometimes I want to get new ideas. My go to is Serious Eats, but today I found a new site with a similar approach. The company is called Food52, and it’s a New York, NY based online community that brings “cooks together from all over to exchange recipes and ideas and to support each other in the kitchen.” (Side note: Food52 and Serious Eats are celebrating the the one-in-70,000-ish-years holiday of Thanksgivukkah with a cook off.) In their first few years they’ve been able to reach millions of people and get them talking about food, which is no small feat.
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I admit to liking bad music. I don’t listen to music all that often, but when I do, I’m perfectly happy listening to Top 40 stuff. I know that most of it is musically questionable, but I can’t help that I like it. I’ve tried listening to Classical music, but I can’t get into it. Maybe one day that will change. And if it does, I’ll have to check out the Handel and Haydn Society. They are based in Boston, MA, and they are “considered America’s oldest continuously performing arts organization.” They’re coming up on 200 years of excellence “in the field of Historically Informed Performance” (see here for a more in depth explanation). In other words they perform pieces “using the instruments and techniques of the composer’s time.”
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Early in the wedding planning process I proposed that we try to do as much online as possible. I quickly lost that battle, and I must say that our custom designed paper goods turned out amazingly well. I’m just glad that I wasn’t paying for them. If only there was a way to get beautiful, custom designed paper goods for a reasonable price. That’s exactly what Minted offers. They are a San Francisco, CA based company that aims “to find exceptional artists and designers all over the world and bring their work to consumers who appreciate great design.” They were early to the crowdsourcing model in 2008, and since then they’ve grown into a place where consumers can find great designers and great designers can get exposure that will help them build their careers.
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InvestmentNews is our sponsor this week, and they would like to tell you about their NextGen Virtual Career Fair on November 8th. It’s an awesome opportunity for students and interns to network and find finance jobs on the spot.
Good leadership always seems to be in short supply. There are plenty of situations where nobody is willing to lead, and there are plenty of others where those who are leading aren’t quite as fit for the job as they should be. I’ve seen a lot of non-profits that focus on developing young people into leaders, but it’s not all that common to find an organization devoted to promoting leadership at all levels. That’s exactly what Leadership Greater Washington does. They are a Washington, DC based non-profit that was founded out of The Greater Washington Board of Trade, The Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation and The Junior League. Its goal is to “foster communication and cooperation among the area’s established leaders” and to aid “leaders in every stage of their leadership journey.”
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InvestmentNews is our sponsor this week, and they would like to tell you about their NextGen Virtual Career Fair on November 8th. It’s an awesome opportunity for students and interns to network and find finance jobs on the spot.
When I’m talking to a potential advertiser for One Day One Job, I tell them how special our audience is. I’ll spare you the details since you certainly know how special you are, but the point is to convince them that they should pay more to reach you. Nearly every publisher does this, but most publishers don’t have special audiences. How do the ones that do prove it? That’s a problem that Umbel is working to solve. They are an Austin, TX based company that helps publishers “leverage social and big data to prove your premium audience story to advertisers and sponsors.” What I think is really cool about Umbel is that they can even help publishers whose audiences aren’t that special on average by segmenting out the groups that are most valuable to advertise to.
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InvestmentNews is our sponsor this week, and they would like to tell you about their NextGen Virtual Career Fair on November 8th. It’s an awesome opportunity for students and interns to network and find finance jobs on the spot.
When you visit most websites, you’re paying for access even though you probably don’t realize it. You’re paying with your attention to advertisements. It’s a terrible model, but it’s pretty much the best idea that we’ve had so far. It’s the reason that Google is one of the most successful companies in the history of the world. Ideally we’d pay the content creators directly on the sites that we like, but managing subscriptions can be a nightmare for both site owners and their visitors. Tinypass has a solution that just might usurp advertising as the preferred way to monetize an audience. They’re based in New York, NY and they enable sites to collect micro payments to access content. They “believe that bloggers, magazines, newspapers, and all creators shouldn’t have so much trouble making money online.”
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Two weeks ago it was my birthday. Amy wanted us to do something fun and new in Chicago, so she surprised me with trapeze lessons. Unfortunately, she forgot that I have an elbow injury that would make doing such things a bit painful. We called the place to see if they could give us a credit for future lessons, and they were able to. While I certainly didn’t want to mess up my elbow more, I have to admit that the idea of soaring through the air scares me a little bit. Maybe if I had been exposed to acrobatics at an early age through a program like AcroSports, I would have had a better attitude about trying trapeze lessons. They are a San Francisco, CA based “non-profit organization whose mission is to teach and develop the physical, performing, and circus arts.” They’ve been at it for two decades now serving their “community in a safe, positive environment, offering activities that encourage teamwork and build strengths and self-esteem, and enhancing life’s experience.”
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How many times have you been watching tv when a familiar advertisement comes on. You know all of the words, but five seconds after the ad finishes, you say to yourself, “Wait, what was that ad for again?” It happens to me all the time. So many brands have gotten too complicated with their messaging. Good branding is almost impossible without simplicity. That’s why Siegel+Gale has made a name for itself as “a global strategic branding firm committed to building world-class brands through elegantly simple, unexpectedly fresh strategies, stories and experiences.” The agency is based in New York, NY, but they also have offices in San Francisco, CA, Los Angeles, CA, and six international locations.
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I can’t walk down the street in Chicago without seeing a new salon or day spa. And just as quickly as they pop up, they seem to disappear. There’s no doubt that these kinds of businesses can make a killing if executed properly, but it’s become obvious to me that a lot of people have no idea how to run a salon. While I’m sure some completely mess up their economics, my guess is that most failed salons had trouble attracting customers. Salon Success Strategies is a Roseville, CA based company that can help. They’re a “full service marketing agency specializing in salons, day spas, and medical spas.” The company was started by successful salon and spa owners who saw an opportunity to share their knowledge by offering services and training.
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