Dale Hrabi of the Wall St. Journal gives readers 10 steps they can take to boost their online followers. We recommend trying these suggestions on Bridge, Instagram, and your other social media platforms. In particular, I liked these suggestions:
1. Post every day.
2. When posting, end the post with a question.
3. Respond to every review and comment.
4. Post selfies.
What is one of your business' most popular posts on social media? And, why do think it resonated so much?
...
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When I was 24-years old, a market research company sent me to Philadelphia to survey potential users about a new offering from General Electric Finance. Your first question may be: "Wait, Jason was once 24?" Your second may be: "GE had a consumer finance arm?" Yes, and yes. GE was once a conglomerate with its hands in many industries, from television to nuclear reactors to jet engines. GE, like Toshiba and Johnson & Johnson, has since shrunk. But the era of the ...
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Upon boarding my flight to Mexico last week, did I eagerly wait the arrival of the bar cart? Maybe, but not before cracking open the book Great by Choice by Jim Collins. I recommend the book because it provides new approaches to success. One takeaway in the book is not new: we’ve got to work each day. Just like the anecdote in the book’s introduction about Norwegian explorer Amundsen, we have to put in miles each day. In a race to the South Pole, Amundsen's unprepared ...
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Allison Zisko, the Editor-in-Chief at HFN magazine, can use your help. She is working on a story about fourth quarter promotions. She would like to know:
Will Q4 promotions continue as usual in light of current economic factors? Are promotions still necessary, particularly when margins are so tight? What are vendors and retailers thinking about this?
Background:
Consumer demand for product remains high.
Inventory is limited. Product introductions are hindered by the
We work tirelessly to help our customers. A good spot to see this is on our sale site’s pricing page, which lists 60+ features that clients receive—often for free. (Sometimes I think that we’re philanthropists. Twenty-five percent of retail clients pay nothing each month.) Each feature is one that we’ve labored over.
But, ironically, our hard work may get overlooked and under-appreciated if key psychological insights are overlooked by me. In his book ...
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Today is National Dog Day! π Do Dogs Have a Sense of Humor? πΆ They certainly do and cannot get enough of this artisan woven tote basket which is perfect for entertaining. π·π½πΎ
CALAISIO
natural elegance, extraordinary durability
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"Are you happy?” That’s a question you may ask yourself. Your parents and friends also likely inquire (I hope!). While it may seem flaky to say, happiness is important. This topic was the subject of Dr. Edward Diener, who passed away in April of this year. Dr. Diener, who studied happiness and earned the moniker “Dr. Happiness,” reported that happiness often correlates with social relationships, being with others, and not being alone.
MEMBERSHIP SURGES 50% IN E-COMMERCE COMMUNITY Online Shopping Boom Drives Retail Industry to Team Up On Bridge
NEW YORK, NY, July 30, 2021 – Bridge, an e-commerce community, reported a record increase in membership as the pandemic continued to rattle the retail landscape. In the last 12 months, 275 retail stores joined Bridge, bringing the total membership to more than 826 stores—a 50% increase. ...
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Hurray for Grandma’s China! They are hot and selling briskly once again.
“There was a long time when no one wanted to inherit Grandma’s prized wedding china, so valued she only busted them out for special occasions. Potential heirs dreaded the bequest thinking them fussy.” said Rebecca Malinsky of the Wall Street Journal. We agree with her.
But some new thinking has arrived recently, as people, especially young ones, are taking another look.
And they are thinking ...
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I’m seeing a disturbing trend online. Stores are not sharing news and events on their websites. Instead, they are relying on Facebook (and Instagram, which it also owns) to perform this task. That’s like a customer coming into the physical store and the store manager saying: "Want our news and events? We don’t have it here. Go to the coffee shop next door—which will be filled with our competitors pitching to you."
Beatriz Ball revisits classicism—with a contemporary twist--in the VIDA Charleston Collection in luxury melamine. Think elegantly simple classic forms, distilled to the essential, enhanced with rich and lively surfaces with the look of fine ceramics—all presented in a cool and classic blue tone.
Standouts include this large blue rectangular platter featuring a textured surface, notched corners, and a gently raised border. The Charleston forms fit seamlessly with your lifestyle, ...
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The Times shares insights in to Amazon's desire to become a profitable company, including increasing employee turn over.
Excerpt:
In his drive to create the world’s most efficient company, Jeff Bezos discovered what he thought was another inefficiency worth eliminating: hourly employees who spent years working for the same company.
Longtime employees expected to receive raises. They also became less enthusiastic about the work, Amazon’s data suggested. And they were a ...
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Is Amazonβs logo a 'smile' or a hidden strategy? Jason Solarek proposes that the smile is its business plan. The βsmileβ is actually a representation of how the company skips most players in the retail chain.
This past week I finally started doing a better job of sharing our vision. A company’s vision and how it shares this story is a key pillar in its growth. A company can grow without being a good vision sharer (storyteller), but it makes the growth slower and harder. When one gets up on stage (metaphorically) and shares their vision, with passion, it’s magnetic and can help split the sea. What medium did we add to our story-sharing tools this week? Video. I made and shared ...
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Operating a website is expensive--not only because programmers are expensive, but because margins are smaller.
For 10 years, Bridge has encouraged stores to beef up spending in preparation for the e-commerce boom. It's easier to spend a little each year over many years than spend money in a panic. Money spent in haste often results in waste. As a reference, when traditional retailers tried to catch Amazon, they often failed in their scramble. Please recall Macy's buying the ...
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Today’s Times shares some of Amazon’s steps during the pandemic to grow its empire.
I used to tell retailers that they don’t know it, but they’re now in: the software business. I missed something in that statement. They are also now in the warehouse business. Websites and warehouses go hand in hand. They’re flip sides of the same coin.
As e-commerce grew, all the major retailers should have been growing their warehouse space. For example: if ...
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These days, ugly Amazon warehouses are beating up pretty retail stores. Many stores in 2020 had record online sales that made up 40% or more of revenue, but they are struggling because they had to bear the burden of retail stores. Retail stores cost more per square foot to rent, furnish, and maintain. They also cost more to staff. A warehouse person need not be a people person and a snazzy dresser; they can exhibit anger management issues and ...
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In a world with so many options, how do we as consumers make intelligent choices? We are overstimulated with resources daily, and sometimes this can be overwhelming. Common sense seems to be the driving factor when assessing the alternatives before us, as may be the process of elimination when there is too much to consider. But what is the most influential deciding factor we face? It could be facts that serve as the strongest fuel to drive us to make an informed decision.
When I was speaking with the team this week, I mentioned author Dan Roam’s strategy for convincing people to change their ways. He suggested leading with data (i.e. facts), which leads to a change in one’s thinking and beliefs, which will then change one’s actions—aka they will change their website to use Bridge.
Yet, we can’t "lead" with too many facts, because as the authors of the book Rethink point out, that is like ...
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Reports suggest that 50% of purchases start on Amazon.com, and Amazon wants to keep it this way. Yet, businesses and merchants increasingly want to sell their products via their own DTC (direct to consumer) site, retailers' websites, Facebook, Instagram, and more. Due to this, Shopify, which powers many DTC and retailer websites, is a growing thorn in Amazon's dominance of retail. Shopify reportedly helps power more than 30% of online U.S. retail sales.