Anthony Acosta

When running a successful business, success is found in having a solid business plan and sticking to it. Unfortunately, at times reality steps in and your plans, SOPs, earning projections and established scripts which you thought were written in stone are now dust. It’s perfectly OK We have a strategy for rolling with these changes as long as you understand that disruption is part of reality and is something that needs to be embraced. The typical causes of outside disruption for businesses usually fall under these 3 categories. Customer Needs (Demand evolves and you can become irrelevant) Competition (Other companies offer what you offer at a competitive rate) Market Changes (Markets are volatile and can cause major disruptions due to political, social, or even environmental fluctuations) Fighting these disruptions require you to constantly improve, innovate and adapt. There are two types of performance styles at play in this arena. Tactical and Adaptive perfor

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dream’t of in your philosophy.” — William Shakespeare Reality is big. Really big. It’s so big that we can barely perceive all of it. There is so much more information in the world around you that if you would be able to capture it all, you’d probably go crazy. In fact, what you, me, and everyone see, is not really reality, but “a subjective approximation of reality” aka “Perception”. This perception includes a defense mechanism that prevents us from seeing too much reality. We call this mechanism, “Perceptual Guards” and it keeps us from going crazy by absorbing too much reality. The Challenge As Marketers, web developers, and graphic design artists, our job is to break through these perceptual guards alter the our audience’s reality to include our marketing message and influence their decision-making process. In order to do this, we have to understand the process that makes our audience decide whethe

Achieve Greatness with your content We all know that content is king. It’s the key to increase traffic, increase engagement, and experience the rush of success. So, since we all know we  need  to create quality content, the question is…   HOW? What does it take? Collaboration  is the key. One person can do it all, but having a singular person creating all the elements required for a great post can come at a price. Lack of vision. Collaboration offers the ability to have your content tested and gives you feedback to your content, allowing you to revise, refine, and re-create your content from a variety of perspectives, giving you the ability to go from good to great content. More than one person should be involved in every single post. Here is a loose breakdown of the roles that should be included. The Author:  This person is tasked with writing the post. The post can be anything you like, from a news story, to tips, to answering common questions, or informing to inspire acti

Tips for Writing News Stories I’ve seen some terribly written news stories and when possible, I try to correct them. (Although I’m also guilty of these transgressions occasionally.) There are a few basic rules to follow for structure and then there’s the content. The Basics* Use short sentences. Use a short first paragraph (The Lead) Be eloquent and energetic Be positive not neutral or negative *These are also known as Hemingway’s rules About the lead The lead is the intro to a story. This needs to be able to stand alone and tell the reader about the most important parts of the story. If someone reads the lead and it’s peaked their interest, then they’ll continue reading the rest of the story. Photo by  rawpixel  on  Unsplash Bones of the Story This is the main content and it’s where many writers/journalists get stuck. The easiest way that I have found to get the story down, is to break it down to the:  Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. Who is the story about

Image courtesy of businesscardszone.com I’m constantly amazed at how uninformed small local companies are when it comes to the importance and value of having a proper logo and building a brand. There is such little awareness that there is such a thing as brand development and that this is the secret that can launch their company into unimaginable success. A logo? It’s amazing how this small yet oh-so-important aspect of a fresh new company is so often overlooked and just slapped together without much consideration for the ramifications and potential benefits for said business. This lack of foresight is disturbing to say the least, and harmful to long-term business success at the most. Yes, you can go out and buy a stock logo for pennies. Yes, it will look professional and your company will have a logo that will look exactly like 100 other companies logos. So you’re done right, now you just need to slap that logo on everything and that’s your branding plan. Simple, right? Yes