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With all of the new social media and marketing terms floating around the web it’s easy to lose track of the actual business terms that we should be using when talking about…business.  It doesn’t matter if you’re talking to a business or talking to someone about business, at the end of the day you need to remember that it’s still about BUSINESS.  This means that if I ask you about ROI and you respond in terms of links and traffic that I can tell you’re a bit nuts (or drunk).  Having said that, I decided to put together a little list of some business terms that I think we all need to remember.

Return on Investment (ROI)

A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments.

ROI = (Gain from Investment - Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment

Profit

A financial benefit that is realized when the amount of revenue gained from a business activity exceeds the expenses, costs and taxes needed to sustain the activity.

Profit = Total Revenue - Total Expenses

Revenue

The amount of money that a company actually receives during a specific period, including discounts and deductions for returned merchandise.  It is the “top line” or ”gross income” figure from which costs are subtracted to determine net income.

Revenue is calculated by multiplying the price at which goods or services are sold by the number of units or amount sold.

Profit Margin

A ratio of profitability calculated as net income divided by revenues, or net profits divided by sales.  It measures how much out of every dollar of sales a company actually keeps in earnings.

Brand

A name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.  The legal term for brand is trademark.  A brand may identify one item, a family of items, or all items of that seller.

Brand Image

The perception of your product or your brand by the consumer.

The Eighty-Twenty Rule

A rule-of-thumb that, for the typical product category, eighty percent of the products sold will be consumed by twenty percent of the customers.

Unique Selling Proposition

The unique product benefit that the competition can not claim.

Social Media

Social media is online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content.

Have any others you think are important?  (I know there are tons but I tried to keep this simple).

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After a 12 hour flight I finally landed in Israel along with a group of random people, some of whom became good friends in just 10 days.  I always told people I was Jewish but I never really knew what that meant.  One of the reasons why I wanted to go to Israel was to connect a bit more with my roots (so to speak).  I’m not religious and neither is my family, but we try to get together for the major Jewish holidays every year as a way to bring the family together.  I did have a Bar Mitzvah and at one point I actually knew had to read Hebrew and speak it at a very basic level.  As I became older I slowly started to lose touch with what Judaism was all about and where it came from.  I forgot the history and in doing so, forgot a bit of myself and who I am.

I feel that it’s important for everyone to understand who they are and where they came from.  I’ve been to several countries around the world but for some reason I’ve never made my way over to Israel, until now…and let me tell you I’m glad I finally did.

I traveled all over the country; I prayed at the wailing wall, rode ATVs near the Lebanon border (and saw the Hezbolah bases), met with tech companies, rode camels in the dessert, went to clubs/bars, swam in the Dead Sea, and did pretty much anything else you could think of.  I slept on average of 3-4 hours a night and trust me when I say I did everything I could possibly do to get the most out of my 10 days.

I felt a greater sense of unity and connectedness in Israel which I have never felt anywhere else in the world.  People there seem like they actually care about you and want to get to know you.  I felt that I could walk up to anyone and act like I’ve known them for years; this is an amazing feeling to have but it’s ironic that I feel this way thousands of miles away from where I call home (San Francisco).  I’ve never seen a more proud and passionate group of people that I did in Israel.

I’ll be honest and say that I’m not too good with history (I wish I was) or current politics.  As someone who lives in states (and like many of you) I rely on the news and internet for all of information and news.  Like you, I hear about what goes on in various parts of the world such as Gaza or the West Bank.  It’s one thing to get information from a news source when you are thousands of miles away, it’s quite another thing to actually see what’s going on an area with your own eyes.  I’m happy I had the opportunity to do so.

There is so much growth and innovation going on in Israel that it’s beginning to rival Silicone Valley.  I learned a lot about the technology and social media scene in Israel and it’s definitely going to be a place to keep an eye on in the next few years (and even now).  One of the many things I found interesting in Israel was the incubator/VC model that they use.  Unlike the U.S. the government in Israel actually helps sponsor investments in startups and new companies in Israel, something I found to be rather unique and fascinating, you can imagine that this definitely helps spur innovation and new ideas throughout the country.

Overall the trip was absolutely amazing, probably one of the best I have ever been on.  Currently I’m trying to see how I can go back to Israel for an extended period of time (with a friend of mine I met on the trip).  I want to spend more time with the Israeli tech/startup scene and I want to continue to explore the culture and the region.

I could spend weeks talking about Israel but the important thing is that Israel was a life-changing experience and I can’t wait to go back.

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by Tom  Vanlerberghe

“Companies are always changing.” Sounds pretty obvious right? But how come a lot of companies make the best plans to steer them into the future and fail when those plans have to be executed? They sit around a table, nodding, giving their thumbs up and that’s it. Come back after a year and nothing has really changed.

Most companies or people don’t want to change. They’re pretty comfortable where they are. Profit is up from last year, customer satisfaction is at an alltime high and positive press reviews, what more do you need? But do you really think will remain the same just because you want them to? You don’t have to change, that’s true, but everything and everybody around you will.

Try to understand what you can change. You can’t influence or control everything or everyone. You can’t influence other departments, you can’t change the way people think, you can’t change how customers think, you can’t change the global economy and you can’t change your own limitations. It’s wrong to start with lots of restrictions, but when it comes to change, it’s better to be honest and understand what you CAN change.

What’s left? We can’t change people, customers or even the company as a structure. How can we change? We can change the place where and the way how people ‘experience’ the company. People’s behaviour can be influenced by the stimuli they get from the outside (behaviourism). Changing the way how they look at what they’re doing on the outside, and the inside will follow. For instance, if customers find your company not ‘available’ enough, why not propose everybody to put in his 8 hours a day when he wants to. They can work from 2 till 10pm, as long as they take on the extra assignment of being ‘available’ for the customer. There are a lot of ways how you can change without having to force it upon your team.

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by Tiffany Davis

We all know that the internet has revolutionized not only the way in which we do business, but also the way in which we interact internationally through an array of online portals.  Social networking sites have aided in gaining an added advantage in finding former classmates and coworkers, while still retaining the worldwide web connection.  Many social networking sites exist in order to expand your followers, either by adding old acquaintances or finding new ones through various portals and group memberships.  This new influx of sites is only the latest addition in an ever expanding internet world.

With the creation of the internet came the creation of various websites that allowed you to communicate with people from around the world; Geocities was one of the pioneers in this venture, although their doors are closing later this year.  America Online additionally aided in gaining a massive audience of users who had never previously used the internet; it succeeded in making the internet user-friendly, even incorporating a new method of communication: the instant message.  While this became a fad of the late 1990s, incorporating a substantial amount of revenue, this particular web provider has lost much of its target client base and has been somewhat left in the dust with the advent of newer browsers and new methods of communications.

The creation of the blogging world in the late 90s has additionally helped to revolutionize the way in which the internet is run.  While we now consider the concept of a blog to be a normal part of our internet lives, the original blogs of OpenDiary and LiveJournal were far from what we construe them to be now.  These original blogs were more diary-formatted and encouraged users to use them as such, thereby providing their followers with an insight into their lives.  This has since transcended into many social networking sites through the many various “status updates”, albeit on a smaller scale.  Blogs were upgraded in 2002 when the Iraq War presented many political pundits with a forum upon which to express their thoughts on the war or for reporters to display their coverage of the war.  This later escalated in 2004 to include a wide array of blog sites, allowing users of all genres to create their own personal site in which they “blogged” about their chosen topic.

Since the early days of these sites, the internet has expanded to include all varieties of social media, from online dictionaries (Wikipedia), to virtual existences (Second Life).  In between it all are the more popular sites of Twitter and Facebook that attract an amazing following per day.  These sites have presented us with a new way in which to keep in contact with classmates, business colleagues, and family through the many updates they provide to the user.  An entire business can now be run out of a particular social media site; Facebook has added many different applications to allow their users to effectively run a business from the site, incorporating conference calls as well as slide show presentations.  This way of doing business has attracted a younger audience because of their affinity with the internet and shows promise of becoming a new wave of the future.

This post was contributed by Tiffany Davis, who writes about accredited online universities.  She welcomes your feedback at TiffanyMDavis82 at gmail.com

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By Josh Morgan
Chocolate, the Cadillac of all sweet sweets.
Let the luxury of the chocolate fill your needs.
It creates what we call the dream of creamy goodness.
Smooth and creamy, that’s luxury.

This is not all, you must handle
It with care.
Be careful,
Let it not slip off your delicate lips
And run down your chin.
Do not let it escape your grasp.

Create an image of what it can be.
The smooth rich taste,
Let it fill your mouth.
Handle with care and enjoy,
It will not last long.

Now lets talk about Dark Chocolate.

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