Inspiring Olah gold-level figure skater Windy Rohde

Windy Rohde is a 3rd generation ice skater with 28 years experience performing, teaching, and skating since the age of 3. She is considered the highest (senior) level ice skater by the USFSA (US Figure Skating) which means her title is “US Figure Skating Gold Medalist.”

Windy came to Israel when she performed with “WOW on Ice” at the Royal Garden Hotel in 2011. She fell in love with the country and subsequently lived in Eilat for a year before making Aliyah and now lives on Moshav Kfar Chayim, near Netanya. Originally from Houston, Texas, Windy has performed in shows spanning the globe including Disney and Holiday on Ice. Since making Aliyah, she has performed in the Ice Mall in Eilat and for Amdocs in Raanana on a synthetic ice-rink. Most recently, we heard from Windy on the new TV network, “I24 News” based in Jaffa but broadcasting throughout the Middle East, Africa, and Europe, commentating about ice skating at the Sochi Olympics. On March 5th and every Wednesday after, you can see Windy at a small show of her own production in Jerusalem for the grand opening of the Yam Ba Kerach, a special indoor skating compound that extends over 600 square meters of real ice which will run from March 5th until April 22nd. She will be performing in front of the mayor of Jerusalem and the press (for more information, click here). Her goal is to bring skating as performance art and an entertainment business to Israel. To this end, Windy has recently taken advantage of her benefit as a new Olah and completed her free MBA at Bar Ilan University while writing a business plan for setting up a synthetic ice rink program in Israel.

Of her decision to make Aliyah, Windy says: “Before performing in “WOW on Ice” in Eilat, I didn’t think much of having a future here in Israel. This seemed to be just another offer in the line of jobs in my career. However, after days of being here, I realized it was no accident that I found myself in Israel. Whether it is the charm of the history of Jerusalem or the impressiveness of the modernity of Tel Aviv never ceases to amaze me. The people have an authentic flair for life here and have encouraged the same in me. Also, the language, the food, the traditions satisfy my appetite for rich cultural experiences that I felt I lacked at home in the US. Yet, unlike my much loved adventures in my career spanning America, Europe, and Asia, I feel that I can connect well enough to settle here. It seems I have found the place that has it all in the right proportions.

“Even collecting the information for the Aliyah process has connected me to parts of my family that I had never met. Being raised in several cities in the US, moving constantly, we were never near my Jewish family. Celebrating the Jewish Holidays here with my Israeli boyfriend and his family has made me feel like I have found some of the missing pieces of the puzzle. Finally, I feel like I belong somewhere.

“By making Aliyah, I can finally plant roots in a place that already feels like home, and give back to Israel what it has given to me.”

In addition to continuing to skate around the world and produce and perform in Israel, Windy is working with various ice-skating rinks to provide after-school figure skating instruction. In addition to the many high-quality classes already given all in Israel in many different sports, language, science and arts, Windy believes there is space for creative expression on ice in Israel.

“I do believe anything is possible here. I also feel that my timing of coming here was no accident. Suddenly a country that only cares about putting ice in its drinks sees the opening of 2 new ice rinks, 4 new local ice skating shows/events, plus bringing 2 foreign ice shows to perform for thousands of people. Ice skating is my life and it excites me to see such interest building and what could come from it here in Israel. With the help of successful performances in the WOW, Ice Mall Eilat, Amdocs, and the upcoming Yam Ba Kerach event in Jerusalem, I think my window of opportunity is widening.”

It seems Windy has already learned much about Israelis and the culture: “Israelis love entertainment, and I want to give them more chances to see ice skating shows and participate in them as well…what little girl doesn’t want to be an ice princess??”

When asked what she loves most about Israel, Windy doesn’t hesitate: “What I love most about Israel is the feeling that I can use my 28 years of ice skating experience to do something new here. I am inspired to make my mark in a big way. My aim is to share my talent, knowledge and passion of figure skating so that any child or adult can experience the joys of ice skating entertainment, recreation, or sport. I also want to collaborate with others – musicians, artists, acrobats… the list goes on! Perhaps this way we can create a truly unique, Israeli brand of ice skating.”

Windy Rohde is an exceptional addition to the country. Expect great things to come.

 

CEO of Your Success

This past Tuesday I attended an event run by Digital Eve Israel and Gangly Sister Productions titled “Everything a Girl Needs to Know about Making It in High-Tech.”
Here’s what I learned.

Digital Evers together at long last. Photo credit: Miriam Lottner

The room was filled with about 50 savvy women working or seeking employment in the digital world in some capacity. Many were entrepreneurs. Some were recruiters or consultants helping businesses grow and develop. I am not usually overly sensitive to disparaging remarks made about my gender, but I do take some issue with the word “girl” in the title. As my mom pointed out when I mentioned it to her, “you wouldn’t call a men’s’ event “Everything a Boy Needs to Know about Making It in High-Tech.” I actually thought the event was going to be about how we can help our daughters prepare for a career in high-tech. I kid you not. Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the morning and gained a lot of insight, tips and tricks.
I go to networking events like these with a few different goals, one being to leave armed with at least one new suggestion, bright idea, resource, or connection I can pass on to the Olim I try to help find employment. Today I came out with several.

Miriam Lottner, CEO of Tech-Tav Documentation, the largest documentation company in Israel, and co-founder of Gangly Sister Productions, is a salesperson. Not in the slimy way we unfortunately think of when we hear the word “sales,” Miriam seems to really get that sales is about relationship building. She never uses PowerPoint to sell her services. She doesn’t believe you can build a relationship with the lights off. She says sales is like a poker game; you should never walk into a room unless you know what the other people in the room are going to say. She looks for “tells” and tweaks her presentation in real time according to the non-verbal feedback she receives from her audience.

We did an exercise where we turned to the person sitting nearest us whom we had never met, and pitched them. We had to sell ourselves to them in less than 45 seconds. It was an interesting experience and what I learned is that we women spend too much time on the lead up to our pitch; almost apologizing for who we are, stumbling as we try to gain our footing, and maybe finally coming up with something clinching way past the 45 second mark.
My takeaway for job-seekers? Be prepared. Practice your pitch with a friend, in front of a mirror, into a tape recorder. Practice until you have it down pat, by heart, and it becomes second nature so that when you meet someone with the potential to introduce you to the right people, offer you a job, or invest in your project, you can do that thing you do without hemming and hawing. You must capture their interest in the first 45 seconds of meeting, just as the body of your email (a few sentences, NOT an attached cover letter) needs to interest the hiring manager enough to open the resume which must inform and excite just enough to get invited for an interview. After listening to you speak for 45 seconds their eyes glaze over, they see someone else they need to talk to across the room, and you’ve lost them. The confidence you exude will be the difference between being lost in a sea of wannabes and sealing the deal.

Rebecca Rachmany, CEO of Gangly Sister Productions and CMO of Tech-Tav Documentation, describes how she has stopped trying so hard. In the beginning, she says, she used to wear button down shirts because she’d walk into a room full of men and want to fit in, not to mention command the same salary as her male peers. She has since come into her own and suggests we do the same. Rebecca implies that as soon as you know who you are and what you want, you can stop trying to be like the men and just get the work done. She also states that woman are paid a whopping 30% less than men in Israel (and similar in the States). Rebecca maintains that we can close this gap by asking for the salary we want. When doing your research, don’t ask women what they make, ask men and then state that is how much you’d like to be paid. I was once told in a public forum (one of Digital Eve’s first events) by a speaker that I had recruited (the HR manager of the company I worked at) that I was a great example of someone who could be making a lot more money than I was currently had I only asked for it. It still stings to this day, but lesson learned. The hard way. On the other hand, employers have also fallen off the face of the earth never to be heard from again after hearing the salary I asked for. The salary negotiation is a tough one to finesse. A recruiter in the room and another Digital Eve co-chairwoman, Leemor Machani, CEO of Machnai Weiss & Partners Ltd., an executive search and business coaching firm, tries to impress upon us that every one of us could be making 40, 50, 60KNIS a month. Everyone around me looks unsure about this. I’m unconvinced. I am sure a few of us could, but the Israeli salary pendulum swing in extremes. Maybe I need to experience it to say it can be so.

The same way we learned that the 45 minute pitch is crucial, we learn that we need to drop the apology. Apologizing for ourselves before beginning to speak or in an email when sending a resume is not only ineffective but hazardous to our potential employment. Miriam Lottner, who sees hundreds of resumes in any given week, said that she receives many resumes from women apologizing for sending her their CV which is ridiculous because she’s a recruiter for goodnessake! So, cut the apology. It isn’t cute or endearing and only undermines your credibility. Just state your purpose. This applies to sales pitches, meetings, and when negotiating salaries.

Susan Fisher, Digital Eve co-chairwoman, managing director of First Class Training, a leading vendor of personal effectiveness, global communication & cross-cultural training to Israeli high-tech companies, extols the virtues of networking, as anyone who has ever had an employment consultation with me knows I do, too. I always say that native Israelis have an organic network of people they grew up with, served in the army with, studied and traveled to South America with. We Olim need to forge our own networks, as artificial as it may feel. We need to be vigilant about letting those around us know we are looking for work, an apartment, a roommate, a date. You can send your resume 1000 times into the black hole that is the Job Board, but taking the extra step to find a contact at the company on one of the social media platforms (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+) or even at a IRL (in real life) networking group (found on Meetup.com) will increase the chances of forming a relationship and landing the interview and then the job. Groups like Digital Eve, Jerusalem Business Networking Forum, Microsoft Ventures Academy, StartHub, BeerTech Modiin,The Junction, countless LinkedIn and Facebook groups all serve to facilitate real connections. And from real connections we can make miracles happen.

Digital Eve is one of Israel’s largest communities of professional women, with over 3000 members subscribed to the active Yahoo group. Online and face-to-face, our members share knowledge, resources, opportunities and insights. With a vibrant daily interaction among over 3,100 members, Digital Eve has strengthened the businesses and career paths of countless professional women in Israel, contributing to our respective and collective successes.

 

Attitude of Gratitude

Our todo lists are long, our plates are full. We juggle work, family, the dinner dishes, book, club Tivo, and Facebook. Breathe!

Often we find ourselves complaining that we don’t have enough, pining over things we waaant. So-and-so went on a fabulous vacation. We deserve one, too. We get caught up in the materialistic and don’t realize that we actually have everything we really need. We take the basics for granted and focus on the unattainable.

The latest research shows that having an attitude of gratitude is the fastest way to happiness, good health, success, and long life. Sounds too easy to be true? A recent study conducted by Dr. Robert Emmons, a leading psychology of gratitude researcher and author of the book Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier, proved people who kept a gratitude journal for just 3 weeks were 25% more satisfied with life at the end of the study. They exercised more, drank less alcohol, and people around them noticed a real positive change in behavior. Not only that, but these changes seemed permanent, lasting for several months after the 3 week study.

It’s easy to put into practice, too. Just do what they did in the study: keep a Gratitude Journal. Every day for 3 weeks (about the time it takes for something to turn into a habit), write down something you are grateful for. It can be little things like someone letting you cut into a turning lane, or big things like your daughter getting over her cold in less than 24 hours.

Take some time to appreciate what you have. Take a deep breath and be thankful for those around you who love you, support you, and nurture you. You are not expected to be thankful for bad situations, but it will help to find something to appreciate in a bad situation or despite it.

I am conducting a little experiment. I invite you to add to the daily Gratitude List on my Facebook page, Fratitude (Friends with Attitude). Our posts will help us appreciate what we have and hopefully inspire others to do the same.

 

Read Their Minds: Know What your Users are Thinking

Shira Weinberg gave a presentation at the Microsoft ThinkNext Academy.

The most important thing about your product is your users. No user = No product, it’s that simple.
No matter how cool your product is, how effective and powerful it is, if no one uses it, it’s as if it doesn’t exist.
In this session we’ll learn how to understand your users, see how they grasp your product, what they understand (and what they don’t).
We’ll learn how to utilize usability studies, user feedback, analytics and additional tools and technics to allow us to track users’ behavior, listen to what they’re thinking, and use this new knowledge in order to improve our products. We’ll also see some real life examples from my personal experience as the product lead of on{X} (www.onx.ms) during the last year.

About the Speaker: Shira Weinberg
Program Manager in the Israeli Bing Mobile team, leading products in the web and mobile world. Prior to her work in the program management area, Shira packs a decade of experience as a software engineer.
Shira holds a real passion to technology, UX, web, mobile, social and people.
In her current position, she is the Program Manager of on{X}, a web and mobile product that allows users to automate their life by pushing JavaScript code to their Android phones and remotely program it. Before the on{X} project Shira led the work on “We’re In” a Windows Phone application that allows real time location sharing.
Shira holds an MBA (majored in marketing) from IDC Herzeliya

 

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10 Marketing Hacks To Boost Your Startup from Ben Lang

By Ben Lang: Here are ten marketing tricks to help boost the visibility of your startup. These are things I’ve picked up over the past few years working at different startups and on my own projects.

Here’s what I’m learning from Microsoft Think Next Academy:

During this meetup I’ll share a few marketing tricks I’ve picked up over the past few years.

I’ll explain how you can:
• Easily drive over 50,000 visitors to your site (in under 24 hours)
• Get any blogger in the world to write about you
• Get global coverage for your startup
• And some more interesting things….
I’ll also make sure to include some stories along the way.
Many of these tips I’ve never shared before, so make sure to come.

The Session will be in English
About the speaker:
Founder of EpicLaunch and Mapped In Israel. Currently a soldier in the IDF and a growth hacker at lool ventures. Previously on marketing team at Wibiya and Kampyle.

Created projects that have been used by millions of people around the world and featured on sites around the world such as TechCrunch, CNET, Real Simple, Lifehacker, New York Times and more.
See a full list here. Connect with me on : http://benjaminlang.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/benjaminlang
Twitter: https://twitter.com/benln

 

The Future of Facebook and Social Advertising

How is this for direct targeting? 
Thank you Flickr user mil8

Thank you Flickr user philcampbell

Facebook will continue to be a strong contender in the social advertising scene. According to new research released by social media agency TBG Digital for the first quarter of this year, Facebook advertising rates have gone up 41% since last year, even while showing more ads per page.

The reason behind Facebook’s advertising success is in its detailed targeting. Nowhere else can a business zone in on their target market’s demographics, mood, preferences, history, and anticipated next click as they can with Facebook advertising. While Facebook’s CPC may be high, you can be sure that once you click on an ad that seems to made just for you, the CVR (conversion rate) will be extremely high. On the other hand, you are contending with about 7 ads all targeted at you. It will be interesting to see what advertisers do to stand out and catch your attention.

For small and medium-sized businesses in particular, there is no other platform at the moment that can peel back the layers of demographic targeting to this level. Microsoft has partnered with Facebook and is getting ready to use social media to enhance its Bing search engine. In addition, earlier this year Microsoft came out with a couple of very interesting patents that describe “a ‘user-following engine’ that would analyze a user’s posts on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites to deduce mood, interests, and possibly even the person’s education  level and comprehension of specific topics.” This information could be used to tailor search results based on all of these factors which would result not only in more relevant results, but more targeted ads as well. Though these technologies haven’t yet made their debut in practice, the foundation exists and is just a matter of time.

In addition to detailed targeting, another huge incentive for SMBs to advertise on Facebook is that they have complete control over their ad campaign. They have the flexibility to start, edit, tweak, and stop the ad as needed. And since Facebook advertising really isn’t all that expensive, they can run multiple campaigns and test the CPA, and pull the duds. Businesses have control over the costs of their ads, as well. All they have to do is decide what kind of results they’d like to see, decide between CPC (Cost Per Click) or CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions), and determine their daily budgets. Keep in mind, though, on Facebook display ads are not just about purchasing. Content is still king. The trick is to have attractive enough content to encourage ‘likes.’ By ‘liking’ a company page, their updates show in your newsfeed, which is kind of a personalized newspaper just for you. News from your friends and companies you have ‘liked’ show up in this feed, allowing companies to stay top of mind, and thus score higher CVR.

Google popularized the “click-through” method of measuring an ad’s effectiveness. Facebook has not done as well in this arena and claims that CTRs only tell half the story. Facebook is more about how often a consumer sees an ad (impressions) and reaching a business’ intended target audience. Since users who click on ads on Google are searching for a product and most likely have the intention to buy, clicks on ads on Google are more effective and CPCs are more relevant as they lead to more purchases. CTRs will be higher in this case. Ads on Facebook, since they are viewed while users are socializing and not specifically searching for a product, are less effective at actual sales, but more effective at impressions, CVR, and brand awareness, hence CPM may be a better option when paying for ads than CPC. In about 5 months we’ll know more about how effective Facebook advertising is in leading to brick-and-mortar sales: “Through its partnership with Datalogix, Facebook will be able to track the relationship between the ads on Facebook and real-world spending by compiling consumer purchasing information from retails stores and matching it with data about Facebook ad impressions.” (Reuters: Facebook’s new pitch to brand advertisers: forget about clicks).

Facebook and social advertising is all about CRV. Watching Microsoft partner with Facebook to create its ‘user-following engine’ will be interesting. Having a broader application outside of Facebook will truly show the sustainability and result-driven success of social advertising.

 

Affiliate Marketing: All the news that’s fit to print, and some that’s not.

Photo credit: NS Newsflash

So, this blog is turning into a chronicle of what I am teaching myself about marketing. Come along with me as we explore and go deeper into social media marketing terminology, definitions, usage, norms, best practices (note to self: must do a blog on “best practices,” boy people just love that term!)  Autodidarketing. I think you’ll find, as I am, that most terms and abbreviations are pretty simple once you get over your fear of new things.

Today, while procrastinating for a piece I am supposed to be writing,  I learned a bit more than I knew about Affiliate Marketing. Wikipedia says “Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts.”

What it means is that when you are doing a search you come across a website and there are a bunch of ads that may or may not have anything to do with the content on the site, sometimes it’s even hard to find said content through the forest of ads. Usually, you just click away from the page, but every so often you might click on an ad. If you do, you have made the owner of the site a bit of money. If you buy something as a result of the click, you have made even more money for the publisher. If it’s a blog, there could be an affiliate link woven right into the content. It would be too tacky of me to give you an example right here, but I’ll have to get on the ball and see about how I can be monetizing this here blog sometime soon. It made me want to register a domain and build a page of content around links to products I can make money off of.

This is not a new concept. Magazines and newspapers have been doing it since there were things to be sold and bought. Notice I didn’t say “since there was news to report.” Now, I have a brother who writes for a certain very well known and respected financial newspaper and a mother who reads 3 newspapers a day. I grew up in a house that could have been featured in an episode of Horders: Newspaper Edition. I get and value the importance of news. BUT, IMO, news is content that is used to lure readers into buying newspapers so that they will see the ads along the way. Same with magazines. It’s not the subscription income that makes these publishing giants into, well, giants. It’s the ad revenue. Same with Facebook. True, Facebook was not created with the monetization of status updates in mind, but hey, a Zuck’s gotta make a buck. Obviously, there are writers and publishers who write and publish stories for the sake of the story itself. My brother being one of them, of course. Economies have fallen under the pen of mighty financial reporters, presidents elected, heads of state overthrown, you get where I am going. All I’m saying is that content may be king but if there’s a good woman behind every successful man, there’s an ad behind every piece of content.

That being said, I assume you can’t just throw up a webpage, sign up for some affiliates and paste any old content around the ads. The content has to be good enough to actually garner the impressions, justify the CPM, get a good rate on CPC, show the ROI on the CTR and be rewarded with a high CVR.

If you didn’t understand a word or abbreviation I just wrote, stay tuned for the next post when I give some definitions of the most thrown around social ad-terms and explore what they mean to us and the big players.

 

SMB Business

I keep coming across the term “SMB” in my business autodidaction reading. Is that a word? Spell check says not.

It always looks to me like SBM to me: Search by Media by Ventura Communications, Inc. This is a company I worked for waaay back in 1998. Back when I loved my job. Can’t remember the last time I could say that! Before I had kids and felt too guilty to work. This was a company that built a search engine application that retrieved multi-media for a search term. Don’t forget, this is 1998. PRE-GOOGLE! If you entered a search term, let’s say Madonna, in addition to the standard list of websites that feature Madonna content, it would retrieve her videos, audios, and images, as well. This was revolutionary back in 1998. Problem was, no one had the bandwidth at the time to support it. Ever try downloading an MP3 on a dial-up connection?

Ok, back to today’s lesson. What is SMB Business. Hold on, I’ll go find out. Just a sec.

Ok, Wikipedia says: Small and medium enterprise or small and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs, small and medium-sized businesses, SMBs and variations thereof) are companies whose personnel numbers fall below certain limits. The abbreviation “SME” is used in the European Union and by international organizations …. In most economies, smaller enterprises outnumber large companies by a wide margin. SMEs are said to be responsible for driving innovation and competition in many economic sectors.

Ok, so now we know the word “business” after SMB is redundant.

Here’s a similar definition (taken from http://searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com/definition/SMB): SMB is an abbreviation for small and medium-sized business, sometimes seen as small and midsized business. A business with 100 or fewer employees is generally considered small, while one with 100-999 employees is considered to be medium-sized.)

This is an example of why I shouldn’t be overwhelmed when reading up online about business. This goes in the duh file.

 

The new social media?

Does this count as social media: my mother-in-law comes to stay to escape the bombings in her home in Ashkelon and she brings with her a radio to listen to constant updates of sirens. She’s visiting= social, brings radio= media. No? Damn, I am trying to keep up with the latest sm trends and I thought maybe I could begin one myself since they seem to change with the wind, anyway.

 

Proverb

[Whoever] smelt it dealt it.

he who smelt it, dealt it

1. (colloquial, originally) A person who calls attention to or complains about a fart is likely trying to pretend it wasn’t his or her own.
2. (colloquial, by extension) Used to suggest that a person calling attention to or complaining about a given problem may in fact be the source of the problem.

I included this for several reasons:

1. To get your attention.

2. To explain my philosophy on life. Basically, if you make a mistake, and we all do, own up to it. Stop playing the blame game, putting someone else down so you feel better about yourself. We are all guilty of this. Realizing it is the first step in trying to correct it.

3. To demonstrate that we are all imperfect creatures bumbling our way through life. And sometimes it’s ok to cover up our tiniest faults.

[Whoever] smelt it dealt it.