Understanding Sustainability
In today’s professional world we are surrounded by dozens of buzzwords for a new age; this is especially true when we throw around words and phrases such as “green”, “eco-friendly”, “renewable” and so on. One of the biggest buzz words in modern personal life and business is, as relates to going green, is “sustainability”. But what does sustainability really mean, both environmentally and as relates to business? Let’s take a look.
What does “Sustainable” Mean? The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines sustainability as creating and maintaining the natural conditions within nature that we need for our own human survival. The EPA asserts that sustainability strives to help nature and people coexist in “productive harmony,” in a way that allows people to meet all of our economic and social needs now and into the future. The future… that is one of the most important concepts of sustainability, the idea that we need to make changes now to live in a way that is sustainable so that the Earth can provide us the resources that we need to be healthy and productive, but also so that the planet can continue to provide these resources to future generations indefinitely.
Why is Sustainability a Concern Today? Rapid population growth, which of course leads to economic growth and an increase in human consumption of natural resources, has, according to the EPA, lead to concerns about whether the modern human experience is sustainable into the future. Our behaviors have lead to climate changes and has caused some climatologists to predict that these changes will get worse and go on to include the spread of global warming, increased disease, rising sea levels and animal extinctions. What we know for certain is that our current behavior and level of resource consumption is not sustainable; we must make changes to guarantee that future generations have the resources that they need to maintain the human lifestyle.
How does One become Sustainable? Sustainability, as the term is used today, refers to at least two things, most commonly. It refers specifically to the above discussed environmental resources, as we seek to make the human experience more sustainable as it relates to the planet’s resources. But the term also refers to how businesses can become sustainable, using certain practices to make their company’s future sustainable and green.
One way that we do this is by looking at how a company can utilize resources for production and services that are reusable. For example, restaurants recycling their used vegetable oil so that it can replace petroleum as a main ingredient in fuel is a great example of sustainable business: it saves the restaurant disposal costs and turns what would otherwise be a waste product into something usable. Imagine if we could find a useful way to use all of our business waste products how much we could reduce landfill waste and how much money businesses could save. Add to this the fact that many of these changes are more healthful for the environment (for example, burning the bio-fuel created by used vegetable oil does not pollute like burning petroleum based fuel), and you have true sustainability.
What Does Sustainability Mean to You The true question really becomes what sustainability means to you, as an individual or as a business owner. It is up to each person to decide that working towards a sustainable future where alternative energy resources replace our petroleum consumption, to reduce our waste to landfills and so forth is a worthwhile investment of our time, money and intellectual capital. By taking small steps today we can start down the road to sustainability. If we do nothing then the time will come when sustainability is a requirement, when we run out of oil or lumber, when the Earth is so polluted that we can’t breathe… at that point we will be forced into some type of action that will be more expensive, more difficult and take longer to see results. However, if we start to incorporate sustainable practice into our lives and businesses today we can make steady steps towards a cleaner future, where our children and our children’s children can continue to live in harmony with the environment.
Sustainability Trends to Watch for in 2012
As we search for ways to change our personal actions as well as those of our businesses and governments to make the human experience more sustainable it can be helpful to know what some of the best ways are to move forward with eco-friendly initiatives. According to some sources, 2012 will have consumers and business people continuing to focus on recycling, reducing waste and turning off our lights and other electrical appliances. But among these continued actions the following six issues are likely to dominate public, commercial and political thinking throughout 2012.
1. Green will begin in the home. Homemakers and parents are paying increasing attention to issues such as food toxins, pesticides, hormones, genetically altered seeds and so forth. People will continue to be concerned about the health of their homes, which they recognize directly impacts the health of their families. The demand for organic food and natural cleaners will increase in 2012, and this trend will continue over the next decade.
2. Companies and municipalities will continue to set goals for energy efficiency. Becoming carbon neutral and having zero waste will become major goals for companies (small and large) and governments around the United States. Following in the footsteps of Kohls and other large retailers, many stores and cities will seek to be carbon neutral by reducing their energy usage as well as investing in carbon offset credits. Similar to the ambitious goals of Oakland, California to be zero waste by 2020, other cities and businesses will increasingly work to reduce, reuse and recycle.
3. Politicians will recognize that investing in renewable resources is a necessity. As we move deeper into the new millennium people will start to demand more renewable energy resources. Politicians and governments will start to recognize that there is an immediate need to develop energy technologies instead of just talking about it. According to some sources, politicians will start to recognize that the issue of sustainable energy will dominate discussions of the need to create jobs; the two concepts must learn to coexist, with new job creation happening in the alternative energy area.
4. Efficiency will become more affordable. In the early years of energy efficiency one had to pay a premium to be energy efficient, which didn’t make sense for most homes and small businesses. In 2012 this will continue to change as energy efficient technologies become more affordable. These technologies will include small items such as compact florescent bulbs (CFLs) and LED lighting, but also spreads to large things like solar heating arrays and geothermal energy systems. People will also become more willing to make some changes in their energy use, such as using electric company programs that allow energy usage to be adjusted based on the demand versus cost of energy at certain times of the day.
5. Computer users will float on the cloud. Cloud computing allows a computer user to share software across what techies call “the cloud”. The cloud is a term used to describe distributed computing, where expensive, memory intensive software programs can be housed on one computer but accessed and used by other people across the city, state, country or globe. Cloud computing is a great financial saver, allowing companies, governments and universities to save money on software purchase, installation and maintenance, while still giving users access to everything that they need. Cloud computing technology will also be increasingly used by people and organizations to back-up their information. All of these efforts will result in less manufacturing of physical storage devices such as CDROMs, DVDs, flash drives and external hard drives.
6. Transportation will see the limelight. Some cities, including New York, have already made huge strides in eco-consciousness by using public transportation extensively. 2012 will see more cities planning for public transportation including direct express trains, energy efficient bus lines, development of car pool and bicycle lanes, and simply people making the choice to ride share, limit or combine automotive trips and so on. Of course, electric and alternative energy vehicles will continue to receive a lot of attention and increased adoption.
5 Important Ways Move towards Green in 2012
You know that it is important that we all work together to save our planet, or you wouldn’t be reading this article. We all know that global warming is upon us on a massive scale, and that pesticides and hormones are hurting us on an individual level. Now, as the holidays of 2011 become a memory and our New Year’s resolutions start to fade, this is the perfect time to take a moment to re-evaluate how YOU can make changes to move towards greener living in 2012.
Green around the World You are not the only one wondering how you, yourself (or your small business) can make a real difference in such a vast world. The truth is that many people just like you – and people very different from you around the world – all want to make that difference. If each of us does our part, together we will forge real change, starting with grass roots efforts in our own lives.
The Worldwatch Institute has its own vision for a sustainable world, much like yours. The Go Green Conference held in March is striving to help people find ways to green in up for the new year. News giants like ABC, the New York Times and more are ripe with stories on going green. People are motivated. People are building off the efforts of each other. Your efforts are not alone and together these small steps will help our planet to reap big, green rewards. So, let’s look at how you can take your own steps, steps that will be added to those of others around the Earth to equal monumental progress.
Five Simple Steps to Getting Started Following are five ideas for how you can make small changes that can lead to big impacts.
1) Recycle Today we have the ability to recycle so much, and it has become so easy. Grocery stores offer recycling containers for plastic bags, paper bags, egg cartons and more. Home improvement stores offer recycling for batteries (disposable and rechargeable), cell phones and other electronics and machines. Most residential garbage pick-up hauls away plastic bottles, newspaper and more to be recycled. To not recycle is really just sheer laziness.
2) Reduce and reuse. As the previous paragraph says, recycling is important and easy. However, reducing and reusing is even better, because recycling does require electricity, water and other resources to turn one old item into some other new item. When possible reduce your consumption altogether and reuse materials. Water is a great example of this, as our country dumps millions of used water bottles into the trash each year. By using refillable bottles and filtered tap water we save the environment in a variety of ways.
3) Turn down the lights. Lighting is one of the highest energy consumers for most people in developed countries, particularly for commercial locations. Turning off lights when not in use, dimming lights to only necessary levels, and using motion sensors to ensure lights are turned off when no people are around are simple ways to decrease energy consumption. You can see this in action with many grocery stores today as more stores are installing motion sensing lights that come on only if a customer is in that aisle or in front of that particular freezer case. Great places to install these sensors include laundry rooms, break rooms, electrical rooms, storage closets and other places that people run into and out of quickly, though almost any room can benefit from them.
4) Support organic farming. Eating organic is being increasingly recognized as a necessary part of developing a healthy human body. Non-organic consumables are simply laden with pesticides, chemicals, antibiotics, hormones and more. Studies have shown that removing these chemicals from a person’s diet can reduce stress, fatigue, anxiety and anger, as well as keep them more physically healthy.
5) Reduce the meat in your diet This may be a new one that hasn’t shown up on other eco lists that you’ve read, but it is actually really important. It’s not about PETA or animal treatment, but about resources. It takes far, far more energy to create a pound of meat than it does to create a pound of vegetables. Meat is one of the least efficient foods for the human body to create energy, yet it takes the most energy to create the meat for consumption. This means that if you eat vegetarian at least a few times a week you are reducing the use of water and the emission of greenhouse gasses significantly.
Bring it Home Of course, these five steps are just that… five out of hundreds of possible steps. This gives you a place to start, a way to ease into a greener year. Once these steps become comfortable, look for more ways that you can green your world. With dedication, commitment and a little willpower, we can all become more eco-friendly and build a stronger world.
4 Tips for Increasing Your Social Media Presence
Developing and maintaining a solid social media presence is becoming a bigger and bigger issue in SMB marketing. Most marketing professionals believe that making solid use of social media can help a business improve general customer relations and visibility, while also producing a positive impact on sales. Following are four tips for how to increase the social media presence of your business, with multiple “sub-tips” in each category:
Tip #1: Get on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube Go where the people are, and today they are all on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Of course, going where the people are is less than half the battle, at least in web advertising. Sure, you can purchase ads on Google and other sites, but the most profitable marketing can be in inbound marketing, where you get people to come to you. How? By being interesting.
Create a vibrant, active Facebook community filled with interesting information, quizzes that people want to send on to go viral, photographs that grab the attention of would be customers and a huge entourage of friends! Remember to update your Facebook page daily and respond to people who post on your page. Also, make special offers to people who “like” you on Facebook. The same is true of YouTube – post interesting, fun videos that have the potential to go “viral.” New and exciting news clips, humorous videos and the like that crawl through the web providing more advertising than you could ever buy. Twitter can also be a great way to keep your current customers updated and award of what’s new in your company.
Tip #2: Create Your Own Blog Building a blog on your website can be a great way to accomplish three things: 1) it gives you a place to communicate valuable, timely information to your customers and potential customers; 2) it gives you a place to use keywords, thus using SEO to draw traffic to your website; 3) it gives your customers a place to ask questions and to interact with each other and you. When you create your blog ensure that it is well written, informative, timely, accurate, original and interesting. A blog should be all of these things to such an extent that your readers can’t wait for your next blog posting.
Tip #3: Post in Other Blogs While your own blog is a great way to draw customers to your site and keep them there, posting on other blogs can help draw customers as well. You can do this simply by finding other blogs and social networking sites that draw similar customers to those that you want, then post replies to the blogs which include links to your own site. Now, you have to be careful. Many blogs and sites will remove overly solicitous or promotional messages that are posted. So, it is important that your postings be informative, accurate, and interesting, and have only minimal promotional content – content that provides value, not just gratuitous marketing.
One good way to do this is to create a “signature” that you add to a blog. This signature could include your name, company website and a slogan or brief call to action. For example, if you are an electrician and you post a comment on a home improvement blog telling someone how to check a wiring issue.
A signature like this can show that your comments are legitimate and informed. It also provides information about you without looking like an advertising pitch. If the other bloggers find your post well written, informative and friendly, they just might consider you when they need their next electrical job.
Tip #4: Make it Fun When it comes to social networking it is important to remember that most people are online for pleasure. Thus, if you want your marketing efforts to be effective they have got to be enjoyable to read and to view. Make sure your website, Facebook page, blog and everything else looks good and is user friendly. Hire a professional writer to create your documents with a friendly, inviting tone and good information. Add games, jokes, quizzes, videos – anything that can add entertainment value for your viewers and would-be customers.
3 Reasons to Become a Green Retail Business
Today green is becoming a necessity in business. For any company to ensure their longevity and continued profitability they need to become a green retail business. This can mean a variety of things, from using sustainable business practices as far as transportation and materials, to greening the company’s new construction and existing facilities to selling environmentally friendly products. Whatever way you slice it, going green is the right decision now and into the future. By going green your retail business can spend less, earn more and become more profitable, while also becoming a positive part of the environment.
There are three main reasons for any company to become a green retail business. First, customers are increasingly demanding green from the businesses they shop in. Second, this consumer demand means that other businesses are going green. Thus, you need to go green simply to keep up. And third, going green simply makes business sense as it increases long term profits. Let’s look at these three items in detail in a moment, but first we will look at a few examples of the retail world making the move to green.
A Few Big Names Go Green As if to emphasize the value of going green today, a number of big names in retail have been focusing their efforts on green recently. These companies are seeking to reduce, reuse and recycle, and also provide green options for their customers.
Wal-Mart is one company starting to make some eco-conscious changes to their business. Specifically, Wal-Mart is focusing on three main goals. First, they are seeking to make a move to sustainable energy, in fact their goal is that all their stores use 100% renewable energy in the near future. Additionally, Wal-Mart is trying to reduce waste, hoping to achieve zero waste in their operations. Finally, Wal-Mart is looking to increase the availability of green products in their stores, making it easier for consumers to take their own green steps.
The department store Kohls is similarly seeking to green their operations. Renewable energy is on their radar as they seek to reduce the carbon footprints of their stores and corporate offices. Part of this will be accomplished through LEED certification of new stores that Kohls builds. While working on their own waste reduction and recycling, Kohls is also working with suppliers to reduce packaging and waste.
The large Swedish retailer Ikea is also trying to reduce their environmental footprint. One of Ikea’s biggest green strategies has always been, and continues to be, reducing transportation costs. This is done largely through packaging as they seek to package their products as efficiently as possible to allow more product to be shipped in fewer shipments. Ikea is also looking into the materials that their products are made from, specifically looking to eliminate their uses of non-sustainable wood.
Customers Demand Green While not every company is as large as Wal-Mart, Kohls or Ikea and cannot embark on such large initiatives or lofty goals, each company must decide what their green policy is and work towards some level of green retail business. Consumers are demanding it. Any company who fails to embrace sustainable business will see a loss in consumers over the coming years.
The Competition is Going Green And where will these lost customers go? Well, they will go off to patronize the competition, who IS going green. As our examples above show, every avenue of retail business is starting to look at sustainability. Even these huge commercial icons have recognized that green is the color of the future, and the future’s money. Going green will be necessary to simply keep up in an ultra competitive consumer marketplace. To truly excel and stand out in that market companies need to be among the first to go green and they need to be sure and spread the word.
Green Makes Business Sense Green makes ethical sense, as we are all stewards of our planet and should want to make a difference. But it also makes economic sense. Not only do sustainable business practices meet growing consumer demand and help a green retailer to keep up with their competition, but eco-friendly actions can also save money now and in the future. For example, by simply reducing the brightness of lights in a store a retailer can save 30-40% off their electricity bill. Some grocery stores are taking the steps of adding motion detectors to the lights in their refrigerators and aisles, so that the lights only come on as customers approach the aisle – what a great proactive solution that looks good and saves money in the here and now. Of course larger changes such as energy efficient buildings and energy systems can save even more over the long run.
Bring it around Town The simple truth is that green is the color of the future. It is not a matter of if a company will have to go green, but rather of when they will institute sustainable business strategies, becoming a green retail business out of necessity. Think of it as the right thing to do. Think of it as the economically smart thing to do. Think of it as a potential government mandate (more are coming every day). Or think of it as peer pressure from the competition. Whatever way you slice it up, going green is an absolute necessity for any business to survive deeper into the 21st Century.
10 Tips for Increasing Your Email Reach and Effectiveness
Email has become one of the biggest marketing tools in the SMB arsenal. However, just shipping out thousands of email with no plan is not any more effective than misplaced advertising. To be effective an email needs to be attractive, informative and well designed. It also has to have credibility. To increase your email reach consider the following three things.
Provide Value to Your Potential CustomerPeople are more likely to read, act on, and even pass along to others messages that offer value. This means that you should use emails to advertise a special sale, offer coupons or discounts and other things that add specific value only to the people receiving that email.
Encourage Referrals As noted above, a huge goal of a good email is to get the recipient to pass the message along to a friend or family member who might be interested in the product or message. People are most likely to pass something on to their friends if it offers value in the form of necessary information or cost savings. A great way to get a double whammy for your email is to send a “bring a friend” coupon or “referral bonus.” Here, you offer an additional savings to both the original recipient and the friend that they refer to you.
Cross Promote to Expand Your List Of course, effective email marketing is only as good as your starting list of email addresses. It is important that you build a solid email list. This does not mean getting your hands on any address you can – sending plumbing repair emails to an apartment renter or mommy and me classes to a retiree makes little sense.
What you want is a list of viable customers – people who may actually need and want your services. You can do this in a variety of ways, three of which are quite easy. First, get email addresses from all your customers. Also, ask current customers if they would like to receive a coupon in return for referring a friend. Another way to increase your email list is to work with another business that has a similar customer base. For example, if you own a child’s clothing store in a high end shopping strip and further down the strip is a baby gym, cross promote. Ask the gym owner to add a link for you to the bottom of their next email mailing; in return, you do the same for them. In this way clients of both businesses get value, receiving only emails that apply to them, and both businesses can potentially double their address list.
Quick Tips The above are all valuable tips for increasing your email reach. There are also some quick tips to prepare the best email, so remember the following:
- Add an “unsubscribe” link to the bottom of your email; in most areas, it is the law and it is also good customer service. You don’t want to get a bad reputation by sending messages to people who don’t want them.
- Include a link to your company’s privacy policy, so potential customers can feel safe giving you their information. If you intend to trade emails with a similar business near you, be sure your policy states this clearly.
- Use a solid subject line that tells the reader, at a glance, what value this message holds for them. Similarly, ensure that your company’s name is in the “from” box.
- Put your full contact information, including phone number and email address, in your message.
- Keep your messages brief and within a single theme; suggest the reader go to your website for information on your other offers or products.
- Target your market; do not just send messages out to every email address you can get your hands on. Try to target your markets properly and send out information to people who want to receive it.
- Use specific call to action buttons. This means that instead of just putting a button that says, “click here” at the bottom of your message write WHY you want them to click here. Perhaps, “Click here for a video of this product in action,” or “click here for a comparison between product A and B.” Be specific – tell the email read WHY to “click here.”
