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Tag: Communications

  • Improve Your Company’s Efficiency with These 5 Strategies | Entrepreneur

    Improve Your Company’s Efficiency with These 5 Strategies | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    A business that operates more efficiently is more likely to be successful in the long term. Your company’s efficiency can increase productivity and give you an advantage in today’s fiercely competitive market. However, this can sometimes be tricky to achieve.

    Due to inefficiencies, companies can lose up to an astounding 30% of their revenue each year. We know how easy it can be to get caught up in the everyday grind, where you do what you have to without reflecting on what can be done with less effort and time, thus allowing things to run much more smoothly.

    Related: 10 Tips to Boost Employee Productivity and Skyrocket Performance

    Efficiency comes down to having the right person do the right thing at the right time. This increases the capacity of the employees and the competitiveness of the business. Efficiency is everyone’s responsibility and an important factor for us to enjoy our workplace.

    There are various methods to help you organize your work to be as efficient as possible. Here are our best tips for how you can improve your company’s efficiency so that you can continue to grow and earn more revenue.

    Conduct a SOC 2 audit

    The SOC2 auditing framework was created by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). It’s a system of controls that provides standards for managing client data in accordance with five trust-based service principles: security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy.

    Related: This Key Thing Will Make Your Company’s Data Safer and Get You More Customers

    Protecting your company against data breaches is not solely a defensive strategy. It can also help you grow your business and make it more efficient. SOC 2 compliance can give your company an edge and allow you to assure prospects and customers that you have taken all necessary steps to protect their data from any potential breaches.

    A SOC2 audit will help you become more efficient and secure. You can streamline your controls and processes based on your knowledge of cybersecurity risks. This will help you improve the services you provide.

    Improve communication

    Knowing when and how to communicate properly at work helps prevent misunderstandings, increases the sense of well-being in the team and strengthens cooperation. It is also one of the best ways to improve your company’s efficiency. Successful communication in the workplace is about discussing individual tasks, sharing updates on projects or giving feedback to managers or employees.

    Eliminating communication barriers in the workplace is an important part of effective collaboration. If you don’t communicate clearly, you risk creating confusion or even inadvertently hurting someone’s feelings.

    Related: Effective Communication Means Business Success

    Company managers should consider organizing communication training courses at their company. Improving communication skills benefits everyone. There might be times when communication hurdles become too much to handle, but fortunately, there are efficient coaching tools that can help you become more efficient, boost your confidence, help your employees understand new concepts, learn more about themselves, and make positive changes.

    Focus on the most important processes

    Anyone who looks around an ordinary workplace can easily find hundreds of things that could be improved for a more efficient work process: a list that can be created, a meeting that can be held or a routine that can be better defined. But before you put effort into the areas with the best improvement potential, it can be important to think about which processes in your business are vital. Focus on improving the work that contributes to you reaching your goals and leave the rest alone.

    Related: 11 Ways to Automate Your Business and Boost Efficiency

    Automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks you identify as problematic is also an option. This will make your life easier and help you do more work.

    Many tools available today can automate even the most complex administrative tasks. These tools include inventory management systems, attendance and payroll tools, accounting software and so on.

    Clarify responsibilities and roles

    Make sure everyone is clear about who is responsible for important tasks and processes and that each person does what they do best. Unclear responsibilities and the feeling that their skills are not being used can lead to employee dissatisfaction, conflicts and stress. This can, in turn, cause your business operations to be inefficient. Create a culture where differences in employees mean strengths for the team.

    To get there, the key is to encourage teamwork, improve performance, and reinforce roles. Your staff members need to understand their responsibilities and then held accountable for all tasks they perform. You should also recognize their achievements and reward them for doing a good job.

    Explore digital integration

    You can’t maximize your efficiency, no matter how productive and skilled your staff may be if you don’t provide the necessary equipment and digital tools.

    Integrating digital solutions can increase efficiency in many ways. Technology can automate tedious tasks so employees can focus on the things that need priority attention. Not only does digital integration improve collaboration and communication, but it also allows for faster reports to be generated and shared. Your employees can also work more efficiently with each other, and customers and suppliers will greatly benefit as well.

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    Under30CEO

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  • How to Select the Right Kind of PR Representation in the Current Economic Climate | Entrepreneur

    How to Select the Right Kind of PR Representation in the Current Economic Climate | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Companies looking to partner with external public relations (PR) agencies to help manage communications and brand reputation should know a few things. Not all public relations is the same, and each has its rightful place in the matrix, but it’s essential for C-suite decision-makers to know the difference.

    What often feels like a daunting task to identify multiple firms, conduct due diligence calls, review proposals and initiate follow-up meetings before a decision is ever made may be made easier to pull better candidates in step one. Here are the key differentiators that companies should consider when selecting an agency, with a priority on today’s economic climate.

    More agencies than ever are offering additional services as clients, primarily led by chief marketing officers (CMOs), are beholden to more data-driven results and need to do more with less. If a company is going through rounds of layoffs, it’s a tougher sell to keep outside vendors unless they can show value.

    While I previously discussed Reputation + and how that supports value and growth-focused organizations, public relations professionals from contractors through large agencies are revamping core offerings.

    Here is a breakdown of five different types of external public relations professionals, what they specialize in and who they are a “right” fit for.

    Related: Here’s One Easy Way to Establish Yourself as a Thought Leader in Your Industry

    1. Publicists

    During approximately one-third of the time potential partners get to us, they are looking for a personal publicist versus a full-scale strategic communications team.

    A publicist is someone who typically works 1:1 with an individual who has a sizeable personal brand and does not typically work for another organization. This may be a highly visible influencer, broadcast personality, author, artist, musician, etc.

    Publicists are exceptional at securing personal brand-earned media, especially broadcast tours, feature articles and other high-profile moments where the personality is the main story. It takes a nuanced skill set to represent a personality, and publicists should be the first stop if PR is just for “you.”

    These pros frequently work on a monthly retainer but may be available to do one-off moments like a TV or podcast tour.

    Related: How to Secure Game-Changing Media Coverage for Your Product or Service

    2. Media relations, Contractors and Freelancers

    This category sits just before reaching a small or boutique agency profile. I consider this one of the most important distinctions because almost every time someone engages with our agency in place of different representation, they communicate dissatisfaction around what is, at its heart, strategic partnership.

    The professionals in this category are phenomenal to work with if both parties fully understand the scope.

    Most freelancers and contractors are “pitchers,” either utilizing pre-packaged brand stories or offering some modifications and creativity on a brand’s editorial and messaging to secure a predetermined amount of earned media.

    They can do more if a brand can provide them with as much completed work as possible. This is because they’re one-person businesses and don’t have team members to support or delegate to. If they can spend at least 70 percent of their time conducting media outreach, they can deliver. However, if they have to cut from that time to do strategy, ideation, writing, editing, design or owned media, it drastically cuts into deliverables.

    And that is where the breakdown usually occurs. These budgets are much more brand-friendly, especially for startups or those with a smaller marketing budget. Both parties must understand what is possible with the scope and budget available.

    These pros also typically work on a monthly retainer but may be available to do one-off PR moments, like a brand launch or a more significant scope project (with enough planning time).

    3. Strategic communications

    This is our personal sweet spot and is often the perfect mix for brands with a dedicated marketing budget (including a CMO or communications leader) who need a team to manage key messages, narrative development, media relationship growth, earned media, thought leadership and owned media.

    Strategic communications firms can come in various sizes but most often provide full-service support with personalized strategies for each client.

    It’s important to look at industry-specific experience when partnering at this level. It is because every industry has unique challenges, trends and players. An agency with experience in a particular industry is better equipped to navigate these intricacies and create targeted campaigns that resonate with the target audience.

    Industry-specific experience also allows for a deeper understanding of a company’s competition and helps the agency craft strategies that can give their client a competitive edge. Moreover, a PR agency with industry-specific experience has established relationships with key media personnel, influencers, and stakeholders, which is crucial when securing media coverage and amplifying the client’s message. In summary, industry-specific experience ensures that the PR agency can create an effective campaign that meets the client’s needs and delivers measurable results.

    These professionals almost always exclusively operate on a monthly or annual retainer and rarely do one-off moments unless the scope is large enough to justify onboarding an entire account team.

    Related: 7 Ways to Build Strong PR for Your Personal Brand

    4. Public affairs

    Most of the time, companies that need a public affairs (PA) agency realize it right away. Still, there are times we get approached about this type of work and have to recommend our peers who specialize in this area.

    Companies that need PA representation often fall under one of three categories: 1) advocacy and coalition building, 2) government relations or 3) regulatory and policy issues.

    It means you may be involved in heavily regulated industries, like healthcare, energy and finance or need to build relationships with key government officials or policymakers. These types of agencies are experts at building third-party coalitions, educating consumers on various issues that may impact them at a local or personal level and help to mobilize others advocating for changes in policy or regulations.

    Just like media relations excel because of strong journalism relationships, so do PAs who know key stakeholders in politics, organizations and other important decision-makers that impact a brand.

    Budgets may vary widely depending on the scope, local, state or national, though almost all work on a large budget project basis or long-term retainer as an organization’s agency of record.

    5. Crisis communications

    If you know your brand is constantly under stakeholder scrutiny, is on deadline with a current crisis or just wants to be prepared should one ever occur, this is the type of agency you need.

    A crisis today can range from disinformation campaigns to product recalls to negative national media or social media coverage. A primary benefit of working with a sector-specific crisis firm is that they have a deep understanding of the challenges and sensitivities of the industry and know how to tailor messages (both in terms of who should deliver said messages and prioritization of messages) and tailor crisis strategies for every individual instance.

    Composed primarily of senior-level strategists, they likely have a wealth of experience managing crises in your industry — and know how to do it to meet the speed of the threat or issue. Any brand knows that when a crisis happens, time is of the essence. The ability to quickly mobilize a team who are already familiar with the industry and external sources in play enables a targeted crisis response plan to be executed quickly.

    When looking at budgets, these agencies will be on the higher end of the PR spectrum. Still, effective crisis management can go a long way toward preserving a brand’s reputation and mitigating financial damages.

    Related: 5 Lessons Entrepreneurs Can Learn About Preparing for Crisis Communications

    Here’s a bonus

    Once you’ve decided on the type of agency that is a fit for your brand, here are the things you should have on hand to help determine who is the best fit:

    • Research the potential partners — Once you initiate communication, a good PR pro is also researching you and your brand. Things to look for: previous wins, track record of success, communications styles and account team background.
    • Define your goals and expectations — If you don’t have an RFP available for an individual or agency, that’s okay, but you should be able to provide an idea of what you need. They take this information to use when building out your proposal, including scope and budget.
    • How goals are tracked and shared — Every organization is different and needs goals communicated uniquely. Whether you use OKRs, KPIs or other metrics, talk about this upfront in initial conversations and negotiations so it’s built in as soon as a team onboards.

    Choosing the right PR representation for your brand is a critical decision with long-lasting implications. Investing time and resources in understanding the different types of agencies and their approach to PR can help you make an informed decision and find a partner that aligns with your brand’s goals and values. A good PR agency can help your brand reach new heights and build meaningful connections with your target stakeholders. So take your time, do your research, and choose your PR agency carefully – your brand’s reputation and success depend on it.

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    Sarah Evans

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  • Unveiling the Business Game-Changer: Communication Ecosystems | Entrepreneur

    Unveiling the Business Game-Changer: Communication Ecosystems | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Businesses invest millions to ensure they have a well-established team management plan. Behind each cutting-edge and successful communication software is a well-structured cooperation model between the team members. That is why we are now facing the daily birth of millions of communication software solutions.

    Although having a wide variety of options on the market is amazing, it can also be overwhelming, mainly if you use multiple tools for each type of communication.

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    Srbuhi Avetisyan

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  • Russian father jailed after daughter made anti-war drawing goes on the run

    Russian father jailed after daughter made anti-war drawing goes on the run

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    A man sentenced to two years in prison in a case launched against him after his daughter drew an anti-war picture at school is on the run from the authorities, a spokeswoman for a provincial court told journalists. 

    Earlier Tuesday, a judge in the town of Yefremov in Russia’s Tula region, south of Moscow, found Alexei Moskalyov guilty of discrediting the Russian army on social media and sentenced him to two years in a penal colony.

    Moskalyov was not present at the hearing.

    Once the proceedings were over, a court spokeswoman, responding to inquiries as to Moskalyov’s whereabouts, said: “The defendant, Mr. Moskalyov, was not present when the verdict was announced because he fled house arrest last night.” 

    Her words were met with applause and several cries of “Bravo!” from some of those in attendance. 

    Formally, Moskalyov was sentenced for two comments he made on social media in which he described Russian soldiers as rapists and Russia’s leadership as “terrorists.”

    But Moskalyov’s defense team and rights activists have argued his persecution is in fact retribution for a drawing made by his daughter Masha at school in April last year, when she was 12.

    In the drawing, a woman and child stand next to a flag reading “Glory to Ukraine” in the path of a rocket shower coming from the direction of a Russian tricolor flag labeled: “No to war.” 

    According to an interview given by Moskalyov to independent media before his arrest, Masha’s teacher informed the director of the school, who then got the police involved, triggering a chain of interrogations that he claimed involved threats and beatings. 

    Moskalyov was eventually detained in early March and his daughter, now 13, taken into state care. While Moskalyov was soon released under house arrest, Masha remains in what the authorities call “a social rehabilitation center” and has been denied any communication with the outside world.

    The ruling on Tuesday, though not a surprise, has been decried as a further crackdown on those who oppose Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine and described by some as a return to the Stalinist practice of targeting the children of “enemies of the state.” А petition calling for Masha’s release has received more than 140,000 signatures.

    Speaking to journalists outside the court on Tuesday, Moskalyov’s lawyer Vladimir Biliyenko said he had been unaware of his client’s plan to flee. He said the last time they saw each other was at a court hearing a day earlier. 

    In another development, Moskalyov’s supporters on Tuesday attempted to visit Masha at the so-called social rehabilitation institution where she is supposedly being held, only to be told that she was not there. 

    According to comments from the center’s director cited by independent Russian media, Masha was attending a “culinary tournament” out of town, fueling speculation about her actual location.

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    POLITICO Staff

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  • MEPs cling to TikTok for Gen Z votes

    MEPs cling to TikTok for Gen Z votes

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    It may come with security risks but, for European Parliamentarians, TikTok is just too good a political tool to abandon.

    Staff at the European Parliament were ordered to delete the video-sharing application from any work devices by March 20, after an edict last month from the Parliament’s President Roberta Metsola cited cybersecurity risks about the Chinese-owned platform. The chamber also “strongly recommended” that members of the European Parliament and their political advisers give up the app.

    But with European Parliament elections scheduled for late spring 2024, the chamber’s political groups and many of its members are opting to stay on TikTok to win over the hearts and minds of the platform’s user base of young voters. TikTok says around 125 million Europeans actively use the app every month on average.

    “It’s always important in my parliamentary work to communicate beyond those who are already convinced,” said Leïla Chaibi, a French far-left lawmaker who has 3,500 TikTok followers and has previously used the tool to broadcast videos from Strasbourg explaining how the EU Parliament works.

    Malte Gallée, a 29-year-old German Greens lawmaker with over 36,000 followers on TikTok, said, “There are so many young people there but also more and more older people joining there. For me as a politician of course it’s important to be where the people that I represent are, and to know what they’re talking about.”

    Finding Gen Z 

    Parliament took its decision to ban the app from staffers’ phones in late February, in the wake of similar moves by the European Commission, Council of the EU and the bloc’s diplomatic service.

    A letter from the Parliament’s top IT official, obtained by POLITICO, said the institution took the decision after seeing similar bans by the likes of the U.S. federal government and the European Commission and to prevent “possible threats” against the Parliament and its lawmakers.

    For the chamber, it was a remarkable U-turn. Just a few months earlier its top lawmakers in the institution’s Bureau, including President Metsola and 14 vice presidents, approved the launch of an official Parliament account on TikTok, according to a “TikTok strategy” document from the Parliament’s communications directorate-general dated November 18 and seen by POLITICO. 

    “Members and political groups are increasingly opening TikTok accounts,” stated the document, pointing out that teenagers then aged 16 will be eligible to vote in 2024. “The main purpose of opening a TikTok channel for the European Parliament is to connect directly with the young generation and first time voters in the European elections in 2024, especially among Generation Z,” it said.

    Another supposed benefit of launching an official TikTok account would be countering disinformation about the war in Ukraine, the document stated.  

    Most awkwardly, the only sizeable TikTok account claiming to represent the European Parliament is actually a fake one that Parliament has asked TikTok to remove.

    Dummy phones and workarounds

    Among those who stand to lose out from the new TikTok policy are the European Parliament’s political groupings. Some of these groups have sizeable reach on the Chinese-owned app.

    All political groups with a TikTok account said they will use dedicated computers in order to skirt the TikTok ban on work devices | Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images

    The largest group, the center-right European People’s Party, has 51,000 followers on TikTok. Spokesperson Pedro López previously dismissed the Parliament’s move to stop using TikTok as “absurd,” vowing the EPP’s account will stay up and active. López wrote to POLITICO that “we will use dedicated computers … only for TikTok and not connected to any EP or EPP network.”

    That’s the same strategy that all other political groups with a TikTok account — The Left, Socialists and Democrats (S&D) and Liberal Renew groups — said they will use in order to skirt the TikTok ban on work devices like phones, computers or tablets, according to spokespeople. Around 30 Renew Europe lawmakers are active on the platform, according to the group’s spokesperson.

    Beyond the groups, it’s the individual members of parliament — especially those popular on the app — that are pushing back on efforts to restrict its use.

    Clare Daly, an Irish independent member who sits with the Left group, is one of the most popular MEPs on the platform with over 370,000 subscribed to watch clips of her plenary speeches. Daly has gained some 80,000 extra followers in just the few weeks since Parliament’s ban was announced.

    Daly in an email railed against Parliament’s new policy: “This decision is not guided by a serious threat assessment. It is security theatre, more about appeasing a climate of geopolitical sinophobia in EU politics than it is about protecting sensitive information or mitigating cybersecurity threats,” she said.

    According to Moritz Körner, an MEP from the centrist Renew Europe group, cybersecurity should be a priority. “Politicians should think about cybersecurity and espionage first and before thinking about their elections to the European Parliament,” he told POLITICO, adding that he doesn’t have a TikTok account.

    Others are finding workarounds to have it both ways.

    “We will use a dummy phone and not our work phones anymore. That [dummy] phone will only be used for producing videos,” said an assistant to German Social-democrat member Delara Burkhardt, who has close to 2,000 followers. The assistant credited the platform with driving a friendlier, less abrasive political debate than other platforms like Twitter: “On TikTok the culture is nicer, we get more questions.”

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    Eddy Wax and Clothilde Goujard

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  • BBC faces celebrity revolt, political pressure amid Gary Lineker dispute

    BBC faces celebrity revolt, political pressure amid Gary Lineker dispute

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    The BBC faces a spiraling revolt by its top sporting presenters amid a row over the broadcaster’s impartiality standards, after star football host Gary Lineker was chastised for tweets criticizing the U.K. government’s new asylum policies.

    Calls of hypocrisy were also leveled at the U.K. broadcaster on Saturday, as Labour leader Keir Starmer accused the BBC of “caving in” to the demands of Conservative Party members.

    The broadcaster’s sporting coverage was plunged into uncertainty due to a boycott from a group of hosts and co-hosts who disagreed with the BBC for attempting to penalize “Match of the Day” presenter Lineker for his recent comments against what he called the government’s “immeasurably cruel policy” on immigration. He has been told to “step back” from his BBC presenting duties.

    In a March 7 tweet, the ex-England international footballer compared the U.K. government’s new policy on illegal migrants with the language of Nazi Germany, prompting a backlash from Conservative MPs and members of the government. The BBC says the tweet violated its impartiality standards.

    The U.K.’s new asylum policy would block undocumented migrants from entering the country on small vessels. The bill has been condemned by the United Nations, which said it amounts to an “asylum ban.”  

    “Match of the Day” — a flagship BBC football show for Premier League fans — found itself without regulars Ian Wright, Alan Shearer, Jermaine Jenas, Micah Richards and Jermain Defoe, who all pledged to stand by Lineker in the dispute. The BBC said “Match of the Day” would be aired Saturday without presenters or pundits.

    Popular broadcasts “Football Focus” and “Final Score” have also been deleted from the BBC’s schedule this weekend, after Alex Scott, Kelly Somers and Jason Mohammad all backed Lineker’s corner. BBC Radio 5 Live’s football build-up transmission was ditched minutes before airing, as other leading hosts and pundits joined forces against the broadcaster’s disciplining of Lineker.

    BBC Director General Tim Davie apologised for the disruptions and said “we are working very hard to resolve the situation.” In an interview with BBC News late Saturday, Davie said “success for me is getting Gary back on air.” Davie said he would “absolutely not” be resigning over the row.

    The BBC boss said he was prepared to review impartiality rules for freelance staff like Lineker.

    In an earlier statement, the BBC said it considers Lineker’s “recent social media activity to be a breach of our guidelines.”

    “The BBC has decided that he will step back from presenting Match of the Day until we’ve got an agreed and clear position on his use of social media,” according to the statement.

    A five-year contract that Lineker signed in 2020 includes guarantees to adhere to the BBC’s impartiality code. He is on a reported £1.35 million-a-year salary.

    Labour’s Starmer accused the BBC of pandering to the demands of the Conservative Party on Saturday.

    “The BBC is not acting impartially by caving in to Tory MPs who are complaining about Gary Lineker,” Starmer told broadcasters at Welsh Labour’s conference in Llandudno, Wales. “They got this one badly wrong and now they’re very, very exposed.”

    Labour leader Keir Starmer accused the broadcaster of caving in to Tory demands | Jason Roberts/Getty Images

    Conservative MP Nadine Dorries tweeted on Friday that Lineker needs to decide whether he is “a footie presenter or a member of the Labour Party.”

    Prime Minister Rishi Sunak defended the government’s asylum policy in a statement on Saturday and said the impartiality dispute is for the broadcaster and the presenter to sort out.

    “I hope that the current situation between Gary Lineker and the BBC can be resolved in a timely manner, but it is rightly a matter for them, not the government,” Sunak said in the statement.

    The links between the BBC and the U.K.’s governing Conservative Party run deep. The corporation’s chairman, Richard Sharp, was previously outed as having facilitated an £800,000 loan for Boris Johnson, the former U.K. prime minister. On Saturday, Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey called for Sharp to resign.

    The communications officer for former Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May — Robbie Gibb — has sat on the BBC board as a non-executive director since 2021. Current BBC Director General Tim Davie previously stood as a councilor for the Conservative Party in Hammersmith, a London constituency.

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    Samuel Stolton

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  • China’s Xi to meet Putin in Moscow, speak to Zelenskyy: reports

    China’s Xi to meet Putin in Moscow, speak to Zelenskyy: reports

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    Chinese President Xi Jinping is planning to visit Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin as early as next week, according to reports by Reuters and the Wall Street Journal.

    The U.S. newspaper added that Xi would also call Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which will be the first time the two men will have had direct communication, at least publicly, since the Russian invasion started more than a year ago.

    The Kremlin last week refused to comment on reports saying that Xi would be in the Russian capital on March 21.

    Xi, who broke with tradition and embarked on his third five-year term as president last week, has long considered Putin his “old friend,” while the two governments reached a “no-limit partnership” shortly before Putin waged war on Ukraine.

    There was no immediate response from Beijing or Moscow.

    Sergii Nikoforov, Zelenskyy’s spokesman, would not deny or confirm the upcoming talks. “I don’t have any additional information … yet,” he said.

    The U.S. has over recent weeks been accusing China of considering sending lethal arms to Russia; Beijing has labelled that as “slandering” tactics.

    Meanwhile, Beijing has proposed a vaguely worded peace proposal. Zelenskyy has said he would be open to discussing part of the plan in a meeting with Xi, even as the West criticized Beijing for showing pro-Russia bias in the text.

    Veronika Melkozerova contributed reporting from Kyiv.

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    Stuart Lau

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  • How Vladimir Putin sells his war against ‘the West’ 

    How Vladimir Putin sells his war against ‘the West’ 

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    MOSCOW — Every year, during the anniversary of the battle that turned back the Nazi assault on the Soviet Union, the city of Volgograd is briefly renamed Stalingrad, its Soviet-era name. 

    During this year’s commemoration, however, authorities went further. They unveiled a bust of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, and paraded soldiers dressed as secret police in a bid to emphasize the parallels between Russia’s past and its present.

    “It’s unbelievable but true: we are again being threatened by German Leopard tanks,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin, who traveled to Volgograd to deliver a speech on February 2. “Again and again, we have to repel the aggression of the collective West.” 

    Putin’s statement was full of factual inaccuracies: Russia is fighting not the West but Ukraine, because it invaded the country; the German Leopards being delivered to Kyiv date back only to the 1960s; there’s no plan for them to enter Russian territory. 

    But the Russian president’s evocation of former victories was telling — it was a distillation of his approach to justifying an invasion that hasn’t gone to plan. These days in Russia, if the present is hard to explain, appeal to the past. 

    “The language of history has replaced the language of politics,” said Ivan Kurilla, a historian at the European University at St. Petersburg. “It is used to explain what is happening in a simple way that Russians understand.”

    Putin has long harkened back to World War II — known in the country as The Great Patriotic War, in which more than 20 million Soviet citizens are estimated to have died.

    Invoking the fight against Adolf Hitler simultaneously taps into Russian trauma and frames the country as being on the right side of history. “It has been turned into a master narrative through which [Putin] communicates the basic ideas of what is good and bad; who is friend and who foe,” said Kurilla.

    Putin’s announcement of his full-scale assault on Ukraine was no exception. On February 24, 2022, Russians awoke to a televised speech announcing the start of “a special military operation” to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine.

    “The official narrative was: ‘there are fascists in Ukraine, and we want to help people there. We are fighting for the sake of a great cause,’” said Tamara Eidelman, an expert in Russian propaganda. 

    On the streets, however, Russians seemed confused.

    Asked in the early days of the war what “denazification” meant by the Russian website 7×7, one man suggested: “Respect for people of different ethnicities, respect for different languages, equality before the law and freedom of the press.” 

    Russia’s laws punish those seen as discrediting the Russian Armed Forces or spreading fake news by using the word “war”  | Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images

    Another interviewee ventured a different definition: “Destroy everyone who is not for a normal, peaceful life.”

    The term “special military operation” at least was somewhat clearer. It suggested a speedy, professional, targeted offensive.

    “There is a certain mundaneness to it — ‘yes, this is going to be unpleasant, but we’ll take care of it quickly,’” said Eidelman, the propaganda expert. 

    А week after the invasion, Russia’s laws were amended to punish those seen as discrediting the Russian armed forces or spreading fake news, including by using the word “war.” 

    Historical parallels 

    As the special military operation turned into a protracted conflict, and the facts on the ground refused to bend to Putin’s narrative, the Kremlin has gradually been forced to change its story.

    Images of a bombed maternity hospital in Mariupol or corpses littering the streets of Bucha were dismissed by state propaganda as fake or a provocation — and yet by spring the terms “demilitarization” and “denazification” had practically disappeared from the public sphere.

    New justifications for the invasion were inserted into speeches and broadcasts, such as a claim that the United States had been developing biological weapons in Ukraine. In October, Putin declared that one of the main goals of the war had been to provide Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, with a stable water supply.

    But the appeal to history has remained central to Putin’s communication effort. 

    While World War II remains his favorite leitmotif, the Russian president has been expansive in his historical comparisons. In June, he referenced Peter the Great’s campaign to “return what was Russia’s.” And during an October ceremony to lay claim to four regions in Ukraine, it was Catherine the Great who got a mention. 

    “Every so many months, another story is put forward as if they’re studying the reaction, looking to see what resonates,” said Kurilla.

    The search for historical parallels has also bubbled up from below, as even supporters of the war search for justification. “Especially in spring and early summer, there was an attempt to Sovietize the war, with people waving red flags, trying to make sense of it through that lens.” 

    In the city of Syzran, students were filmed late last year pushing dummy tanks around in a sports hall in a re-enactment of the World War II Battle of Kursk. More recently, law students in St. Petersburg took part in a supposed restaging of the Nuremberg trials, which the region’s governor praised as “timely” in light of Russia’s current struggle against Nazism.

    More recent statement by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Vladimir Putin himself have made the idea of “war” less taboo | Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

    Throughout, the Kremlin has sought to depict the conflict as a battle against powerful Western interests bent on using Ukraine to undermine Russia — a narrative that has become increasingly important as the Kremlin demands bigger sacrifices from the Russian population, most notably with a mobilization campaign in September.

    “Long before February last year, people were already telling us: We are being dragged into a war by the West which we don’t want but there is no retreating from,” said Denis Volkov, director of the independent pollster Levada Center.

    The sentiment, he added, has been widespread since the nineties, fed by disappointment over Russia’s diminished standing after the Cold War. “What we observe today is the culmination of that feeling of resentment, of unrealized illusions, especially among those over 50,” he said. 

    Long haul

    With the war approaching the one-year mark, the narrative is once again having to adapt.

    Even as hundreds in Russia are being prosecuted under wartime censorship laws, slips of the tongue by top officials such as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and even Putin himself in December have made the idea of “war” less taboo. 

    “We are moving away from a special military operation towards a holy war … against 50 countries united by Satanism,” the veteran propagandist Vladimir Solovyov said on his program in January.

    According to Levada, Russians are now expecting the war to last another six months or longer. “The majority keep to the sidelines, and passively support the war, as long as it doesn’t affect them directly,” said Volkov, the pollster. 

    Meanwhile, reports of Western weapons deliveries have been used to reinforce the argument that Russia is battling the West under the umbrella of NATO — no longer in an ideological sense, but in a literal one. 

    “A year of war has changed not the words that are said themselves but what they stand for in real life,” said Kurilla, the historian. “What started out as a historic metaphor is being fueled by actual spilled blood.” 

    In newspaper stands, Russians will find magazines such as “The Historian,” full of detailed spreads arguing that the Soviet Union’s Western allies in World War II were, in fact, Nazi sympathizers all along — another recycled trope from Russian history.

    “During the Cold War, you would find caricatures depicting Western leaders such as President Eisenhower in fascist dress and a NATO helmet,” said Eidelman, the expert in Russian propaganda.

    “This level of hatred and aggressive nationalism has not been seen since the late Stalin period,” she added. 

    The anti-West sentiment in Russia has been fed by disappointment over the country’s diminished standing after the Cold War | Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

    On Tuesday, three days before the one-year anniversary of the invasion, Putin is scheduled to give another speech. He is expected to distract from Russia’s failure to capture any new large settlements in Ukraine by rehearsing old themes such as his gripes with the West and Russia’s past and present heroism. 

    There may be a limit, however, to how much the Russian president can infuse his subjects with enthusiasm for his country’s past glories.

    In Volgograd, proposals to have the city permanently renamed to Stalingrad have been unsuccessful, with polls showing a large majority of the population is against such an initiative. 

    When it comes to embracing the past, Russians are still one step behind their leaders.

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    Eva Hartog

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  • Zelenskyy: Macron is ‘wasting his time’ with Putin

    Zelenskyy: Macron is ‘wasting his time’ with Putin

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    French President Emmanuel Macron is wasting his time talking to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday.

    “It’s a useless dialogue. In truth, Macron is wasting his time,” Zelenskyy said during an interview with several Italian newspapers.

    “I have come to the conclusion that we are unable to change the Russian attitude,” Zelenskyy added. “It is up to them to choose whether to cooperate with the international community.”

    Macron has been criticized by Zelenskyy in the past for his attempts to keep lines of communication open with Moscow since the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

    In remarks made over the weekend during the Munich Security Conference, Macron said that he had not spoken to Putin since last September, adding that “now [was] not the time for dialogue.”

    But, a day later, Macron added that although he wished for the Kremlin to lose, the war would end not on the battlefield but with peace talks — and that France would “never” support “crushing Russia.”

    In the same interview with Italian media, Zelenskyy also reacted ironically to the recent statements from former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who triggered an internal revolt among European conservatives last week after he said the Ukrainian president was responsible for the war.

    Berlusconi, who has described himself as a close friend of Putin, was heard boasting about receiving bottles of vodka from Putin for his birthday in audio tapes leaked to the press.

    “He likes vodka? If that’s the case, we have some of the finest quality in Ukraine — we can offer him some,” Zelenskyy said.

    The Ukrainian president also commented on recent reports from the U.S. that China was ready to send weapons to Russia, saying he hoped Beijing would keep a “pragmatic approach,” to avoid a “Third World War.”

    Elena Giordano contributed reporting.

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  • Let’s Bring Back This Hated Buzzword Into Remote Work

    Let’s Bring Back This Hated Buzzword Into Remote Work

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Breaking down departmental silos was the hottest business trend of the late 2000s and early 2010s.

    It was so cliche that it made regular appearances on lists of the most annoying corporate buzzwords of the time, but there was a reason why the business world fell in love with the concept. Previously each department was considered a separate entity, with only a handful of folks at the very top enjoying visibility into how each piece fit together.

    Over time, however, it became clear that breaking down the walls between departments was necessary to share ideas, resources and tactics better, inspire innovations, provide more consistent employee and customer experiences, take a more unified approach to problem-solving and enable organizations to act quickly and unilaterally to solve new challenges. As the speed of business gained new momentum, organizations couldn’t afford to be weighed down by interdepartmental misunderstandings and information gaps.

    Related: How to Break Down Silos in Your Company by Building Lanes

    As work moved from the office into the home in 2020, maintaining those cross-disciplinary communication lines fell off the priority list. In a rush to bring productivity into a new, digital space, there was the widespread adoption of collaborative tools that provided teams with everything they needed to work effectively within their departments. Developers are now likely to spend most of their time in an app like GitHub, sales teams in software like Salesforce, engineers in Jira, designers in Figma, and so on.

    As team members spent more time on the platforms that were purpose-built for their specific function, they spent less time sharing and learning from other corners of the organization. Suddenly, all that progress toward breaking down silos took its first significant step backward in decades.

    Nowhere is this challenge more pronounced than among those who, by definition of their role, need to work across departments. Functions like marketing, for example, need to maintain clear lines of communication with everyone from customer service and sales to product specialists and developers to do their jobs effectively. Knowing the status of various moving pieces, aligning internal goals and objectives to external communications, and maintaining a deep understanding of changing consumer preferences are all necessary elements of the job.

    Related: An Asynchronous Workforce Is The Future. Are You Ready For It?

    Sure, we have tools that can carry messages between otherwise siloed departments, but seeing the real-time status of workflows and progress toward objectives isn’t the same as getting an occasional update via Slack or email. Furthermore, promptly getting that information out of various teams requires more intentional effort. All of those requests and follow-ups can also serve to breed tension, especially in a remote setting.

    This is where collaboration tools like Bubbles come into play. The organizational-wide collaboration software provides an even playing field where team members from all departments can easily share content in various formats. It provides a meta-layer on top of the applications they are already using rather than being sandboxed within those applications. For example, designers can record their screen on Figma, and share it on the productivity application Notion, to discuss product requirements with a product manager that doesn’t use Figma.

    Engineers can do the same thing with ads in the project management platform Jira, where they can discuss requirements or clarifications with marketers who don’t know how to use Jira. The same goes for sales teams, who can now share content from customer relations management platforms like Salesforce with product managers without requiring those product managers to be on Salesforce.

    Our goal is to enable a flattening of the digital collaboration landscape and, with it, a collaboration between departments without requiring each to gain familiarity with (not to mention login credentials, onboarding, and training for) the platforms on which the other spends most of their time.

    Related: How to Use Personal Brand Photos to Stand Out on Social Media (and Be Remembered)

    Today most organizations rely on tools like Slack, Zoom and Email to provide some kind of bridge between various departments and their technology platforms of choice, even if it is a little shaky sometimes. Bubbles, however, was designed to be a permanent structure that can quickly and reliably carry information from one corner of the organization to the next.

    The breaking down of silos between departments was vital in enabling agility and innovation at the start of the millennia when most operated in the same physical space. Now the buzzword everyone loves to hate is making a comeback, with the breaking down of digital silos key to enabling the next wave of innovation in a more remote environment.

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    Tom Medema

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  • 5 Ways to Communicate More Effectively With Your Customers

    5 Ways to Communicate More Effectively With Your Customers

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Communicating effectively with customers is essential for the success of any organization. And in today’s connected world, consumers expect seamless and consistent experiences across all channels, from email and SMS text to social media and live chat. Omnichannel communications enable businesses to meet these expectations by providing a unified and integrated experience for their customers. This not only enhances the customer journey but also helps to build brand loyalty and trust.

    Reaching the customer on the right channel with just the right message at just the right time is key to improving customer satisfaction. My company’s recent survey found that more than two-thirds (68%) of leaders of small and medium-sized businesses surveyed said access to an omnichannel platform was vital to their business’ success in the next 12 months.

    Using an omnichannel platform allows a brand to capture all interactions with a customer and transition an exchange started on one platform to another. For example, a customer might reach out to a company’s support team on Twitter with a question about their account. The support team can respond to the customer’s tweet and provide them with the information they need immediately. If the customer needs further assistance, the support team can ask for the customer’s email address or phone number and continue the conversation through one of those channels. This allows the customer to choose the communication method that is most convenient for them, and it also allows the support team to provide a consistent, seamless experience across all channels.

    For businesses, using an omnichannel platform that captures all communications with a customer, regardless of the platform used, can provide a single source of truth that makes it easy to access the information they need and receive timely and personalized responses to their queries — and customer satisfaction is a leading factor in customer engagement. By using a variety of channels, businesses can reach out to customers in the way they prefer and encourage them to engage with the brand.

    Once you have the right technologies in place, however, how can you ensure that your content is resonating with customers? Here are five guidelines to keep in mind when creating content.

    Related: 13 Ways to Grow Omnichannel Customer Engagement

    1. Use clear and concise language

    As a rule, when communicating with anyone — whether a colleague, client, prospect or customer — it’s important to use clear and concise language. Avoid using jargon or technical terms that might be confusing or difficult to understand. Instead, use simple, straightforward language that can be easily understood by everyone. In other words, don’t call it “a meaningful statistical downturn,” call it what it is: a recession.

    2. Listen actively

    Again, this is an essential skill for any communication, but for customer-facing brands, it is of utmost importance. Active listeners pay attention to what the other person is saying, asking questions to clarify their points and providing feedback to demonstrate that they are listening.

    For brands, active listening can facilitate customer engagement and can potentially stave off a poor experience. Airlines and other travel brands are noted for their ability to address customer issues via social media. The use of social platforms, text and communication apps like SMS text and WhatsApp have become so prevalent in the industry that some have discontinued traditional phone support.

    3. Communicate frequently

    Regular communication is key to ensuring that your customers are engaged and up to speed on the latest products, services or special offers. Especially during busy or hectic periods — such as the run-up to the holidays for retailers or the summer travel season for the hospitality industry — it’s important to communicate freely to prevent misunderstandings, keep everyone informed and maintain customer satisfaction.

    Related: 6 Pitfalls of Common Customer Communication Tactics

    4. Use the right channels

    As we stated earlier, choosing the right communication channels is also important for effective customer communications. In today’s digital world, there are many options to choose from — email, instant messaging, video conferencing, social media, SMS text — so it’s important to leverage the channels preferred by your customers and that are the most appropriate for the situation and information you are relaying.

    5. Be open and transparent

    Transparency is also crucial for effective customer communication. When communicating with customers — especially when sharing potentially negative news — it’s important to be open and transparent about what you are doing, why you are doing it and what the expected outcomes are. This can help build trust and foster loyalty.

    Keeping the lines of communication open has never been more important for brands looking to maintain customer engagement and satisfaction. It also has never been easier. Customers and brands have a wide array of platforms on which to engage, depending on the situation and type of interaction. Regardless of the platform used, brands that communicate with customers clearly and frequently will reap the rewards through repeat business from loyal customers.

    Related: How Technology Has Changed Business Communication

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    Sean Whitley

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  • How Gulf tensions drove Qatar to seek friends in Brussels

    How Gulf tensions drove Qatar to seek friends in Brussels

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    Voiced by artificial intelligence.

    They’re dazzlingly rich, and they expect to be in charge for a long, long time.

    The monarchs leading Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia might seem from the outside like a trio of like-minded Persian Gulf autocrats. Yet their regional rivalry is intense, and Western capitals have become a key venue in a reputational battle royale.

    “All of these governments … really want to have the largest mindspace among Western governments,” said Jon B. Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

    As the Gulf states seek to wean themselves off the oil that made them rich, they know they’ll need friends to help transform their economies (and modernize their societies).

    “They think it’s important not to be tarred as mere hydrocarbon producers who are ruining the planet,” Alterman added.

    With an erstwhile vice president of the European Parliament in jail and Belgian prosecutors asking to revoke immunity from more MEPs, allegations of cash kickbacks and undue influence by Qatari interests look likely to ensnare more Brussels power players.

    The Qatari government categorically denies any unlawful behavior, saying it “works through institution-to-institution engagement and operates in full compliance with international laws and regulations.”

    Against the background of regional rivalries, that engagement has become increasingly robust. While tensions with Riyadh have eased over the past few years, Qatar’s mutual antagonism with the United Arab Emirates has been particularly severe.

    Qatar’s survival strategy

    Regional rivalries burst beyond the Middle East in 2017 in a standoff that would reshape regional dynamics.

    Until then, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had been essentially frenemies. As members of the Gulf Coordination Council, they’d been working toward building a common market and currency in the region — not so different from the European Union.

    But different responses to the Arab Spring frayed relations to a breaking point.

    The Qatar-based Al Jazeera news network gave a platform to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist party that rode a wave of unrest into power in Egypt and challenged governments throughout the Arab world. And Doha didn’t just offer a bullhorn — it gave the Muslim Brotherhood direct financial backing.

    Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, meanwhile, considered the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist group.

    Along with Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE severed diplomatic ties with Doha in June 2017, barring Qatar’s access to airspace and sea routes; Saudi Arabia closed its border, blocking Qatar’s only land crossing.

    Among the demands: close Al Jazeera, end military coordination with Turkey and step away from Iran. Qatar refused — even though it was crunch time for building infrastructure ahead of the 2022 World Cup and 40 percent of Qatar’s food supplies came through Saudi Arabia.

    Fighting what it called an illegal “blockade” became an existential mission for Doha.

    “The only thing Qatar could do was make sure everyone knew Qatar exists and is a nice place,” said MEP Hannah Neumann, chair of the Parliament’s delegation for relations with the Arab Peninsula (DARP).

    “They really stepped up the diplomatic efforts all around the world to also show, ‘We are the good ones,’” said Neumann, of the German Greens.

    Qatar needed Brussels because it had already lost an even bigger ally: Washington. Not only did then-President Donald Trump take the side of Qatar’s rivals in the fight; he also appeared to take credit for the idea of isolating Qatar — even though the U.S.’s largest military base in the region is just southwest of Doha.

    Elsewhere, Qatar had already been working with the London-headquartered consultancy Portland Communications since at least 2014 — as its World Cup hosting coup was becoming a PR nightmare, with stories emerging over bribed FIFA officials and exploited migrant workers.

    Exploding onto the EU scene

    In Brussels, Doha leaned on the head of its EU Mission, Abdulrahman Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, who had moved to Belgium in 2017 from Germany, to step up European relations.

    Within days of the fissure, Al-Khulaifi appeared in meetings at NATO, and within months opened a think tank called the Middle East Dialogue Center to hone Doha’s image as an open promoter of debate (in contrast, it contended, to its neighbors) and pressure the EU to intervene in the Mideast.

    By the next year, he was speaking on panels about combating violent extremism — alongside Dutch and Belgian federal police. By late 2019, Al-Khulaifi hosted the first meeting of embassy’s Qatar-EU friendship group with a “working dinner.”

    “The situation following the blockade has pushed Qatar to establish closer relations outside the context of the regional crisis with, for example, the European Union,” Pier Antonio Panzeri, then chair of the Parliament’s human rights subcommittee, told Euractiv in 2018.

    The following year, Panzeri would attend the Qatari-hosted “International Conference on National, Regional and International Mechanisms to Combat Impunity and Ensure Accountability under International Law,” and heap praise on the country’s human rights record.

    Panzeri is now in a Belgian prison, facing corruption charges; his NGO, Fight Impunity, is under intense scrutiny for being a possible front.

    Neumann said that Qatar’s survival strategy has paid off. “Absolutely, it worked,” she said. “I think it’s fair enough, if they didn’t do it with illegal means.”

    Directly or indirectly, Qatar clocked several big victories during this period, including multiple resolutions in Parliament on human rights in Saudi Arabia and a call to end arms exports to Riyadh in the wake of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Doha also inked a cooperation arrangement with the EU in March 2018, setting the stage for closer ties.

    Frenemies once again

    Since Saudi Arabia and Qatar signed a deal to end the crisis two years ago, Riyadh-Doha relations have generally thawed. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 37, traveled to Qatar in November for the World Cup and embraced Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, 42, while wearing a scarf in the host’s colors.

    However, relations between Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — led by Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, 61 — remain chilly.  

    As the Gulf transforms, the United Arab Emirates “has come to see that role as being a status quo power,” said Alterman. On the part of its neighbor, “Qatar has come to see that role as aligning with forces of change in the region, and that’s created a certain amount of mutual resentment.”

    Qatar’s smaller scale contributes to Doha’s sense of internal security, fueling its openness to engaging with groups that others see as an existential threat.

    Qataris see themselves as “champions of the Davids against the Goliath,” said Andreas Krieg, an assistant professor at King’s College London who has worked in the past as a consultant for the Qatari armed forces. Civil society organizations founded by “a range of different opposition figures, Saudi opposition figures in the West, have been supported financially by Qatar as well,” Krieg added. (Khashoggi, one of the era’s most prominent Saudi opposition figures, had connections to the state-backed Qatar Foundation.) “Hence why Qatar was always seen as sort of a thorn in the side of its neighbors.”

    And while the €1.5 million cash haul confiscated by Belgian federal police looks like an eye-popping sum, it certainly pales in comparison to the amount the Gulf states spend on legal lobbying in Brussels. And that sum, in turn, pales in comparison to what those countries spend in Washington.

    “Brussels isn’t that important,” Krieg said. “If you look at the money that these Gulf countries spend in Washington, these are tens of millions of dollars every year on think tanks, academics … creating their own media outlets, investing strategically into Fox News, investing into massive PR operations.”

    Nonetheless, the EU remains a key target. Abu Dhabi is strengthening its “long-standing partnership” with Brussels on economic and regional security matters “through deep, strategic cooperation with EU institutions and Member States,” said a UAE official, in a statement. 

    “Brussels was always a hub to create a narrative,” said Krieg.

    And right now, each of the region’s power players is deeply motivated to change that narrative.

    Alterman invoked a broad impression of the Gulf countries as “people who have more money than God who want to take the world back to the 7th Century.”

    But that’s wrong, he said. “This is all about shaping the future with remarkably high stakes, profound discomfort about how the world will relate to them over the next 30 to 50 years — and frankly, a series of rulers who see themselves being in power for the next 30 to 50 years.”

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    Sarah Wheaton

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  • 6 Ways to Foster Teamwork in Your Business

    6 Ways to Foster Teamwork in Your Business

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Teamwork is essential to any successful business, as it allows employees to pool their skills and knowledge to complete tasks more efficiently and effectively. But, just having a team of employees is not enough to guarantee success. To get the most out of your team, you must encourage successful teamwork within your organization.

    Let’s discuss six ways to do just that. With these tips, you can foster an environment of collaboration, trust and understanding that will help your team reach their potential and drive success for your business.

    Related: The Importance of Teamwork and Collaboration

    1. Define roles and responsibilities

    When it comes to successful teamwork in your business, one of the most important elements is having clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Each team member must understand their role and how they fit into the bigger picture. Having well-defined roles will allow each team member to take ownership of their own tasks and understand how their work fits into the collective success of the entire team.

    Before any work can begin, it’s essential to identify each team member’s skills and experience and assign specific roles accordingly. Make sure each team member is aware of their duties and responsibilities, and don’t be afraid to give them room to explore their talents and use them to benefit the team. This will help ensure that everyone is working towards the same goal and promote collaboration and camaraderie amongst team members.

    When defining roles and responsibilities, it’s important to consider how individual skills can complement those of other members. This can mean assigning more complex tasks to those with more experience or expertise while giving simpler tasks to those needing more time or guidance. By doing this, you are ensuring that everyone can contribute to the team’s success in their own way.

    Finally, ensure that you create a system for tracking progress and providing feedback. By setting deadlines for tasks and providing regular feedback to each team member, you are ensuring that everyone is held accountable for their work and helping them improve their skills. By defining roles and responsibilities, you are laying the foundation for a successful team that will help your business thrive.

    Related: How To Increase Employee Responsibility — Regardless of Where You’re Working

    2. Set clear goals and objectives

    Teamwork is essential for any business to succeed, but fostering collaboration and cooperation among your employees can be difficult. Set clear goals and objectives that the team can work towards together. Doing so helps give everyone a sense of purpose and direction while also helping them stay on track and avoid getting sidetracked by other tasks. When everyone understands what they are working towards, they will be more likely to collaborate and come up with creative solutions to any problems that may arise. Establishing clear goals and objectives can also help to motivate the team, giving them something to strive for and measuring their progress against.

    3. Encourage creativity

    Teamwork is essential to any successful business. To foster an atmosphere of collaboration and success, it is important to encourage creativity in your team. Here are a few ways to get your team thinking outside the box:

    • Brainstorming sessions — Use brainstorming sessions to develop new ideas or solutions to existing problems.
    • Promote healthy competition — Creating friendly competitions between teams or departments can help stimulate creativity and drive employees to think of creative solutions.
    • Support risk-taking — Encourage employees to take risks and suggest creative solutions without fear of failure.
    • Set a good example — Lead by example and show your team that you are open to new ideas and willing to take risks.
    • Celebrate successes — Celebrating successes will motivate team members to continue striving for success and take more risks.
    • Provide resources — Give employees access to the tools, resources, and training they need to create innovative solutions.
    • Create an inspiring workspace — A clean, organized, and inspiring workspace can help increase creativity.
    • Reward creative efforts — Rewarding creative efforts will show your team that you value their creative input and encourage them to keep coming up with new ideas.
    • Invest in technology — Invest in the latest technology to give your team access to the best tools for creative work.
    • Involve everyone — Involving everyone in the creative process will ensure everyone can contribute their ideas and benefit from the team’s success.

    4. Celebrate successes

    Teamwork is essential to the success of any business. Encouraging successful teamwork starts with celebrating successes and recognizing individuals and teams for their contributions. Celebrating achievements, big or small, helps to create a positive and productive atmosphere in the workplace and will help to motivate and engage employees.

    • Share success stories with the team — Take time to recognize individual and team successes by highlighting them in meetings or emails.
    • Give out rewards — Reward employees for their hard work and accomplishments by providing bonuses, gift cards, or other incentives.
    • Showcase success on social media — Let your audience know about the great things your team has achieved by posting about them on social media.
    • Have team celebrations — Celebrate team successes by throwing an office party or team-building activity.
    • Say thank you — Make sure to take the time to thank each individual for their contributions, no matter how small.
    • Share recognition — Encourage team members to recognize each other’s successes and praise each other publicly.
    • Hold competitions — Give awards or prizes to teams or individuals who have achieved a particular goal or milestone.
    • Use public acknowledgment — Acknowledge successes in a public setting like a company newsletter or blog post.
    • Celebrate the little things — Don’t just focus on the big wins, but also take time to appreciate smaller successes along the way.
    • Set achievable goals — Create achievable goals that everyone can strive towards together as a team. This will encourage collaboration and support amongst team members and foster a spirit of success.

    Related: How to Set Goals and Celebrate the Successes

    5. Encourage healthy conflict

    When building a successful team, encouraging healthy conflict is essential. Healthy conflict encourages team members to think critically and view issues from multiple perspectives, which can lead to innovative problem-solving. To promote healthy conflict in your team, provide an environment where everyone can express their ideas without fear of being judged or attacked. Encourage active listening to ensure everyone feels heard, and consider setting ground rules for respectful communication. Inviting an outside facilitator to lead the discussion can also be beneficial in ensuring that dialogue remains constructive.

    6. Learn from failures

    Regarding teamwork, it is crucial to recognize that failure is essential to learning and growth. If a team works together to complete a task but fails, it can be a valuable opportunity to learn from mistakes and to try something different. Leaders should encourage the team to discuss what went wrong and brainstorm ways to do better the next time. This dialogue will help build a culture of open communication, collaboration, and problem-solving.

    Additionally, when a team experiences failure, leaders should provide recognition for any hard work and contributions made by individual team members. Doing so will help ensure that even when projects don’t end up as expected, everyone can still feel a sense of accomplishment for their effort.

    Finally, take the time to reflect on what was learned from the failure and use this knowledge to inform future tasks. With this approach, teams can move forward with greater confidence, knowing they have the tools and strategies necessary for success.

    The key to successful teamwork is open communication and collaboration. By leveraging these tips, you can encourage effective teamwork in your business and promote a culture of trust and respect. With the right tools and strategies, you can help create a positive environment for teams to achieve success.

    Let Hana Retail be your POS system and experience the power of teamwork! Our innovative technology allows multiple users to access the system simultaneously and collaborate on tasks, streamlining customer service and increasing efficiency. With us, you’ll have a POS system that works with your team, not against it.

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    Murali Nethi

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  • How to Engage Employees Through Core Values

    How to Engage Employees Through Core Values

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Whether you run a start-up that focuses on a single market or own a large business that operates worldwide, defining the company’s mission and values is the fundamental thing needed to communicate its reason for existence, connect to customers and organize the group of people who will work toward a common business goal.

    This is what the “First Who, Then What” concept presented by Jim Collins in his book Good to Great refers to. It also encourages entrepreneurs at the helm of building successful organizations to “get right people on the bus” — in the key seats — and only then decide where to steer the bus. My company quickly became convinced of this idea’s veracity, and I am willing to share how we ensure no “random passengers” on board.

    Related: How Establishing Core Values Drives Success

    People come first

    When we saw our company growing 10x in the first three months after launch, we understood that this increase was most likely to continue along the same lines. And now, after ten months of operation, the monthly revenue exceeds $3 million from zero, which is an even greater performance, meaning that our assumptions were right. So we needed a more advanced approach to business to keep pace with it.

    After consulting with a few highly skilled entrepreneurs from various niches, we summarized our research and concluded that any great organization’s first and foremost criterion was quality recruitment.

    Сompany values that let the workforce know the essential parts of doing any given business are what underlies the hiring processes. They serve as a reliable guideline for an employer who seeks long-term and productive cooperation.

    While hard skills can be corrected or enhanced over time, a potential employee’s values are usually immutable. In case a candidate’s inner culture runs counter to your company’s principles, making a job offer:

    • poses a threat of wasting time and energy on training;
    • can cost you thousands of dollars — our HR department calculated that the losses are six monthly salaries of a bad hire plus indirect costs of the organization’s inefficiency;
    • will eventually require more efforts to revitalize the search for a better employee.

    Setting your company’s core values helps avoid these outcomes, systematize the qualities that you need your staff to have and better understand what workforce should be fired. If employees easily get discouraged by what they do after a month of operation, do not learn from their failures or do not want to grow, they are not with us for long. The passengers of our bus never give up and always strive for more.

    Related: Stand for Something: How to Establish Authentic Core Values

    Only true values have power

    When working on your company’s culture, consider the values that matter to you. Do not motivate your employees to lead a moderate and thrifty lifestyle if you purchase a luxury purse every time you walk past an expensive boutique. Otherwise, your employees will soon sense the difference, and communicating with the team will be much more challenging.

    If several entrepreneurs manage a business, all co-founders must agree on the company’s values to avoid future misunderstandings and conflicts. As three co-founders, we came to common opinions about our company. Among them, we believe that we need to be first in everything. Thus we are waiting for a job candidate who is not just a good employee, but a top performer. Also, we do not tolerate gossip and rumors, so we cannot go any further with those who demonstrate that they are prone to backstabbing.

    Related: 7 Traits You Must Find In A Co-Founder

    Implementing your values into business

    Based on our experience, the best solution is to integrate your values into all employee development activities, which requires excellent internal communication. We started by presenting the company’s mission and values to our C-level executives to assess whether they could settle down in the team. As soon as some positive progress was made, we designed our own culture fit scoring system, which implies:

    1. Holding an extra interview with a competent expert to determine whether the candidate’s values correlate with the company’s fundamental beliefs. In cases with C-level managers and team leads, often the co-founders themselves perform this role. Ideally, you should involve an impartial specialist who did not previously participate in the hiring process and will never even cross paths with a candidate at this job. Thus, you manage to avoid the bias as people unconsciously sympathize with those they already put time and energy into. This tactic is a good hedge against the risks – third-party opinions have already saved us from multiple bad hires.
    2. Including acquaintance of new employees with the core values into the list of the onboarding activities so that every specialist knows what qualities you appreciate along with hard skills;
    3. Launching individual training plans and performance reviews for employees who are generally good performers but lack a few essential qualities. For example, suppose people are afraid of making decisions. In that case, managers are gradually delegating relevant tasks to them. Then the discussion of the results takes place.

    As an ending note, I would like to share one good method my company uses as part of culture fit when selecting suitable candidates during interviews: appeal to your senses. This means that the first part of the conversation you spend being diligent and attentive to details, but then you distance yourself from what you hear, focus on your inner thoughts and try to feel the candidate in front of you. Sometimes employers become too keen on the process and ignore their doubts when having doubts should be a key signal for refusal.

    Creating the company’s culture is more important than coming up with strategies because strategies are executed by people who get genuinely inspired by your mission and values. Setting the right culture fit scoring system may significantly increase your recruitment’s effectiveness and ensure your business’s long-term success.

    Related: Having A Work-Life Balance is Nonsense. To Reach Your Goals, Follow Another Approach

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    Roman Kumar Vyas

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  • Elon Musk gives Europe’s digital watchdogs their biggest test yet

    Elon Musk gives Europe’s digital watchdogs their biggest test yet

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    Voiced by artificial intelligence.

    After Elon Musk bought Twitter — and fired almost anyone whose job it was to deal with regulators — the social networking giant is now facing a flood of legal challenges across the European Union.

    The question now is whether the EU’s watchdogs can live up to their ambitions to be the world’s digital policemen.

    Ireland’s privacy regulator wants to know whether the company’s data protection standards are good enough. The European Commission doesn’t know who to ask about its upcoming online content rules. The bloc’s cybersecurity agencies raise concerns about an increase in online trolls and potential security risks.

    Twitter’s unfolding turmoil is precisely the regulatory challenge that Brussels has said it wants to take on. The 27-country bloc has positioned itself — via a flurry of privacy, content and digital competition rules — as the de facto enforcer for the Western world, expanding its digital rulebook beyond the EU’s borders and urging other countries to follow its lead.

    Now, the world’s richest man is putting those enforcement powers to the test. 

    Europe’s regulators have the largest collective rulebook to throw at companies suspected of potential breaches. But a lack of willingness to act quickly — combined with the internal confusion engulfing Twitter — has so far hamstrung the bloc’s enforcement role when it comes to holding Musk to Europe’s standards, according to eight EU and national government officials, speaking privately to POLITICO. 

    “This will be a major test for European regulators,” said Rebekah Tromble, director of the Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics at George Washington University. She is part of the advisory board of the European Digital Media Observatory, a group helping to shape the EU’s online content rulebook, known as the Digital Services Act (DSA).

    “If Musk continues to act with intransigence, I think there’s an opportunity for European regulators to move much more quickly than normal,” she added. “These regulators will certainly be motivated to act.”

    A representative for Twitter did not return requests for comment.

    Regulatory firepower

    The bloc certainly has the firepower to bring Twitter to heel.

    Under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, companies can be fined up to 4 percent of their annual global revenue for failing to keep people’s personal information safe. The Irish regulator, which has responsibility for enforcing these rules against Twitter because the company’s EU headquarters are in Dublin, has already doled out a €450,000 penalty for the firm’s inability to keep data safe.

    As part of the bloc’s upcoming content rules, which will start to be enforced next year, the Commission will have powers to levy separate fines of up to 6 percent of a company’s yearly revenue if it does not take down illegal content. Brussels also has the right to ban a platform from operating in the EU after repeated serious violations.

    “In Europe, the bird will fly by our rules,” Thierry Breton, the French commissioner, told Musk — via Twitter | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty images

    Thierry Breton, the European internal market commissioner, reminded Musk of Twitter’s obligations under the bloc’s upcoming content rules in a call with the billionaire soon after his acquisition of the social network. Musk pledged to uphold those rules, even as he has pushed back at other content moderation practices that could hamper people’s freedom of expression on the platform.

    “In Europe, the bird will fly by our rules,” Breton, the French commissioner, told Musk — via Twitter.

    Yet over the last three weeks, European regulators and policymakers have struggled to navigate Twitter’s internal turmoil, according to four EU and national officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

    The likes of Damien Kieran, Twitter’s chief privacy officer in charge of complying with Europe’s tough data protection standards, and Stephen Turner, the company’s chief lobbyist in Brussels, were among scores of senior officials who left since Musk took over.

    Two of the EU officials, speaking about internal discussions on condition of anonymity, told POLITICO that multiple emails to Twitter executives bounced back after those individuals were laid off. One of those policymakers said he had taken to Twitter — scrolling through the scores of posts from the company’s employees announcing their departures — in search of information about who was still working there. A third official said the current confusion could prove problematic when the company had to reveal long-guarded information about the number of its EU users early next year. 

    Others have been fostering wider connections within the company, just in case. Arcom, France’s online platform regulator, for instance, has built ties with high-level executives outside of France and still had a contact in Dublin at the company to answer its pressing questions.

    The policymaking blackholes — fueled by mass layoffs — have been felt beyond the EU. 

    Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s eSafety commissioner who previously ran Twitter’s public policy team in Asia, told POLITICO she had written to the company last week to remind them about its obligations to clamp down on child sexual exploitation on the platform. She had yet to hear back from Musk or other senior officials.

    “We did have a meeting on the books with Twitter,” Melanie Dawes, chief executive of Ofcom, the U.K.’s communications regulator, told POLITICO ahead of her trip to Silicon Valley this week to meet many of the social media companies. “It was canceled.”

    What about privacy?

    Another open question is how Twitter with comply with Europe’s tough privacy rules.

    Although the company’s chief privacy executive had been fired — and rumors swirled Twitter could pull out of Ireland in its cost-saving push — the Irish Data Protection Commission told POLITICO it had yet to open an investigation into the firm.

    A spokesman for the agency said Twitter executives had assured Irish regulators on Monday that Renato Monteiro had been appointed as the company’s acting data protection officer — because it’s a legal requirement to have one — and no changes to how Twitter handled data had been made.  

    A data protection official said it was likely that Musk would move such decision-making powers to his inner circle in the United States | Justin Sullivan/Getty images

    A key unanswered question is whether, in the wake of the mass layoffs, Twitter’s operations in Dublin are either shuttered or cut back to an extent that regulatory decisions are made in California and not Ireland.

    Such a change would lead the company to fall foul of strict provisions within Europe’s privacy regime that require legal oversight of EU citizens’ data to be made in a firm’s headquarters within the 27-country bloc.

    A data protection official, who asked to remain anonymous to speak candidly, said it was likely that Musk would move such decision-making powers to his inner circle in the United States. That potential pullback could allow any European regulator — and not just the Irish agency — to go after Twitter for potential privacy violations under the bloc’s data protection regime, the official added.

    This story has been corrected to specify how multiple European privacy regulators may target Twitter for breaching the bloc’s rules if the company pulls out of Ireland.

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    Mark Scott, Vincent Manancourt, Laura Kayali, Clothilde Goujard and Louis Westendarp

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  • Egypt’s COP27 summit app is a cyber weapon, experts warn

    Egypt’s COP27 summit app is a cyber weapon, experts warn

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    Western security advisers are warning delegates at the COP27 climate summit not to download the host Egyptian government’s official smartphone app, amid fears it could be used to hack their private emails, texts and even voice conversations.

    Policymakers from Germany, France and Canada were among those who had downloaded the app by November 8, according to two separate Western security officials briefed on discussions within these delegations at the U.N. climate summit.

    Other Western governments have advised officials not to download the app, said another official from a European government. All of the officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss international government deliberations.

    The potential vulnerability from the Android app, which has been downloaded thousands of times and provides a gateway for participants at COP27, was confirmed separately by four cybersecurity experts who reviewed the digital application for POLITICO.

    The app is being promoted as a tool to help attendees navigate the event. But it risks giving the Egyptian government permission to read users’ emails and messages. Even messages shared via encrypted services like WhatsApp are vulnerable, according to POLITICO’s technical review of the application, and two of the outside experts.

    The app also provides Egypt’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, which created it, with other so-called backdoor privileges, or the ability to scan people’s devices.

    World leaders, including Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres pose for a group photo during the Sharm El-Sheikh Climate Implementation Summit of the COP27 climate conference in Egypt | Sean Gallup/Getty Images

    On smartphones running Google’s Android software, it has permission to potentially listen into users’ conversations via the app, even when the device is in sleep mode, according to the three experts and POLITICO’s separate analysis. It can also track people’s locations via smartphone’s built-in GPS and Wi-Fi technologies, according to two of the analysts.

    The app is nothing short of “a surveillance tool that could be weaponized by the Egyptian authorities to track activists, government delegates and anyone attending COP27,” said Marwa Fatafta, digital rights lead for the Middle East and North Africa for Access Now, a nonprofit digital rights organization.

    “The application is a cyber weapon,” said one security expert after reviewing it, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect colleagues attending COP.

    The Egyptian government did not respond to requests for comment. Google said it had reviewed the app and had not found any violations to its app policies.

    The potential security risk comes as thousands of high-profile officials descend on Sharm El-Sheikh, the Egyptian resort town, where so-called QR codes, or quasi-bar codes that direct people to download the smartphone application, are dotted around the city.

    Participants at COP27 include global leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, though such high profile politicians are unlikely to download another government’s app.

    The experts who spoke to POLITICO said that much of the data and access that the COP27 app gets is fairly standard. But, according to three of these specialists, the combination of the Egyptian government’s track record on human rights and the types of people who would downloaded the app represent a cause for concern.

    Strange and extensive access

    Three of the researchers said the app posed surveillance risks to those who download it due to its widespread permissions to review people’s devices, though the extent of the risk remains unclear.

    Elias Koivula, a researcher at WithSecure, a cybersecurity firm, reviewed the Android app for POLITICO and said he had found no evidence people’s emails had been read. Many of the permissions granted to the climate change conference app also have benign purposes like keeping people up-to-date with the latest travel information around the summit, he added.

    But Koivula said other permissions granted to the app appeared “strange” and could potentially be used to track people’s movements and communications. So far, he said he had no evidence that such activity had taken place. 

    Not all the experts agreed on the risks.

    Paul Shunk, a security intelligence engineer at cybersecurity firm Lookout, said he had found no evidence the app had access to emails, describing the idea that it posed a surveillance risk as “strange.” He was confident the app was not built as typical spyware, pouring cold water on claims the app functioned as a listening device. Shunk said it could not record audio if it was running in the background, which makes it “almost completely unsuitable for spying on users.”

    The COP27 app uses location tracking “extensively,” Shunk said, but seemingly for legitimate purposes like route planning for summit attendees. It lacked the ability to access location in the background, based on Android permissions, which would be what the app would need for continuous location tracking, he added.

    The other two cybersecurity analysts who reviewed the app spoke on the condition of anonymity to safeguard their ongoing security work and to protect colleagues attending the climate change conference.

    “Let me put it this way: I wouldn’t download this app onto my phone,” said one of those experts. Those two the researchers also warned that once the application had been downloaded onto a device, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to remove its ability to access people’s sensitive data — even after it had been deleted.

    POLITICO checked the app’s potential security risks via two open cybersecurity tools, and both raised concerns about its ability to listen to people’s conversations, track their locations and alter how the app operates without asking for permission.

    Both Google and Apple approved the app to appear in their separate app stores. All of the analysts only reviewed the Android version of the app, and not the separate app created for Apple’s devices. Apple declined to comment on the separate app created for its App Store.

    Egypt’s track(ing) record

    Adding to rights groups’ concerns is the track record of the Egyptian government to monitor its people. In the wake of the so-called Arab Spring, Cairo has clamped down on dissidents and used local emergency rules to track its citizens online and offline activity, according to a report by Privacy International, a nonprofit organization.

    As part of the smartphone app’s privacy notice, the Egyptian government says it has the right to use information provided by those who have downloaded the app, including GPS locations, camera access, photos and Wi-Fi details.

    “Our application reserves the right to access customer accounts for technical and administrative purposes and for security reasons,” the privacy statement said.

    Yet the technical review, both by POLITICO and the outside experts of the COP27 smartphone application discovered further permissions that people had granted, unwittingly, to the Egyptian government that were not made public via its public statements.

    These included the application having the right to track what attendees did on other apps on their phone; connecting users’ smartphones via Bluetooth to other hardware in ways that could lead to data being offloaded onto government-owned devices; and independently linking individuals’ phones to Wi-Fi networks, or making calls on their behalf without them knowing.

    “The Egyptian government cannot be entrusted with managing people’s personal data given its dismal human rights record and blatant disregard for privacy,” said Fatafta, the digital rights campaigner.

    This article is part of POLITICO Pro

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    Mark Scott and Vincent Manancourt

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  • 6 Pitfalls of Common Customer Communication Tactics

    6 Pitfalls of Common Customer Communication Tactics

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Most people running a business are well aware that customer communication is critical to success, but that’s only partially correct: It’s only successful when executed in a way that not only engages customers but builds meaningful relationships. In fact, 54% of customers think companies need to do a better job with their approach to relationship-building, according to global research findings from Salesforce.

    Today, there are a multitude of ways to communicate with customers, and within this digital age, it’s an ever-changing field with a diverse array of means to reach out and communicate directly. It can become overwhelming for businesses trying to pinpoint which channel is best to not only reach customers but to generate loyalty — since it goes back to the Pareto Principle (or 80/20 rule): That loyal 20% of customers drives 80% of your revenue.

    While this process can be difficult, it’s something each business needs to embark on when looking to grow and be successful. Especially when considering that two-thirds of the difference between brand profits were based on consumer engagement, with businesses at the higher end of customer engagement receiving higher percentages of profits, according to a report from Hall and Partners.

    Each communications channel has value and is well suited for a specific purpose, but each also has weaknesses. It’s helpful to look at the best use of the various channels to enhance customer communications but to also understand the pitfalls of these individual channels and how to mitigate the risk through best practices, as well as supporting technologies.

    Let’s break down the six most popular and effective ways to keep in constant contact with your customers and what the limitations are:

    Related: Why Customer Communication Makes a Difference During Inflation

    1. Intense competition on social media

    Ninety percent of customers are more loyal to brands they follow on social media, according to a recent report by Sprout Social. Why? Because customers want relationships with brands, and social media platforms provide a means for customers to know what a brand is doing any day of the week at any time, and most importantly, based on the consumer’s schedule. While social media platforms are constantly evolving, the one challenge is the competition for placement. Consumers are inundated with a deluge of content, and the fact that the platforms have algorithms to pick what content they can display means that, organically, only 2% of your followers will see what you post on their timeline. Thus, social media platforms are very powerful, but only if the customer either “goes” to your page or is somehow driven to your site.

    2. Difficulty driving traffic to your website

    Websites have long been the common method for publishing content, business hours, company information and much more. Providers like Google constantly scour the web, building huge indices of the information they find on a website. However, much like social media, websites are great if the customer comes “looking” for your information — but websites have no way of actively getting information into your customer’s hands. The challenge is navigating search engine optimization and an array of tactics to drive traffic to your site. The second challenge with a website is that the information is often stale for multiple reasons. The most obvious one is that the individual operator is not a website developer. And there is cost and the time spent to keep the site current — especially for very time-sensitive information, like a band schedule or this week’s happy hour specials.

    Related: 19 Experts Explain Why Your Website Isn’t Bringing in Customers

    3. The many challenges of email marketing

    Email is an age-old communications method. One of the benefits of email is that it creates a reference that people can revisit (for example, a coupon delivered via email that can be pulled up on a phone). The challenges are the sheer volume of emails, the timeliness of “seeing” the emails, and spam filtering. Also, inbox space is limited, messages need to be brief, and delivery and compliance are very non-deterministic. Even with a successful email model, the question is how do you acquire the email addresses of your valuable customers? These aren’t always easy or inexpensive to procure and often require depending on a third-party resource.

    4. Character limits with SMS marketing

    The primary benefits of SMS marketing are that it’s delivered quickly and promotes interaction. It also has a much higher open rate than email. In fact, 98% of text messages are opened within 5 minutes. However, the messages are very short, at only 160 characters, which limits the robustness of communication. This can leave a customer feeling detached from your business and impacts the personalization of your communications. And the phone numbers for SMS must be procured — so building a customer database takes time.

    Related: 5 Ways to Use Texting to Grow Your Sales and Marketing

    5. Digital signage lacks personalization

    Digital signage provides a means to inform customers in brick-and-mortar establishments. It can communicate specials, upsell items, provide QR codes to follow, share social posts, and it can even serve as a digital menu board. While digital signage is certainly beneficial, it’s not advantageous as a stand-alone tactic. Customer loyalty requires personalized, ongoing relationship building, so digital signage works better as an enhancement as opposed to a tactic of its own.

    6. Cost and time of podcasts

    A podcast provides the opportunity for robust, personalized content and no time or length restrictions. The biggest challenge with a podcast is growing an audience in addition to the time spent planning, recording, producing and marketing the podcast. Although a podcast does boost brand loyalty, due to the amount of money and labor it requires, it’s not always the best fit.

    With these six different methods of communicating with customers, each has unique benefits. But generating customer loyalty, and ultimately more revenue, can best be achieved by not just one of these methods, but multiple integrated tactics, to achieve the best results.

    Related: Why You Should Use Blogs and Podcasts to Market Your Business

    How integrated marketing technology works

    Here’s an example: Charlie & Jake’s Brewhouse needed to fill their dining room and boost sales on Sunday afternoons. By capturing customer information via a free WiFi hotspot, they collected phone numbers and sent a text message out at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday offering a free brewhouse pretzel with beer mustard that day. Customers merely had to text the reply “PRETZEL” to redeem it. The result was a busy dining room within hours of opening. It was real-time marketing, with real-time results by integrating WiFi with SMS.

    However, this can be taken a step further. Once owned customer data is collected, it can also be integrated with social media, email marketing and digital signage. SMS can be used to send a message with a one-click link to follow your business on social media, or it can provide a link to your event on Facebook. By integrating WiFi technology with different forms of communication, businesses can not only provide hyper-targeted and more personalized messaging, but communication that is provided to the right people at the right time and in the right place.

    In short, there isn’t necessarily a right or wrong form of communication when building customer relationships — it’s about utilizing multiple forms of communication that all work together for a purpose.

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    Stephen Gould

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  • Call for probe into Truss phone hack claims

    Call for probe into Truss phone hack claims

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    Claims that former U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss’ mobile phone was hacked by foreign agents while she was serving as foreign secretary must be “urgently investigated,” the opposition Labour Party said.

    Private messages exchanged between Truss’ personal phone and foreign officials — including detailed discussions about arms shipments to Ukraine — are thought to have been intercepted by foreign agents, the Mail on Sunday reported, citing security sources.

    The newspaper claimed that the hack was uncovered during this summer’s Conservative leadership campaign, but that details were suppressed by then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, the U.K.’s most senior civil servant. Russia was suspected to be behind the hack, the report said.

    Labour’s shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said the allegations were “extremely serious.”

    “There are immensely important national security issues raised by an attack like this by a hostile state,” Cooper said in a statement.

    “There are also serious security questions around why and how this information has been leaked or released right now which must also be urgently investigated,” she said. “It is essential that all of these security issues are investigated and addressed at the very highest level.”

    Speaking to Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Sunday program, U.K. Housing Secretary Michael Gove did not deny the hack took place but insisted “very robust protocols” were in place to ensure the security of governmental communications.

    “I don’t know the full details of what security breach, if any, took place,” Gove said. “I’m sure that the right protocols were followed. I’m sure that more information, as appropriate, will be released.”

    Citing allies of Truss, the Mail on Sunday reported that the former foreign secretary had been worried that revelations about the hack would compromise her bid to become prime minister, with one claiming she “had trouble sleeping” until it was confirmed that news of the alleged security breach would not be disclosed by the government.

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  • Russia defense chief makes unfounded claims of Kyiv ready to use ‘dirty bomb’

    Russia defense chief makes unfounded claims of Kyiv ready to use ‘dirty bomb’

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    Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Sunday had telephone calls with his French, British and Turkish counterparts in which he made unfounded claims that Ukraine might be preparing to use a “dirty bomb,” according to Russian readouts of the conversations.

    The conversations took place after Russian President Vladimir Putin recently raised the prospect of using nuclear weapons in the war he launched against Ukraine. And after Shoigu faced intensifying political pressure over a series of disorderly retreats in Ukraine.

    The calls came as Russia continues a mass evacuation of civilians from occupied Kherson in southern Ukraine and defense analysts believe that the movement of people is setting the scene for Moscow to withdraw its troops from a significant part of the region. But among EU diplomats, there are fears that Moscow is only setting the scene for things to get worse.

    During the call with French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu, they discussed the situation in Ukraine, “which is rapidly deteriorating,” according to the Russian readout of the call. And Shoigu conveyed “his concerns about possible provocations by Ukraine with the use of a ‘dirty bomb’,” the Russian ministry said without giving any further detail.

    The same content of the readout was provided on the call with Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar.

    The Russian readout of the call with U.K. Defense Minister Ben Wallace talks only about the risk of a “dirty bomb.” However, in none of the readouts does Moscow provide any evidence for its claims.

    The U.K. said that “Shoigu alleged that Ukraine was planning actions facilitated by Western countries, including the U.K., to escalate the conflict in Ukraine,” according to a U.K. statement. “The Defense Secretary refuted these claims and cautioned that such allegations should not be used as a pretext for greater escalation,” it said.

    No statement on the call was immediately made available by the defense ministries of France and Turkey.

    On Friday, Shoigu spoke with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for the first time since May, and, according to a Pentagon readout, in the call “Austin emphasized the importance of maintaining lines of communication amid the ongoing war against Ukraine.”

    Shoigu spoke with Austin again on Sunday, according to the Russian defense ministry. In this case, the Russian readout says only that “they discussed situation in Ukraine.”

    A dirty bomb is a bomb that combines conventional explosives, such as dynamite, with radioactive materials. For Dara Massicot, an analyst at U.S. research company Rand Corporation, “this reads like Russian false flag groundwork.”

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    Jacopo Barigazzi

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  • ‘Beaten by a lettuce’: 44 glorious days of Liz Truss

    ‘Beaten by a lettuce’: 44 glorious days of Liz Truss

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    LONDON — Westminster is in turmoil, the U.K. economy is floundering, and Tory MPs are about to pick their fifth prime minister in just over six years.

    But in a sign of total normality in this fully-functioning Western democracy, Brits have instead spent much of the past week fixated on a livestream of a head of iceberg lettuce, wearing a wig.

    Set up by tabloid the Daily Star, the paper’s newshounds bet big that a 60p supermarket lettuce would outlast Prime Minister Liz Truss, after her fledgling regime was gripped by unprecedented chaos in its first few weeks.

    And they were right. Truss finally resigned Thursday, just 44 days into the job, making her the U.K.’s shortest-serving prime minister. The Daily Star broke out the Champagne, declaring: “The Lettuce Outlasted Liz Truss.”

    So how did Truss put her salad days behind her, and why did she wilt under the public gaze?

    Let POLITICO take you on a whirlwind tour of Truss’ 44-day premiership — but be warned, there are more than a few icebergs ahead.

    Smashing the orthodoxy

    September 6: It all started so well. After seeing off suave-but-dull rival Rishi Sunak in a rancorous Conservative leadership contest, Truss looked triumphant as she took the reins at No. 10 Downing Street and vowed to “transform Britain into an aspiration nation.” She had good reason to be cheerful, too, vacuuming up support from thousands of grassroots Tory members, getting the key Conservative-backing newspapers on side, and confidently brushing off the fact that the majority of her own Tory MPs had doubts about her competence. What did they know, after all? They’d only worked with Truss in Westminster for the past decade.

    September 8: Upon taking office, Truss picked her close friend and neighbor Kwasi Kwarteng as her top finance minister, and immediately tasked him with taking on the stale “orthodoxy” at the Treasury. In a savvy first move, Kwarteng immediately sacked the most senior civil servant in the ministry — a man so clever his name is literally Tom Scholar — and so ensured that outmoded, orthodox qualities like “experience,” “credibility” and “economic literacy” were expunged at just the right time … amid a global economic crisis.

    Also September 8: A busy day this one, what with Britain’s longest-reigning monarch dying that same afternoon. As the country mourned Queen Elizabeth II, Truss faced her first big communications test on the job: How to capture the nation’s deep sense of grief? She duly rose to the occasion, ripping up lines painstakingly prepared by career officials to deliver a heartfelt tribute with all the enthusiasm of a Q4 sales report. The country wept, for at least one Liz.

    September 23: The queen’s death put normal politics on ice for a couple of weeks. But the pause allowed Team Truss to put the finishing touches on their very own Mona Lisa: the mini-budget. A sleeker, more aerodynamic budget than the normal kind, this mini version did away with tired conventions like “independent fiscal scrutiny by the government’s own watchdog,” and “making the sums add up.” Instead, Truss and Kwarteng pressed ahead with debt-funded tax cuts and a multi-billion pound plan to subsidize energy bills. Kwarteng also showed he retained a populist touch with crowd-pleasing measures such as cutting taxes for the U.K.’s super-rich and removing a cap on bankers’ bonuses, all in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis — before heading off to a Champagne reception with hedge fund bosses to party the night away. Cheers!

    Woke markets cancel Truss

    September 26: Eek. Then came the backlash. Financial markets — famously stuffed with tofu-munching lefties who hate conservatism and everything it stands for — failed to understand the mini-budget’s genius, while the unruly pound, which probably voted to Remain in the EU, crashed to its lowest-ever level against the U.S. dollar. Kwarteng, sounding a little shaken, promised he would publish all his fully-worked-out sums in, oooh, November? That sound OK?

    September 28: The pound’s reign of terror continued, and, as U.K. borrowing costs soared and British pension funds teetered on the brink of collapse, those radical communists at the Bank of England were forced to step in with an unprecedented emergency bond-buying program “to restore market functioning.” Their hippie best mates at the International Monetary Fund also got in on the act, saying Kwarteng’s plans would “likely increase inequality” and urging the government to “re-evaluate” its tax measures. Chill out, guys!

    Prime Minister Liz Truss is seen returning to Downing Street | Rob Pinney/Getty Images

    October 3: Phew — she made it through to the Tory party conference. Political party conferences, after all, are normally a glorious victory lap for newly-crowned leaders, but Truss again decided to smash the status quo by turning hers into a deeply embarrassing few days of U-turns, backpedaling and noisy Tory infighting. Less than 24 hours after insisting she was sticking by her economic plan, Truss suddenly junked her centerpiece proposal to cut taxes for the rich. Kwarteng admitted the idea had “become a distraction” from the government’s “overriding mission.”

    October 4: Indeed, the U-turn allowed the real “overriding mission” of the government — to needlessly piss off its own MPs — to shine through. No sooner had the tax cut been ditched than Truss’ ever-loyal Cabinet ministers were onto their next target, publicly pressuring the PM not to impose a real-terms cut to social security payments. One minister even capped off the day by telling a room full of drunk communications professionals that the government’s own comms strategy was “shit.” And who could argue?

    October 10-11: A week after ditching their flagship policy, Truss’ government had another go at calming the still-spooked markets. Kwarteng’s new idea? Bringing forward the publication of his next fiscal plan to a date in no way guaranteed to be, erm, spooky: October 31. The Bank of England loved the cut of his jib, again stepping in with a major market intervention to prevent what it called a “fire sale” of U.K. government bonds. Which sounded worrying.

    Actually, we really love the orthodoxy, please come back

    October 14: After weeks of economic turmoil, Kwarteng was dragged home from a trip to Washington D.C. so that he could be sacked on the spot while still jet-lagged — a bad day at the office by anyone’s standards. Finally free of a chancellor who had repeatedly defied her by *checks notes* implementing her exact policy wishes to the letter, the PM then ripped up her long-standing pledge to ease taxes on big business, admitting in an epic eight-minute-long press conference that she’d gone “further and faster than markets were expecting.” We’ve all been there. Reaching out to the center of the Tory party, Truss appointed former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt as her new chancellor, shoring up her faltering premiership for a full 36 hours.

    October 16: Team Truss’ strenuous efforts to build bridges with her now-mutinous party ramped up another notch over the weekend, as a No. 10 insider branded her former leadership rival and ex-Cabinet colleague Sajid Javid — who had reportedly just been sounded out by Truss’ team itself about the chancellor job — “shit.” It didn’t go down too well with him, or his mates.

    October 17: A biggie, as Hunt put a bullet in the entire Truss agenda, live on TV. In an astonishing move, the new finance minister issued a televised statement in which — by his own admission — he ripped up “almost all” the mini-budget pledges the Truss government had announced just a few weeks earlier. Even the energy support plan, clung to by Truss supporters as one of the few remaining positives of her premiership, was to be significantly pared back — although hard-pressed voters should be able to warm themselves this winter by standing near the giant “dumpster fire” that’s been Westminster the past six years. Truss capped another glorious day by avoiding an urgent question in the House of Commons and sending a junior Cabinet minister to reassure angry MPs that the British prime minister was not, in fact, “hiding under a desk.”

    October 19: Very much the End Times. A rollercoaster of a day — if rollercoasters only went downhill — as an under-pressure Truss first offered up yet another U-turn, this time on pension payments; then a senior Truss aide was suspended as that clever “shit” quote to the Sunday newspapers got investigated by No. 10; then her home secretary was sacked and posted what was essentially an extended anti-Truss sub-tweet as a resignation letter; and then the government somehow turned a really boring House of Commons vote into a bitter row about “manhandling” its own MPs, as one of them literally cried on live TV. For those watching from abroad — this is why people in the U.K. drink a lot.

    October 20: With the game finally up and her authority shot to pieces, Truss bowed to the inevitable and resigned Thursday, reeling off all her achievements in an 89-second statement on the Downing Street steps. Yet all is not lost. Tucked away in a newsroom in London, there’s one little lettuce who never lost hope. And in its still-crisp and delicious center lies the promise of national renewal. We can but dream.

    This article was updated to correct a date.

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    Matt Honeycombe-Foster

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