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There's Enough Time in Your Life for Everything Important 

5/12/2015

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If I could go back in time, I’d introduce my 22-year-old self to a quotation by the writer Brian Andreas: “Everything changed the day she figured out there was exactly enough time for the important things in her life.” If only I had learned this lesson sooner! But I hope that by sharing it here, I can make a difference in someone else’s life, and save them from the perpetually harried, stressed-out existence I experienced for so long.

Our culture is obsessed with time. It is our personal deficit crisis. We always think we’re saving time, and yet we feel like we never have enough of it. In order to manage time — or what we delude ourselves into thinking of as managing time —  we rigidly schedule ourselves, rushing from meeting to meeting, event to event, constantly trying to save a bit of time here, a bit there. We download apps for productivity and eagerly click on articles with time-saving life hacks. We try to shave a few seconds off our daily routine, in hopes that we can create enough space to schedule yet another meeting or appointment that will help us climb the ladder of success. Like airlines, we routinely overbook ourselves, fearful of any unused capacity, confident that we can fit everything in. We fear that if we don’t cram as much as possible into our day, we might miss out on something fabulous, important, special, or career advancing. But there are no rollover minutes in life. We don’t get to keep all that time we “save.” It’s actually a very costly way to live.

We suffer from an epidemic of what James Gleick’s book "Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything" calls “hurry sickness”:

    "Our computers, our movies, our sex lives, our prayers — they all run faster now than ever before. And the more we fill our lives with time-saving devices and time-saving strategies, the more rushed we feel.”

Harvard professor Leslie Perlow has given this feeling a name: “time famine.” Feeling like you’re experiencing time famine has very real consequences, from increased stress to diminished satisfaction with your life. On the flip side, the feeling of having enough time, or even surplus time, is called “time affluence.” And though it may be hard to believe, it’s actually possible to achieve.

Some people are naturally time affluent. My mother, for instance. In fact, when it came to time, she was filthy rich. She moved through her days like a child does, living in the present, stopping, literally, to smell the roses. A trip through the farmers’ market might be an all-day affair with little thought of All the Things That Must Be Done. I still often think of the advice she’d give my sister and me when we were faced with a hard decision: “Darling, let it marinate.” In other words, give yourself the time to think about and live with the consequences of the decision.

My mother was a towering example of the joys of slowing down. Until her death in 2000, she and I had an unspoken deal: Hers would be the rhythm of a timeless world, a child’s rhythm; mine was the rhythm of the modern world. While I had the sense every time I looked at my watch that it was later than I thought, she lived in a world where there were no impersonal encounters, and never a need to rush. She believed that rushing through life was a sure way to miss the gifts that come only when you give 100 percent of yourself to a task, a conversation, a dinner, a relationship, a moment. Which is why she despised multitasking.

Not surprisingly, when it comes to winning the war on time famine, we are our own worst enemies. To win the war, first we have to declare that we want to change. I wish I’d known this when I was 22 – and I hope it’s what young people just starting out will take away from this. According to a 2008 Pew report, when asked what was important to them, 68 percent of Americans replied “having free time.” It ranked even higher than having children, which came in at 62 percent, and a successful career, at 59 percent. Yet the way many of us choose to live doesn’t reflect those priorities. As long as success is defined by who works the longest hours, who goes the longest without a vacation, who sleeps the least, who responds to an email at midnight or five in the morning — in essence, who is suffering from the biggest time famine — we’re never going to be able to enjoy the benefits of time affluence.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-were-22-theres-enough-time-your-life-everything-arianna-huffington 
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Getting Stamped - a travel blog creating a stir.....

5/6/2015

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Travel bloggers are becoming hot property if they have a decent following. This couple's success is great images, good looking couple and now an incredible following.

"A Full Passport is a Happy Passport"......Meet the Getting Stamped USA Travel Blogging Couple that is making a stir.

Hannah and Adam are an American couple who decided the normal life was just too normal for them, and so packed their lives into backpacks to travel for the next 2+ years. They are both 29 year old college graduates, who had good jobs and a house in a nice neighborhood, but felt that something missing. They needed to have a big adventure, so decided to leave on a round the world trip.

They are extremely passionate about traveling, and traveling on a budget. After a few years of some aggressive saving they were able to save enough to explore the world and have gotten pretty creative with all sorts of methods of saving. The key is traveling cheap, not staying in 5 star resorts along the journey, but still seeing some of the most beautiful places on earth.

They’ve been on the road for 608 days, visited 47 countries, toured 156 cities, and slept in over 200 beds. They know how to travel and how to share their stories well, an impressive feat when bopping along from place to place.

Some sound advice from the Getting Stamped blogging couple:  Find a few good travel blogs! If they don’t get you hooked on travel I don’t know what will. Blogs are what turned us on to long term travel and how to do things on a budget. The pictures and the stories you read in the blogs will have you buying plane tickets in no time!

So how can lodges and hotels benefit from travel blogs?? Travel Blogs are where
social and active travel communities on the web come together to share their experiences, after all travelers love to hear objective feedback from other travelers. Its a place where travelers share amazing travel photos and posts, and most importantly first-hand travel information.

These particular bloggers choose travel specialists along the way to help them on their journey based on recommendations from fellow travelers, which proves that reputation is EVERYTHING!

read more on getting stamped
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influencer Marketing And What It Means For You

5/4/2015

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Influencer Marketing - is definitely an are of marketing to keep your eye on! - Wilna 

The Explosive Growth Of Influencer Marketing And What It Means For You
By Kyle Wong for FORBES

The voice of the customer has always been one of the most powerful concepts in marketing, and today’s social media platforms act as one giant megaphone for that voice.

In fact, social media has fundamentally changed the balance of power between customers and brands because it enables peer recommendations to play a much greater role in purchasing decisions. According to a McKinsey Study, marketing-inspired word-of-mouth generates more than twice the sales of paid advertising, and these customers have a 37% higher retention rate. Given the importance of peer recommendations and their amplification through social media, influencer marketing has become a widely discussed topic among marketers. This is especially true given the prevalence of influencers in the growing “millennial” and “mom” demographics.

Influencer marketing can be loosely defined as a form of marketing that identifies and targets individuals with influence over potential buyers. In the past, brands may have focused on popular bloggers and celebrities but today there is a new wave of “everyday” consumers that can have just as large an impact.

What is a Brand Influencer?

Currently, when a brand identifies influencers, they often look at number of followers that identity has on social platforms. However, in his famous book “The Tipping Point” Malcolm Gladwell calls out mavens (as he calls influencers) as people who also have a lot of knowledge about a topic. Influence isn’t just having a lot of followers. It’s also driven by expertise and credibility on subject matter and the relationship between the influencer and his or her followers.

Instead of simply looking at followers, a better equation for brands to consider is the following:

Influence = Audience Reach (# of followers) x Brand Affinity (expertise and credibility) x Strength of Relationship with Followers

Two Ends of the Spectrum

Platforms like Instagram and YouTube have led to the rise of a new generation of influencers that have amassed huge followings on niche subject matters such as fashion, beauty, and food. One such example is Michelle Phan who started a series of YouTube videos featuring simple make-up demonstrations and tutorials. Overtime, she has amassed over 6 million followers. More important than her follower count is the personal brand she has been able to build. Michelle Phan has become a cosmetics authority that many consumers have come to trust…to the point that L’Oreal actually co-branded a cosmetic line with her.

BDMI Graph On Influencers
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On the other side of the spectrum are a brand’s “everyday” customers and brand advocates. It’s critical not to discount the combined influence of these customers on their own groups of followers. While I may not have nearly as many followers as Michelle Phan, I have close friends who trust my opinion. This type of influencer/follower relationship scales extraordinarily fast and creates massive trends in the marketplace. It’s this kind of influencer behavior that has skyrocketed small no name companies to instant fame and fortune.

What You Should be Doing:

Leveraging your brand’s influencers begins with building relationships with your customer.Given how frequently customers post about brands on social media, investing in a superior customer experience and service should be a priority. Show some love! This could include directly interacting with customers, providing promotional discounts, loyalty programs, or even creating a customer advisory board. By providing a superior customer experience and celebrating your customers, you will encourage more positive organic and authentic sharing about your brand. If you can find your own Michelle Phan, and leverage that relationship to further foster a community.

Finally, in addition to improving your customer experience, a brand should also be aware of influencers who are actual industry experts with large followings. Agencies like The Mobile Media Lab and Laundry Service provide services to help brands connect influencers at scale.

Scott Cook, the founder and CEO of Intuit, said it best, “A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is–it is what consumers tell each other it is.” He’s hit the nail on the head and the numbers show it. Influencers hold the power and it’ll be our job to cater to them.

Kyle Wong is the founder and CEO of Pixlee. Follow him on Twitter  at @kwong47.
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