These days, by the time the prospect tries to contact you by phone or email, he may already know a great deal about your firm. And much of that knowledge comes from social media. But why is that important? Because studies show that marketing companies who use social media for six hours or more each week realize a 52% increase in leads than companies that didn’t use social media.

Also, companies that use Twitter get twice the number of leads each month. And, remember that ⅔ of Internet users in the US use a social network every day, such as Facebook or Twitter. Overall, the top social media platforms for businesses are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogging and Youtube.

Note that businesses are not the only entities for which social media is vital. Business groups, such as the US Chamber’s of Commerce who are soley supported by member organizations, also are getting a lot of mileage out of a strong social media profile as reported by MBA Social Community site, Onlinembapage.com titled, Top 100 Most Social Media Friendly Chambers of Commerce.

Other vital reasons that all types of business organizations need to connect with prospects on social media include:

#1 You Personally Connect With Your Customers

The really great thing about social media from a marketing perspective is that it allows you to build a personal, emotion-based relationship with your prospects or customers. Getting an emotional connection with your prospects makes them more likely to go to your company for what they need. When you connect to people’s emotions, you connect to THEM. This is far better than regular advertisements to the masses on TV or in the mail. With your social media presence, you connect one-on-one with your prospects.

For example, this Grey Poupon social media campaign does a marvelous job of connecting with its customers and prospects. By making them feel part of an ‘exclusive’ club, the company personally connects to our vanity and desire to belong. Great job, Grey Poupon!

#2 Answer Customer Questions Quickly

Prospects are more likely to become customers if you can address their specific questions and concerns quickly and personally. Social media allows you to do just that. You become a trusted source of information by personally interacting with them on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and so forth.

Social media also allows you company to ask questions of your customers and prospects. This technique can help you to gather a tremendous amount of useful and free marketing research. You can use social media to answer questions that people are asking in your niche. Your firm can then become known as a good resource for information, which can help you to make more sales.

#3 Showcase Your Brand

With a strong social media presence, you can build your company’s reputation and showcase the business in a positive way. By providing good information by Facebook or Twitter in your industry, prospects will subconsciously view your firm as an authority. Over time, this means that your brand name will build in stature, and you are going to be more likely to reap more rewards in terms of sales.

One of the best social media campaigns in 2012 was the Honda Pintermission. Honda created a campaign to encourage its customers to go out and live life, which tied brilliantly into the Honda CR-V brand. Honda created a very positive brand image with this campaign as it encouraged its customers to get outside and do things they enjoy.

#4 Massive Numbers of Users

MBA Social Community, Onlinembapage.com, recently showed Social media is growing bigger by the hour. Today, there are more than one billion people around the world using social media. There are:

• 800 million Facebook users

• 800 million unique Youtube users per month

• 400 million unique Twitter users per month

• 150 million Linkedin users

• 10 million Pinterest users

You can market to these people far cheaper and effectively through a strong social media operation than you ever could hope to with traditional advertising. Whatever demographic you are targeting, there are millions of prospects waiting to be contacted. So get on it!

Why should you worry about social networking in your business? Because a corporate marketing message that comes from people you know is much more likely for you to buy into. And, you are much more likely to spread that message to your social network if the message came from a trusted friend.

The Case of Ford Motor Company

There is no better example of the power of social media to revitalize a brand than Ford Motor Company. Ford was hurting big time following the recession that started in 2008, with a major drop in its share price. However, Ford has shown to be very resilient, as it rejected TARP bailouts and truly embraced the power of social media to boost sales.

Ford currently has at least 80 Facebook pages, with more than 14.7 million fans, that they use for various marketing campaigns. Their global head of social media, Scott Monty, gets that people interested in Ford products want to see a lot of diverse and interesting content. That is why the company is constantly tweaking its marketing messages in social media. Ford was recently ranked #9 by OnlineMBAPage.com in a recently published list of the Top 50 Most Social Media Friendly Fortune 500 Companies for 2013.

Ford was one of the first companies to sign up on Google+, and it has emerged as one of the corporate powers of the social media world. Ford has been able to restore its brand to some level of prominence because of its effectiveness in directly connecting with customers on social media.

Check out some of the social media statistics for Ford today:

• Facebook: 80 pages, 1,763,000 likes and 14.7 million fans
• Twitter: 186,000 followers
• YouTube: 109,000 subscribers
• LinkedIn: 155,000 followers
• Google+: Circled by 1,900,000

Ford has put together some very successful social media campaigns. Some examples:

• Fiesta Movement: Ford gave Fiestas to 100 young people and let them drive the cars for six months, posting videos and blogging about the experiences.
• Random Acts of Fusion: This campaign started with a teaser video on the Fusion Facebook page, where Ryan Seacrest urged Ford fans to work together to unlock more content by giving 1,000 likes on the Facebook page. The goal was reached in 24 hours.
• How to Focus Your Car: This cool campaign was created to show off the Focus as a high-tech vehicle that young drivers should enjoy driving.
• Doug, Ford’s Spokespuppet: Ford did a campaign with a puppet as a spokesperson. It encouraged Ford fans to go to Doug’s Facebook page and like it. The goal was 10,000 – it got 43,000 likes in 2011.

Ford’s great success with social media marketing is a great indicator of what can be done in the social media space by progressive companies.

Ford is not the only large corporation to hit the target on social media campaigns. Other big social media campaign successes have included:

#1 Oreo – You Can Still Dunk in the Dark

This brilliant social media campaign was cooked up on the fly during the 2013 Superbowl by the advertising company Mondelez International. These guys had no idea that the power would go out in the Superbowl, but they had a team watching the game, ready to launch a social media campaign on the spot.

Their Oreo advertisement, cooked up in minutes when the lights dimmed in the Superdome during the game, was released on Twitter and was retweeted 15,000 times in 14 hours.

#2 Mello Yello – They Call Me Mello Yello

If you grew up in the 1980s, you probably remember the citrusy soda Mello Yello. It is still around, but many people were not very familiar with it anymore. Mello Yello recently came up with a new social media campaign that played off of the 1966 hit song by Donovan. Mello Yello aggressively used Facebook to spread the new message to old fans of the product, and also thousands of Millennials who weren’t around in the early 1980s.

Mello Yello also launched a Facebook page , which included a cool Retro Smooth Photo Generator. It allows users to take a photo of themselves and go from ‘not smooth’ to ‘smooth,’ by using a hipster-style photo filter.

#3 Grey Poupon – The Society of Good Taste

It is a rare social media campaign that requires you to fill out an application to become a Facebook fan of the product. But that is exactly what Grey Poupon did in 2012.
The idea behind this unusual campaign was to create a sense of exclusivity for the Facebook page for Grey Poupon mustard. It also attempted to develop a highly relevant and qualified Facebook audience.

Users who wanted to become fans – get this – had to APPLY to become members through the Society of Good Taste application! The app scanned your profile in Facebook and learned about your friends and interests. Then it assigned you a score to determine if your taste was good enough to become a fan of Grey Poupon.

This very unusual campaign was highly successful in building brand awareness for Grey Poupon.

#4 Sephora – 15 Days of Beauty Thrills

The goal of this Facebook campaign in 2012 was to attract fans and to drive more traffic to the new Sephora website. Sephora utilized some of its beauty partners, such as Urban Decay, Pantone Universe, Make Up For Ever and others, to provide ‘thrills’ for the Sephora Facebook community. Some of these thrills included a $5000 shopping spree, a new Fiat, a trip to Paris and several others.

Sephora also used a fan-gated application that required you to like the Sephora Facebook page to gain access. Fans learned about new thrills at midnight the day before, and they could enter to win the thrill each day on Sephora.com

This Facebook media campaign worked because it created a strong sense of exclusivity. It offered insights and special, thrilling deals to its Facebook fans that they could not get elsewhere.

All of these companies are really leveraging the power of social media to drive their sales and brand awareness to the next level.

Image Source:

• Steve-Lovelace

No matter what sort of educational inspiration you are searching for, TED has something for you. For instance, there are many highly informative and provocative talks on TED that can help to inspire your MBA job search. The top nine awesome TED talks in this category are as follows:

1. Tony Robbins on Why We Do What We Do: Tony Robbins, the pioneering life coach, discusses what he calls ‘the invisible forces’ that motivate us, and cause us to take the actions that we do in life. During this TED talk, he is so pumped up that he high-fives Al Gore in the front row! Robbins has had many famous personal clients, including CEOs, heads of state and Olympic athletes. All are drawn to him to learn how to reach their potential. Learn how to live up to your potential as you embark on your business career.
2. Steve Jobs on How to Live Before You Die: In 2005, Steve Jobs, the CEO and founder of both Apple and Pixar, urged the students of Stanford University in this commencement speech to pursue their dreams and to see all of the opportunities that we have in life’s many setbacks, even death itself. Jobs was the brilliant mind behind the amazing, simple design of Apple products and was the person that made Apple one of the most successful companies in the world. You can use Jobs’ speech as inspiration for you as you confront challenges in your MBA job search and career.
3. Brene Brown talks about The Power of Vulnerability: Brene Brown has long been studying how humans connect with each other – how we belong, love, and empathize. In this humorous and truly poignant TED talk, she shares some of the deepest insights she had during her research on this topic. She is a famed research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. Learn about how to become more adept at connecting with people in your MBA business career.
4. Daniel Pink discusses The Puzzle of Motivation: Dan Pink is a well-known career analyst who examines the fascinating topic of human motivation in this highly popular TED talk. He will explain to you that most social scientists know what most managers do not: traditional incentives are not usually as effective to motivate us as we might think. Learn what really motivates people, and change how you relate to your employees in your business career.
5. Elizabeth Gilbert on Your Elusive, Creative Genius: Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of ‘Eat, Pray, Love,’ and in this talk, she discusses the impossible things that we expect from society’s artists and geniuses. She points out the controversial idea that genius is really not rare, and that many of us have somewhat of a genius inside ourselves. A great way to motivate yourself to achieve excellence in your MBA career.
6. Dan Gilbert talks about The Surprising Science of Happiness: Dan Gilbert is the author of “Stumbling on Happiness,” and here he talks about the wrongheaded notion that we will be miserable if we do not get what we want in life. He argues that our psychological immune system, as he calls it, allows us to enjoy true happiness even if things do not go exactly as we want in life. A good concept to keep in mind in your business career as things sometimes go in directions other than what you expected.
7. Keith Barry on Brain Magic: This TED talk shows us how our brains have the ability to fool our bodies. He also shows the audience some real examples of what he calls ‘brain magic.’ Barry is a favorite at events around the world, as the Irish magician discusses mind control, hypnosis, mind reading and all sorts of outrageous stunts. This talk is a good reminder of the power of our brains and how they can fool us, which is a smart thing to remember in your new business career.
8. Jeff Bezos on What Matters More Than Your Talents: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos addresses the Princeton University graduating class, and he says that character is shown not in our natural gifts, but by the choices we make in the course of our lives. Remember that the choices you make in your business career after MBA school will define who you are, more than the piece of paper you earned.
9. Randy Pausch on Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams: Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch was dying from pancreatic cancer in 2007, and he delivered this famous lecture that has mesmerized millions of people as he discusses how we can achieve the dreams of our childhood.

Listen to these nine awesome TED talks and learn how you can achieve your potential in your MBA job search, your career, and your entire life.

1. They Communicate Well. A successful business school student is not only good at communicating complex ideas in clear language. She also is able to listen to what others have to say and to incorporate the ideas of others into their own. Despite what some might think, a successful student is going to spend not just time talking, but listening, as well.
2. They Are Team Players. It is true that to be a strong business person, you need to be able to lead teams and projects. However, much of the success of business revolves around being able to work well in teams. If you monopolize the time of the group with your own voice, resentments can build. A successful business school graduate is able to work well with others in mutual respect.
3. They Are Leaders. The successful businessperson is going to be able to lead teams of people on projects and initiatives.
4. They Are Disciplined. There are many distractions in the modern world of smartphones, Internet and 24/7 television entertainment. A successful business school graduate is able to focus on her studies and on her work to maximize her chances for success.
5. They Are Practical. There are many people who can memorize business theories and regurgitate them on an exam. This does not mean you are going to be a good business leader! A successful business graduate is able to take what she learns in the classroom and apply it to the real world.
6. They Are Decisive. Much of the education in business school is considered ‘practical’ because it teaches you how to make strong decisions and to follow through on them. You need to be able to collect a lot of information about a business scenario and then make a strong and accurate decision on the available facts – quickly.
7. They Are Professional. A successful business school graduate looks successful. She is going to always dress and present herself well in public – at work, business functions, conferences and seminars.
8. They Are Ethical. The world of business can be highly competitive, even cut throat. This may lead some individuals to ‘cut corners’ and to behave in a less than ethical fashion. A successful business school graduate always behaves honestly and ethically in the classroom and in the workplace.
9. They Are Strong Networkers. A good business school graduate is able to effectively talk to other professionals to gain access to opportunities and decision makers. This ability can help you to find good employment, cinch a business deal, or save your company money on a contract.

As you can see, a successful business school graduate has personal traits and characteristics that can be used all through life to be successful. By focusing on these traits, you can emulate successful business students in anything you do.

Interested in starting your MBA search? Try these helpful resources:

• MBAPrograms.org -Offers tips, advice and information on various MBA programs around the country. Lots of specializations.
• OnlineMBAList.com- Allows users to explore various Online MBA programs. They have a cool feature called ‘Online MBA of the Day’ as well as a guide and news section.
• Bloomberg Businessweek – A Forum for all business school students where all your questions can be answered.

As illustrated in the infographic below, courtesy of a website about public health degrees, 22.3% of the working adult population lacks health insurance. Also, insurance policy costs have shot up 50% from 2005 to 2011. The average family health insurance policy costs over $15,000 annually.

You should know that those higher insurance costs affect you in two ways. First, you pay more from your pocket. Second, your employer pays more, which means the company does not have as much to pay you in salary and bonuses.

Depending upon your budget, there are several health insurance plans to choose from. Your employer may have some or all of these options available:

• HMO: Cheapest, but you must stay in network
• PPO: Most flexible, costs more, but you do not have to stay in network
• POS: Mixture of HMOs and PPOs
• EPO: You have no deductibles, but you have to stay in network

Depending on which plan you choose for your family or employees, your out-of-pocket costs could vary a great deal, depending if you are in or out of network.

If the health insurance market does not change, you will see as a consumer & business owner that your health insurance policy cost could rise to as much as $30,083 by 2019! And over the working life of an average 22 year-old, you and your employers could pay an astounding $4 million total for your health care coverage. These big numbers are why it is so important for our society as a whole to work together to solve the public health care crisis of health insurance in America.

Sugar’s Effect on the Body
Some of the most important reasons why sugar could be considered a public health crisis lie in the way that it behaves in the body. It causes damage and leads to your chance of contracting certain diseases, while making you want to consume more and more. For this reason, some have suggested that it be taxed and regulated just like alcohol and tobacco.

1. It is Addictive – Like drugs and alcohol, sugar acts on the brain in ways that makes you want to consumer more of it. It decreases leptin, which makes you feel less full, while also lowering levels of dopamine after a meal. This makes you feel less satisfied with what you have just eaten, and want to reach for more.

2. Causes Liver Damage – Some scientists believe that sugar can cause just as much liver damage as alcohol, which is in effect just refined sugar itself.

3. Raises Your Blood Pressure – Fructose increases uric acid in the body, which in turn leads to higher blood pressure levels.

4. Alters Hormonal Signals – High sugar levels in the blood can interfere with the body’s signals, changing the levels of hormone such as insulin.

Sugar and Metabolic Syndrome
Although obesity is a major risk factor for metabolic syndrome, scientists have noted that 40% of those who are diagnosed are not clinically obese. Sugar consumption may play a role in the development of this series of disorders, which can lead to the following serious conditions:

5. Diabetes – Excessive consumption of sugar can cause your blood sugar levels to spike suddenly, which interferes with the production of insulin in the body. Because sugar has been linked to metabolic syndrome, this also suggests that it plays a strong role in the development of type 2 diabetes, along with obesity.

6. Heart Disease – Metabolic syndrome caused by sugar intake has also been linked with coronary problems, including heart attacks.

7. Cancer – Some studies have shown that sugar alone can cause cancer, causing damage by binding to DNA and altering it. Metabolic syndrome is also linked with certain types of cancers, including colon, prostate, and cancer of the uterus.

The Economic Toll of Sugar and Obesity
One of the reasons why sugar is such a problem today is that it is low in cost to manufacture, particularly in the form of high-fructose corn syrup, which is found in virtually all processed food. Yet although the idea behind using this low-cost item to provide flavor is to save money, in the end it costs society more to pay for all the health problems stemming from its overuse.

8. Direct Costs – The public health cost of treating disorders like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer is extremely high, totaling $115 billion in the USA each year. For cases when this can be attributed to sugar, this includes the cost of diagnosis, treatment, and preventive action.

9. Indirect Costs – In addition to the public health cost for treatment and prevention of sugar-related health problems, there are also indirect costs. This could include lost wages, for example, when those who have developed a disease due to their excess sugar consumption are unable to go to work. The US currently spends $65 billion in lost productivity due to metabolic syndrome. This affects the economy as a whole.

Professional Education

A new era of health issues are taking place around the world as processed foods & sugar continues to be consumed on a massive global level. Thankfully huge leaps of progress in the health & life sciences are taking place but requires an ever influx of graduates in this field to take charge and become the new world leaders. With dozens of new online masters in public health programs available from such schools as Berkeley University, Tulane, & University of Southern California, there has never been a better time to consider this field especially with the convenience offered with distance learning.

References:

• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK44210/
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
• http://mphprogramslist.com/10-best-accredited-online-mpa-programs-degrees/
• http://www.connectwell.biz/pdf/comment_truth_about_sugar.pdf