Rhythm Blog | Alicia Croke

Recently, our digital marketing team sat down and talked about our annual plan. Marketing departments have many campaigns they focus on throughout the year, so we broke our campaigns down over four quarters. We track our marketing campaign performance over four main drivers: emails, website design, social media, and SEO. We break those down into team KPIs and then even further down into individual KPIs for team members.

I thought I would share just a few digital marketing KPI examples from our session. In addition to using to our own free comprehensive KPI guide for help, we did source some of our KPIs from Hubspot and Impact Branding. The two areas I will focus on are email performance and Social Media.

Recently, I started on a journey to be healthier and more active. As I was running on the treadmill last week, I thought to myself, "Are motivation and engagement the same?" There are quite a few times when I am at the gym motivated but not necessarily engaged with what I am doing. I am motivated to run a mile, but my mind could be engaged a million miles away. 

As an employer, you want your workforce to be both engaged and motivated. With employee engagement at around 32.6%, it is important to know the difference between engagement and motivation.

Every week you sit down with your team and discuss what you need to get done to be effective. How often do you enter the meeting dreading it or leave it feeling burnt out? When you meet with your team, you should focus on fixing problems and not statusing your projects. At Rhythm Systems, we use a few KPIs religiously at our weekly adjustment meetings. Check them out below!

As Annual Planning approaches for many companies, leadership teams are sitting down to develop their goals for 2018. How was your 2017? Did you get everything accomplished that you had hoped? Are you closer or farther away from your BHAG?

To develop a stronger leadership team in 2018, start with Annual Planning. Watch out for the three leadership mistakes below during your Annual Planning meeting to have a constructive session!

The term activist investor has been floating around Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal for a while now. Activist investors are turning up the heat in companies all over the market, including Saks Fifth Avenue and Buffalo Wild Wings. What exactly is an activist investor? What do they do and how do they impact your business?

According to Investopedia, "An activist investor is an individual or group that purchases large numbers of a public company's shares and/or tries to obtain seats on the company's board with the goal of effecting a major change in the company." 

The Human Resource budget is one of the biggest budgets a CEO sees on his desk every day. Gallup "estimates that actively disengaged employees cost the U.S. $450 billion to $550 billion in lost productivity per year." 

As a CEO, you are constantly under pressure to meet shareholders' needs and stay under budget. Your human capital is one way to keep a healthy chunk of your budget in check. Our CEO, Patrick Thean, shared with me some ways a successful CEO should think about Human Capital Management.

"Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts." -Arnold Bennett

Whether you or an external force initiated the changes that are about to take place, preparation is essential for you and your organization. Change management can be the catalyst for immense success or supreme failure.

Early on in the process, develop a think rhythm about the future adjustments, the impacts of change management, and an employee focus.

Recently, our team sat down with our some of our panelists for our Women In Leadership breakfast at the upcoming Breakthrough Conference. I was happy to sit back and soak up all the knowledge I could from these inspiring ladies and men. One thing rang through crystal clear from our calls with them: how to manage time effectively with life and business.

Did you know that Charlotte was recently voted as one of the best cities for tech outside of California and New York?

We have all heard for years how women and men experience life differently. Recently, the discussion has shifted more toward how women and men experience their working lives. With workplace gender disparity still hovering at 30%, companies are trying to combat this number with everything they've got.

However, the Wall Street Journal reported that "just 45% think their company is doing the work that is necessary to achieve gender parity. Even fewer report ever having witnessed a manager challenging gender-based language or behavior, or a leader being held accountable for making—or not making—diverse hires."