Monday, Dec. 11th

Happy Monday!

Here’s the Business Buzz with A Helpful Trend, Tip, Tool, and

a Hot Take from HiveThink to help you this week… but before that we have an exciting announcement.

01 HiveTrend - Businesses and Nonprofits: A Synergy for Social Good

🫶 In an inspiring trend, more and more businesses are aligning their products and services with charitable efforts, creating beautiful relationships that benefit both communities and nonprofits.

Here Are Some Great Examples Of Awesome Partnerships Making a Difference:

🥯 ➕ 🧠 (Be)Caffeinated & Be The Change Youth Initiative:

The Bagel of Change Program at (Be)Caffeinated exemplifies how everyday products can be a vehicle for change. Each bagel sold contributes to initiatives led by Be The Change Youth Initiative that promote mental health and community well-being, underlining both brands’ commitments to fostering kindness and happiness within the Chattanooga community.

🏡 ➕ 🚲 Northside Neighborhood House & White Oak Bicycle Co-Operative:

The Northside Neighborhood House’s Red Bank Thrift Store has partnered with the White Oak Bicycle Co-Operative (WOBC) to sell bicycles, aiding those without reliable transportation.

This initiative, supporting WOBC's mission to provide accessible bicycles and repair services, offers refurbished bikes for sale, with proceeds supporting both nonprofits.

🍔🍺 ➕ 🤲❤️ Parkway Pourhouse and United Way of Greater Chattanooga: 

Chattanooga-based restaurant, Parkway Pourhouse, is teaming up with United Way of Greater Chattanooga for a meaningful event on December 14th. By dedicating 10% of proceeds from this event to the Hand for Hope campaign, Parkway Pourhouse invites the community to enjoy good food and company while supporting a vital cause.

These partnerships are more than just business transactions; they are a reflection of our community's spirit and dedication to lift each other up. As they say, “a rising tide lifts all boats”.

Together, let's continue to build a stronger, more caring Chattanooga. (And let’s start by going to this awesome event!) 😉

Event Details for the Hand of Hope event:

December 14th, 5:30 - 7 PM

At Parkway Pourhouse | 801 Riverfront Pkwy

10% of all proceeds will go to United Way of Greater Chattanooga

P.S. All nonprofit friends: United Way of Greater Chattanooga is hosting an essential event you won't want to miss. Join them for the 2024 Grantmaking Info & How-To Apply Session scheduled for Monday, December 18, from 2:30-3:30 PM on Zoom.

This session is a great opportunity for nonprofits to learn about streamlining the grant application and reporting process, helping you dedicate more time to what truly matters - your services and impact in the community.

Click here to register for the event:

02 HiveTip - Diagnose Your Content Pt. 3 (The Ultimate Thing To Focus On To Get More People Actually Seeing Your Content)

👁️ Did you know that in pretty much all social media platforms you can check your average watch time? In case you didn’t know, that just means how the average amount of your piece of content was watched.

Why is this important?

Great question. 😉

👀 This is important because the longer people watch your content the more likely it is to be pushed out to more people. It also means that those who viewed your content are more likely to see your content pop up again.

This is true even of your current followers. Ever noticed how you have lots of followers, but only a fraction of them see your stuff?

This is why you want to increase your average view duration.

📺 More old people seeing your stuff. More new people seeing your stuff.

And now I bet you’re wondering how to increase your average watch time, right? Well, you’re in luck. I’m feeling generous today as I’m writing this, haha. 😇

🪝 The first thing to work on to increase your average watch time is making better video intros that hook viewers into sticking around. (We call that little intro a Hook, by the way. Makes sense, right?)  

There’s infinite amounts of ways to make interesting hooks, but the underlying principle behind all the ones that work are that they are truly valuable to the viewer.

👟 👢🩴 Ultimately, this takes forgetting about what’s good for you, and REALLY putting yourself into your target audience’s shoes and trying to get down to what would make them stop their scroll as they consume the endless river of online content.

If you focus on that you’re way more likely to think of what is going to “hook” your viewer than if you just think of what you want or need to post (very “you” focused instead of “them”).

How to evaluate your hooks?

💡 01 Did you truly imagine being your ideal customer and coming across your content online? If so, were you uninterested or was it like “OMG, I HAVE to watch this.”? Keep working on your hook until you get the latter.

📨 02 Send it to someone that is within your target audience and get their honest feedback. Literally ask them something like, “Hey, can you check out this piece of content and tell me if you were scrolling online if it would be interesting/valuable enough to get you to stop scrolling and actually watch it?”

03 HiveTool - The ONE Question

📘 This tool comes from the book, The ONE Thing by Gary Keller with Jay Papasan.

☕️ (Be)Caffeinated recommended this book on their blog, so we thought it’d be fun to write up one of our favorite takeaways from the book here.

At it’s core, the book is a thought experiment putting forth the question,

“If the 80/20 rule states that 20% of our efforts bring forth 80% of our results, what if we then looked at the 20% and applied the 80/20 rule again and again until we’re left with ONE to-do, ONE project, ONE conversation, etc. that is more impactful than any other?”

🁪  If we did this again and again in our lives, careers, relationships, etc. then we could line up these ONE things like dominos that get us results way faster than previously imagined.

He turns this idea into a question you can ask yourself and adapt to your situation to better find your ONE thing that could change everything. Here’s the question:

❓ “What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?

I (Michael here) find the wording a little clunky, so here’s my version:

“What’s the ONE Thing I can do that will make everything easier or unnecessary?”

Or adapted and applied to specific things:

🍳 What’s the ONE Thing I can do that will make the process of eating healthier breakfasts way easier, tastier, and sustainable?

What’s the ONE Thing I can do that will make the process of getting new interested leads into my business way easier, fun, and aligned to my values?

Best of luck as you get hyper-focused on your next ONE Thing.

04 HiveTake - What Is Branding?

🦚 “Branding” is a word that gets thrown around with lots of different meanings attached to it such as an organization’s personality/vibe, logos, brand colors, website, etc.

And yes, all of those things contribute on some level to your branding, but what is branding when you really get down to it?

Branding is what people think about you when you’re not around.

And how do people build up their version of how they think about you? We’ll pass the answer over to Seth Godin for that one.

“Every interaction in any form, is branding.” - Seth Godin

No pressure, right? 😅

So, what do we do with this?

Take this as a reminder to focus on your values, to keep your Why front of mind, and generally approach whatever you do with the Golden Rule in mind.

If you do that, we think your brand is going to do just fine. 🫶

Until next time,

The HiveThink Team

P.S. If you missed our latest podcast episode where we talk all about community, check it out here to listen on Spotify!

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