50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing

Social media isn’t always the right tool for the job. Not every company needs a blog. YouTube worked for BlendTec, but it might not work for your company. And yet, there’s something to this. Over the last three days, I’ve spoken to four HUGE brands in America that are considering social media for one project or another, and there are many more out there working on how these tools might integrate into their business needs. Here’s a list of 50 ideas (in no particular order) to help move the conversation along. Note: I mix PR and Marketing. They should get back together again.

1. Add social bookmark links to your most important web pages and/or blog posts to improve sharing.
2. Build blogs and teach conversational marketing and business relationship building techniques.
3. For every video project purchased, ensure there’s an embeddable web version for improved sharing.
4. Learn how tagging and other metadata improve your ability to search and measure the spread of information.
5. Create informational podcasts about a product’s overall space, not just the product.
6. Build community platforms around real communities of shared interest.
7. Help companies participate in existing social networks, and build relationships on their turf.
8. Check out Twitter as a way to show a company’s personality. (Don’t fabricate this).
9. Couple your email newsletter content with additional website content on a blog for improved commenting.
10. Build sentiment measurements, and listen to the larger web for how people are talking about your customer.
11. Learn which bloggers might care about your customer. Learn how to measure their influence.
12. Download the Social Media Press Release (pdf) and at least see what parts you want to take into your traditional press releases.
13. Try out a short series of audio podcasts or video podcasts as content marketing and see how they draw.
14. Build conversation maps for your customers using Technorati.com , Google Blogsearch, Summize, and FriendFeed.
15. Experiment with Flickr and/or YouTube groups to build media for specific events. (Marvel Comics raised my impression of this with theirHulk statue Flickr group).
16. Recommend that your staff start personal blogs on their personal interests, and learn first hand what it feels like, including managing comments, wanting promotion, etc.
17. Map out an integrated project that incorporates a blog, use of commercial social networks, and a face-to-face event to build leads and drive awareness of a product.
18. Start a community group on Facebook or Ning or MySpace or LinkedIn around the space where your customer does business. Example: whatJeremiah Owyang did for Hitachi Data Systems.
19. Experiment with the value of live video like uStream.tv and Mogulus, or Qik on a cell phone.
20. Attend a conference dealing with social media like New Media Expo, BlogWorld Expo, New Marketing Summit (disclosure: I run this one with CrossTech), and dozens and dozens more. (Email me for a calendar).
21. Collect case studies of social media success. Tag them “socialmediacasestudy” in del.icio.us.
22. Interview current social media practitioners. Look for bridges between your methods and theirs.
23. Explore distribution. Can you reach more potential buyers/users/customers on social networks.
24. Don’t forget early social sites like Yahoogroups and Craigslist. They still work remarkably well.
25. Search Summize.com for as much data as you can find in Twitter on your product, your competitors, your space.
26. Practice delivering quality content on your blogs, such that customers feel educated / equipped / informed.
27. Consider the value of hiring a community manager. Could this role improve customer service? Improve customer retention? Promote through word of mouth?
28. Turn your blog into a mobile blog site with Mofuse. Free.
29. Learn what other free tools might work for community building, likeMyBlogLog.
30. Ensure you offer the basics on your site, like an email alternative to an RSS subscription. In fact, the more ways you can spread and distribute your content, the better.
31. Investigate whether your product sells better by recommendation versus education, and use either wikis and widgets to help recommend, or videos and podcasts for education.
32. Make WebsiteGrader.com your first stop for understanding the technical quality of a website.
33. Make Compete.com your next stop for understanding a site’s traffic. Then, mash it against competitors’ sites.
34. Learn how not to ask for 40 pieces of demographic data when giving something away for free. Instead, collect little bits over time. Gently.
35. Remember that the people on social networks are all people, have likely been there a while, might know each other, and know that you’re new. Tread gently into new territories. Don’t NOT go. Just go gently.
36. Help customers and prospects connect with you simply on your various networks. Consider a Lijit Wijit or other aggregator widget.
37. Voting mechanisms like those used on Digg.com show your customers you care about which information is useful to them.
38. Track your inbound links and when they come from blogs, be sure to comment on a few posts and build a relationship with the blogger.
39. Find a bunch of bloggers and podcasters whose work you admire, and ask them for opinions on your social media projects. See if you can give them a free sneak peek at something, or some other “you’re special” reward for their time and effort (if it’s material, ask them to disclose it).
40. Learn all you can about how NOT to pitch bloggers. Excellent resource: Susan Getgood.
41. Try out shooting video interviews and video press releases and other bits of video to build more personable relationships. Don’t throw out text, but try adding video.
42. Explore several viewpoints about social media marketing.
43. Women are adding lots of value to social media. Get to know the ones making a difference. (And check out BlogHer as an event to explore).
44. Experiment with different lengths and forms of video. Is entertaining and funny but brief better than longer but more informative? Don’t stop with one attempt. And try more than one hosting platform to test out features.
45. Work with practitioners and media makers to see how they can use their skills to solve your problems. Don’t be afraid to set up pilot programs, instead of diving in head first.
46. People power social media. Learn to believe in the value of people. Sounds hippie, but it’s the key.
47. Spread good ideas far. Reblog them. Bookmark them. Vote them up at social sites. Be a good citizen.
48. Don’t be afraid to fail. Be ready to apologize. Admit when you’ve made a mistake.
49. Re-examine who in the organization might benefit from your social media efforts. Help equip them to learn from your project.
50. Use the same tools you’re trying out externally for internal uses, if that makes sense, and learn about how this technology empowers your business collaboration, too.

10 Incredibly Awesome Documents to Help You Start a Company

Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) – these are over-hyped in my opinion and few angel or venture investors will sign them, but always helpful to have one handy to bust out at parties.

LLC Operating Agreement – I put my first LLC together myself using this agreement. My advice is to hire an attorney, but if you don’t listen to advice so well, knock yourself out.

Sample Convertible Note – A convertible note is a way to raise debt for your company that will convert into equity. When you are first raising money, if you can use a convertible note instead of having to give up shares/equity, you’ll usually be in a better position later on and own more of your company.

Board of Advisor Agreement – A good board of advisor can be worth their weight in gold, a bad one can be worth their weight in radioactive fluid.

Financial Projections Template – This document is “da bomb”. My good friend and previous business partner Mike Sheridan put this together in our prior consulting company Venature. This is a fantastic financial model template to build your basic Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow statement. Needless to say he paid a LOT more attention in accounting classes in our MBA program.

Financial Model Projections for an Internet Company – Big shout out to Brian Garrett ofCrosscut Ventures (site coming soon). This is a fantastic model/template for internet companies to use to project their growth.

Application for Employer Identification Number (EIN) – Basic government form you need to fill out to get set up with an Employer Identification Number (EIN) so that you too can hire folks and pretend to be a badass at cocktail parties (don’t forget to pull out the NDA).

Start Up Pitch Presentation – there are no graphical elements here, but this doc lays out how to describe your business in a presentation format. Business Plans are dead, use a PPT Deck, see graphic examples below.

10 Questions to Consider When Start a New Business – I wrote this doc so I’m biased (hell, I’m writing this whole blog post) – but I do think this is a simple set of questions you can use to analyze any business you are thinking of starting. And once you decide to start, here are some mistakes to avoid.

Business Plan Presentation Template – This doc has a sample layout you can use to pitch investors/partners (plus its got a cool effect of color changing bars on the side – that only took me 4 hours to figure out one law school class)

Business Plan Presentation Template – Get more Legal Forms

Business Plan Deck – I stripped down the docstoc deck and left all the graphical assets in the presentation so that you can download it and use it however you like. We paid a good amount of money to get this done, so I hope you can take our graphical starting point, and raise LOTs of money for your own company with this. Upload Documents to Docstoc and we’ll call it even.

Business Plan Deck – Get more Business Plans

Oh yah, I should probably have some legal disclaimers around the use of these documents…. use your best judgment and hire a qualified professional to review or customize where needed. Or don’t.

Business

12 Point Checklist for Successful Negotiations by Mark Hunter

Do sales negotiations make you nervous? Put yourself at ease and increase the likelihood of a successful outcome with this negotiation checklist.

Image source: BigStockPhoto.com

1. Never negotiate with anyone who is not qualified to negotiate. If in doubt, ask your contact how they've handled a similar type of negotiating in the past. Listen for names, dates and other details that will provide clues as to their level of responsibility.

2. Never put things into writing unless you're prepared to live with them. Once an item is put into writing, it becomes an anchor either for you or the customer. This is especially critical when negotiating with a professional buyer who will use anything put into writing as leverage.

3. Always have room to give something the other person will deem as a perceived benefit. This is why it is so important to sell first and negotiate second. By selling first, you have the opportunity to ask questions and validate the key benefits for which the customer is looking. During the negotiation phase, a customer will attempt to mask the benefits they desire, making it harder to determine exactly what the customer wants.

4. Know when to walk away and be confident in doing so. To execute this requires the walk away point being shared in advance with others to ensure accountability is in place if and when this tactic has to be used.

5. Know at least 5 things the other person wants that you can offer. Again, this is why it is so important to sell first and negotiate second. By doing so, it will be possible to know in advance of the negotiation phase what can be offered.

6. Know at least 5 things you can say that will discount what the other person is offering (price not included). Never negotiate on price. Negotiate using other items, such as technical performance, operational efficiencies, etc. that will provide the leverage needed to avoid a price-oriented discussion.

7. Always treat the other person with respect and dignity. Negotiate over things and services, not personal matters. Never allow the negotiation to become personal in nature. This even applies to those situations where a close personal relationship may exist. A quick rule to keep in mind: If the relationship is so good, then why is anything being negotiated anyway? If a negotiation does become personal in nature, do not hesitate to step away and arrange a follow-up time to resume negotiating.8. Never enter a negotiating process until both sides are clear on what is being negotiated. At the start of a negotiation session, it is appropriate to state exactly what is up for discussion. By doing this up front, it's possible to avoid a waste of time and, more importantly, inadvertently negotiate things that don't need to be discussed

9. Use the sell/buy approach first. Only move to a negotiating phase if you are unsuccessful closing the sale first. Minimally, no negotiating should begin until the customer has rejected the close at least twice and the customer has provided you with at least one buying signal..

sell/buy approach first. Only move to a negotiating phase if you are unsuccessful closing the sale first. Minimally, no negotiating should begin until the customer has rejected the close at least twice and the customer has provided you with at least one buying signal.

10. Never offer up options until after you're deadlocked on price and the customer has provided you with additional information. This includes providing you with a buying signal and credible benefits as to what the customer is looking for.

11. Always put the negotiated outcome in writing immediately. Do not leave issues open for further discussion. The person who puts the outcomes in writing first wins by being able to position things in the manner they want them to be. Putting things into writing first also provides the opportunity to make one final modification with minimal risk.

12. Upon reaching an agreement, thank the other party, but do not celebrate!Celebrating the outcome of a negotiation sends the signal to the other party that they have been taken advantage of. Sending this signal will jeopardize the long-term potential of the relationship

PeeqPeeq, The App That Lets You “Shop Your Email” Expands, As Company’s Next Take On Reimagining The Inbox Starts Testing

PeeqPeeq, a mobile and tablet application that lets users “shop their email,” is launching its first major update today, after initially debuting its email-based catalog on iTunes just last month. The update expands the app’s reach beyond Gmail, to now include all of the Microsoft email domains, like Hotmail, Live and Outlook, while also offering a revamped look and feel for iOS 7 as well as badges support, so you’ll know when new deals have come in.

The app has arrived at an interesting time for email marketers, who have reportedly beenexperiencing a downturn in email open rates following the introduction of “tabs” in Gmail, the widely adopted free webmail service Google provides. In the new tabbed Gmail inbox, emails from retailers and other merchants are shuffled off into another section labelled “Promotions,” which end users can browse through at their leisure. No longer can email marketers rely on timing the arrivals of their emails to hit inboxes in the early AM, hoping to grab eyeballs when consumers open up their email first thing in the morning. These days, who knows when users are browsing through their email deals? And from early reports it seems that fewer users are clicking through at all.

PeeqPeeq is taking advantage of this change in consumer behavior with an app that takes the concept of browsing through promotions on your own time, but packaging it in a way that makes the task more enjoyable. Its app digs into your email inbox, and surfaces all the promotional shopping messages – the emails from the various department stores, airlines, e-commerce shops, etc. you’ve likely (or inadvertently) signed up for – and organizes them into a mobile catalog you can browse from your smartphone or iPad when you’re ready to really shop. The experience is more akin to using Flipboard than it is email triage.

These promotional mailings are the messages that you think of as junk when they interrupt your train of thought and workday correspondence, currently. It’s sales at Macy’s, new shoes from Zappos, electronics from NewEgg, Groupon deals, dresses from online retailers, and so on. But in the PeeqPeeq app, you can see these deals at a glance, organized six per page, and filterable by type (e.g. women, men, kids, travel, home & kitchen, etc.) You can also bookmark those you like, and share them with others.

To make this all happen, PeeqPeeq moves messages out of your inbox into a dedicated folder in your main inbox. But the app isn’t limited to only those emails you personally subscribe to. On its backend, the company has opted into all the promotional newsletters you could ever want, allowing you to browse through categories where you may only occasionally have an interest.

With today’s update, users can finally import deals from other inboxes, including Microsoft’s mail service – which, let’s face it, is often used as the dumping ground for all those emails you don’t want cluttering up your main Gmail inbox. It will also let you know when new deals have arrived with iOS’s red badges, though not with buzzy push notifications.

Company Now Attacking The Next Email Problem After Promotions

While PeeqPeeq will have some appeal to those who do a lot of online shopping, the company’s vision is broader than just this one email category. In fact, explains CEO Lee Ott, his company RokketLaunch is actually rethinking email not by “killing it,” as some companies have tried and failed to do, but in leveraging its data for new products.

Reinventing email is a challenge few startups are willing to take on for a number of reasons, but one of the toughest hurdles to overcome is getting email users to change years of ingrained behavior. That’s why it’s impressive when startups like Mailbox, whose gesture-based mobile email app wassold to Dropbox for $100 million, actually generated enough traction to become notable. Getting people out of their preferred inbox is very hard to do.

“If this is the state of the art, this sucks” says Ott, referring to the way most email is handled today, “But I can’t kill it. [Email has] two and a half billion people using it. But maybe I can just change it. Maybe we can use the inertia that it has to do something really different, where it won’t feel like you’re abandoning email. It will just feel like a subtle change. And that subtle change rippled out over time will be a really big change,” he says.

The company already has two other products in the works that are using this “big data” store found in the inbox. One is now in alpha testing, and while Ott won’t offer details on what it is, he would say there are plenty of other areas you could take on in the inbox, including things like electronic bills and receipts, shipping notices, non-promotional newsletters, social messages and updates, and more. The beta should begin to ship in the next couple of months. He’s not sure if people will really get it, but if it works, it could “totally blow up,” he claims. The only hint as to what it might be is this: RokketLaunch is attacking the biggest inbox problems in order, meaning those that occupy the highest percentages of user inboxes.

“Email’s weakness is actually its biggest strength,” explains Ott. “A massive volume of content that’s getting funneled to you – what if the volume is actually the thing that makes it valuable?,” he wonders.

It’s a different way of thinking about the email problem, where so many startups are trying to help you have less mail, by better managing your inbox, speeding up triaging, helping you opt-out of emails, and more. Of course, anything related to email is a huge experiment and risk, which is why startups so often avoid the area entirely.

Ott, whose background involves time spent as head of mobile and other products at Yahoo, as well as head of product for webOS at HP, has raised $1.25 million from his own network of connections, including Jerry Yang’s AME Cloud Ventures, Ash Patel (Morado Ventures), Jon Rubinstein, Farzad Nazem, Hank Vigil (SVP of Strategy and Partnerships at Microsoft), Adrian Aoun (Wavii, sold to Google), and others. The investors, to be clear, were funding not just PeeqPeeq, but the company’s larger goal of shifting inbox behaviors to new experiences.

The updated PeeqPeeq app is live now here in iTunes. As for the rest, stay tuned.

25 WOMEN-RUN STARTUPS TO WATCH

BY: ALLYSON KAPIN

Think women don't launch startups?

1) You're not alone, and 2) Think again!

Over the last couple of months there has been another round of women in tech and startup debates.

Robert Scoble says in a Facebook Group that he wants to write about women launching world-changing startups but struggles to find them. Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch says "the press is dying to write about [women startups]." Over onQuora, there is a discussion about the hottest companies started by women. Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr and Hunch is one of the most popular answers.

It's easy to complain that it's hard to find women run startups--or to provide excuses. But instead, let's focus on 25 women running kick-ass startups. Will they change the world? I don't use crystal balls, but I sure do think that they have huge potential to make a serious mark.

1. Pauline Alker, Founder, a la Mobile
   Streamlining the way mobile handsets are developed and deployed. They aim to be theindependent, open Linux system platform for the mobile phone industry. They adhere to design and development disciplines of openness, innovation and freedom of choice with configurable and customizable architecture. 
   Funding: Series A, B
2. Alexa Andrzejewski, CEO and Co-Founder, Foodspotting
   A visual guide to good food and where to find it. Foodspotting lets consumers find and share the foods they love: Instead of reviewing restaurants, consumers can recommend their favorite dishes and see what others have recommended wherever you go. 
   Funding: Series A
3. Kris Appel, Founder, Encore Path
   Encore Path developed Tailwind, a device that helps improve arm function and range of motion for people with stroke or other brain injury. 
   Funding: Seed
4. Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki, Co-Founders, 23andme
   Genetics just got personal. 23andme is a human genome indexing/application. They analyze your genetics through saliva testing and store the results online and help you interpret the data. You can keep it private or you can share it with family and doctors. 
   Funding: Series B
5. Patricia Bright, Founder, BioFuelBox
   Provides modular bio-refineries for converting waste materials into biodiesel.
   Funding: Series A
6. Annie Chang, Co-Founder, LOLapps
   LOLapps builds quizzes, gifts, and game platforms that provide user-generated, customizable applications. They are a growing social games company with over 300,000 user generated applications and 11 games in their portfolio.
   Funding: Series A
7. Rachna Choudhry and Marci Harries Co-Founders, Popvox
   POPVOX bridges the gap between the input the public wants to provide and the information Members of Congress want and need to receive. The product is based on the founders experience working with Congress and research with Congressional staff. 
   Funding: Seed
8. Cathy Edwards, Co-Founder & CTO, Chomp
   Billed as a "a sort-of Yelp for iPhone apps" by TechCrunch, Chomp is an app discovery engine that enables users to search for iPhone apps on the Apple App Store, through a combination of app search and personalized recommendations. 
   Funding: Series A
9. Cindy Gallop, Founder, IfWeRantheWorld
   If you ran the world, what would you do? IfWeRanTheWorld is a crowdsourced, collective action-generating platform, that makes things happen in the real world and reports back on the results. "If Facebook is the social graph, and Twitter is the interest graph, then IfWeRanTheWorld is designed to be the action graph," said Gallop.
   Funding: Seed
10. Kaliya Hamlin, Founder, Personal Data Ecosystem
    A leader and vocal advocate in the user-centric identity movement, Hamlin recently launched a new nonprofit to focus on how people control and access their own data online. 
    Funding: Seeking funding
11. Julia Hartz, Co-Founder and President, Eventbrite
    Eventbrite is a social commerce platform for ticketing and event management. They processed $207 million in ticket sales in 2010, more than double from 2009. 
    Funding: Series A, B, C, D
12. Tara Hunt, Co-Founder, Shwowp
    Shwowp helps you gather your purchase history in one place. It's a purchase sharing site where you can input product purchases, share items on Twitter or Facebook, follow friends' purchase activity and start conversations around products. 
    Funding: Seeking funding
13. Amy Jo Kim, Co-Founder, ShuffleBrain
    Inspired by the explosion of Brain Games, and passionate about creating games that keep you sharp and socially connected, Shufflebrain builds games for a connected world. They've helped design games including Bejewelled 2, The Sims, and Rock Band. 
    Funding: Unknown
14. Annalea Krebs, Founder, ethicalDeal
    Similar to the Groupon and LivingSocial model but aimed at green consumers who love local deals on green products, ethicalDeal launched in November 2010 in Vancouver. Krebs expects they'll launch in Toronto and San Francisco in early in 2011 and a new city every three months thereafter.
    Funding: Seeking funding
15. Kristen Kuhns, Co-Founder and COO, Story of My Life
    A collection of online stories of people's lives. The site helps users build an interactive 360-degree view of who you are: your accomplishments, your feelings and thoughts, your narrative--the essence of who you are and what you will leave behind. 
    Funding: Angel
16. Jen Pahlka, Founder, Code for America
    Code for America recruits savvy web industry folks into public service to use their skills to solve core problems facing communities. They help talented technologists leverage the power of the Internet to make governments more open and efficient, and become civic leaders able to realize transformational change with technology. 
    Funding: Grants
17. April Pedersen, Co-Founder, Salsa Labs
    Salsa Labs has grown into one of the most established online organizing and fundraising platforms for the nonprofit and political sectors. The platform allows over 3K nonprofits to organize and communicate with their supporters, activists, fans, and donors all managed through a single, hosted application. 
    Funding: Seeking funding
18. Elisabet de los Pinos, Founder: Aura Biosciences
    Elisabet and her team are pioneering the development of nano-delivered drugs through its proprietary Nanosmart platform. In layman's terms? They are working on a chemotherapy agent that will have the ability to treat, target and be monitored in the body. Hat tip to Robert Scoble who highlighted her work while he was at Davos. 
    Funding: Series A
19. Charlotte Rademaekers, Founder and CEO, Call2Action
    Call2Action puts videos and action tools together in a portable online engagement and marketing tool. Their current product is a widget, called Spark to support social justice causes. The company says that they have an average interaction rate (number of actions taken anywhere on a widget divided by the number of times it has been loaded) of 6 times the industry standard at 28%.
    Funding: Seeking funding
20. Victoria Ransom, Co-Founder, Wildfire Interactive
    Their patent-pending technology allows corporations, small businesses, marketing agencies, bloggers and nonprofits to easily create their own branded interactive campaigns (e.g. sweepstakes, contests, give-aways, incentive-based surveys, etc) and to simultaneously publish them in multiple social networks and on their website. 
    Funding: Series A
21. Carol Realini, Founder & CEO, Obopay
    A pioneer in mobile payments, Obopay lets consumers pay anyone, anywhere in the U.S. in just a few seconds using your phone. It offers flexible, instant mobile money that lets you send money to family, collect or make online payments, get a prepaid debit card or send a remittance. 
    Funding: Series A, B, C, D, and E
22. Birame Sock, Founder, MyReceipts
    A green solution for consumers to receive and file receipts. Participating retailers include Whole Foods (who also offer digital coupons to MyReceipts users), Best Buy, Amazon, and more.
    Funding: Uknown
23. Wendy Tan White, Co-Founder, MoonFruit
    Moonfruit provides software that allows users, with no previous web technology experience, to build and develop websites. Over 1.2 million business and individual websites have been built by people around the world using Moonfruit's website building tool SiteMaker. The company started in 1999, endured the dot com bust and made a big come back in 2009. 
    Funding: Series A
24. Amra Tareen, Founder and CEO, Allvoices.com
    A global community that shares and validates user-generated news, videos, images and opinions tied to news events and people from all over the world. In January the site received over 11 million unique web visitors. 
    Funding: Series A
25. Alexa von Tobel, Founder, Learnvest
    Learnvest makes personal finance fun (well as fun as you can possibly make it). Whether you're buying a home, saving for grad school, or simply trying to become a better 'budgeter,' LearnVest provides products, content, and a community to make personal financial information accessible to millions of women. Learnvest offers a customized financial action plan, a budgeting tool, and more.
    Funding: Series A


A LONGER LIFESPAN—IF WE CAN AFFORD IT

Today’s Americans are going to live much longer than they think. What does that mean for their financial futures?

How long do you think you’ll live? Seventy years? Seventy-five? Most Americans don’t see themselves living all that long past retirement age—and why would they want to, anyway? Old age is often thought of as a drag, a tedious and unpleasant slide into sickness. Even if everybody could make it to 100, would they want to?

“For years, we’ve heard this myth: The older you get, the sicker you get,” says Dr. Thomas Perls, a specialist in aging and longevity. “And at some point, we’re all going to have to recognize that it’s just not true.”

Perls has devoted much of his career to busting old-age canards, a specialty he developed while conducting a study on centenarians—people over 100 years old. Over the course of the study, Perls found that although many of the centenarians had age-related diseases, they were handling them much better than the average senior. Looking over the patients’ histories, Perls discovered that, by and large, the centenarians had taken excellent care of themselves throughout their lives, remaining healthy and independent even into their 90s. So he coined a new adage: The older you get, the healthier you’ve been.

“We should take an enabling and positive view of aging,” Perls says, “because most Americans generally have the genetic makeup, the blueprint, to live at least into their late 80s. It just depends on what they do with that blueprint.”

After developing his hypothesis about our bodies’ potential for a healthy old age, Perls decided to launch a new study to confirm his theories, this time focusing on Seventh Day Adventists. According to the dictates of their religion, Adventists are forbidden to smoke, drink, or eat meat, and they are encouraged to exercise regularly and pray frequently. (For believers, prayer often relieves stress.) And almost all of them live into their 80s and 90s.

The Adventists’ astonishing longevity was made even more intriguing by disparate genetics. As a group, they are geographically and ethnically heterogeneous; in other words, they don’t have any obvious genetic predisposition to longevity. That fact seems to contradict another common myth: that only people with certain protective genes can live an extremely long life.

“Many people assume that without those protective genes, we don’t have a good shot at longevity,” Perls says. “But the Adventist study shows that that’s just not true.”

Of course, having protective genes—as about 15 to 20 percent of us do—certainly helps. Most of the centenarians Perls studied had these genes, which help to block cancer, heart disease, and other common health pitfalls. These genes allow the centenarians to live generally rotten lifestyles—lots of junk food, little exercise—without a significant toll on their health.

Yet the centenarians had another surprise in store: In addition to protective genes, many also had bad genes. Previously, researchers had assumed that longevity required a lack of these genes, which put people at greater risk of disease and illness. But it turns out that the mere presence of protective genes is enough to get us into our 90s and beyond. In response to this finding, scientists are currently looking for a way to synthesize these genes and bring their benefits to the rest of the population.

For now, though, what can Americans do to maximize our genes’ potential? Perls suggests that taking simple actions every day can have a major impact on our later years. Smoking is off the table, naturally, and junk food should be minimized. Regular exercise is, predictably, a must, as are relaxation and rejuvenation. And those of us with health problems in the family—cancer, heart disease, even high cholesterol—should be particularly mindful to see a doctor for regular checkups. If we follow these simple steps and maximize our genetic blueprint, there’s no reason most of us can’t live healthy lives well into our 80s. But that possibility presents another problem: How many of us are prepared to live that long?

“When people are planning financially, I sincerely doubt they believe they’ll live 20 or 30 years beyond the age of 60,” says Perls. “And that’s reason to worry.”

Perls believes that as baby boomers zip past retirement age, many will run unexpectedly low on finances, creating a strain on themselves, their families, and society as a whole. He’s even created a tool to help people calculate their likely lifespan in the hopes of waking them up to their longevity potential.

“We’re a healthier society than we've ever been,” Perls notes, “and the baby boomer population has a good chance of reaching their maximum longevity potential. But they’re going to need to start planning for it now.”

10 Tax Deductions Freelancers Can Make

Tax time can be especially stressful for freelancers: despite paying estimated tax payments throughout the year, it’s rare that a freelancer doesn’t still have to come up with some money for April 15 — or come up with a long enough list of deductions.

There are quite a few deductions available to freelancers that may not seem obvious when you first sit down with all those 1099s and receipts. But as long as you have the right documentation, you can write off plenty of deductions you may never have thought of.

Unpaid invoices

Did one of your clients disappear over the course of last year, leaving you with an unpaid invoice or two? The IRS allows you to write off those invoices as bad debts. Writing them off as a freelancer is a little more complicated than for other types of businesses: that invoice must be included in your gross income, which means that you must use the accrual method of accounting (reporting income as you earn it). If you use the cash method, you didn’t need to report an unpaid invoice to the IRS at all. For more information, look at IRS Publication 535.

Niche research

Conferences, books and other research-related expenses are deductible.

If most of your business comes from a specific industry — like a website designer who primarily creates websites for real estate agents — you can write off research into that area. Conferences, books and other research-related expenses are deductible. You’ll want to hang on to receipts for your research expenses.

Meetings at the coffee shop

Do you head to the local Starbucks whenever you want to discuss a project in person? If you buy coffee for the pleasure of meeting with a client, partner or other business contact, you can write off half of your expenses. It may seem like a small amount, but if you’re a freelancer who routinely uses a coffee shop as a work space, coffee costs can add up. Keep your coffee receipts and, to make things easier if you have to go back through your receipts later on, make a note directly on the receipt of who you had coffee with and why.

Job hunting

Any payments you make to access job boards and other lists — even if they aren’t for permanent jobs — are deductible. The same goes for any costs associated with joining a website that lets you bid on projects or other methods of buying leads on new opportunities. You’ll want to hold on to your receipts for any such expenses. If they’re online, either save them as PDFs or print them out.

PayPal fees

Businesses are able to deduct credit card convenience fees because they’re a necessary cost of doing business. You can write off PayPal’s fees if you accept payment through that website, no matter how much or how little business you’ve transacted over the site in the course of the year. The easiest way to document those fees is to wait until the end of the year and print out your account history.

Virtual assistants and other freelancers

You’ll want an invoice from whoever you work with, as well as a record of when you paid the invoice.

Subcontracting part of a project to another freelancer or hiring a virtual assistant can be an easy way for a freelancer to take on more work and make more money — and the expense to do so is tax deductible. You’ll want to document any such transactions carefully so that you can prove that your use of freelancers and virtual assistants is purely a contract arrangement, rather than employment — which you would have to pay extra taxes for. You’ll want an invoice from whoever you work with, as well as a record of when you paid the invoice.

Your home expenses

If you work out of your house, you can deduct part of what you pay towards utilities, insurance and mortgage interest. The home office deduction is one of the more complicated deductions you can take, but it’s worth it. You’ll need to use IRS Form 8829in most cases to document your use, and you’ll need to know the exact area of your home as well as of the space you use as an office — you’ll figure the percentage of your expenses you can claim based on the percentage of your home you use as office space.

Cellphone and Skype

According to the IRS, you can’t deduct the expense of the first telephone line in your home, regardless of your use your home for business. However, in addition to any second phone line you might have, you can deduct your expenses for your cellphone (assuming you use it primarily for business) and applications like Skype.

Professional advice

If you find yourself in a situation where you need to consult with a lawyer or an accountant, for any reason related to your freelancing, you can write off those professional fees. Documenting such expenses is just a matter of having an invoice or receipt.

Payments to non-profits

While charitable donations are not deductible as business expenses, you can write off payments you make to non-profit organizations. The IRS’ favorite example is paying for an ad in a local church’s directory, but the cost to attend networking events held by non-profits and similar expenses are all deductible as well. You’ll need receipts. And, by the way, just because you can’t write off donations as business expenses doesn’t mean that you can’t write them off at all — they’re personal deductions instead.

Not all of the deductions listed above will be available to every freelancer, of course. Because it’s impossible to give universal tax advice, you’ll want to double check to make sure that you qualify for a particular deduction. Better yet, consult with an accountant or tax professional who can go over your specific situation with you. You can often write off the expense of hiring an accountant as another business expense, by the way.

It’s also worth noting that that these deductions meet the U.S. requirements — other countries have different tax laws. The following sites can at least give you a starting point on your taxes if you’re based in another country:

• Australian Taxation Office (Business Deductions)
• UK Revenue and Customs (Small Business Topics)
• Canada Revenue Agency (Small Business Topics)

The Entrepreneurial Mindset

The era of “regular” jobs is coming to an end. The Entrepreneurial Midset infographic from oDesk warns us of the changing mindset of workers. They want more freedom and are more likely to quit their current jobs in search of what they want.

Workers want freedom, and this desire is driving them towards independent (and often entrepreneurial) career paths. Following a prior study on disruption of work from the perspective of businesses, this survey examines the future of work as envisioned by professionals. Results found that many are planning their escape from corporate jobs — 72% of freelancers still at “regular” jobs want to quit entirely, and 61% say they are likely to quit within two years.

Millennials in particular are pursuing independent careers that foster faster progression than traditional hierarchical organizations. Of almost 2,000 Millennial respondents, 58% classified themselves as entrepreneurs. These responses (from more than 3,000 freelancers worldwide who have worked online) quantify the mindset of freelancers today, providing a glimpse into the professional landscape of tomorrow.

There are some great statisitics in this design, but it’s disappointing that some of the data near the end is just shown in text instead of visualized.