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constructivworks · 7 years ago

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New Post has been published on Constructiv Works

New Post has been published on http://www.constructivworks.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-build-a-log-cabin/

How Much Does it Cost to Build a Log Cabin?

The type of construction you choose will greatly affect the overall cost of your log home. Although there are hybrid methods, log homes generally fall into three categories: full scribe, post and beam, and timber frame.

Full Scribe

When you think of the typical rustic log cabin, you’re probably picturing full scribe construction. This consists of placing round-milled logs horizontally, stacked on top of one another and notched (interlocked) at the corners. The logs are then cemented together with chinking, a synthetic adhesive that locks out moisture and allows for settling and expansion. Due to the use of many large beams, this method of construction is typically the most expensive. The costs are less, however, if you select a home that is premade in an assembly yard. If the logs are to be milled on site, the costs are considerably more.

Estimated total cost (for a 2,500 square-foot home): #######

Estimated cost per square foot: ####

Post and Beam

With post and beam construction, the logs function mainly as the frame of the home. Many vertical logs (posts) support the weight of large horizontal logs (beams) that create the outer frame supporting the roof and walls. The walls are then filled in through tradition framing or with timber panels.

Aesthetically, these log homes have the appearance of blending features of traditional and modern log homes. If you’re looking for that mountain resort feel, this may be the type of construction for you. Price-wise, post and beam construction is middle-of-the-road, less than full scribe, but more than timber frame.

Estimated total cost (for a 2,500 square-foot home): #######

Estimated cost per square foot: ####

Other Factors Affecting Costs

In addition to the type of construction, several other factors will determine how much it will cost to build your log home. Here’s a list of other things to consider:

What species of timber will you use? (Cedar is generally more costly.)

Will you use pre-milled timber or have it milled on site? (It’s more costly to mill it on site.)

How large are the timber beams required by your design? (Larger beams are more expensive.)

Will you choose one of our designs or design your own? (Paying an architect to design your own costs considerably more.)

Will you have basic or extensive exterior and interior finishings?

Does the property require large-scale excavation to prepare for the foundation?

What type of roof will you put on?

How big will your deck be?

By considering the type of construction and these other common factors, you can much more accurately budget what it will cost to have that log home you’ve always dreamed of owning. Before long, you’ll find yourself breathing in that fresh mountain air on the weekends, and all the work and planning will have paid off. Your log home will be yours to enjoy for years to come!

Please don’t hesitate to contact Log Homes Canada. We’re here to assist you with any questions to help your planning go smoothly.

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constructivworks · 7 years ago

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New Post has been published on Constructiv Works

New Post has been published on http://www.constructivworks.com/the-benefits-of-social-media-automation-tools-for-businesses/

The Benefits of Social Media Automation Tools for Businesses

Read this great article from Jarvee,com and thought I should share it. Hope you all enjoy it as much as I did.

Generating leads, fostering business-client relationships, and increasing sales are the hopes of all aspiring entrepreneurs. Accomplishing such ambitions are vitally important to the health and maturity of your company or brand. Years ago, before the rise of Social Media – growing a business really took great strides, tremendous effort, and creative marketing strategies.

However, times have changed and as discussed in a Mashable post on SM automation: Social Media has become the dominant force for businesses for who want to drive traffic and conversions. It comes as no surprise since Social Media is responsible for attracting a monthly audience measured that’s in the billions which leaves enough market-share for us all to target.

Social Media is evolving and so should your marketing strategies. Social Media encompasses much more than only Facebook; over time, new platforms emerged and were quickly adopted and used by the masses. Such platforms include Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, and Tumblr… Just to name a few.

When it comes to Social Media, you want your brand to reach maximum audience reach potential and doing so will require a tremendous amount of time (until now). In a recent report published by the “Pew Research Center on Internet & Technology” – studies have shown that 71% of all Americans aged 18-24 use Instagram with that number increasing to 73% for the number of individuals using Facebook.

Needless to say, these numbers represent the audience in which your business can target and by automating your social media marketing efforts – you’ll be able to reach more consumers.

With so many Social Media channels available for brands to target – establishing a presence on each of these platforms can be overwhelmingly difficult. Not all of us have the spare time to dedicate to sharing updates and promotions about our brand across 5+ networks per day. However, not doing so could lead to a consequential reaction resulting in a loss of traffic, leads, and sales.

You don’t want your business to under-perform and neither do we. This is why we’re introducing you to “Social Media Automation Tools” for businesses. Tools which will enable you to cross-promote your company on multiple SM channels, at the click of a button.

Use Social Media Automation to Free-Up Time

As an aspiring entrepreneur or an established business owner – your time is valuable and any approach that frees up your time without sacrificing productivity is a move that’d be wise to make. Well, welcome to Social Media automation – a marketing and content distribution technique that automates the tedious task of posting to multiple accounts.

Time management is crucially important to growing a business and spending time manually curating and publishing posts by hand can take precious time out of your day – time that could be better spent on another aspect of growing your business.

If you’re ready to adopt SM automation and want to learn how it’ll help your business excel – please read on.

First and foremost, social media automation is going to free up a lot of your time which in and of itself is a tremendous benefit. However, it doesn’t stop there. By automating your social media marketing efforts, you’ll be able to schedule and publish posts, automatically respond to audience feedback (comments, mentions, etc.), and manage daily actions – all through one, user-friendly interface.

By automating social media tasks you’ll free up more time to focus on:

Engaging your Audience – Manually keeping track of content feedback from your audience can be challenging. By using social media automation, you’ll be notified of responses, queries, messages, and comments received in an interface that’s easy to navigate and understand. Rather than spending time manually checking for responses, you can now spend that time curating helpful responses to your audience.

In return, you’ll provide more insightful feedback, your audience receives better help, and everyone benefits.

Curating Engaging Content – Content marketing is where most businesses fall short. Business owners, brands, entrepreneurs – time isn’t always on our side and we may be rushed to curate, edit, and publish content for our audience. Unfortunately, you can’t rush art, and, you can’t rush content quality. Sharing content manually across multiple social sites can consume precious time out of your schedule.

As discussed in a report on what mistakes to avoid in Social Media: all social media platforms should be treated and posted to equally.

Rather than investing your time in the process of publishing, automate the publication process so more time can be spent on producing the content quality that your audience has come to expect.

In Jarvee, ensuring that your content reaches all of your channels is as simple as adding in your account credentials. It couldn’t be easier and you’ll save yourself a TON of time and effort.

Brand Messaging – Distributing your content across multiple social media accounts is a lot of work and you want to make sure your content reaches all channels. By manually managing the publishing of your content on so many accounts it can be easy to glance over and forget about getting your content published for the day on a particular account.

Aside from the time you’ll save – automating your social media marketing will permit you to have your content evenly distributed across all of your chosen networks automatically with no chance of anything being missed.

I absolutely love the intuitive user interface that Jarvee provides as I can easily monitor my branding efforts across all of my social media accounts and can ensure that scheduling for posts are published as they should.

Understand your Businesses Position on Social Media

Some companies spend thousands of dollars on generating data reports and statistic overviews and needless to say – such a process is costly and time consuming. By automating social media, you’ll be able to view all of your accounts from an easy-to-use interface that will display account follower count, mentions, shares, and much more data that is extremely useful for you.

Before the practice of automating tasks – manually reviewing each account to understand growth and brand reach was a part of all businesses daily routine. However, you can alleviate yourself of having to manually check each of your accounts by accepting the social media automation concept to help you save time while giving you a better idea of where you stand.

Set and Forget – Manage Account Actions with Ease

There’s no debate to be had when I say that saving time is the biggest benefit to automating social media marketing efforts. Let’s take for example an Instagram page that I have for one of my 3 brands. Initially, I spent about a couple hours per day on this account alone. I spent precious time uploading photos, responding to comments, following others, and answering DM’s.

Now, if we take a look at the Instagram tool provided by Jarvee (which I’m currently using) – I have access to automation features that include:

Post Scheduling

Auto Re-post

Auto-Follow

Follow-Back

Unfollow

Auto-Like

In addition to 15 other functionality options that they offer.

Just by automating the 6 tasks listed above, I was able to accomplish quite a few things including saving time, growing my brand through following others automatically, and uploading/reposting content (scheduled).

This has afforded me the opportunity to work on offline marketing which has driven my business new clients and sales that I otherwise wouldn’t have had without the use of social media automation.

What are you waiting for? If you’re like me and want to utilize your time more effectively, consider automating your social media activity so that your time can be spent on growing your business rather than maintaining it.

Elias Arosemena is a startup advisor, social media aficionado, and SEO consultant. On his blog, MyMarketingInsider, he provides actionable insight on how brands can excel through Social Media Marketing and SEO. You can connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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constructivworks · 7 years ago

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New Post has been published on Constructiv Works

New Post has been published on http://www.constructivworks.com/supporting-local-artists/

Supporting Local Artists

A little about Paper Heart Calligraphy: Courtney’s passion for lettering is not just about making pretty things to look at! Although that is most definitely part of it.

Lettering is where she has a passion for encouragement and love meets my love for creating.

For PHC, lettering is about connection. It’s about sharing in struggle and saying to another, “Yes, me too.” It’s about spurring each other on with words of affirmation and kindness. It’s about resting in the loving and gracious words of the Lord.

Courtney’s hope is that you will come to this space and “be encouraged to encourage” others.

This is what lettering is about to her and I believe it. No I not only believe it, I’ve experienced it and I hope you get the chance to experience it too!

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constructivworks · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on Constructiv Works

New Post has been published on http://www.constructivworks.com/how-to-structure-your-content-calendar/

How to structure your content calendar

We just recently partnered up with Spyfu to help our clients ranks better with SEO. Spyfu recently published this article on content calendar structure and it’s a great example of how to focus your info in a main hub and then support it with interesting and quality articles surrounding that keyword. Loved the article so much I thought I should share it. If you enjoyed it, please go to Spyfu and check them out. Great group, great product and quality content. Enjoy.

How Do You Decide What Goes into a Content Calendar?

Your content calendar should help you to identify the core pieces of content that you need to publish, as well as the supporting items you need. Done well, it all works together to help you connect with your audience and earn some traffic.

Early enthusiasm could have you saying, “I want to publish a blog post a week, a case study each month, and a white paper every other week;” That’s fantastic. Run with it! Just know, it is an entirely different task to put those elements together and keep up your pace.

If you structure your content calendar with the following guidelines, it helps you stay on schedule and cover the important points. Here’s how to build one that keeps you focused without overextending yourself.

Choose the days based on your audience’s needs. Choose the actual pieces based on your overall content strategy.

Once you have a general list of topics to cover, look at your available resources to figure out your how often you would schedule a new post.

It’s best to start with a pace you can keep up with. If you share something every other day and then burn through your backlog of content, you might get discouraged more easily than just sharing something every week or every other week.

Also, consider the target dates for your audience. Are they tied to a more traditional Monday through Friday work week, or is this an industry where they work weekends and need to focus during traditional off-hours? That’s going to help you figure out how many pieces you really need each week.

Rule of thumb: start with a “hub and spoke” approach.

Schedule a few substantial pieces of content on a core topic–a relevant term that gets a high number of searches each month–and support it with smaller, more specific pieces that extend from it, like a spoke.

Hub and spoke pieces complement each other

For example, your Monday morning blog post might be a 1,500 word article that speaks about college financial aid. During the week you might use social media to publish supporting statistics and relevant quotes that can be linked back to the article.

Then, you can follow up with smaller articles that take a detailed look at specific components of the initial post. Those smaller (500 word) articles could discuss new rules about applying for certain grants or scholarship opportunities.

On Thursday, you might publish an infographic blog post that gathers together the statistics published on social media throughout the week. Finally, you might use a video that examines student loans vs. student grants.

Monday – 1500 word article

Social media posts during the week

Wednesday and Friday – Smaller 500 word articles on specific details of the main post

Thursday – infographic

Friday – video

The calendar should work for you. Not the other way around.

If this pace is too fast then stretch it out. As long as you keep the goals of your content marketing efforts in mind, you can create a calendar that focuses your attention on both core content and supporting content pieces.

Use placeholders if your content is still under construction. In fact, writing “1000 word article on core topic” works as both a calendar marker and a reminder of what to work on. Pending work can help you plan and prioritize.

Change it up

Make sure that you’ve got diversity in your formats. Plan for social posts, videos, short announcements, and infographics.

What type of content should you be publishing?

By “type” I mean more than just a big article. You can decide the actual topics that make up your content when you have the bigger picture.

We elaborated on that in this article. It was written as a companion piece to this article, and it expands on taking your audience, resources, and time limits into consideration. That helps you answer what you should be writing about. The focus right here is how you should organize and express those thoughts.

Remember to think of the goals of your content marketing campaign as well as the needs of your audience. A social-only campaign might not be right, or you maybe infographics are gold. Insights like that come from putting out content and measuring your audience reactions. These insights come from ongoing data, and yes, they also come from that magic sense of knowing what makes your customers tick. (But mostly data.)

Here are some formats that you try to see how they fit with your audience (and your content style). Bonus — they help you expand one topic into multiple pieces.

Slide decks from internal training sessions;

Product demos that can be transformed into infographics;

Customer survey results that can be used for white papers or case studies;

Press releases that showcase product or service updates, or vital company news;

Newsletters that provide valuable insights;

Email campaigns;

Blog posts; and

Social media posts that link to relevant content, statistics, or industry news.

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constructivworks · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on Strongbow Resources

New Post has been published on http://www.strongbowresources.com/ideas-selecting-right-crane/

Some Ideas On Selecting The Right Crane

Understand the process of selecting the right crane for your project

Selecting the right crane for your project is one of the most important things. In order to pick the right crane, you need to have a lot of technical and general information about the project; specifically where the crane is to be used. You need to be aware of the load rating, along with the type of ground where the crane would be sitting. Any negligence in the selection procedure can cause financial losses, delays and even accidents.

Strongbow resources provides good quality content to its readers on a regular basis. This article is very important for those involved in any type of project that demands the use of a crane; be it construction, power generation, energy, manufacturing, production etc. Selecting the right crane for your project is not difficult. It just takes some research to find the right answers for your project requirement. Luckily, this article addresses all the important questions that you need the answers to, so that you can select the best crane with ease.

Read the complete guide to learn more about selecting the right crane!

Here are the questions and answers:

What Load is Being Lifted?

Loads can shift at random intervals, and they may be balanced in unusual ways. One important part of deciding which kind of crane to use is to determine what type of load you are going to move. This inquiry process needs to include both the materials inside, and the method of containing them. A liquid inside a tank is going to have dramatically different movement characteristics than a flat car trailer full of tightly packed solid objects. Exploring the entire fleet of possibilities can benefit you if you are unaware of the types of cranes available to you.

How Far is the Load From the Crane?

The counterweight, the support structure and the stability of the boom are all affected by the distance from the load’s origin point to the base of the crane. As well, the rated load weight also varies based upon the distance from the crane’s base to the load at the end of the boom or jib. Every crane has a load chart that explains how much load can be hoisted at one given point, and exceeding this level of weight can cause problems with the operation. In some instances, such as in factory or other tightly confined spaces, overhead cranes can be your best bet.

What Kinds of Obstacles are There?

In many environments, especially urban and suburban ones, cranes need to be adapted to circumventing obstacles. In addition to winds, there may be power lines, other buildings and other obstacles that can keep a crane from being able to simply raise the load directly from its origin point to its destination. In some instances, even the control scheme the crane uses can be difficult in the presence of obstacles, with pendant station cables getting caught. Radio controls may be more effective and less potentially hazardous.

How May the Crane Affect the General Public?

Just like how tower cranes are affected heavily by windy weather, the public in the area the crane is operating may be affected by this operation. If the crane’s size impacts the flow of traffic beyond a reasonable threshold, this can cause problems for the entire construction site. Further, if the crane is likely to cause issues with the operation of nearby buildings, this needs to be taken into consideration prior to selecting the type of crane you are going to use for your project.

To learn about the topic in detail, read the complete article that describes how to choose the right crane for your project.

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constructivworks · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on Constructiv Works

New Post has been published on http://www.constructivworks.com/why-seo-and-ux-make-for-a-great-website/

Why SEO and UX Make for a Great Website

The expectations of online customers have changed dramatically over the years. When the internet was in its infancy, no one knew what they wanted or what to expect. However, now customers have been online for a long time and they know what they want from a website.

As customers have become smarter, search engines have adapted how they interpret and display information based on the modification of user intent. This is the result of evolving online environments that have shaped how customers interact with content.

No matter how someone finds and consumes your content, they have certain expectations when they interact with your brand. Every business must adapt.

That’s why it’s critical for businesses to combine user experience (UX) and search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. Doing so will ensure more conversions and help you maintain a competitive advantage. Focusing on only one of these will result in sub-optimal experiences for your customers and less revenue.

Let’s look at how SEO and UX work together to drive more conversions for your business.

The Common Goals of SEO and UX

The goal of every business is to make money.

No matter your industry, you depend on your website to build trust, answer questions, provide services, and sell products.

You depend on a holistic online presence to drive qualified traffic and increase conversions on your website. This means that you need to maximize your search engine visibility while also optimizing your website.

Your customers have specific problems, and they turn to search engines to find their answers. Once they find a website that meets their needs, they expect a great experience.

This is why SEO and UX need to work together. Put simply: UX + SEO = $.

SEO is mainly focused on external elements and the architecture of a website and usually looks to drive traffic to your website. UX is primarily focused on engaging customers once they reach your website and implementing a design that minimizes distraction to maximize conversions.

Driving traffic to your site is worthless unless that traffic is qualified. At the same time, the design of your website is useless if you don’t have any traffic to convert.

Collectively, SEO and UX need to focus on the intent of your users so your business produces a website that turns visitors into customers.

SEO and UX: BFFs <3

UX designers and SEOs were once competing against each other. Each thought their craft was better, and in many companies budget was divided between departments, so they had to fight to ensure adequate funding. However, as online marketing becomes more user-focused, many companies have discovered that SEO and UX work together to drive more sales.

Instead of competing, SEOs and UX teams should realize that they both focus on delivering a great experience at different stages of the customer’s journey. In fact, SEO and UX are two sides of the same coin.

Because search engine algorithms have evolved based on user experience, marketers have learned to use SEO and UX together to drive qualified leads and increase conversions on their website.

How User Experience & SEO Affect Each Other

Today’s online interactions between your brand and customers are more diverse than ever. At the same time, your online customers are more informed and have more choices to solve their problems.

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SEO has the data that UX teams need to produce personalized experiences for customers. At the same time, UX teams have the website framework and content optimization insight that SEOs need to make crucial decisions to ensure rankings in SERPs.

When SEO and UX teams share their findings, they can create optimized experiences for their users. Your business needs to make money through your website. You can’t do that by only focusing on technical SEO, or only looking at UX.

How SEO Affects User Experience

Search engines use algorithms to identify patterns in how people search and what they are searching for online. Due to the nature of the industry, SEOs utilize different “levers” like keywords and links to rank their web properties in SERPs. This is the basic principle of SEO, so at its core, SEO focuses on identifying, publishing, and optimizing content that will attract qualified readers.

Just as keyword data indicates what prospective website visitors are looking for, this data is also vital for UX designers because it serves as a sample size of their overall audience. This information is even more important than ever as UX designers integrate SEO data to influence their development choices.

When you know what your customers are searching for and how your prospects search, it’s easier to make adjustments to your website so visitors can easily discover what they are looking for. SEOs can work with their UX teams to determine what pages on the website should be optimized to increase conversions.

Why UX Is Pivotal to the Future of SEO

While SEO data is great for highlighting general user trends, this information can’t pinpoint specific issues on a website that influences how individuals interact with website content.

A smooth and optimized website experience means that users spend more time engaging with the site and (hopefully) return to the site often. Great UX design is vital to the personal experience on a website.

Not only does UX influence how individuals perceive a website, but it can also positively impact how search engines view your website’s authority, relevance, and trust (which can indirectly improve your search rankings).

Website navigation is one of the biggest ways that UX impacts elements of SEO. For example, if users aren’t able to find the information they need quickly and easily through either the main navigation menu or how information is organized on a site then those users will leave without converting.

Great navigation is even more important today as a majority of traffic is coming from mobile devices. A couple of other UX factors that impact a site’s SEO include how fast your website loads and whether your content is engaging.

Google and other search engines know that where, how, and when people consume content is changing. As a result, UX teams need to work with their SEO counterparts to ensure that their website is optimized for their users just as much as it is optimized for search engines.

Using SEO and UX as Tools to Improve Your Business

Now that we have looked at how SEO and UX can drive qualified traffic and increase conversions for your company, it is time to improve your website based on the customer journey.

As search engines, your customers, and other technologies continue to evolve, your business must look at how to align your business assets with how your customers behave and engage with your content. Combining your SEO and UX efforts into a valuable strategy that will benefit your customers.

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constructivworks · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on Constructiv Works

New Post has been published on http://www.constructivworks.com/some-ideas-on-selecting-the-right-crane/

Some Ideas on Selecting The Right Crane

Here are some ideas on selecting the right crane

Ideas on selecting the right crane: Cranes are very important for big projects. Primarily, cranes are essential to be used in the construction industry, manufacturing sector, production field and energy related or power generation. Other than that, several other sectors also require the use of cranes for different projects. The selection of the right or best crane for your project then becomes extremely important. If you mistakenly select a crane that is not the best for your needs, then you may have to pay a very heavy price in terms of financial losses, delays and even accidents.

One of the good qualities of Constructiv Works is to provide its audience some valuable curated content. So, another important article is presented for our readers. This particular article addresses some very important questions which are essential for choosing the best crane for your project.

If you are unsure about which crane to pick, you must read the complete guide to learn how to select the right crane for yourself!

The questions and answers are provided below:

How High is the Work to Be Done?

The height of the work is going to impact how the boom is set up, as well as what kind of boom will be necessary. Furthermore, the extension of the crane’s boom can be affected by the wind, which increases exponentially as the height increases. In addition, the amount of counterweight needed to heft loads to ever-increasing heights needs to be calculated differently versus if the height is lower. Tower cranes now have dramatically higher capacity than they once did, and they can often lift over 1,000 meters into the air.

How Far is the Load From the Crane?

What Kinds of Obstacles are There?

Read the full guide on how to select the right crane to obtain more information about this important topic.

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constructivworks · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on Constructiv Works

New Post has been published on http://www.constructivworks.com/some-strategies-to-minimize-construction-risk/

Some Strategies to Minimize Construction Risk

These strategies will help you lessen the construction risk

Lowering the construction risk: Construction is a dangerous, difficult and demanding job. The risks are high and even a small negligence can have grave consequences. The risks, however, can be lessened by the use of certain techniques and strategies. The project needs to be properly planned by construction manager, keeping all the things and risks in mind.

Even the little amounts of negligence can cause huge financial issues, wastage of time and precious resources and can even cause heavy injuries or major accidents at the site. Such big losses can be prevented by taking extra care of certain things. The tasks, roles and responsibilities must be properly shared and distributed so that the risks could be minimized.

Constructiv works has always been providing excellent tips specifically on cranes and construction and this article also provides some great tips to minimize and lessen the risk factor in construction.

Read the complete article to obtain valuable information about construction!

Step 1: Allocate Risk

The contract negotiation and preparation phase is the best time for all project leaders, including the owner, contractors, architects, and building manager, to come together and anticipate all potential risks and assign responsibility of those risks to parties most apt to handle them should the unwanted arise. For example, the building owner and architect should be charged with ensuring design and environment issues are worked out and should draft a plan in case something arises. Meanwhile, contractors should be charged with ensuring personnel are equipped with all the necessary safety guidelines and understand how best to maneuver the environment with equipment in a safe and secure manner.

Step 2: Add Protection with Indemnity Policies and Provisions

Even the best of plans can go awry. To be more proactive in managing construction risk, it is essential to ensure professional indemnity insurance coverage is up-to-date and meets the needs of the current project. This might require talking to an attorney or insurance representative to ensure the following policies (either under your insurance or insurance of partners) are in place at or by the start time of construction:

Product liability insurance. This type of coverage protects against liability for injuries to people or property damages that arise from products supplied by a business. The suppliers of common construction equipment, such as escalators and lifts, are often required to maintain this type of insurance.

Public liability insurance. This type of coverage protects against liability arising from the death or personal injuries to third parties and for property damages belonging to third parties. While most construction projects should ensure some type of security measures, such as security fencing around around the perimeter of a project zone, this type of clause ensures that should something happen, it will be handled swiftly and with care.

Latent defects insurance. This type of coverage is generally held by a building owner as it protects the owner against the cost of rectifying structural components of a building in the case of unknown or unforeseeable defects. In certain provisions, the contractor may be held responsible in arenas of material placement and known quality-of-work issues.

The complete article which contains all the information and strategies to minimize construction risk, is posted on TNT Crane & Rigging website. You need to read the full article in order to understand the topic clearly.

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constructivworks · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on Constructiv Works

New Post has been published on http://www.constructivworks.com/article-make-viral-loop-linkedin/

Article on How to make a Viral Loop on LinkedIn

I came across this great post by Anna Vital and thought it was too good not to share. I want to share an elegant trick where a “viral loop” on LinkedIn got me over 76,000 email subscribers in just one month.

I use the SEO software Ahrefs to support my clients in getting found online. I typically go to Ahrefs blog mostly for SEO insights, advice, and studies. And there’s no doubt that good SEO will create a steady, passive stream of visitors to your website.

But it can take quite a while to get good results.

A recent study here at Ahrefs has shown that almost 95% of newly published pages don’t get to the Top10 within a year. That’s why when you’re bootstrapping your startup you need to start working on your website’s SEO as soon as possible.

Hence you need a kind of marketing move that can start bringing you customers right away.

That’s what we call a “growth hack.”

A huge, quality list of email subscribers is probably the most promising thing to “hack.”

I am going to show you a simple trick that got me 76k+ email subscribers in less than a month.

Here’s a screenshot of my email list growth over the past 30 days:

You may have seen better, but for me that was a tremendous success!

To get these results, I started a “viral loop” on LinkedIn where I played the curiosity card. Let me show you exactly how to do that.

The Concept

One day, as I was checking my LinkedIn feed, I saw that one of my connections had commented “Yes” on some post with free presentation slides.

As a designer, I’m seeing tons of such posts with templates and slides and stuff. But this time I wondered:

“Yes” what?

I opened the post and saw thousands of other people writing the same comment: “Yes”.

Naturally I wanted to figure out what was going on there.

Having dug deeper I uncovered a small group of other similar posts. Here are just a few examples:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/free-powerpoint-strategy-transformation-templates-20-david-tang

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/real-ultimate-powerpoint-slides-save-hours-your-next-pitch-jeffery

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ultimate-team-workshop-activities-pack-rock-your-next-nick-martin

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/digital-marketing-deck-template-60-slides-ilan-nass

https://www.facebook.com/AnikSingalcom/posts/1019714528089474

They all looked almost the same:

They were giving out something free yet valuable in their post.

The post had a link to the opt-in form. So people had to give their email address in exchange for the “opt-in bribe.”

Nothing special so far, right? But there was one more thing:

One also had to comment “Yes” on a post to get that freebie.

The latter was a gamechanger. By adding this simple comment, people were spreading this post like hell in front of their own LinkedIn connections, bringing more and more people to it and dragging them into a viral loop.

This whole concept hang upon people’s curiosity. And it worked like a charm!

As more and more people saw the article and got a freebie, a viral loop was born. And the author’s email list was growing like hell.

Seeing what they did, I created my own presentation templates to give away and ran a similar campaign.

Here’s what I did

Now let me share the exact steps I took to imply a similar strategy to drastically grow my email list.

1. Create a valuable download

No matter what tricks and hacks you’re using to bring people to your post, you must offer something really valuable in it.

In my case, it was a set of templates for PowerPoint. The templates were easily editable and could be a perfect basis for any presentation. People love such stuff.

But you are not limited to presentations here. Other examples I have seen include email templates, marketing checklists or even discounts — anything people in your niche find valuable and would like to get.

2. Write a LinkedIn article to present your freebie

Explain why people need your freebie and what exactly they will get in your LinkedIn article.

Give your article a headline explaining what freebie you’ll be giving out. People should instantly understand its value.

Mine was: Presentation Templates for PowerPoint (Free download)

I used the word “PowerPoint” in the title as I anticipated people knew exactly what PowerPoint was and how easy it would be to use my presentation templates.

3. Create a catchy header image of a right size

This item is very important. The image in a header will be shown in the LinkedIn feeds as you post will be going viral.

Here’s the header image from my article:

Make sure you’ve used 2:1 aspect ratio. It is the best fit for LinkedIn.

Now this header and title will show up in the feeds of your connections. As people will comment on your post, it will appear in the feeds of their connections as well.

That is how it typically looks:

4. Outline “terms and conditions”

In your article, you need to outline some simple rules to follow in order to get a freebie.

I added the instructions right below the title line:

Pretty straight to the point.

You can add such an instruction to any place (or even places) of your post, where it will be instantly visible.

Now attention here! The first part of this thesis instruction is what makes this post potentially go viral. This is where you ask people to comment on the post.

As you understand, people can download the freebie without commenting or sharing the post. However, since you are giving something away for free, you have a right to ask for something in exchange.

With the results of Ellen Langer’s “Copy machine study” in mind, you can even directly explain WHY one should write “Yes” in comments:

Also you’re not limited to LinkedIn only. Here’s a nice example of a similar campaign on Facebook:

It’s up to you to decide how pushy you want to be.

Writing things like “Comment ‘Yes’ to be whitelisted” may increase the number of comments, but that would be a bold manipulation.

This may also backfire by scaring away commenters who are averse to such tricks.

The 3 obvious options for what you might ask are likes, comments, and shares. All of them will appear in the LinkedIn feeds. However, comments are the most interesting.

Commenting takes more effort than clicking the like button, but you’re just asking to write 3 letters “Yes.” That’s really easy.

This will start a chain reaction of “Yes what?” on LinkedIn. And that’s exactly what you need!

Although a like or share are good options as well.

As we’re setting sights on email subscribers as leads, your instruction must also contain a link to a page with an opt-in form.

5. Set up a landing page with an opt-in form

The easiest way to get a landing page with an opt-in form on it is to use LeadPages service.

As a startup may not be ready to invest into a paid tool. So you can easily use MailChimp’s Form Builder. It’s free before you get 2,000 subscribers. And if you have a WordPress powered website, there is a bunch of plugins that can help you with that.

Here is my opt-in form. It only has an email address field with no need to fill in your name:

This makes the subscription process faster and easier.

I recommend you to use a “double opt-in” route for your new subscribers and send them an email with a confirmation link. This will decrease the number of signups but increase the quality of emails, sifting out the fakes.

Once they click the link to confirm their email address, you will deliver them their freebie.

NOTE:

Make sure the files you are sending are not too large. Put them into a single .zip folder if there are more than one.

6. Publish your article

An article on LinkedIn will be visible to all your connections and followers. Before you publish it, make sure that you set the header image to wide mode.

That’s all for the setup.

Getting Your First 1,000 Comments

Now, once I launched the campaign, I didn’t sit back and wait for the comments to start pouring in. To get the viral effect, you need at least 1,000 comments.

But how do you get them?

You have to promote your article a bit:

1. Share your article on your own LinkedIn profile.

That’s the basic step to start a chain reaction.

2. Share the LinkedIn article (not the page with the signup form) on every social account you have.

LinkedIn has analytics to show you where people came from to your article. At first, my visitors were coming from Facebook, and then switched to LinkedIn when the campaign was well under way.

Monitor where your audience is coming from in the beginning, and double down on that channel.

3. Reply to the comments.

There will be commenters wondering if this is a scam. Reply to them and let them know that you are really doing a free giveaway.

4. Email your existing subscribers.

You might think it makes no sense to get email addresses from people who are already subscribed to you. But the virality of your campaign is not about emails, it’s about comments, likes, and, as a result — shares.

Your email subscribers are the ones who already know you and trust you. They are more likely to help you spread the word.

EDITOR’S NOTE

You can also invest some money in Facebook Ads to give your article an initial acceleration.

Managing the Campaign

Once your campaign turns into a viral loop, you will need to help your new subscribers.

This was a discovery for me, but it turns out that even sending something as simple as a zipped folder will generate hundreds of emails asking for help.

Here’s what you can do to make your life easier:

Preempt misunderstanding by telling people upfront how and when they will get their freebie files.

Since you are sharing intellectual property, include a license into the .zip folder. Specify whether your files are free for personal and commercial use.

Give specific instructions. For example, a few dozen people emailed me for help because the .zip file was not opening in PowerPoint. That’s when I updated my article to tell them in advance that have to unzip it first.

Campaign Expenses

The LinkedIn part of this campaign is free. However, someone has to send those confirmation emails and store the subscribers. There are great premium solutions for that, including Aweber, GetResponse, Ontraport, ConvertKit, and many other.

But the free Constant Contact “New Business” account will also do before you get the first 2k subscribers (you’ll need a paid account beyond this point). You’ll just have to spend some time setting up a custom “Thank you for subscribing” page with a link to your freebie.

Will this Growth Hack Work For You?

I can’t guarantee 76,000 new email addresses in your list. I don’t know anything about your business. However, there are things in this concept that don’t depend on a niche:

People like free stuff. If you make a valuable thing and give it away for free, it will be hard to resist. So make something people really want. And make it good.

Commenting spreads your post across LinkedIn. From your connections to connection’s connections. So if 100 people comment, considering that 55% of LinkedIn users have 500+ connections, your post will be visible in at least 50,000 feeds.

Trust me, 76k subscribers is not a limit!

Final Words

Overall, the quality of leads I’m getting from LinkedIn is high. Yes, I’m still getting new email subscribers, although I published this article around a month and a half ago.

With this viral loop I haven’t just built my email list. I’ve been also getting new leads through LinkedIn messages, and my connections grew from 6,000 to over 8,000.

This campaign was so successful for me because I run an infographic maker company, and quite a few customers of mine use infographics in presentations. There is a direct connection between what I give away and what I sell. So when you design your campaign, think of how your giveaway relates to your niche.

Over to you

How do you like this growth hack? Do you think you could also make use of it? Or maybe you already did?

Do let me know in comments!

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constructivworks · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on http://www.constructivworks.com/a-comparison-between-led-light-bars-and-cfl/

A Comparison Between LED Light Bars and CFL

This article provides a comparison between LED light bars and CFL

Comparison between LED light bars and CFL: LED technology is not a new one. It has been around for quite a while now. Before the emergence of LED technology, we had CFL (Compact Fluorescent Lamps) which were also good and better than the incandescent lamps but the emergence of LED technology completely revolutionized the lighting experience.

LED light bars are efficient, reliable and cost-effective. They show really long and impressive lives and can lighten up your work space to 50,000 hours of light per light or even more. LED light bars are the most popular solution for off-road vehicles and industries. Their popularity is indeed due to the numerous advantages they hold over other types of technologies.

Constructiv works has been consistently providing the readers with great content. This particular article is focused on comparing LED light bars with CFLs, so that it may ease your decision in investing in LED light bars for your lighting solutions.

Hesitant to buy LED light bars for your industry or vehicles? Read the complete article to get rid of your hesitation!

Power Differences

LEDs use less power (watts) per unit of light generated (lumens)

Using a standard 75-watt incandescent bulb as a basis of comparison:

Lamp Watts Lumens Efficacy LED 12.5 1000 80 lumens/watt CFL 20 1150 57.5 lumens/watt

Benefits:

Higher electrical efficiency

Less greenhouse gases

Lifetime

LEDs have a longer lifetime

Lamp Lifetime (hours) Replacement frequency

(40,000 hours)

LED 40,000 1 CFL 10,000 4

Benefits:

Fewer bulb replacements

Less landfill

Lifetime not shortened by power usage patterns (see “On off cycling effects”)

Author: Sarah Bailey

You need to read the complete article to study a good comparative analysis between CFLs and LED light bars.

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constructivworks · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on Strongbow Resources

New Post has been published on http://www.strongbowresources.com/what-should-you-know-before-buying-led-light-bars/

What Should You Know Before Buying LED Light Bars

Things to know before buying LED light bars for your lighting needs

What you must know before buying LED light bars: Incandescent lights are good for using but the truth is that, they are not as efficient as LED light bars. In addition to having superior efficiencies, LED light bars also have long lives. The benefits of using LED light bars do not just end here, as they have proven to be very cost-effective as well!

Indeed, the initial cost of LED light bars seem high but they consume much less energy as compared to other technologies available in the market. It does not matter if you are looking for the best solution for your industry or you are looking for some great lighting for your ATV or that 4 x 4 vehicle that you own. LED light bars are the best solution that you should invest in. Their impressive lifespans, efficient technology and less energy consumption makes them the best solution for all your lighting needs.

Of course, investing in a technology requires some research and you should weigh the pros and cons of the technology prior to reaching a decision. Strongbow resources has always been there for its customers in terms of providing them valuable, engaging and great content. This article is also presented here to provide you some valuable information before you reach a decision to invest in a lighting technology.

Read the complete article to learn more about this topic!

You’ll pay more for an LED light bar

LED light bars are like hybrid cars: cheaper to operate but pricey upfront.

When switching to LED light bars, don’t expect to save buckets of cash. Instead, think of it as an investment. Luckily, competition has increased and LED light bars have come down in price but you should still expect to pay much more than an incandescent light.

Eventually, the LED light bars will pay off, and in the meantime, you’ll enjoy less heat production and longer lifespan.

To obtain more information in order to reach a decision about lighting solution, you need to read the wonderful article discussing this technology.

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constructivworks · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on Constructiv Works

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Important Hand Signals For Crane Operators

This article provides a comprehensive guide on hand signals for crane operators

Hand Signals for Crane Operators: Cranes have become a part and parcel of our modern day industry. They are used everywhere, in almost all the industries. Their ease of operation and efficiency has enabled us to perform seemingly impossible tasks with ease. Skilled crane operators have the ability to work independently and operate the crane in a safe manner. However, there are times when the crane operators require some assistance from the crew or workers on site to ensure there are no accidents.

Communicating with the workers and crew can be a bit difficult for crane operators at times due to the high noise present in the working area. Furthermore, the limited vision of the operator calls for someone to guide him or her in a proper manner. In such cases, there is nothing more reliable and efficient than by guiding the operator using hand gestures and motions.

Constructiv works consistently provides valuable and reliable information to all its valued readers. It is one of our business practices to provide excellent quality content to all the readers. This article addresses a very important aspect of the safe operation of cranes. The article may also be considered specific to the construction industry due to the heavy use of crane in this particular sector. This article provides the details regarding different hand signals along with their meanings to ensure safe operation of different cranes in the workplace.

It is very important to understand and use different hand signals for crane operators. Read on to learn more about them!

Different hand signals and their explanations:

Lower

Lowering the load is where the signaler places his/her right arm pointing straight downward to the side by the hip, points the finger off to the right, and turns the finger around from the elbow in a counter-clockwise fashion.

Use Main Hoist

There are going to be occasions when the main hoist is necessary for its greater strength. In these instances, the signaler cocks their right arm outward and bends their elbow outward, which allows the signaler to tap on their hard hat with their closed hand as if they were knocking on a door.

Lower Boom

To lower the boom is the reversal of the signal to raise the boom. The signaler begins with the right arm outstretched to the side. From there, they point their thumb downwards.

Lower the Boom and Raise the Load

Lowering the boom while raising the load involves a similar signal to the previous boom lowering signal. The signaler begins with the right arm outstretched to the side, and the thumb pointing downward. The signaler then opens and closes the hand, extending and retracting the fingers repeatedly, to indicate this dual motion.

Learn about all the important hand signals that are necessary for your crane operators and workers to learn to improve the safety standards and make the workplace safer. In order to do so, you need to read the full article present on the website of TNT Crane & Rigging.

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constructivworks · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on Constructiv Works

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Some Considerations That You Need To Take Before Getting LED Light Bars

Here are a few considerations before buying LED light bars

Considerations for LED light bars: LED light bars are unarguably the most efficient and best lighting solutions for your off-road vehicles, ATVs and motorcycles. They are reliable and have significantly longer lives as compared to the incandescent lamps and light bars. Indeed the life primarily depends upon the usage but still, the LED light bars have much better lives as compared to their counterparts.

In addition to having great lifespans, LED light bars have proven to very cost-effective. There are, in fact the most cost-effective lighting solution available in the market.

Providing high quality and interesting content is the hallmark of Constructiv Works and so, we have selected to share a very informative article will help you reach a decision to invest in LED light bars.

Do you want to get the perfect lighting solution for yourself? You need to read the complete article!

Lumens, not watts

Forget what you know about incandescent lamps — your watts are no good here.

When shopping for bulbs, you’re probably accustomed to looking for watts, an indication of how bright the bulb will be. The brightness of LEDs, however, is determined a little differently.

Contrary to common belief, wattage isn’t an indication of brightness, but a measurement of how much energy the bulb draws. For incandescent lamps, there is an accepted correlation between the watts drawn and the brightness, but for LEDs, watts aren’t a great predictor of how bright the bulb will be. (The point, after all, is that they draw less energy.)

For example, an LED bulb with comparable brightness to a 60W incandescent is only 8 to 12 watts.

But don’t bother doing the math — there isn’t a uniform way to covert incandescent watts to LED watts. Instead, a different form of measurement should be used: lumens.

The lumen (lm) is the real measurement of brightness provided by a light bulb, and is the number you should look for when shopping for LEDs. For reference, here’s a chart that shows the watt-lumen conversion for incandescent lamps and LEDs. The higher the lumens are, the greater will be the output of your LED light bar.

The article giving a detailed study regarding information before buying LED light bars must be read in order to learn more about this topic.

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constructivworks · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on Constructiv Works

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TEC Fraser Valley - Small Business Leadership Training

TEC Fraser Valley – Small Business Leadership Training

I was extremely excited to partner with Gerry on this new career path as a facilitator of small business leadership training. He had committed to joining TEC Canada and becoming a chair for the Fraser Valley region. When he reached out to me, he had asked if I was interested in helping him with a project he was working on. Together we collaborated on a new website and strategized on how we could leverage digital marketing to get his message out to the small business groups. We decided to build the website on WordPress to allow for agility as well as integrating some marketing tools that would help better leverage Gerry getting found.

Here’s a little bit about Gerry.

Gerry L. Wiebe, MML, GCA, CSPC is a maverick in the best sense of the word – a lateral, independent thinker who challenges accepted norms and in doing so, has earned a reputation as a “go-to-guy” in the industrial sector, one who rises to the challenge of creating innovative solutions, processes and systems.

Gerry parlayed a trade school education into a 37-year career as a general manager, rising to the level of Chief Operations Officer and garnering many awards for customer service and management along the way. His natural talent for business development and marketing led to close collaboration with the C-suites of major industrial services and commercial sales companies, for which he created profitable client-supplier relationships in domestic and international markets, both as an employee and a consultant. As VP of Sales & Marketing for Eagle West Cranes, he was part of a leadership team that drove growth from $22 million to $100+ million over seven years while redirecting marketing efforts online and gaining mass brand penetration across North America.

As a further example of his ingenuity and determination, Gerry overcame his lack of academic pre-qualifiers, initially at the Fraser Valley University and then beyond, earning his Masters in Marketing from the Schulich-Kellogg Executive Centre. Now, Gerry is leveraging a highly relevant education, along with 37 years of business experience, for the benefit of his TEC Small Business group. As he says: “It’s not whether tough times and challenges come our way, but how we respond to them that count.

TEC CANADA GROUP VISION

Gerry values directness and empathy in his relationships. He puts great stock in the correlation between the management of the self and the development of our work, small business leadership and organizations – which is initially what drew him to TEC Canada. His vision for his TEC Canada groups is for them to not only be the most successful business people in the Lower Mainland, but to be role models to their families, companies and communities

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constructivworks · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on Constructiv Works

New Post has been published on http://www.constructivworks.com/2213-2/

What if I Could Make Your Remarketing Advertising Smarter?

If you live and die by the website, you know getting a second bite of the apple is critical. Remarketing works assuming that you have good quality ads, you have the right network, etc.; but how do you get it to work better? What if I told you I could make your remarketing ad campaigns smarter?

At the end of the day, even a 1% increase over your conversion rates has a big impact on the business. Even though you are optimized, it may be time to look at some sophisticated machine learning to boost your conversion rates.

There are two main areas that we think could have major impact on driving higher remarketing conversion rates:

Identify shoppers from browsers – some of that you can tell by what page they left your site, but some of it is opaque. We don’t have enough detail. But, what if you could analyze how they engaged and make some determination as to their likelihood to buy?

Where and how we target ad impressions – we serve ads to everyone we can identify to see what sticks – What if you could target based upon profiles of known buyers, different ads to different people at different points based upon their identified behavior patterns?

What would you get to improve your remarketing?

Likely Buyer Score – High score gets more follow up as they look like real shoppers, low scores get light footprint as they look like simple browsers.

Dynamic Clustering – target profiles with ads that you know will work based upon recognition of their behavior.

How much work does it take? A lot of work. No, really we are just kidding. It is very simple.

Simple code on your website

Export of the score and cluster information to your systems

Plugin to your remarketing efforts

Test efficacy, repeat and rinse to optimize

The science behind the scoring is pretty sophisticated machine learning, but the application for juicing your remarketing efforts is really simple. Plugin a score, refine your ad serving, and reap the rewards. The beauty of this model is that it is easy to A/B test the results. Numbers speak for themselves.

You can read the full article about machine automation here.

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constructivworks · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on Constructiv Works

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The Origins of Father's Day - Started with a Single Dad

Today, Father’s Day is part of the pantheon of sentimental holidays. And one commonly uttered joke about the holiday is that it was sponsored by people who sold neckties.

The truth is, Father’s Day was sponsored by people who sold neckties. But there’s a whole lot more to understand when you hear about the woman who petitioned the government to create a day a year to honour dad’s, especially her single Dad who raised her. In 1910, it was not common for single dads to raise a family. Which makes this day that much more honourable.

This article by VOX is a great summary of the origins of Father’s day and the importance of celebrating it every year.

Father’s Day began in Mother’s Day’s shadow — and was a bit of a joke

Sonora Smart Dodd, the “mother” of Father’s Day.

Tacoma Times/Library of Congress

Father’s Day began earnestly enough. After the 1908 founding of Mother’s Day, it seemed like a natural extension to give a holiday to dear old Dad, and in 1910, a Spokane, Washington woman named Sonora Dodd proposed just that.

Leigh Eric Schmidt tells the holiday’s story in his excellent (and cynical) Consumer Rites: The Buying & Selling of American Holidays. Dodd, the daughter of a single father who raised six children, believed that fathers should be celebrated just as ardently as mothers (though there were other Father’s Day proposals around the same time, Dodd’s was the most successful).

She asked her pastor to start a Father’s Day celebration, and in 1910, Dodd and the local YMCA established a petition for Father’s Day that was quickly adopted by local churches. In that way, Father’s Day began like Mother’s Day — as a religiously influenced holiday meant to honor fathers.

THE FIRST FATHER’S DAY GIFT WAS A ROSE

The problem was that at the time, the idea of a holy image of an actual father was a joke. Early celebrations were tonally off, as well, with love for fathers symbolized by a pinned-on rose. That sentimentality was a poor fit for dads in the 1910s, and from the beginning, people joked about how Father’s Day would be more of a burden than a treat. A 1915 articlein Arizona was typical: it suggested that dads would most like to sleep late and drink. A cartoon first published in the Washington Star 1913 depicted the holiday the same way:

Father’s Day: not a lot of fun.

Library of Congress

These jokes weren’t just fun had at the father’s expense. They probably reflected a different idea of the father as, at best, a breadwinner, and at worst, a distant, less-than-lovable figure. In 1911, the governor of Washington actually held forth on the holiday to say, “We fathers can scratch along in some way without having such a flattering mention of us.” The general sentiment was that fathers could get “along very well without a day” because Dad was just“the old critter” who paid the bills.

He was thought of as “Pard,” the “Old Man,” or “the Governor,” not as a hallowed figure (or a necessarily lovable one).

That said, Father’s Day never disappeared — in 1916, a thousand-boy chorus in Spokane celebrated the holiday, and it was a feature of sermons around the country.

But it also passed unnoticed in New York in 1921 (“Father’s Day slips past New Yorkers unobserved”), and, as Schmidt notes in Consumer Rites, “no one took the day seriously.” It was at risk of being forgotten — or simply a half-remembered holiday like Secretary’s Day or Grandparents’ Day is today. In 1926, the New York Times declared Father’s Day a hopeless project that had languished for 20 years.

So what saved Father’s Day from obscurity? Neckties.

The Father’s Day Council makes Father’s Day dapper

A Macy’s Father’s Day ad in 1938.

Times Machine

Mother’s Day had a tireless champion in its founder, Anna Jarvis, who obsessively promoted her holiday. But Father’s Day’s founder, Dodd, had other interests — she was an artist, not an obsessive. Attempts to make the holiday a national one fell short, and interest flagged until 1936, when a group called the Father’s Day Committee lent a hand.

IN 1936, ONLY ONE IN SIX DADS WERE GETTING A FATHER’S DAY GIFT…

The group behind the Father’s Day Council? New York Associated Menswear Retailers. Yes, Father’s Day was truly boosted by people who sold neckties (as well as dapper shirts and hats, of course), and in 1938 they expanded their efforts to become the National Council for the Promotion of Father’s Day.

Their efforts were in response to poor sales in 1937. Schmidt’s book quotes one report that only one in six dads was getting a gift on the big day, so the group set the goal of increasing those sales.

With the help of dry goods, clothing, and tobacco associations, they did just that. They convinced Macy’s to hold 1941’s “Father’s Day Sports Day” parade and also promoted civic-minded Father’s Day events, like the selection of a father of the year. By 1949, Father’s Day sales had climbed to $106 million, but the association didn’t consider its job done. Leigh quotes one particularly desperate communication:

Some think that like Christmas, Father’s Day is here to stay and needs no organized effort. That is a fatal mistake. If the central bureau and organization promotion were discontinued, Father’s Day would die a miserable death.

So the promotion kept going, and Dodd became more involved in selling the holiday, repeating her story happily to the press and other retailers. Sales soared to an estimated $940 million in 1963. And slowly, national appreciation of the holiday followed. In 1966, Lyndon Johnson issued a presidential proclamation designating the holiday, and Richard Nixon made it official in 1972.

Father’s Day made it from upstart holiday to joke to billion-dollar national institution in a little more than 50 years.

So is Father’s Day just a ruse to sell neckties?

Father’s Day and ties: together forever.

All of this leaves a question: if Father’s Day was truly pushed into prominence by retailers, is it worth celebrating? The holiday is definitely still a commercial hit — the National Retail Federation estimates a $12.7 billion take in 2015.

But when Dodd died in 1978 — at 96 years old — her obituary included less commercial reflections on the holiday. It notes that her own son was named Washington, DC’s father of the year in 1952, and it also quotes her original proposal of a holiday to celebrate dads. Through all the marketing and mockery, the sentiment is still worth hearing, no matter how cluttered the tie rack may be:

“I liked everything you said about motherhood,” Mrs. Dodd said she told the minister. “However, don’t you think fathers deserve a place in the sun, too?”

I agree Mrs. Dodd. I agree.

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