Style of Business - Page 11

Is Your Brand Messaging Reaching Your Target Audience? Here’s How to Find Out

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brandingtips You’ve spent a lot of time building your brand messaging stock…but is it actually doing anything for you? If you aren’t putting attention on what your target audience is and if your branding is actually reaching them. Branding and marketing can’t be created and just tossed out onto the Internet as a catch all — extra work needs to be put in to ensure that the content reaches who it will actually appeal to.

There are two obvious steps to making sure that your branding efforts aren’t in vain: deciphering who your target audience is, then using analytics to ensure that they’re being accurately reached.

Establishing Target Audiences

The first step in establishing your target audiences is to simply sit down and see what makes the most sense. What audience does it make sense for your brand to reach out to? A specific gender? Age group? Niche audience? Profession? The more specific you can be, the better.

Demographics aren’t the only area to explore, though. Sometimes you need to appeal to how someone thinks instead of who they are, and this is called a psychographic. This is marketing and branding strategies that appeal to someone on a more mental level than an obvious category. Areas like a person’s values or interests fall into this category.

Sometimes a target audience is more abstract than a specific subset of people. This means that your brand identity is more vague — it’s not like there’s a specific subset of people that Coca Cola or Walmart advertise to. While an individual ad might have a target audience in mind, the brand itself doesn’t have one set demographic.

Establishing a Brand Connection

Once you’ve established what your target demographic is, it’s time to reach out to them. Depending on who your demographics are, how you reach out to them and build that connection may drastically change. Many key demographics can be reached via social media, but which sites? Do you have a target demographic in mind that isn’t so Internet savvy, like the elderly?

Analyzing the Outcome

The best way to understand if your brand is actually connecting with an audience is to analyze the data involved with your branding and marketing to see if it’s working the way you want it to. Many social sites and blogging platforms like Twitter and WordPress have built in analytics tools that you can use for free or at a very low price. These are great resources! However, it never hurts to spend a little money on tried and true analytics software.

Analytics is how you determine if your plans are actually succeeding. Without analytics, you push branding content out into the world blind. How will you know if it’s successful? Is it failing? Is it succeeding?

The great thing about analytics is that it can get into specifics. If you do a branding overhaul and see your sales go up, your plan worked — but why? How can you execute this same plan again and again to better ensure future success? Analytics is worth paying for, and it’s worth paying very close attention to too.

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4 Websites Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know About

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trepresources As an entrepreneur, you’re likely constantly looking for resources to help you along your business journey. Those just starting out with a business, or those who haven’t even coherently decided on a business idea at all, need all the help they can get to inspire ideas, get organize and get started on solidifying their plans for success. You’ve likely already got a few webpages bookmarked, but what about these?

The following for blog links are all great for young or new entrepreneurs who need a little boost to help them along. Open up the links and bookmark them in your browser for safe keeping.

Inc. Magazine

It’s very likely that you’ve got a couple Inc. pages bookmarked already, or perhaps you’ve simple read a piece from this site before? If you’re only familiar with this website in name and aren’t using it to the fullest, you may want to reconsider how important this site is to you. Inc. is a large resource for entrepreneurs of all calibers – from new, naïve entrepreneurs that are lost as to what to do; to older, more seasoned entrepreneurs that want to brush up on the newest best practices. If you want business info, Inc. has it somewhere in its depths.

Social Media Examiner

Don’t neglect your social media efforts – in fact, that’s one of the biggest flaws beginner entrepreneurs make. In the past, social media wasn’t that integral to business, whether it just hadn’t been invented yet or the social marketing revolution just hadn’t taken place. In this age of modern technology, however? Social media is as important to your success strategies as waking up and working on your business every morning. If you want to know how to successfully use social media for your new or small business brand, look no further than Social Media Examiner.

A Smart Bear

Let’s look at something not so resource-filled, shall we? Sometimes the best thing for a young, insecure entrepreneur who doubts their potential is to hear from someone else who used to be in their shoes. Millions of entrepreneurs around the world are trying to succeed right now, but only a few truly make it big – one of these chosen few is Jason Cohen, author of the blog “A Smart Bear.”

After selling is last start-up company in 2007, Cohen bowed out of that aspect of the business community. However, he still catalogs his experiences and knowledge in this very successful business blog, filled with insights and helpful hints.

Forbes Woman

Female entrepreneurs have a very unique and specific perspective as compared to their male counterparts. While a female entrepreneur should have every opportunity afforded to her that other entrepreneurs are given, we all know that sometimes this isn’t the case. They must work harder and can potentially face very different hurdles, like sexism and patronizing attitudes in the world of business.

Forbes Woman is designed with the female entrepreneur in mind. While all topics aren’t exclusively geared towards female-driven issues, all of the blogs and pieces ARE written by professional women with experiences they want to share.

The 4 Big Qualities You Need as a Female Leader

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womentreps It’s a man’s world – but women in business are steadily working to change that. Make no mistake that largely influential women exist, and have always existed, but women in a business setting often have to work ten times as hard to receive the same level of respect as their male peers, and female leaders are looked with a magnifying lens. In short, it can be hard to lead a team, a business or a project as a woman – but it’s possible, and you can succeed.

All leaders require key traits, but women need those and then some in order to gain the respect of their peers, employees and others within a business setting. These are the four biggest qualities you need to succeed as a female leader:

Stability

Men often see a woman who is emotional as unhinged, while also reacting to cool, calm and collected women with choice expletives. In many situations, you can’t win for losing – but that’s okay, because the task at hand is really what should be king.

A strong female leader is one that is emotionally stable, and this isn’t just to jab back at the peers who attribute weakness to moodiness. Any leader must be calm and collected, but female leaders have something more to prove in how they are even, resourceful and emotionally clear-headed when making decisions.

In short, they don’t crumble in the face of adversity – they overcome it and are better for it.

Purpose

To be a leader you must be a visionary, and this means creating an innovative plan and executing it with purpose. When a leader makes a purposeful decision, they’re showcasing many other important leadership qualities: intelligence, resourcefulness and power. To be purposeful is also to know how to communicate well – you can execute orders clearly and see your plans come to fruition.

Determination

It was Eleanor Roosevelt who said “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” Women in business know this idea very well, but female leaders must internalize it. All leaders must be determined, but women should be driven by the determination to prove themselves.

Female leaders don’t have it easy, and in a perfect world they would only have to work as hard as their male counterparts. Instead, determination and the idea that they must use all their skills and resources to make it to the top is why we have the powerful women figures that we have today.

Confidence

Finally, all female leaders should exude confidence. A confident leader is a leader that people can trust, and they know that everything will go according to plan under a leader who is sure of themselves and their ideas. This is the most critical quality because confidence is what gets people to follow you – no one wants to trust in an unsure leader, male or female.

Also, female leaders will likely be questioned more than their male counterparts. While this isn’t a reality that is agreeable, it’s one that must be faced head on. A good leader takes their confidence and wields it like a shield – that’s how a female leader becomes successful.

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Reaching Out to Others for Motivation: How and Why

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reachingout When it comes to our motivation in life we often look inward or focus on tools we use separately by ourselves. Even when you buy the motivational audiobook or research everyday positivity tips, you’re still going it alone on this journey – but why?

Sometimes it’s because we believe we need to be strong by ourselves and for ourselves, and this isn’t necessarily false. We all like to believe we’re the one person army we’re supposed to be, and even when we need help making it through we should still help ourselves over extending a hand and asking for it, essentially showing weakness to someone else.

The problem is that sometimes we can’t get motivated or stay positive on our own, and there’s no fault in that. Weakness isn’t admitting you need help, but it is being too scared to ask for it. Reaching out can actually be a great way to get – and stay – motivated, but you do need to learn how.

Friends and Family

First, consider your loved ones. These are the people who would do anything for you and would gladly help you when you’re down and out. This should be the first place you look for motivation when it comes to asking others.

Why? First and foremost, your loved ones are who you’re most comfortable with. If you share your fears and flaws with anyone, these will be the people who will accept you above all else. They’re also the people whom you have easiest access to.

Similarly, friends and family are also great tools to use on your motivational journey because you want them to see you succeed. You want to accomplish your goals and make them proud. There’s nothing worse than letting down a loved one, so you definitely have something to prove when it comes to being motivated.

Peers

Sometimes the best motivation can come from someone we aren’t as close to and that’s because they’re a peer. When you go to work every day and see someone doing better than you, this can either make you self-conscious or it can drive you to be better.

Reaching out to a peer is a good way to push yourself to succeed like they have. Ask them their strategies for success and how they motivate themselves. You’ll often find they’re perceptive to your questions because they appreciate being looked up to and seen as a success themselves.

How to Reach Out

It’s often seen as awkward to reach out, but that’s because we think of the scenario as if we’re reading from a script. Don’t open with “I’d like you to help me get motivated” – instead, be more specific. As mentioned above, ask for advice. When it comes to friends and family, ask if they’d like to do something related to the task at hand with you, like help you sort through receipts or jog every day.

Reaching out doesn’t have to be hard – it’s only hard because we imagine it that way. Take a chance and reach out. You’ll certainly be better for it.

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The Ingredients Necessary for a Successful Brand Makeover

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brandmakeover You’ve likely seen a makeover montage on TV or in the movies before. An ugly duckling (usually a woman, sadly) is taken through a variety of wardrobe changes, hairstyles and other beauty training, usually emerging as a beautiful swan after the process is complete. On the big and small screens this process is hackneyed, but it’s something that can be extremely useful in the world of branding.

Giving your online brand a makeover is no small feat, especially if your brand is well established. Just remember – if the big dogs of business can reinvent their brand image, so can you.

Attracting Different Customers

Sometimes a brand matures or finds a new purpose in the business world. This isn’t bad marketing – sometimes it’s entirely necessary. No matter the reason, it can be hard to take on a new consumer demographic, especially if you want to include a broader audience without completely alienating the original consumers.

The solution here is to isolate the pain point most experienced by your newly desired buyer. Once you discover how to sell to this demographic, you’ll more easily discover how to brand yourself accordingly.

Reestablishing Brand Voice and Personality

Think about one of your favorite companies that has been around for at least 30 years. Do you think their brand voice was the same in the 90s as it is now? Even going back five years can show you a drastically different brand voice a business once held. Times change, and so must a brand’s personality and voice.

A big catalyst for this change is usually culture itself. Think about the year 2016 and how it is extremely shaped by pop culture and global headlines. The way a business speaks reflects that change, and your business must too.

A brand voice and personality doesn’t have to lose professionalism, however. Just because you’re aware of trends and current times doesn’t mean your company has to tweet and post like the average millennial on Twitter. Establish a voice that’s personable and a personality that is friendly and you’ll do just fine.

Upgrading Visuals

Many businesses need to be forced into 2016. What gives away their anachronistic ways? Namely their website and visuals. You can always spot a business that’s anti-modernism based on what their website looks like, and that’s a crowd an innovative business doesn’t want to be lumped in with.

One of the easiest ways to give your brand a makeover is to upgrade your website. Current site designs are minimal and svelte; they retain function while cutting out the fat. How does your current website stand up to the trends of today?

Competition Analysis

If your competition is undergoing a brand makeover, you may want to consider doing the same. Businesses that rebrand themselves introduce themselves to a new spotlight, and you could be left in the dust if your competition beats you to the punch.

Do your research. Does your competition have flaws? If so, what are they? When you compare your own company to your competition, who wins and in what areas? How can you fix this problem? Once you answer these questions, adjust your brand accordingly.

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Female Entrepreneur Blogs to Start Following Immediately

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It isn’t exactly a man’s world anymore. Though many sectors are still dominated by male presence, it’s becoming more and more common for women in the workplace to take over positions of power.

However, women who are just getting started on their career paths often find it hard to thrive in an environment that has been filled with roadblocks for so long. Even though the overall business culture is changing, it’s still common that they’ll run into misogyny in the workplace.

In cases like these, it’s important that female entrepreneurs and career women have someone to look up to – an example of female success. Here are a few blogs run by female entrepreneurs and businesswomen worth looking into.

Marie Forleo

Born and raised in New Jersey, Marie Forleo graduated from Seton Hall University in 1997. She held a degree in business finance which helped her secure a job as a trading assistant in the New York Stock Exchange. From there she moved on to work for the magazines “Gourmet” and “Mademoiselle” where she began to branch out into the world of branding and began to create her own image for herself.

You may recognize her as the author of the famous book “Make Every Man Want You: How to Be So Irresistible You’ll Barely Keep from Dating Yourself!” Forleo is currently running her blog and works as owner of Marie Forleo International, as well as the companies B-School and MarieTV.

Amber Rae

Amber Rae’s entrepreneurial attitude began at a young age. She sold candy to her neighbors, leaving notes on cars as a form of marketing and documented the entire journey in her journal. Now she works with hundreds of different creative and entrepreneurs. At 11, Rae launched an e-zine for teenage girls and she hasn’t stopped creating since.

Clients Rae has worked with include Apple and The Future Project, and her work has been featured in outlets such as The New York Times and Forbes. Her blog covers her journey and life experiences that have led her to the current points in her life.

Kristi Hines

Since 2008, Kristi Hines has been writing about marketing and business. If you need to know anything about a marketing topic, Hines is the person you should go to before anyone else. She’s the owner of marketing curation blog Kikolani and you’ve likely seen her post work to other big marketing blogs – Search Engine Watch and Social Media Examiner to name two. Hines has also worked with big marketing companies like KISSmetrics and Sprout Social. Hines has written over 1.5 million words across 1,000 blog posts.

Maren Kate

If there was ever a business “Jack of all trades,” it would be Maren Kate. After dropping out of University of Nevada at Reno, Kate found herself needing to find a way to make ends meet. She picked up odd jobs, like selling jewelry on eBay and working as a social media guru for “The Pawn Stars,” just to name a few of her entrepreneurial gigs.

Kate’s claim to fame is Zirtual, a company that helps to connect entrepreneurs to virtual assistants. Now Kate has left that company and is back to escaping the 9 to 5, much like her new book suggests.

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3 Books Every Female Entrepreneur Needs on Her Shelf

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If you’re a woman in the business world, you’re likely familiar with the idea of “the boys club.” The realms of industry, innovation and entrepreneurship have long been dominated by males, and there is still a very patriarchal edge that lingers in these settings. As a woman who is also an entrepreneur, you can fell unwanted, threatened or intimidated in these spaces.

The key is to rise above this preconceived notion and do your best without allowing others to compare you based on gender. To be a woman is to be strong, confident and sure of yourself. This should shine through in your business acumen.

Still, it can definitely be hard to be a female entrepreneur some days. You want to shine bright, but the pressures, possible harassment and discrediting can get you down. When you need a positive pick-me-up, try out one of these three amazing books by female entrepreneurs. Once you read these three, keep going back for more – it’s never a bad thing to support female writers and share in their sisterhood.

“Ladies Who Launch” – Victoria Colligan, Beth Shoenfeld, Amy Swift

This is one of the best entrepreneurial introductory reads in the world, let alone just for women. The spin on this book is obviously riddled with female empowerment, but aside from that the advice is ingenious for any entrepreneurs who need a little help launching their first business. Any men who happen to be reading, you should pick this up as well.

Colligan, Shoenfeld and Swift are three female entrepreneurs who have all been in your shoes – a little beaten down by the male environment that they work in, but they put a female and spirited perspective on success. They don’t believe in succeeding in spite of being a woman, they believe in succeeding because you are a woman, and there’s nothing more empowering than that.

“Shark Tales: How I turned $1000 into a Billion Dollar Business” – Barbara Corcoran

Not everyone is born with a silver spoon in their mouth, and that’s incredibly true of “Shark Tank” star Corcoran. Her “rags to riches” story tells the tale of a young waitress bussing tables in a diner who gets a $1000 loan from her boyfriend.

Through hard work and experience, as well as failures and triumphs abound, Corcoran found out that success was still something she could accomplish, even coming from where she did. Now the female entrepreneur is a real estate tycoon who helps others blaze their own trails in the business world.

“Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead” – Sheryl Sandberg

As the CEO of Facebook, Sandberg obvious has a pretty strong business resume, and her success is one that women the world over should triumph. Only recently have women found their foothold in the higher-up tech industries, and Sandberg is paving the way for millions of girls who want a piece of that pie for themselves.

Her book details her success and strategies, but also sends across an even more important message: the world actually needs more female leaders for a myriad of reasons, and it’s time we start allowing it to happen. Sandberg also doesn’t shy away from controversial discussions, like career vs. family and money over enjoying your life.

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Finance and Fitness: Getting in Shape Without Breaking the Bank

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There is a common misconception that you need to buy, buy, buy to stay in shape. The media helps to perpetuate this with hundreds of ads touting products that keep track of weight loss, help you lose weight or help you exercise. From nutrition shakes, step counters, high tech running gear and the newest pair of Nikes, paying for all of this equipment can really add up.

The problem is that advertisers do this for a reason. They know that so many people, women especially, desperately want to lose weight.  If they think something will help them shed those pounds in an easier way, they’ll go for it. If these same people opened their eyes and realized if they put in as much effort to becoming healthier as they did spending money on gadgets that only sometimes work, they may actually get somewhere.

The long story short is that you don’t have to spend tons of cash on getting fitter. All you need is the willingness to get fit and the ability to put in the effort needed to make your dreams a reality.

Gym Memberships

A gym membership is in no way the only way to exercise. Are gym memberships cheaper than buying expensive exercise equipment? Short-term, yes. However, this conditional discount doesn’t matter. The best way to spend money is to not buy gym memberships at all.

If you are indeed hell bent on going to the gym, wait for promotional prices and always break down yearly membership fees by month-to-month costs. If you’re spending more than 20 dollars to go to the gym every month, you’re spending way too much.

Work with What You’ve Got

Do you have stairs at home? Use them to do lunges. Is your living room pretty free and clear of furniture? Use it as a space for yoga. Is your office close enough to walk to? Start doing it.

Getting fit requires some creativity at times, and you need to have an innovative mind to discover new ways to workout. Utilize any and all resources you already possess to help you get fit and you will, eventually, see results.

Committing to Routine

It doesn’t cost money to manage your time better. You can find small ways to exercise throughout the day, like using sitting exercises while you’re behind your desk for hours, but you also need about 15 to 30 minutes of cardio time that you can only get by focusing only on exercise.

This means mapping out your schedule and sticking to it. No “but I don’t have time”s or “I’m too tired today”s. Set aside this time to exercise and execute your schedule.

Budget Fitness Food

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to break the bank to buy the right foods for fitness. Go to your local grocery store and map out the cost of buying fresh produce, meats and grains. Look for discounts, coupons and sales. This also requires effort, but it will be well worth it in the end when you’re preparing home cooked, delicious meals that are simultaneously helping slim down your waistline.

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Keep a Work-Life Balance When You’re Starting a Small Business

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Knowing How to Keep a Work-Life Balance When You're Starting a Small Business

If you’re an entrepreneur or a small business owner, you know how difficult it can be to keep your work at your office and your personal life at home. This can manifest in different ways, from answering work calls during dinner, to having to take care of neglected personal issues when you’ve set aside time for work.

The ideal situation is keeping both of these areas of your life completely separate. In reality, the more separate they are the more at ease and de-stressed you will be. When you keep your work at work and your personal life at home, you create a safe space away from stress while maintaining a professional area for productivity.

This can sometimes be impossible, though, when your life is revolving around getting a small business off the ground. Think about how much effort it takes to get your business off the ground – when there’s so much to do, is it possible to keep these areas of life separate?

The Answer Is…?

Yes. The solution is to be willing to sacrifice more home time to working, but the boundaries still need to be set.

Say that you get seven hours of sleep a day. This means you have 17 hours a day for yourself. Take away three hours for showering, eating, restroom breaks and other miscellaneous time for other needed functions. This means you have 14 hours to split up between your personal life and work.

In a normal situation, you may commit yourself to an eight hour work day, but during your business’ early stages you may need to make room for 10 hours devoted to work.

This isn’t a bad thing. A small business needs nurturing. The problem arises when after those 10 hours are spent, you’re still in business mode when you need to worry about your stress and rest.

The Solution

Setting up boundaries is the first step, then you’ll need to implement a way to maintain these boundaries.

One of the most obvious ways you’ll try to blur those lines is through your smartphone. This piece of technology symbolizes the line itself – you use your phone for both personal reasons and it’s also a great tool for business. The solution here is to separate the work-life functions of your phone as much as possible.

Learn how to turn off notifications for business emails when you get home and put your business apps in a folder that you keep on a separate phone screen. This commits you to the idea of “out of sight, out of mind.”

You’ll also need to learn how to commit to staying diligent and recognize that you NEED time away from work. When you rest at home, you aren’t slacking off or being lazy – you’re giving yourself time to recharge and relax in order to better your work performance.

This means being very diligent about where your boundaries are. Try this method out: when you get home, leave your phone on an end table or in a drawer for an hour to help wean you away from the idea that you need to work while you’re at home. The more you separate yourself from the idea you have to keep working at home, the less you’ll feel compelled to do so.

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About Branding Yourself Online: The Whys and Hows You Need to Know

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Branding Yourself Online The Whys and Hows You Need to Know

How do you brand yourself online? A better question might actually be this one: do you brand yourself online in the first place?

Aside from your business, you should also be branding yourself on the Internet. The difference is obvious: when you brand your business, you market it and what it can do for others. When you brand yourself, you market your own person and what you can do for others. This includes showcasing yourself as a thought leader, an influencer or just someone that needs an audience.

Why You Need to Brand Yourself

As you can see above, it’s pretty obvious on the surface why building a personal brand for yourself online is enticing. Who doesn’t want to be thought of as someone influential with something to share with the world?

Being an influencer, though, does more for you than just boost your ego. The long and short of it is building a brand for yourself improves your credibility. This helps you out in more ways than one.

  • Any personal projects you start or endorse will immediately be thought of as credible based on your improved personal brand.
  • Your business will be seen as more credible based on your own credibility.
  • Your social media, publications and any content with your name attached will be seen as credible and insightful based on your personal brand.

This can certainly be a great asset for your other businesses. When you work on building your brand, you also work on building your image and credibility across the board in the world of business.

How to Start Building Your Brand

Building a personal brand is in no way an exact science, but there are some basic steps and tips to follow that can get you on the right track. In general, building your brand is composed of two parts: activity and image.

How active you are online greatly affects your credibility and brand. When you post on social media often, keep your website updated and actively engage with others online, you give off an image that you are committed to maintaining your brand and being active within the business community.

Your image is greatly based on the kind of content that you post and how you engage in the above activity. Sharing insightful tips and content is one way to boost your image online.

Here are some quick and simple ways to start working on building your personal brand:

  • Post on social media every day on a schedule.
  • Post to your website’s blog and business blog(s).
  • Always stay committed to sticking with trends.
  • Read thought leader blogs and websites.
  • Offer your content services to outlets.
  • Look to attending and/or speaking at events, conferences and seminars.

These are just some of the more basic ways you can build your brand online, and you’ll quickly find that the effort involved is minimal compared to the great results you get at the end of it all. If you stick with these small tips and grow from there, you’ll have a great personal brand in no time.

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