Fix These Potential Failings To Save Your Business!

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As a company owner, you of course want your business to succeed and get ahead, but this can be difficult in such a competitive market. There are so many things to consider, and so many details that need to be right- any of the following things could be letting you down (even to the point where they cause your business to fail!) For this reason, make sure you’re not overlooking these essential elements.

Invest in An App

The world’s largest companies might have been first to get on board when it comes to mobile apps, but it’s definitely not something you should disregard for your own medium sized or smaller business. An effective mobile strategy isn’t just about a mobile friendly website, mobile apps do so much more than this. They allow customers to have all your information at the click of a button and can result in better interaction and more sales for you. It can help you gain new customers, and all in all is an excellent tool to increase your company’s profits. An app for your business will help to improve your brand and increase brand awareness. This is important as customers are more likely to choose brands they know simply because they are seen as safer and more reliable. When you have an app that your customers can download to their phone, it means your website is just a click away. This also means you can send things like offers and coupons directly to their smartphone even when they’re not using the app. These days mobile apps from small businesses are still rare, and this is where you can take a leap ahead of your competition. In the next few years every business will have one, and so take the chance to get involved while it’s still early days and it will set you apart. Anything that can make your company stand out in a good way will have a positive effect on it. Since mobiles and tablets have replaced more traditional desktops and laptops in being the most used devices- the future of your business depends on your ability to get your business onto the phones of your potential customers.

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Use Good Business Software

Keeping good accounts is vital when you run a business. You will of course have an accountant to tackle the difficult things. However, you will still need to keep efficient records day to day. Good accounting software can allow you to do this and means either you’re able to do your books yourself, or at least tackle a  lot of the work, so you don’t have to spend as much money paying an accountant for more hours. Old methods of accounting such as paper records or Excel can slow or even jeopardise your business. As well as the risk of mistakes, you also have to pay someone to trawl through and take care the tedious task- more efficient methods are the best way to go. They’re more accurate, will save you time and can be saved to cloud based backup services which protect your day. Another type of software you will need if you sell products is presentation software. Your first thought might be Microsoft Powerpoint, but there are a whole range of other programmes out there, many which will likely suit the needs of your business more. Some are relatively simple, others give you the ability to create more complex presentations so find one that’s right for your business. Employee scheduling software will  show you how to create the perfect work schedule for your team. No more manually swapping things over or spending time working it all out, the right software will do all of that in seconds. Email marketing software is another useful one to consider for your business. It can attract new customers as well as maintains relationships with loyal customers- plus it has a large reach and has been shown to lead to more conversions in the form of leads and sales. Unlike social networks, email will always be around and is an efficient way to deliver a message to all of your customers.

Write A Business Blog

There are numerous benefits of running a business blog. It helps drive traffic to your website, plus it means more pages are being indexed by search engines boosting your PageRank. It establishes authority about your brand and also helps to spread the word about your website through social media shares. Write regular engaging content in order to draw in potential customers in and boost business. Each piece of content you produce is another way your blog can be found in organic search. I t’s a free and a straightforward way to promote your business and something any business owner can get on board with. You don’t even have to write it yourself, employ a writer, or pay a writer online to create posts for you.

Create A Social Media Marketing Strategy

Regardless of what your product is and who you sell it to, you need to be using social media as a marketing tool. This can help you grow your brand awareness no end, and these days it’s not just an added extra. It really is something that needs to be an integral part of your company’s digital marketing approach. It’s free to use, and according to research is twice as effective at leading to sales than other traditional outbound marketing techniques. Plus, a good social following makes you look reliable to customers, and provides them with another point of contact should anything go wrong with the transaction. It provides a unique way to have more interaction with your customer base, and you get to find out what makes them tick- this is all information that could even give you ideas for your marketing strategy.  All of your accounts should be run efficiently, get a social media manager on board your team if you’re not an expert. It’s an excellent investment into your business in today’s digital age.

Use An Ecommerce Platform

If your business sells products, you will need to find a good ecommerce platform. Don’t try listing things just on your website, at the very least you need an online storefront with payment processing capabilities. It looks professional and will make life easier for you too. Different platforms will have different customizations and themes on offer so you have the opportunity to really personalize it to your business. There are plenty of comparisons to read online, so spend some time working out exactly what’s right for your business. For many businesses, this will be the main thing that the customer sees when interacting with the company so be sure to get this right.

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Take On Board Customer Feedback

Any feedback you can gain from customers is useful – good or bad. If and when you do receive complaints or negative feedback, make sure this is carefully looked into and is a way to improve. It’s easy to get defensive over your company but the old adage ‘the customer is always right’ is true- these are the people buying from you and keeping you in business.  Whether it was long shipping times or items arriving in bad condition, incorrect sizes or colours sent out or poor quality items it shows you where you’re going wrong. Whatever it is, focus on what the problem is to come up with a suitable solution. And of course, positive feedback is always good and lets you know what you’re doing is working.

Managing a Remote Business Without an Office

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For most people, an office is a certainty in business. It’s a place you commute to, do your work, interact with colleagues and then leave. However, the office-less business is growing in popularity thanks to a rise of software-as-a-service tools and an increased emphasis on cloud-based collaborative work. Unfortunately, the problem comes when trying to manage this type of business. With your employees spread out all over the country (or even the world) it takes a special approach to be able to manage an office-less business.

If you’re curious about making your next startup without an office or if you’re thinking about transitioning your current business into a remote working environment, then here are a couple of things to keep in mind when trying to manage your business.


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Communication becomes even more important

Unlike speaking in person, speaking over the internet can be a lot different. This is generally because speaking in person allows you to convey emotions better, but speaking over the internet with text or even voice can be a completely different experience. As a result, it’s important to put a heavier emphasis on communication. Otherwise, it’s better to build your workflow and business around having less communication.

A good example of this would be how work is edited by multiple people. Let’s say someone is writing a document that describes your project. Instead of being able to simply walk over to the member of staff and question them about their work, you’ll need to leave notes on the document, speak to them over instant messaging clients or even phone them. As a result, this can be slower and often cause more delays in your company’s workflow, which is why opening more channels of communication and putting a heavier emphasis on keeping in touch is important.

Managing performance with software

Monitoring performance is usually something done by a human resources department, but with the help of software-based tools, it can become something you can easily do through a mobile device like a smartphone. You can learn more at Wizper, a software-based and AI-driven software package designed for managers, and see if it’s something that is worth including in your workflow. As communication comes at a premium in a remote working environment, it’s essential that you use whatever tools you can to get a better understanding of how your business is running and what issues need to be fixed.

Dealing with flexible schedules

Remote working usually involves working from home or in a shared office space. It’s important that you tell your staff not to slack off and to still set working hours despite being able to work from home. A good suggestion to remind them of is working at a cafe or a shared office space. This can emulate the office working environment and can be a fantastic tool for networking. This works if they’re being distracted at home or simply can’t work effectively because they aren’t used to the freedom.

Working remotely is a fantastic way to improve your business’s productivity, but it can quickly lead to disaster if you don’t take these points into consideration. Managing remote employees is a whole different ballgame, so make sure you learn the rules and strategies for it.

Evolve As An Entrepreneur In 3 Simple Steps

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Being an entrepreneur is not a career choice that means you can stay static. If you’re never moving forwards and developing your skills, you’ll just get passed by all the other entrepreneurs that are doing just that.

Entrepreneurship is about constant evolution to transform yourself from a fresh-faced small business owner into a chiseled owner of multiple franchises. In short; if you want to see continued success as an entrepreneur, you need to keep evolving and being better. Furthermore, you can do this by following three simple steps.

Step 1: Network With Other Business People

To evolve and improve you need to realize that you aren’t the authority on everything. You might have a lot of knowledge about certain things, but I’m certain there are people out there that know more than you. More specifically, there are others that have more experience and have gained the wisdom that you don’t have. As a result, you need to network with other business people so you have contacts and friends you can talk to about different things. You surround yourself with people that can teach you how to do things and provide words of wisdom. This is essential if you want to develop your skills as an entrepreneur.

Step 2: Continuously Educate Yourself

Education is so important if you want to further yourself as an entrepreneur. Knowledge is power, and you will never reach a point in your life when you know too much. My advice to any entrepreneurs is to study different areas of business. Get a marketing BBA degree or a management MBA, or any other business related degree. The things you learn will help you be a more complete business person. You add skills to your skill set, and it makes everything so much easier for you too. Educate to improve on your flaws, and you will go far as an entrepreneur.

Step 3: Try New Things

Last but not least, it’s crucial that you try new things as a business owner. If you’re not actively trying to do something different, then you’ll always stay in the same place and will never grow. Don’t be afraid to try and fail, this is something that holds people back. If you plan everything correctly and do all the research, calling on advice from others and your new knowledge, you can easily start new business ventures. Make sure you have contingency plans in case they do fail, but don’t let failure put you off. Keep trying to be different and evolve your ideas so that you’re doing things that haven’t been done before. This is how you become the best and leave the competition in the dust behind you.

I implore you to follow these three steps if you want to evolve as an entrepreneur. Not only that but don’t stop evolving! You can always get better, and you can always improve your ideas and business ventures. To be as successful as possible you can’t afford to get complacent and be satisfied with sitting still in your career.

The Keys to Strong Working Relationships

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You may enjoy your job immensely, but if you haven’t got good working relationships with the people you work with on a daily basis, it can make your life a misery. All it takes is one failed relationship to make your whole view on your job change completely. You may feel like you want to change jobs or you may feel like you’re unable to work with the individual in question. Building strong working relationships will not only mean you’ll be able to enjoy your job, but you’ll also have support when you need it and you’ll be more likely to succeed. Good working relationships are important in every sense – an employer with employees, employees with their employer and colleagues with one another. So, here are some tips for perfecting all three.

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An Employer with Employees

You’re reliant upon your employees to do a good job in order to keep the business running as successfully as possible. Your employees need to know that they’re able to come to you with problems and you’ll calmly offer solutions. If your employees are afraid to bother you or believe they’ll be reprimanded for small mistakes, they’re less likely to keep you informed. So, how do you build a relationship that allows your employees to enjoy your company and respect your views?

First and foremost, you need to remember that your employees are the ones who are the first point of contact for your customers. What they do is important and employers often forget that. As an employer, it’s easy to feel like you’re superior to your employees, when in fact, their jobs are just as important as yours. If you present yourself in a way that makes your employees feel inferior, they may not believe you’re approachable.

As the businesses boss, you’re sometimes the odd one out. You’re doing a different job and it’s likely that you have your own office space, away from everyone else. Therefore, you have to do what you can to blend in with the crowd. Come out of your office at break times and enjoy a coffee with your employees so you can find out more about them and their lives. Consider how you’re dressing too. If you’re walking into work wearing a designer suit and tie, you may be inadvertently setting yourself apart from the rest. That’s not to say you shouldn’t be turning up looking smart; but, you don’t have to throw your superiority in everyone’s faces.

It can sometimes help to go back to basics. When you’ve been running a business for so long, it can sometimes be difficult to remember where you started. Try to trigger your memory by doing your employees job for a day could help you to realise the pressures they’re under and what you could do to make their jobs easier. Ask your employees for any suggestions and don’t try and keep secrets. It’s important you have an open relationship with your employees, where you can say what you need to say and they can return the favour.

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Employees with an Employer

If you can build a good relationship with your employer, it can make your job so much easier. Even if you’re only in your job for a short amount of time, you’ll need to rely on your employer for a good reference and they may be able to point you in the right direction when you want to climb the career ladder. So, how do you create a relationship with your boss that will benefit you both?

One of the main things to remember is that your boss is human. There may be days when your boss is under immense stress and that could result in you and your colleagues getting the brunt of it. It’s difficult not to take it out on the people you work closely with when something major goes wrong. Don’t take it personally and try to remember that there are more good days than there are bad. Underneath the title, your boss is just like any of the rest of you. So, build a relationship in the same way you would with any of your other colleagues.

Along with your quality of work, your boss will also expect a high level of reliability and honesty. So, if you’re known for pulling a few ‘sickys’ and your boss has to deal with unfinished work, you aren’t going to build a strong foundation for a good relationship. Can you imagine if you turned up to work and the doors were closed with a note saying, ‘sorry, but I won’t be paying you today’? Trust and reliability works both ways.

It’s always nice to be told that you’re doing a good job or your work is fantastic. But, your boss may not always have time to give you praise. Don’t sit there and wait for praise to come and then get upset when it doesn’t. You should be able to tell when you’ve done good work and be proud of yourself regardless. Everyone has a different kind of communication style, and it’s worth taking the time to figure your bosses out. It will be easier for you to figure out your boss’s style than your boss attempt to adjust his style to each individual employee. Once you’ve cracked it, you’ll have a much easier time when it comes to talking to your boss one-to-one.

Creating a good working relationship with your boss doesn’t mean you need to be best friends. In fact, it doesn’t even mean you have to like each other. But, you do need to rely on each other. So, do what you can to show your boss that you’re willing to go above and beyond and you may just get the same back.


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Employees with Employees

Colleagues have the opportunity to become lifelong friends. In fact, many colleagues do become best friends. If you think about it, you probably see more of your colleagues than you do your own families. This is especially true for people working shift jobs, like nurses. Take a look at Staffnurse.com vacancies for phlebotomists and care assistants and you’ll see the type of hours they work. So, it’s important you build great relationships with your colleagues so you have a better chance of enjoying the work you do.

It’s a much different type of relationship than that of an employer and employees. You’ll spend a lot more time with your colleagues than your employer, so you’ll have more of a chance to get to know one another. Be honest and open from the get go. Learn to communicate well with others. Some basics are eye contact and body language. Don’t be afraid to be truthful about your flaws. It isn’t like the playground at school – no-one is going to tease the new kid. In fact, many people end up bonding over similar flaws.

Remember that everyone is different. When you attempt to get to know people by chatting and opening up, you may come across people who are less enthusiastic about building a relationship. Some people are quiet and reserved, so it doesn’t mean you’ll never have a relationship with that person, it just may take longer to develop. When building relationships with colleagues, it’s important to be observant. You may spot someone reading a book you’ve read before which could be a good talking point for you both. You may notice someone suffering from a head cold, so offering to lighten their load or making them a cup of tea could go a long way to starting a lasting relationship. People don’t often remember what you said, but they’ll certainly remember the way you made them feel.

One of the most important things you can do when you’re starting new working relationships is to find some common ground. Perhaps you like the same TV programmes or you enjoy going to Yoga class. Perhaps you have children of a similar age or you have a family member that drives you crazy. There are lots of things, some surprising, that can help people to connect. It also worth remembering not to be a colleague snob. There are many companies where colleagues stick to the same department when it comes to building relationships. Someone from the I.T department surely couldn’t be friends with someone from the marketing department? Thinking like this will only result in you missing out on valuable friendships. If you have the opportunity, try and connect with people from different areas in your workplace. It’s not only good for you to establish as many relationships as possible, but having connections can often lead to new opportunities. You’ll never know if you’ll be interested in swapping departments in the future.

Working relationships have the ability to make your working life wonderful or a living hell. Which would you choose? Make an effort with your relationships by following these steps and you could find a workplace that you’re happy in for years to come. After all, isn’t that the ultimate goal?

8 Essential Tracking Strategies You Need To Succeed

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In the business world, success is everything. You don’t need to have a capitalistic mind to agree: Without success, your business fails. Costs increase, profits fall, and ultimately the business faces bankruptcy. But success depends on your ability to take strategic decisions that will benefit the company. Most entrepreneurs, when they launch their first business, tend to imagine that the skills of business management come naturally to those who are in the right position. In reality, effective management relies on informed decisions. These strategic decisions we’ve mentioned, they don’t just come as divine inspiration. They are the result of thorough and analytical research, done by experts in their fields. In other words, great business decisions come from using the appropriate business data. You need to track your performance today to find room for improvement and to grow your business tomorrow. Sounds simple enough, wouldn’t you say? Here’s a list of the most important tracking strategies that you need to implement in your company.

StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures Article | 8 Essential Tracking Strategies You Need To Succeed

Why do businesses need to track data?

It’s well known that large companies have implemented complex tracking strategies within their structure. Small businesses, on the other hand, tend to reject the idea of tracking as they often consider it a waste of time. Nobody can blame small companies for coming to that unfair conclusion. After all, they don’t have sufficient resources or time to create large-scale data tracking strategies. But becoming a data genius in a small company can still be a useful way to identify useful data for your business survival. Tracking everything is time-demanding. Nevertheless, it’s important to gather knowledge about everything that relates to your business, including employees, customers, and web interactions – assuming you have a website. Thankfully, there are a few useful tools that can be easily implemented, even in small companies, and that are designed to provide you with the necessary knowledge to take informed decisions: CRM tools, task management tools, and web traffic tools are already available on the market.

How is your SEO performance?

When your website is your main marketing tool and the key tool of your online presence, it’s essential to make sure that it is equipped to rank high in the search engine results, which is why SEO for small business is so vital. As a result, most companies need to work on a regular basis with a specialist agency that offers practical SEO audits services. The audit will highlight areas of improvement and identify strategies to improve your ranking scores. It’s also important to stay on top of the Google ranking updates so that your website doesn’t suffer any penalties for not following the latest SEO best practices promoted by Google. As a rule of the thumb, SEO audits, carried out by a leading SEO agency, consider your keyword choices and its ranking in comparison with your competitors. It also helps you to identify further relevant keywords that you might be missing. Additionally, it will highlight technical changes that need to be made to improve your ranking abilities, such as adding micro data and respecting the scheme.org etiquette.

Is your branding consistent?

For businesses, whether online, offline or both, your branding strategy is your identity. Consequently, keeping a consistent brand identity is the best way to convey an image of reliability for your business. If you start by changing your logo and then play with the layout, the color scheme, and the content until you’ve found a brand image that you like, you risk losing a lot of customers in the process. Your visitors want to feel like they are interacting with the same company when they read your online content. This means that the tone of voice in your product pages and your blog articles needs to remain the same; the social media platforms need to promote your business values too; and finally you need to share the same visual look and feel across all platforms – in short, don’t use a different logo or color scheme between your website and your Twitter account, for example. Consequently, tracking your brand online presence is the most effective way to guarantee that you share a homogenous message.


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Are you a social media influencer?

The great thing about using social media platforms is that you can engage directly with your customers, leads, partners, and investors. The problem is that too many companies tend to use social media in a very self-centered manner. They only talk about their brand, but they don’t create any exchange with other social media users. This kind of social media strategy is pointless and doesn’t generate any positive result for the company. Therefore, you should investigate the possibility to track social media engagement, as a way of monitoring the effectiveness of your social media strategy. There are plenty of ways to measure engagement, and the best strategies combine several tracking methods. Monitoring likes and shares on your social media posts indicates how other users reacted to your message. You will need to add audience growth indicators to ensure that your posts are touching a wide group. Finally, keeping track of active fans vs. passive fans is also a solid indication of your performance.

What’s the ROI of your website?

Thanks to Google Analytics and Google Adwords, small companies don’t need to pay to track the performance of their website. Using the Analytics tracking code, you can stay informed in real time of how your website is doing and how people are using it. Additionally, you can create conversion tracking codes, which are used to track positive interactions on the website, such as a customer registering to a membership program or someone committing to purchase. Conversions can help you to give a monetary value to your website. For eCommerce sites, the monetary value is pretty easy to define, as all you need to do is to track the actual purchase value. You can use this value to identify the most valuable content on your site. Pages that receive little views and don’t generate a conversion have no ROI. For websites that don’t offer online products to buy, the monetary value will be defined by combining the digital touchpoints that lead to a business purchase. Pages that are not viewed, again, may not support revenue growth for the website.

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What is the overall productivity in the workplace?

If you’ve heard that your employees are your most precious asset, you might want to measure the truth of that saying in the workplace, namely by monitoring your business productivity. For a lot of companies, the idea of tracking business productivity brings to mind an image from Modern Times with Chaplin running through a factory to finish his task. In reality, monitoring productivity can be done in any line of work and provides useful information for improvement. In offices, it’s about tracking the amount of time spent on each project, using a time management tool. This is extremely useful to identify issues with projects and with work practices so that most the project manager and the employee can think of the ideal solution for their problems.

What’s the employee’s satisfaction?

Using smart and playful survey system, you can track the level of satisfaction of your employees. What this means is that you can very easily identify frictions and pressure points before they damage your team. For instance, this kind of survey is extremely useful if you are implementing a new business strategy. You should run a survey at the beginning of the implementation and a few months later when everyone has got used to the change. This allows you to track good ideas, and change management direction before your employees leave you. Additionally, employee satisfaction surveys need to be run yearly, even if you don’t introduce new strategies. Consider it a checkup on your business health.

Don’t let competitors surprise you

Competitors never stop working on a new service product or way to approach the market. Consequently, you should alway keep an eye on their activities to make sure that you are prepared for anything new. Beware, this doesn’t mean engaging in illegal spying activities. It’s about making the most of useful marketing tools to keep yourself informed! Working with SEMrush enables you to track the keyword ranking of your competitors in any search engines. Not only can you discover relevant keywords but you can also find out their best-performing ones. Ads tracking tools – SocialAdNinja for example – are extremely useful to spy on effective campaigns and eventually learn a few tips from your competitors! The more you know about their activities, the better equipped you are to beat them. But remember: What you do to them, they can do to you too, so be smart with your marketing and don’t plagiarize their ads.

What are the latest digital trends?

The digital trends change and evolve all the time. From responsive design, marketers have now moved to interactive video strategies and virtual reality integration. In other words, keeping track with the market trends means that you can provide your customers with a communication campaign that is anchored in real time and respond to their needs.

Tracking data is the only way for businesses to aggregate knowledge about the performance of their employees, their customers, and their websites. Knowledge is the base to build further successful campaigns and business strategies. But knowledge is only a platform for more creativity. Data don’t provide the solution. They only paint the situation. Innovative thinking and imagination as a response to identified problems are what success is made of.