Taking A Business Blog And Making It Work For Your Business

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, Taking A Business Blog And Making It Work For Your Business

There is no denying that as a business you need to look at all the different opportunities and avenues to attract customers or clients to your company. While some people are going back to old methods of shopping their high street and supporting small and local businesses, the digital world is still expanding, and this can often be an area where a business is the most successful.

However, for many businesses, there are opportunities that you just don’t take or utilise as best as you should. Sure you may have a content strategy when it comes to advertising your business online, perhaps a campaign where you use social media to keep things current and to engage with your audience. But there are other factors that you can consider, and a great option is a business blog. You may already have a page dedicated to blog posts on your main website, which is an excellent start to make, but could you do more? Here are some of the ways that you can take your business blog to the next level and make it work harder for your business. With very little effort.

Have your own domain

If you are serious about taking the business blog to the next level then it is important to ensure that you have your own domain name. While you may already have a dedicated page on your website, there is a missed opportunity of what a separate domain could do for you. Many people start off blogging with a host like blogger or WordPress. They choose a blog name, perhaps your business, but then the domain includes WordPress or blogspot within it. This means that you aren’t completely self-hosted, and that you are not building your own domain authority. Which can help you become credible when it comes to audience, engagement and your reach on the internet. Consider obtaining your own domain and then focus on your SEO to build up your ranking. It may take time, but it can be a serious game changer when it comes to attracting more customers and clients to your main site. As there are two domains to work from when it comes to keyword selection and links.

Attend networking events and use the blog for it

Blogging and networking events can be overwhelming, but you are going to be in a room full of like-minded individuals and the opportunity to feel inspired and learn something new is not to be missed. Plus it enables you to work and network with others, so you may want to consider having business cards that not only include your business details but also your blog details. Many people at networking events may find that checking out a business blog is easier than heading directly to the website, a more informal approach. Of course, within the posts, you may then have links directly to your site so it can be a win win situation to find yourself in. Networking events can work wonders for gaining in popularity when it comes to the digital world, but also enable you to make new connections. You could then host articles on each others blogs, obviously with companies that are not a direct competition or threat to your business, and help to increase SEO in that way.

A blog can help SEO

We have mentioned SEO a few times already, but a blog can really help to enhancer that feature when it comes to your business. You can include keywords in blog posts and content, you can use the separate domain to link back to your main website and also see it as an informal sales tool. If you are unsure how to make sure that you are prioritising search engine optimisation, not just with your business blog but also your main website, then you can seek the help of an SEO company for guidance. It could be a great way to boost your credibility in the online world and be presented in search engine results when your company may not even be on the radar of a potential customer or client.

Focus on your brand and social media strategy

These days making more of your blog is so much more than the content you produce, although that is equally as important. It can be more to do with how you promote it and the readership you gain. It’s all well and good writing a killer blog post, but if you don’t promote it then you may find it doesn’t get the readership it deserves, and therefore the traffic you want. Work on promotion through Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Each have their different algorithms, so learn about the best posting times and what sort of content would suit.

Let’s hope these tips help you to make more of a business blog.

Detailed Guide to Project Management Principles and Phases

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StrategyDriven Project Management Article |Project Management|Detailed Guide to Project Management Principles and PhasesProject management is a process that involves planning, executing, and managing a project to ensure successful project delivery. A project is a one-time activity that focuses on a particular goal, though sometimes it could be for a set of outcomes. Commonly, a project refers to developing a computer application, updating an application, etc. There are essential aspects of the project, such as scheduling, monitoring, and closing the project that is a part of the project manager’s responsibilities. The job of a project manager includes directing and managing project work, such as setting up project goals and objectives, identifying tasks, and allocating resources, as well as calculating budgets and deadlines.

A project manager often uses project management tools to make these tasks easier and more efficient. Further, every project has a set of principles and phases that help make the project workflow smoother. Let’s look at these principles and stages in detail.

Project Management Principles

While aiming for successful project management and delivery, following a set of principles can make the path to successful implementation easier. Below are some common project management principles that can be applied to any level of a project.

  • Project planning

A good starting point for developing any project is clearly defining the goals and vision of the project. This helps plan the project structure. The PM can include work packages to be assigned to the project team; the project workflow chart; and the project milestones.

  • Project structure

A clear project definition should be established at the beginning. This definition involves the entire project team at every step to facilitate smoother functions of the project.

  • Transparency

Maintaining a certain level of transparency through the project management lifecycle helps everyone stay updated on the project’s progress. Ensure that you present an overview of the project status to the client or stakeholders at each stage of the project.

  • Risk management

Risks are a part of any project, and it’s the role of a project manager to plan and budget for these risks. Also, keep in mind that every project is unique and has different goals, associated costs, appointments, and performance. Identifying these risks at the right time can help you address negative developments early on.

  • Managing project disturbances

Developing strategies to overcome risks and roadblocks will help you stick to the project timelines. Your experience, skill set, knowledge, and instincts will help you identify and address risks in time.

  • Project success

Project success can imply various things. Depending on the project goal and customer requirements, project success should be defined at the beginning of a project. It should include project terms and key measurable criteria for defining the project.

Project Management Phases

Almost every project management lifecycle goes through five phases. These project management lifecycle phases categorize what the project is about and how it will be carried out from the beginning to the end. Following are the five phases of project management:

  • Initiation

This is the beginning of any project. At this stage, the project value, feasibility, and goal are determined. Generally, a business case report and a feasibility study are created before the project is approved or rejected.

  1. The business case report justifies the need for the project and the return on investment.
  2. The feasibility study comprises the project goals, deadlines, and budget.
  • Planning

The next phase in the project management lifecycle is planning the project. This stage focuses on:

  1. Gathering a project team and creating workflow charts to meet project deadlines.
  2. Creating an accounting of the resources required, financing, and materials.
  3. Determining the risks associated with the project and how they’ll impact the project.
  • Execution

Once the project planning is complete, the project execution begins. This stage starts with assigning the team members their tasks and monitoring the progress of these tasks.

  • Monitor and Control

It is the project manager’s role to continuously monitor the project to ensure that it is progressing smoothly and as planned. This includes:

  1. Tracking the deliverables and ensuring that the planned quality of deliverables is met.
  2. Monitoring expenses and control cost changes.
  • Close

The final stage in project management is closing the project. This stage comes after the project goals and objectives are met. Project closing includes the following:

  1. Ensure all the deliverables are complete.
  2. Close outstanding contracts and archive the paperwork.

To Conclude

This is just a brief idea of what the project management process entails. To get a thorough understanding of the project management process and all its aspects, opt for a project management professional course. The delivery of a project is just one of the elements in project management. It also involves quality, discipline, and goal-orientation, all of which can be developed by taking a professional certification course in project management.

How to Transform Your Management Style

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StrategyDriven Management and Leadership Article |Management Style|How to Transform Your Management StyleIn terms of business management, there are so many different types of management style to choose from, and the type of business you run, what motivates your workers, and what you want to achieve as a business can dictate the best approach. Some management styles are inherently less productive than others, and the trick is to adopt a leadership strategy that promotes productivity and wellbeing within your organization. If your current style isn’t working then there are a variety of strategies that can help you to transition from one management style to another; in this article we’ll take a look at how to go about transforming your own management style without disrupting your everyday business or affecting your staff.

Establishing your style

Leaderships styles can vary from the dictatorial to a more hands-off approach. Each style can affect the wellbeing of your staff, and will hopefully increase productivity. However, productivity can also decrease if the right style isn’t adopted for a particular environment. Let’s take a look at a few well-recognized management styles and see how they can affect the workplace. You may recognize your own style, or perhaps draw inspiration to move to a type of management that might boost your team and increase profitability.

Autocratic

Amongst the more Dickensian management styles, the autocratic leader tends to lack empathy for his team, communicates poorly, and isn’t good at collaborative working. An autocrat (also referred to as an authoritarian) can leave their staff feeling undervalued and you can expect to be organizing leaving parties with increasing frequency.

Paternalistic

Just like working for your dad (this is not always bad, of course), being under the control of a paternalistic manager can have a similar effect to that of an autocratic boss; although, like parents, they tend to have a more empathetic approach when demanding that tasks are done their way.

Democratic

Like the name suggests, under the rule of a democratic boss, you can expect the whole team to get a say in the decision-making process, which is, of course, great, as people tend to feel more included, valued, and engaged when their voice counts. This can lead to better overall communication and a happier workforce. In a democratic office it’s good to have a wise chairperson, however, as a lack of experience can mitigate this extra level of responsibility for outcomes.

Laissez-Faire

You need to be careful with this one, as it can be seen as a little lazy to let the team take over all the decision-making, and without a strong captain at the helm to imbue a little experience into proceedings, problems can easily occur. If you go down this route it may be worth investing in some corporate training courses to up-skill your key team members.

Servant Leadership

Google are known for being good at this style of leadership; removing the focus on the needs of the business and reassigning it to the needs of the workforce. The idea is that a happy team will naturally be more productive. This style of leadership requires a hiring process that can find the kind of staff that are likely to respond best to this sort of working environment.

Changing it up

Moving from one style of management to another needs a stoic attitude, a determined and brave approach, and preferably a collaborative strategy. It might be a change in leadership style but the consequences affect the entire organization and the employees, so they should be kept in the loop and consulted throughout the process in order to get useful feedback and check that they are adapting to the plan.

Think hard about making a change for the better as it can be disruptive, but make sure it’s an egoless process, and everything should go to plan.

Five Methods for Making Your Startup Business Look More Professional

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Startup|Five Methods for Making Your Startup Business Look More ProfessionalIn order to lead your startup business to success, it needs to look professional from the very beginning. Professionalism will be the difference between drawing clients in or pushing them away.

Here are five key and simple methods to promote more of a professional image for your business.

1. Create a Business Email Address

If you’re an entrepreneur who is working at home or from a personal location without a team of staff, chances are you’re using a lot of your current personal information to get things moving, which might include your own personal email address.

Even if your personal email address is nondescript, such as just your name, it still reveals what it is: that you’re a startup using personal information.

Instead, form a new business email address as soon as you can, ideally one which includes the business name or something generic such as ‘contact@businessname’. It’s a simple task, but it can make your correspondence seem significantly more professional.

2. Design an Impressive Website

When researching a new business or product, most people turn to an official website first. Your business can be judged within a matter of seconds based on what your website has to offer and how it appears. A professional website could be the difference between a visitor remaining and browsing, or clicking the exit button straight away.

First impressions count, especially for a start up business, so you need the first impression of your website to be an excellent one. If you’re unsure where to start, you can consult with professional web design in Lichfield and have experts help you develop it.  Alternatively, you can outsource your entire website build to a website development company.

3. Get a Separate Business Line

This means either a direct landline for your business, or having your current cell phone number fitted with a second line. This means that you can answer business-related calls professionally with a formal greeting, and keep your personal calls separate with an informal ‘hello’. To answer a business call informally can make you seem unprofessional.

4. Keep on Top of Invoicing and Payments

Correct and prompt invoicing simply screams professionalism. Invoices which are missed or incorrect will make your accounting system seem undependable and shoddy. It can be difficult to keep on top of accounting when you’re a startup, especially if you are doing everything else and finance isn’t your forte, but it’s important to set up a system which works for you. Scheduling and reminders will be a huge help, and you can easily download invoice templates to fill out accordingly.

This can also help you to keep on track with payments owed to you, to ensure that clients don’t try to delay payment or ignore them entirely.

5. Create a Social Media Presence

After checking out your business website, the next port of call for consumers will be your social media profiles. If you don’t have any, this can seem strange within the current online climate.

Even if you create a very basic, professional profile on each social media platform, it still shows that you’re present online and that you care about getting involved with social media. You can always add to and build your profiles later.

Want To Create SMART Objectives? Here’s How

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StrategyDriven Strategic Planning Article |Business Objectives|Want To Create SMART Objectives? Here's HowNo matter what type of business you have, you’ll need to set clear objectives quarterly or annually. A way of identifying future goals, along with the timeline, they will help you to achieve growth.

Whether your objectives involve increasing business revenue, maximizing your profits, providing better customer service or improving the productivity within your workplace, if you use the right tools you’ll be able to accomplish it.

For these to be successful, you should make them SMART. But what does this mean?

Specific:

You need to ensure that you’re setting very specific objectives. The more specific they are, the more likely it is that you’ll achieve them. An example of an objective which is specific is – increasing sales by 25% by the end of the next quarter through an online marketing campaign. Giving your employees clear guidance, they know what they should be working towards.

Measurable:

When creating your objectives, you should also make them measurable. Identifying exactly what you want to see when you reach your goal, you’ll be able to use the results to showcase their measurability. Breaking it into various elements, it’s a way of refining the steps you will have to take.

Attainable:

Are they attainable? During the process, you need to make sure that you’re not setting goals that are out of reach. To make these achievable and attainable, you need to prepare your staff in advance and have the resources in place.

Realistic:

Can you realistically accomplish these? Are they relevant to your exact needs? These thoughts should be consistent throughout the process to ensure that you’re following the right path.

Timely:

You need to set a deadline – otherwise, you’ll find that there is no hurry to focus on the objectives. This deadline doesn’t have to be rigid, it can be flexible – as long as you or your employees don’t lose sight of what you want to achieve.

So, how do you create them?

Identify The Objective’s Priorities

At the start of the process, you should sit down with your employees and map out what your objectives should be. By setting a concrete vision and conducting a SWOT analysis, you’ll be able to analyze your business’ opportunities, strengths, weaknesses and any potential threats.

Through an open discussion, you should pay attention to key areas within your business, looking at how the objectives can be shaped around them. For example:

  • In the Finance Department, an objective could be to cut spending and improve profit margins.
  • In Operations, you could introduce new technology or update your current software.
  • In Quality – introduce new processes so that all of your products/services are to the highest possible quality.

While identifying priorities and performing a SWOT analysis, you can also review your business’ past performance. Using KPIs as a benchmark, you can create a comparison between your past and future performance.

Evaluate the Market

After identifying priorities, set about evaluating the current market situation. By looking at the market and industry as a whole, you’ll start to notice trends for the upcoming year. Helping you to compete successfully alongside other players within the industry, it will give you a clearer picture of how your company will fit into the landscape.

Keep Your Employees in The Loop

Throughout the course of achieving your business objectives, you should keep your employees up to date with the success of them. By asking for feedback and uncovering the impact that different changes have on your business, you’ll be able to plan your next steps.

A good way of getting your employees involved is through an OKR (Objectives and Key Results spreadsheet). Shared across the company, it will list the steps that each employee will take to achieve the objectives.

Use Sales Playbooks

By utilizing the power of AI Generated Sales Playbooks, you’ll be able to characterize the responsibilities for both you and your sales team. Identifying metrics for measurement and the right approach for successfully closing sales, you’ll be able to establish more concrete objectives.