Fun and Lucrative: 5 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Podcast

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Podcast|Fun and Lucrative: 5 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a PodcastThanks to the development of new and innovative technologies, it is easier than ever before to create, manage, and advertise any business; however, new challenges are introduced daily. With this in mind, many wonder how business owners can establish their authority in their particular niche and gain new customers. How will people find the product or service they want when there is so much information “out there?”

An answer to this is with podcasts. Podcasts are a new and popular option for businesses to go where their potential customers are and win their attention and patronage while providing service to the community and establishing their brand. Some of the reasons that making a podcast with the help of experts like Blubrry Podcasting is such a good idea for modern businesses can be found below.

1. Share Expertise

A business owner along with their business has something unique to offer the world. It could be knowledge about frugal living or even a team of comedians -; there are people out there who want to know what you have to say. They are out there looking for it and waiting for it.

A business owner should think about all the resources they have at their disposal and the things they may have taken for granted. These are the things that can be shared to help others. What is a business owner able to give back to help contribute to the conversation that is going on? Building thought leadership and authority within the business realm is the best way to reach the top in any field. Podcasts offer businesses another way to build brand awareness and this should be something any business owner uses.

2. Build the Brand

Building a brand is about much more than just picking a web design, logo, and motto. When someone is searching online, they will find an array of companies offering identical products or services. How can they tell which is best? A podcast can help a business owner set themselves apart from the crowd. It will also help customers see that the business owner truly cares and knows what they are doing, which will build trust.

3. Gain and Retain Customers

All businesses must be able to gain and retain customers. Keep in mind, keeping a current customer costs less than getting a new one. By providing quality information on a regular basis, a person can keep customers coming back. This is key to retention and ongoing business success.

4. Networking Benefits

Podcasts are the ideal medium for interviews. While solo shows are great, any conversation can help make it more engaging. Many successful podcasts have guests from a related field that can provide valuable content for people listening.

5. Save Money and Time

Podcasts are extremely affordable compared to other forms of advertising. This means it is something that anyone can afford to do, even startup companies with a limited marketing budget.

Creating a Podcast

Remember, before starting a podcast, a business owner needs to make sure they have something of significance to talk about. This will help ensure people are actually interested in what is being said. take some time to think of a direction for the podcase to achieve the best possible results for the marketing method.

Five Ways To Get Creative While Working From Home: From someone who does it all the time

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StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article |Working from Home|Five Ways To Get Creative While Working From HomeWhen I am not teaching a class at the university or speaking, I am working from home.

Here are five things that work for me as a solitary, creative home worker:

  1. Finding my creative space
  2. Finding my creative time
  3. Take breaks and naps
  4. Letting incubation work for me
  5. Force connections

A bit more about each, and how you might put them to work for you.

Finding your creative space

Have you ever walked into a place, rubbed your hands together and said to yourself, “I could really do some great work here?” Artists and musicians have studios, crafts people have workshops, professors and pastors have studies, and scientists have laboratories.

Where is your creative space? Where do you do your best work? One of my artist friends describes her studio as her sanctuary. It is her “safe place.” In her studio, she is able to create, try new concepts, and leave her work in progress. Her studio is filled with light, it’s clean and well organized, and is just the right temperature for her. It is the place where no one disturbs her. It is her retreat from the hectic, outside world, where she can immerse herself in a private world of concepts and colors.

I really love my home office.

I work at an old library table that was built in 1952. I bought it from a used furniture store in the 1980s, and it is my favorite piece of furniture. I wrote my dissertation and all of my books at that table! When I sit at my desk I have a beautiful view of my yard and the pine trees that surround it. I keep meaningful items and decor in my office – like my Iron Man action figure and desktop tractors that remind me of my farm heritage. My office is my favorite room in the house – and it’s a good thing because I spend so much time here.

How to create your own place for productivity? Make your creative space a place that you want to be in. That you look forward to spending time in. Ask yourself, where do I do my best work?

Finding your creative time

My best creative time is morning. When I was writing my second book, Leading on the Creative Edge , I would write from 6:30 to 9:00 a.m. At 9:00 my staff would start to arrive for work and the day-to-day business would begin. I was also mentally “done” with the book for the day. I needed a break.

When I worked with my colleague, Dr. Mary Murdock, her most creative time was from 10:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. Needless to say Mary didn’t schedule morning meetings or classes.

Working from home is providing many folks a brand-new opportunity to find a creative time that works best for them. If you’re able, lean into the schedule that works best for you and your creative output.

Take breaks and naps

The philosopher Immanuel Kant worked in bed at certain times of the day with blankets arranged around him in a particular fashion. Mozart composed after exercise. For me, it is sleep that rejuvenates my creative capacity.

After a 20 or 30-minute nap in the afternoon, I am ready to do more creative work. My nap creates a separation in my day. It feels to me that I actually have two days in one.

When I was writing my master’s thesis and later my doctoral dissertation I would lie down on the floor for 20 minutes after dinner and listen to meditative guitar music. I usually fell asleep during that time, but that little nap allowed me to work productively for another three hours.

Letting incubation work for you

A classic tenet of creative problem solving is that breakthrough ideas often come to us when we step away from the problem and “incubate.” You’ve likely experienced it yourself. You’ve been working on a problem for a long time, haven’t made progress, and you back off to do something else. After your period of incubation — eureka!

The idea hits you.

Several times in my life I’ve woken up in the middle of the night with a breakthrough idea for a project I am working on. As a matter of fact, my first book, Why didn’t I think of that?, came to me at 3 a.m. in Washington D.C. in 1986.

I was finishing up my doctoral dissertation and took the weekend off to visit friends.

In the middle of the night, I woke up with the characters and the plot line for the book. I grabbed my pocket tape recorder and dictated almost the entire book.

Now, here is the kicker. I went to D.C. to get away from my work. I almost did not take the recorder with me because I thought I was mentally exhausted. However, if I had left the recorder behind, I am sure that book would not exist today.

So, if you become stymied on a project, step away from it. And it’s OK to work on several projects at the same time. (Just don’t multitask!) Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison worked on several projects at the same time. When they got tired of one, they would switch and work on another. In that way, when they were working on the other project they were “incubating” on the first project. Try it. If it worked for Franklin and Edison it might work for you.

Force connections when you get stuck

One sure-fire way to get new ideas is by using Forced Connections. Forced Connections is the essence of creativity; a practice of combining ideas that don’t appear to be related in a new way. This method helps you get those ideas flowing when you are stuck.

How it works:

  • Consider the problem you are trying to solve.
  • Pick an object or situation from a completely unrelated area.
  • Find or “force” a connection between the problem you are working on and the seemingly unrelated object.

The result of this new connection is a new idea.

In my creativity programs, we always do a warm-up exercise before we take on the main challenge. One of my favorite warm-ups is to generate ideas for the perfect bathtub.

After a few minutes, the group starts to slow down. They have generated the typical ideas for improving a bathtub. But, now they are stuck. It is time to introduce Forced Connections by showing the group some pictures or items unrelated to the topic.

First picture. “What ideas do you get for improving a bathtub from a bunch of bananas?” I get ideas like: make it non-slip, make it yellow, shape the tub to fit your body, and my favorite—have a bunch of my friends over.

Another picture: an airplane cockpit. This picture generates ideas like: temperature controls for the tub, lots of windows around the tub, seats in the tub and, of course, make the tub fly.

You don’t need pictures to have this technique work for you. All you need to do is look around. I am sitting at my desk while I am writing this. So, if I were working on a challenge and got stuck, I would ask myself—what ideas do I get from my telephone or books on my bookcase or the fan on my desk or trees in my backyard?

With Forced Connections, the ideas you get may not be the breakthrough answers you are looking for, but you will have more ideas to choose from.

There you have it! My time-tested recipe for at-home creativity work. See what works for you – I’d love to see photos of your creative spaces, learn about your breakthrough ideas, and hear about whether these practices help your creative output. Send your experiences, and good luck!

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor |Roger L. Firestien, PhDDr. Roger Firestien has taught more people to lead the creative process than anyone else in the world. He is senior faculty and an associate professor at the Center for Creativity and Change Leadership at SUNY Buffalo, author of Create in A Flash: A Leader’s Recipe For Breakthrough Innovation and President of Innovation Resources, Inc.

For more information please visit: https://rogerfirestien.com/

The Simplest Way Of Commercializing Products Is Ecommerce!

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Ecommerce|The Simplest Way Of Commercializing Products Is Ecommerce!The essential thing which entered into the world of new creations nearly four decades before has revolutionized the life of people today. It is none other than the network of networks. It has changed its name to the internet in the following days. The Internet has accessed every indispensable space. It creates a platform for learning and earning people. It serves a better place for commerce too.

The art of doing commerce through the network is popularly known as ecommerce. Let’s enquire about the characteristics of selling and buying through the internet.

Best platform for finding numerous choices

The procedure for buying a thing is to step into a shop and finding the best one we would like to buy. If the products showcased at the shop is not fulfilling our needs, we will step into the other one. This situation is avoided at finding things on the internet. It contains a long list of manufacturers and their products. This enables the buyer to choose the best from numerous products placed.

Intermediate dealers between manufacturer and buyer

The products can be showcased online by manufacturers and dealers. The dealers stay as an intermediate between the manufacturers and buyers. They deal with dropshipping the products. They receive orders from the customers and places the information to the manufacturing site. They finish the order and ship it to the dealer. Then the product reaches the customer who ordered it. Thus, the dealers stay as an intermediate between producers and customers.

Benefits of purchasing online

Online shopping has become more common among people nowadays. The numerous choices and sellers have made people explore it. Some of those products cannot be found at the place we live in. The rare ones and exotic products can be found online. The dealers would rate the product’s quality and reviews given by its users who had purchased it before. The sites of purchasing have every product we think of. Dropshipping platforms like aliexpress dropshipping has become more available for persons in need of immediate use. It ranges it’s products from household needs to jewelry collections.

Trendy choices are found online

The world moves on to the style of freaky and strange as the way of wishing to look freaky than others. These freaky needs can be attained at online shopping. They give off the products at the best and reliable rate. The tracing and tracking of the position of goods can also be monitored by the customers if it is needed. The customer gets the most trendy choices of products available at the market at the site. The dropshipping has made more and more reliable and trustworthy. They help in situations when we are unable to step into a shop and buy the products in person.

The world has been shrunk into the palm of our hand which has made everything possible in this world to acquire. It helps in predating situations to make us satisfied and free. The best one for answering and delivering the best in ecommerce!

Dealing with Payroll for Small Business Owners

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article | Dealing with Payroll for Small Business Owners

Single touch payroll is one of those essential tasks that small businesses must undertake, but it can be a confusing and time-consuming process. The basic principle is straightforward enough – calculate the gross monthly earnings of your employees, then subtract deductions to arrive at a net figure. Inevitably it isn’t as simple as it sounds, and you need to be aware of every detail and produce 100% accurate net figures. If you don’t yet have small business accounting software, here is how you can understand it.

Deductions

Statutory payroll law states that the employer must retain this deduction and transfer the money to the relevant tax office. Statutory deductions include federal income tax, social security tax, Medicare tax (with an additional percentage for high earners) and state income tax. There will also be local taxes that come under the statutory umbrella, such as city and county taxes, plus school district, state disability and unemployment insurance.

Voluntary deductions are agreed with the employee and cover employment benefits such as health insurance, life insurance, retirement plans and stock purchase plans. It also includes any job-related expenses, for example, uniform, meals and union subscriptions.

Employer’s role in tax collection

It is essential that every employer keeps records of their payroll accounting and adheres to the law regarding tax deductions. It is the duty of the employer to deduct the correct tax amount from the employees’ wages and ensure that it is transferred to the right tax agency. To maintain comprehensive accounts of all monies dealt with, the employer must produce reconciliation reports, file payroll tax returns and include all payroll expenses in the company accounts and financial reports.

Taxes paid by the employer

In addition to the taxes an employee pays, the company must contribute to payroll taxes. These are payable in addition to an employee’s earnings and include social security, Medicare, federal unemployment taxes (FUTA) and state unemployment taxes (SUTA).

The importance of good record-keeping

Make sure your payroll accounting is kept meticulously recorded and up to date. Taxes need to be paid on time, and the mandatory forms filed when due. These forms include the annual federal unemployment tax return, the employer’s quarterly payroll tax return, the annual return of withheld federal income tax, and the wage and tax statements form. As well as federal requirements, employers also have to file reports with state and local agencies.

How do you run your payroll accounting

Large businesses can employ payroll experts or even entire teams to take care of all aspects of payroll. Small businesses often don’t have trained personnel, and with payroll being a crucial factor in running a legitimate business, the responsibility needs to be taken on by someone with the knowledge and abilities necessary to ensure that standards are being met. Small business owners often need to learn new skills, and this can often be facilitated by researching the topic on the Internet. For many needs, as long as you are careful to check that your sources of information are authoritative and reliable, then the knowledge you wish to obtain can be found quite easily. However, the skills required to run a well-managed payroll operation will not be so readily acquired using the same method. The intricacies of payroll and possible complications require professional training if you want to be confident you won’t end up in a payroll tangle further down the road.

Learning to run the payroll

The American Payroll Association runs courses on payroll, and offers virtual study options as well as having training suites in most major cities. The study can lead to Certified Payroll Professional (CPP) and Fundamental Payroll Certification (FPC) qualifications. It could be a good option if you wish to master the art of payroll for yourself or have a member of staff that is suitable for the role.

A less formal option might be to enlist the help of friends, family or anyone else who understands payroll and could help you with keeping records and doing tax returns to the required standard. It could be a good option if you only have one or two members of staff and limited resources. It cannot be stressed enough, however, that whoever you ask for help must be an expert, not just a buddy from the office next door who says he knows all about payroll! Make sure your adviser is qualified and can prove their expertise. Payroll is far too important to get right to trust it to just anyone.

Not learning to run the payroll

You may not want to spend your precious work time doing payroll, let alone learning about how to do it properly. If you don’t have the time or inclination to do it yourself, one option is to outsource. Outsourcing has become a popular choice for many discrete business functions and is a good way of getting aspects of your business taken care of professionally when you don’t have the skills or availability to do it yourself. If your business needs you to bring in sales leads and meet with clients in order to generate business, then that is what you need to devote yourself to. The business is likely to make more profits with you acting in your strongest role rather than spending time doing payroll, which could be accomplished more cost-effectively with outsourcing. Choose your outsourcing company carefully to ensure you get the highest standards of service. This option sounds expensive, but it needn’t be. It is perfectly possible to find a Cheap Payroll Service that will do a good job for you, so don’t assume it will be too costly.

Payroll matters

The thought of tackling payroll may make you groan, or induce a headache as you contemplate the lists of tax percentages, welfare contributions and complicated calculations. The key message here is that payroll is vitally important, and it won’t go away. However much you might dislike it, it has to be done. Spend some time assessing which solution is most suitable for you, your staff and your company. Decide the method you want to use to tackle your payroll, put a plan into action, and then quit worrying about it.

How to validate your blog post ideas

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Blog Post Ideas|How to validate your blog post ideasThe cold, hard truth in the world of writing is that no matter how well you research a topic, and no matter how much passion you pour into content creation, a piece can (and will) still fall flat if there was never enough interest in the topic to start off with.

There’s nothing quite as disheartening as spending hours upon hours writing a blog post (the average one takes roughly 3 and a half hours from start to finish), only to find that it was never going to drive traffic due to minimal search volume.

Fortunately, there are data-driven ways you can validate your blog ideas before you dive into the creation process.

Take stock of these simple steps and work them into your blogging process. You’ll soon find your content marketing is performing far better than you imagined possible thanks to spending these few extra moments on validation.

Use Google to Assess The Competition

One of the most powerful tools at your disposal for validating a blog post idea is actually one of the most common: Google.

By searching your proposed topic or title, Google can give you a strong indication on whether or not you have any chance or ranking with that title and therefore whether writing content on that topic will drive traffic to your site in the long term.

Before you write a post on a given title, put that title into Google and see what comes on the first page.

Google gives preference to bigger sites with more traffic and a stronger presence on the internet generally. Therefore if you see the first page of Google dominated by the websites of big companies and global news sites, you should narrow down the topic that you are writing about.

Ideally, when you search your proposed title in Google you want to see posts on the front page of companies your own size or smaller. Having social media and forum pages on the first page of Google also confirms that you have a good chance of ranking your post, even if your website is still small.

Ask your current audience what topics are of interest to them

Another way to gauge interest in a potential blog topic is to ask your existing customers whether they care about the topic in question.

After all, the whole point of a blog is to engage with your current audience and encourage new leads to interact with your brand; what better way to find out what your customers want to hear about than to simply ask them?

There are a couple of simple ways to do this: if you have an active social media following, you can create an easy Yes/No poll asking whether or not your audience would be interested in reading about a specific topic—Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are ideal venues for this sort of outreach.

If you’re lost in the ideation process and could use some direction, send out an email blast giving your audience the opportunity to call out the topics they’d most like to hear about. You’d be surprised by how many of your followers will respond with ideas they’ve been itching to learn more about.

Another effective, yet easily overlooked way to choose blog topics with the help of your customers is to simply jot down the most common questions you receive on a daily basis and use them as inspiration for future posts.

Use forums to find “low competition questions”

Forum sites like Quora and Reddit can help with validating a blog topic idea because the presence of conversations around your topic both indicate a level of interest in that topic, as well as a lack of answers on the internet on that topic.

This latter point is particularly important. People often ask questions on forums when they have Googled a question but not found a satisfactory answer. Therefore if you see a question being asked regularly on forum sites, it is well worth seeing what comes up when you Google it.

If you feel that you can answer the question better than what is currently on the first page of Google, and that question is being regularly asked in forums then you have an excellent chance of creating a post on that topic which will bring in traffic (and leads) for years to come.

Take Note of Fruitless Searches

It’s important for every content creator to always stay vigilant for topic opportunities; that way, you won’t be found wanting when it comes time to choose a topic to write about.

One of the best ways to validate a topic is through personal experience—if you’ve searched and searched for information on a specific subject to no avail, that’s a great indication that there are others just like you looking for the same thing. There therefore may be an opportunity to fill there.

Make it a habit to write down every time you research a topic but come up dissatisfied with your results; you’d be surprised how quickly you amass a list of blog topics just waiting to be created.

The best thing about this method of validating a topic is that all of the work is done for you prior to the actual creation process since your list is already on hand, and it takes the pain out of ideation since these are all topics you’re already interested in.

In the world of modern marketing content is king, but it’s worthless without proper validation; gather data through these simple processes, and you’ll soon find that your blog posts are earning you better engagement and higher traffic than ever before.