What’s the Difference Between Influencer Marketing and Brand Advocacy?

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article | Influencer Marketing|What’s the Difference Between Influencer Marketing and Brand Advocacy?The terms influencer and advocate often get thrown together and some may think that they’re interchangeable. But they aren’t. Both roles are very different, and they both have different goals and intentions. Simply put, influencers are in it for themselves while advocates work for you. Working with both could help, but there are cases when only an advocate could help, and vice versa. Let’s take an in-depth look at the differences between the two and which one you should go for.

What is Influencer Marketing Anyway?

When someone uses influencer marketing, it means that they’re partnering up with someone who already has a sizable audience. We use the term partnering up loosely since the influencer isn’t obligated to do anything but mention your product or service. They have no obligation to like it. At this point, this would be an advertisement. They could be required to do some product placement, however, or make a review in the format of your choice.

Evidently, you have to choose influencers who you think will appreciate your product or brand and will want to sing its praises. This is where their role becomes similar to advocates. But it isn’t guaranteed that they will like your product and it could eventually backfire if they have serious gripes with it.

What are Brand Advocates?

Brand advocates are not workers. Instead, they are clients that are so appreciative of what you do that they will be willing to sell your product or services to others unsolicited. It’s a modern version of word-of-mouth marketing.
What makes brand advocates so powerful is social proof. Research has shown that people are more likely to make purchase decisions after recommendations from people in their social circle. Advocates become opinion leaders within their group and can help you get referrals, introduce new products, boost interest for product launches, or even get directly involved in the research and development stage.

What About Brand Ambassadors?

This is also a term that gets conflated with influencers and advocates, but ambassadors are different. Unlike influencers, it is their job to promote your brand. However, unlike advocates, ambassadors will be paid for their work. Ambassadors can drive efforts and help you reach objectives with more predictability, but campaigns have to be executed properly to get results.

Can Ambassadors and Advocates Work Together?

Of course! Actually, this is when they become more powerful. Advocates can be great content creators, and if you can find a way for ambassadors to collect, manage, and re-use this content in your social media campaigns, then you will be able to harness the power of both. Brand ambassador management software streamlines social content development and sharing and will allow you to gather content from a network of advocates, ambassadors, and even employees to boost engagement and traction for your brand across all platforms.

Influencers, ambassadors, and advocates play very different roles. This doesn’t mean, however, that they can’t complement each other, so try to see where each could help.

Designing a Home Office That Aids Your Professional Development

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StrategyDriven Professional Development Article |Home Office|Designing a Home Office That Aids Your Professional DevelopmentOver the past year, many professionals within business, management, and analytics – and, indeed, across many other sectors, too – have found themselves working from home on a more regular basis. This has led to a huge shift in the ways in which staff are able to communicate and interact with one another, in addition to affecting the very nature of their work.

Inquiring about an aspect of a document you’re uncertain about, querying decisions, and monitoring the effectiveness of staff have all been rendered much more difficult, while working from home has become the norm.

This new way of working limits human-to-human interaction, making it difficult to observe and question exemplary staff to help your own development, and making feedback a much lengthier process. However, as remote working seems to be becoming the norm in large corporations such as Spotify and BP – at least for part of the working week – it makes sense to start considering the ways in which working from home can help aid your development.

In this article, we discuss office set-ups and designs that are conducive to focused work patterns and that can help enhance your professional development even while you’re not sat in the office.

Finding the Perfect Spot

Many workers underestimate the benefits of a designated space within the home that is entirely dedicated to the production of work. The key is identifying a space within your home that has a surface you can work at (preferably a desk or a table), lots of natural light, is not affected by noise as much as other areas of the house, and that has all the equipment you will need. Ideally, the room you choose requires a door that you can close, to avoid interruptions from pets or children when on conference calls, and block out any distracting noises throughout the day.

A Comfortable Space

While you obviously would prefer to avoid creating a space that is too comfortable and disrupts your working frame of mind, you also need an area that doesn’t distract you from your focus – heightened feelings of discomfort can prevent you from concentrating as effectively as you would otherwise.

A key element of this is the maintenance of the room temperature. Too cold, and your digits will stiffen and your brain will work slower, slowing your progress down and inhibiting your thinking and problem-solving skills; too hot, and you’ll become lethargic and spend a vast proportion of your time trying to cool yourself down. Investing in a variable heating center for your home office could make all the difference! Refurbished PTACs from ptac4less.com/ are perfect for room renovations or additions. They allow you to control the temperature of your working space to make it optimal for you.

Additionally, investing in ergonomically designed seating will do wonders for your posture, enabling you to sit in an upright position comfortably and type at the same time, while cushioning your lower back. Combined with a raised, padded mousepad and a screen that can be adjusted for your comfort, this will allow you to focus entirely on your work output.

Maintaining Calm

An often-underestimated aspect of a home office is the requirement for calm. Busy rooms with lots of visual and auditory distractions can cause sensory overload and make it more difficult to focus on your work. A room painted in neutral colors is preferable, as busy patterns and bright, popping colors again can disrupt your thinking process and add to feelings of stress. Instead, it would be beneficial to invest in calming artwork, depicting soft seaside or country scenes, or paintings with soft blues and greens. This also means that you have a professional-looking space for those inevitable Zoom meetings and conferences!

If you are the type of person that benefits from music when working, curating a playlist of instrumental music and themes is generally best. Studies have demonstrated in the past that classical music is particularly conducive to focus and concentration.

Keeping plants and fish has also been suggested as a way of invoking calm in a space; creating your own aquarium (well-researched, of course) would not only add to a relaxing yet focused atmosphere, but they also provide a calming visual that you can use to stimulate ideas and configure solutions.

Many believe that working from home has negatively impacted the professional development of staff, particularly those transferring from other sectors or who are just starting out in their career. However, there are ways of designing your home office set up in such a way that you are not only able to complete your work effectively, but that enables you to flourish.

Which Qualities Define a Successful Entrepreneur?

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Successful Entrepreneur|Which Qualities Define a Successful Entrepreneur?Let’s face it: everyone wants to be a ‘successful’ entrepreneur. The harsh reality is that few entrepreneurs become successful in their careers, irrespective of whether you use money or popularity as metrics to measure success.

You’re likely reading this article today because you have an entrepreneurial spirit brewing inside of you, and now is the time to do something about it. However, you don’t want to try your hand at business and fail at the first hurdle.

With that in mind, which qualities define a successful entrepreneur? The following points illustrate the qualities you will find in any entrepreneur that has made a name for themselves in their industries:

Hard Work

The path to success, however you measure it, is not an easy one. It requires a lot of hard work and determination to get to the stage where you can begin to reap the fruits of your labor.

Hard work is just one of many qualities found in all successful entrepreneurs, of course, but without it, you are unlikely to achieve your goals and aspirations in the business world.

It’s not uncommon to hear that many successful entrepreneurs like David William Sherrer have sacrificed a lot of their time and dedicated it to achieve their ultimate business goals. Hard work does pay off; you just need to be in the right mindset to follow through with it.

Education

People aren’t born with the knowledge they possess in their latter years; they educate themselves and get educated by others. Knowledge is wonderful, and it can also make you powerful as an entrepreneur.

Some people are born with an entrepreneurial spirit, while others learn the skills to become entrepreneurs through education and experience. Education can teach us about entrepreneurship and how we can use this knowledge will help to start or grow our own business.

For Australian entrepreneur Kath Purkis, to be a successful entrepreneur you need to educate yourself on the market to the point you become an expert. Understanding the market allows you to find gaps and profit from these opportunities when they arise. With constant education your business can stay ahead of competitors and continue to grow.

Passion

Imagine there are two people in a room selling identical products. One of those individuals is highly passionate about what they’re selling and projects positive energy from themselves by talking with almost encyclopedic knowledge on their products.

The other person isn’t particularly interested in what they’re selling and appears disinterested, even to the point of seeming rude to potential customers that ask questions about the products.

Which of those two entrepreneurs do you think is likely to finish their day and go home with no stock and a pocket full of cash? Passion is a crucial element you’ll find in any successful entrepreneur.

Passionate business leaders love what they’re doing and don’t mind putting in the extra hours and hard work into making their enterprises a success.

Conclusion

Success is a metric you can measure through different metrics. When talking about successful entrepreneurs, most people mean individuals that have profitable and popular businesses.
There’s no reason you can’t become a highly successful entrepreneur, as long as you have certain traits like those discussed above.

3 Reasons Why Small Businesses Need Managed IT Services

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Managed IT Services|3 Reasons Why Small Businesses Need Managed IT ServicesRunning a small business isn’t for the faint-hearted. Competing in a global market with limited resources is challenging, which is why it’s essential to have the right resources to hand. Managed IT services give you the opportunity to outsource every element of your tech infrastructure, from installation and maintenance to procurement and future proofing. To learn more about the impact outsourcing your technology can have, take a look at these three reasons why small businesses need managed IT services:

1. Reduced Costs

Instead of hiring your own IT employees, you can avoid costly recruitment processes and minimize your expenditure when you rely on managed IT services instead. Managing a company’s tech infrastructure requires input from a wide range of IT specialists, such as network administrators, developers and cloud engineers. Hiring a full IT department is beyond the scope of most small businesses, but you won’t be at a competitive disadvantage when you outsource your needs to a professional IT company.

2. Access to Expertise

Some small business owners assume that hiring one IT employee will be enough to manage and maintain their tech resources while still keeping costs relatively low. In reality, there are numerous specialisms that are required to implement and maintain the right infrastructure, which is why you need access to a team of IT specialists, rather than just one individual.

When you choose a leading managed IT services partner, like Fidelis, Inc., you gain access to all the expertise you need. From IT consulting and hardware installation to helpdesk support and business continuity, you’ll benefit from having a wide range of resources at your fingertips.

3. Increased Security

Today’s businesses face a wide range of online threats, which often equates to financial risk. If you’re hit by a data breach or a DDoS attack, for example, it’s going to affect your professional reputation and reduce operational efficiency. To prevent this from happening, you need a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy in place. Furthermore, you need the tools and expertise to implement, monitor and update your security strategy.

Small businesses often overlook the importance of cybersecurity. After all, it’s easy to assume that major enterprises are a more likely target. However, the relatively limited security implemented by small businesses makes their systems a prime target for hackers. Fortunately, you won’t need to worry about your company’s digital security when you access managed IT services. By incorporating cybersecurity into your IT solutions package, you can protect your business and your investment.

Finding the Right IT Partner

Managed IT services offer a wide range of benefits, providing you find the right partner. As well as working with an IT firm that offers the services you need, it’s important to find a solutions provider who takes the time to get to know your business, your operations and your goals. This ensures they understand your pain points and growth plans, which allows them to provide maximum value when it comes to virtualization, business continuity and future proofing.

8 Simple Ways to Declutter Your Office

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StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article |Declutter your Office|8 Simple Ways to Declutter Your OfficeAs your business grows, you will get busier, and your office will get more cluttered. According to Small Business Trends, a cluttered workspace is less productive. Therefore, if you want to improve efficiency, you should have a system in place that ensures that your workplace stays decluttered. However, while this may look like a simple task, it is quite easy to become accustomed to clutter, especially if you spend most of your time in the office. A cluttered office can cause organizational issues, which can take time for you to realize.

Tips on How to Declutter Your Office

Remove all items in your office

If you truly want to declutter your workspace, you should start from scratch. Remove all the items in your office, including your drawers, computers, and shelves. Place your items in neat piles in another room or on the floor. Now that your office is empty wipe down all surfaces and clean your PCs.

Determine what you need in your office

When everything is still outside, spare some time to evaluate what you will need in your office and what needs to go. For most people, clutter piles up because the brain tricks them into believing that everything in the office is crucial. When you find items that you no longer require or things that you had forgotten exist, you should get rid of them.
Decide where to keep the remaining items

Now that you know what you should keep, your next step is to determine where to keep them. Where you place your items is equally important because you will need to access them quickly. Therefore, organize items in your workspace based on how regularly you will be using them. The stuff you most often use should go in the closet drawer, and everything else can go in faraway drawers. If you have several tax and customer files, then you may need a secure AAA Mobile Storage.

Use your phone to take a photo

You have most likely visited another office and found clutter that the owner was genuinely unaware of. This is most likely the case in your office. Visitors may see your office from a different perspective, and they will tend to be more observant of clutter that you may never notice.

To test this synopsis, take a photograph of your office with your phone from the main office door. This will help you to see your office the same way your visitors do. If you don’t find clutter from that photo, take many photos from different angles. These photographs will help you to pinpoint areas that may need decluttering and cleaning.

Tame your cables

From laptop and phone chargers to headphone dongles and HDMI cables, the cables in your office may seem to multiply. Whether these cables are on top of the desk or underneath it, it isn’t easy to get them under control. In fact, most people end up ignoring them. However, ignoring this issue may lead to problems with your electronics. Additionally, disorganized cables can delay you from identifying where the problem is. You can tame your cables by labeling them during installation and use a system like Cablox to arrange your cables in a neat and organized manner.

Create a hidden storage

If using traditional shelves isn’t appealing to you, you have a few other options. For instance, pegboard is a popular way to hide routers, cables, and other gadgets behind your office desk. You can also use magnets to mount some of your important items or hide other stuff behind your monitor.

Digitize all files

If your office is cluttered, then most of the clutter may be paper-based. These can include documents, sticky notes, business cards, and meeting notes, among others. Paper clutter can occupy most of your office space and you won’t need them regularly. Therefore, instead of preserving all this paper clutter, you can digitize the important documents by scanning the documents or typing them.

There are several mobile apps that you can use to scan your documents and store them on your phone. Take the photos of important documents that you don’t want to lose, and then recycle or discard the paper versions.

Clean your office every evening

Even after decluttering your office, your workspace will still get messy during the day. And that’s okay because it shows you’re working. However, keeping it messy will start becoming a problem. Therefore, you need to prevent this from happening by cleaning your desk and office every evening.

Bottom Line

Your office isn’t just your workspace, it’s a place where you and your employees spend most of your time. Therefore, its organization will not only affect physical cleanliness but also affect productivity. With this in mind, ensure that you organize your office files and maintain a flexible work environment to ensure that you maximize your time and effort.