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Building A Team Without Taking On Employees

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article | Building A Team Without Taking On Employees

Getting to the stage when your business is ready to start building a team can be a great achievement. Not only will you have already proven yourself and the concept that your company is built upon, but you will also be getting to the point that you can feel secure in your business. Of course, though, taking on employees is extremely expensive, often taking up the vast majority of a small company’s resources. This doesn’t have to be the case in the modern world, though, and this post is going to be showing you how to overcome this sort of issue with a business of your own.

Freelancers

Freelance work has been increasing in popularity over the last couple of decades. With the web enabling people to work at home and look for opportunities outside of newspapers and job adverts, it’s become easier than ever to take on a team that you don’t have to directly employ. Tools like Snupit make it incredibly easy to find freelance employees without having to spend weeks searching for them. Thousands of workers are on sites like this, making it much easier than you might expect to find freelance workers that won’t come with the cost of hiring someone.

Remote Employees

While permanent employment is an expensive game for businesses, looking at the idea of remote employees can be a good way to save some money. You will still have to pay to hire them, including things like pensions and health benefits, but you won’t have to fork out the costs of additional office space. People are getting more and more used to working at home, making it a great time to start looking for employees that can work from their own place. As time goes on, this sort of work routine is only going to get more popular, especially if companies continue to push for it.

Service Businesses

Service businesses make it possible to have the jobs that you would usually hire someone for covered by someone else. There are companies that can handle your marketing, web design, tech support, and a wealth of other services that you would usually have to hire a dedicated employee to handle. Not only does this make it cheaper to run your business, but it also gives you the chance to improve your productivity without having to hire more people to work for you. It’s always worth reading reviews before you choose to pay for something like this, with many companies offering very different levels of service.

With all of this in mind, you should be feeling ready to take on the challenge of building a team without employees. This sort of process can be tricky, with many companies finding themselves struggling when they can’t afford employees but need to take on a team. Thankfully, though, the modern world has you covered.

How To Make Everything Easier For Your Business

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | How To Make Everything Easier For Your BusinessIs taking care of your company a challenge? Even if your business is thriving, there may be a lot on your plate. You may feel that there are too many responsibilities to take on. This is a normal thing to feel when you are taking on a large project, such as starting and maintaining a business. Even years down the road, you may feel that stress again. Here are three things that can make your life and the lives of your employees easier.

1. Get An Office

If you have lots of responsibilities, it may be time to rent an office. An office can be a space where you and your team can focus on the goals and needs of your company. You may also need an office so all of your workers have space to work. This is an important stepping stone for many companies as it makes the business feel established. Mail can be delivered to the office, you can store company equipment and you have a place to conduct meetings.

Once getting the office, you can more fully organize the company. You may consider delegating smaller tasks to all who work there to lighten the load and increase productivity. It may be easier for you to meet with clients and customers and host incentives.

2. Use Cloud Services

Tired of storing all your data on your computer? Make accessing data ten times easier and safer by using cloud services to back up your information. You can also use these services to run software and applications through the internet, making it efficient for all members of your team to do their duties. Microsoft Cloud Solutions offers security, IT service and flexibility that can make your company run smoothly.

3. Make Good Goals

If you are feeling overwhelmed with the responsibilities of your business, it’s time to make some serious goals. Have a meeting and plan out your yearly, monthly and daily goals. What are you trying to achieve? Where do you want the business to be in five years? Make sure to plan financially and take account of what expansions you want to make in the future. Try to keep your goals reachable and inspire your team to work hard. You may want to think about some digital marketing, local advertising and improved customer service to help you progress.

As you expand your business, increase digital security and make achievable goals, you can take on the responsibility of a business step by step. Don’t forget to make it a team effort!

Create A Business Strategy That Works

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Having a business strategy is more important now than it ever was before. As a small business you might find yourself in hot waters at the minute due to the current economic climate, and the fact that many small businesses haven’t survived the pandemic. When the world shut down and nobody was trading, business profits obviously plummeted and a lot of small businesses that were already on the brink have had to cease trading. So if you’re here reading this as a trading business then you’ve already done far better than many small businesses before you. Unless you’ve found some way to have a huge cash injection from somewhere you will no doubt be feeling the pressure to perform at the minute, especially if you’ve got staff employed under your belt. So, we’re going to try and help you create a business strategy that we think works during these current turbulent times.

StrategyDriven Strategic Planning Article | Create A Business Strategy That WorksA Financial Plan

This is the most important one that you need to be thinking about. Your financial plan now will be far different to the one that it was at the start of the year. Our advice is to be a little more cutthroat with the cuts you make. It’s like with your personal spendings, you get used to the money you have to spend and it’s hard to change back from that. Business is no different, areas of your business are used to receiving a certain amount of money and it’s hard to change that. So one area we would suggest making cuts is with employees, if you need to. If times are really testing, you should consider joining the many businesses who have had to make their staff redundant. Although it’s such a hard thing to do, it’s the easiest way to save a lot of money for the year.

A Marketing Plan

The quickest way to get your business back on track is to sell sell sell, and the quickest way to do that is to get people thinking about your business again. One we think small businesses in particular seem to not focus on, is SEO. Everything is online at the minute and most people will Google your business, or keywords related to it, before they decide to work with you. But what if they can’t find you? Or what if competitors beat you in the search? That’s where SEO comes in. ECommerce SEO might be a little more expensive compared to some marketing methods, but it’s going to prove the most effective if you want to gain attention. So are simple marketing techniques such as billboard advertising. It’s the sort of in your face advertising that you need!

A Sales Plan

Finally, make sure that you have a solid sales plan. One idea might be to go through your directory of old clients or customers and get in touch with them. Just a courtesy phone call or email to see how they’re doing and to put your business back in their mind. You don’t have to push sales or make multiple calls, that’s when your business gains a bad reputation.

It’s A Dog-Eat-Dog World Out There, But Only If You Allow It

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Business is often described as a dog eat dog world. But things only usually get that bad if you let them. Here is some advice from entrepreneurs who learned serious lessons through their own experience on how to avoid getting screwed over by their business partners, and the people that they work with.

Always Avoid Emotionality

StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article

It’s great that passion motivates the positive aspects of your business and drives you forward to new heights. But passion in business can get you into trouble, especially when emotions turn negative. Things will go wrong in business. People will try to take advantage of you, colleagues will lie, and business partners will let you down. The key to running a successful business is to always remain cool and calculating in these situations. Losing your head can lead you to make damaging decisions that could ultimately be harmful to your business in the long run.

Meditate

StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article
Photo courtesy of Max Pixel

Meditation and entrepreneurs don’t seem like great bedfellows. After all, entrepreneurs are all about living life at 100 MPH, and people who meditate, usually Buddhist monks, are interested in the precise opposite. But when it comes to entrepreneurship, meditation is actually of critical importance. The reason is that our brains tend to make new connections and come up with original ideas when our minds are clear from other worries. Many entrepreneurs like to meditate in the shower and are sometimes referred to as “urban shower monks.” Being able to get away from the mayhem often allows you to think about how you’ll deal with a difficult situation better at work.

Set Clear Parameters With Your Stakeholders

One of the biggest problems companies face is defining relationships between their partners, vendors, stakeholders and colleagues. Often these agreements can get out of hand, and you can find yourself losing out. This is why so many companies now use contract management software to stay on top of all their relationships with their customers. It allows them to make sure that all of their contracts are in the best interest of the company and easy to find. It also helps organizations that need to scale rapidly manage their risks in real time.

Be Strategic

StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia

Command and control entrepreneurs don’t usually do all that well. They think that people are working for them because they really want to and they believe in the company, but most of the time it’s just so that they can put food on the table at night. Some business leaders think that all they have to do is tell their employees what to do by force of will and they will obey. But this isn’t how people work. Instead, interacting with people is more like a game of chess. It’s strategic, and often people will do and say things that lead to their strategic advantage. For years Donald Trump ingratiated himself with the highest echelons of society. Now he’s bringing them to their knees. It’s all about long-term planning and cunning. Think carefully about what is actually motivating the people who work for you and with you.

Top 4 Things to Keep in Mind When Developing a New Business Website

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, Top 4 Things to Keep in Mind When Developing a New Business Website

No matter what your business is about, your target audience is online. People are constantly browsing the search engines and social media to find exciting brands and local businesses.

In fact, according to last year’s Local Consumer Review Survey by BrightLocal, 92% of consumers look at businesses’ websites when deciding on a business. So, the short answer to whether you need to invest in a business website is a resounding yes.

A business website will help you stay competitive, establish credibility, and take your marketing to the next level. But as you go about developing your new business website, there are some things you must ensure on your website, the four most important ones being:

Usability

First off, think of your website user’s perspective and answer these questions:

  1. Does it load fast enough?
  2. Do you find it intuitive to navigate?
  3. Do you like the look-and-feel of the site?
  4. Is the copy engaging enough?
  5. Does it look trustworthy?
  6. Is it mobile-friendly?

You must focus on creating a website that allows you to say “yes!” to all the questions above. That is, your website shouldn’t take more than three-to-five seconds to load.

Make sure your site’s design is easy to navigate and responsive (adapts automatically to the screen size on which it is loaded) while being aesthetically appealing. Also, ensure the content on your website is engaging and exciting.

NathanIves.com Designing Your Digital Products Platform Online Training Program

All these factors make up the web core vitals that Google will be analyzing on your site for its much-anticipated update in 2021. Cobiro shares that sites that do not meet the requirements the search engine powerhouse are looking for will fare badly in the SERPs once this update is rolled out. So getting ahead of the curve and taking action is the best way to get your site in line with Google’s priorities and help you to ride out the changes without your traffic being affected adversely.

What’s more, your website should also be accessible. Simply put, an accessible website is one that accommodates all visitors on all devices irrespective of the physical or mental ability of the visitor.

As website accessibility is mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), failing to make your website accessible makes your business vulnerable to costly lawsuits by advocacy groups. Indeed, discussions about website accessibility have increased and 2018 saw a 181% rise in Federal ADA lawsuits over 2017.

So, test your website with web accessibility evaluation tools and consider using a web accessibility software so that everyone has a great user experience on your website. You can also hire agencies like Web Integrations that build websites that are compliant with accessibility.

Ranking on the first page of Google is crucial to bringing in more business and achieving a better ROI for your website.

Search Engine Friendliness

As such, usability and search engine friendliness go hand-in-hand. Search engines like Google are quite smart. If your site delivers a great user experience, then it is already well on its way to becoming a high-ranking website.

For example, site speed, which is essential for usability, is officially a ranking factor for both mobile and desktop searches. Likewise, a poor site structure will hamper your site’s indexability by Google crawlers.

While SEO is a vast topic that needs special attention, ensure that your website is in line with these basic best practices:

  • Content, page titles, meta descriptions, and URLs should be keyword-optimized.
  • All external links must be pointing to high-quality websites, internal linking must be done properly, and there are no broken links.
  • All images should be compressed and have appropriate alt text.

In fact, search engine friendliness is also influenced by your website’s security…

Security

Needless to say, your website’s security is critical for both your business and your website visitors. A secure website serves as a safe environment for potential clients which in turn, helps boost sales.

So, don’t wait for cyberpunks to remind you of the significance of having a secure website. Make sure to have the following in mind when developing your new website:

  • Strong login credentials for better immunity against brute force attacks.
  • Up-to-date content management system (CMS) and plugins.
  • Frequent site backups, malware scans, and vulnerability tests.

Also, get an SSL certificate to secure the connection between your hosting server and your visitor’s web browser. Once an SSL certificate is in place, browsers will show a padlock sign next to your website address which indicates that all the information exchanged by the visitor on your site is safe.

In other words, an SSL certificate guards your customer’s sensitive data and is considered so important that Google uses it as a ranking factor.

So many small businesses, including SaaS startups, agency websites, blogs, and eCommerce stores fall prey to hackers every day. The last thing you want is to lose your business to a hacker, or worse, compromise your customers’ data due to a cybersecurity lapse on your part. So, prioritize security when developing a new business website.

Grammar

Yes, you read that right. If you wish to create a website that people would find credible, you can’t afford to have grammatical inaccuracies plaguing your website copy.

Sure, as a business owner, grammar may seem like a trifling matter. But make no mistake, something as simple as a spelling mistake has a big influence on your business’s credibility.

Poor grammar and frequent typos can become a major distraction for visitors, making it impossible for them to focus on the meat of the matter. It indicates a lack of professionalism and sloppiness in business practices, which would be off-putting for your site visitors and potential clients.

Therefore, see to it that every piece of content and copy on your website is grammatically flawless.

Over to You

Right off the bat, paying heed to just these four aspects of your website will most certainly result in quicker, more sustainable, and scalable business growth. And so, make sure to get them right.

About The Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Pratik DholakiyaPratik Dholakiya is the founder of Growfusely, a content marketing agency specializing in content and data-driven SEO. He regularly speaks at various conferences about SEO, Content Marketing, and Entrepreneurship. As a passionate SEO and content marketer, he shares his thoughts and knowledge in publications like Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, Entrepreneur Magazine, Fast Company, The Next Web, YourStory, and Inc42, to name a few. He can be reached at Twitter @DholakiyaPratik