Posts

5 Tips on Building Content Marketing Campaigns for Small Businesses

/in /by

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |content marketing campaigns |5 Tips on Building Content Marketing Campaigns for Small BusinessesWhat’s the key to success for your small business? Marketing. A strong marketing campaign bolsters your brand, draws in new customers, and puts more eyes on your product.

There are dozens of different ways to approach marketing, but in the age of the internet and social media, content marketing campaigns are among the most effective.

Building a great content marketing campaign might seem daunting, but there are a few tricks that can make it easier. Read this article to learn five ways you can become an expert at marketing with content.

1. Choose a Core Message

Your content marketing campaign needs a strong foundation. The first step in any campaign should be to determine the core message: the idea that you want to impart to your audience.

“You should buy our product” is not a strong core message. You need to go deeper–why should someone buy your product? What sets it apart from the competition?

Identify your product’s strengths and build a campaign around that. If you sell towels, for instance, your core message might be, “Our towels are the softest, most luxurious towels on the market–and you deserve that luxury.”

2. Understand Your Audience

Understanding your audience goes hand-in-hand with selecting your core message. You need to determine what your audience is looking for and what types of content they’re likely to respond to.

Think about your target customer’s goals. Are they looking at your content because they want to relax and have fun, or because they want to learn something new? What other interests might they have?

3. Decide on a Format

There are two questions you need to answer when deciding on your content’s format: what is the most effective way to get your message across, and what is your audience interested in viewing?

Video is an increasingly popular format for content because it’s engaging and eye-catching; however, making regular blog posts is a great way to keep your audience engaged over a long period.

Keep abreast of trends–for instance, podcasts are an increasingly popular medium.

4. Spread the Word

It doesn’t matter how good your content is if no one sees it. That’s why it’s smart to create content for social media–social media makes it easy for people to find and learn about your brand.

Content syndication platforms can also help your content get seen. Click here to read more about content syndication.

5. Analyze and Learn

Publishing your content isn’t the end of the process. Once it’s out in the world, you need to observe and analyze how people react to it. Did your target audience find it engaging?

Figure out what people like and dislike about your content. Then, use that information to improve your next content marketing campaign.

Upgrade Your Content Marketing Campaigns

Content marketing campaigns help you connect with your customers on a deeper level. Videos and blog posts provide consumers with entertainment and education while also building your company’s brand.
Entrepreneurs understand the importance (and the difficulties) of marketing businesses online. For more guidance on this crucial topic, visit our entrepreneurs page, where you can find more insights to help grow your business!

Things That Payroll Officers Must Avoid

/in /by

StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article | Things That Payroll Officers Must AvoidThere are several things that payroll providers must avoid. These violations can lead to imprisonment and fines of up to $10,000. Many employers try to comply with the law, but they are still prone to mistakes that could cost businesses money and reputation.

Falsifying wages

Employees can falsify their wages to benefit themselves or employers. Falsified wages are common ways to cheat payroll departments. Employees may also use their payroll access to forge or alter checks and alter the amounts. Physical reviews are also easier to develop and steal.

Another way to defraud a payroll system is to perform timesheet fraud. This involves submitting timesheets that do not accurately represent an employee’s work schedule. This method is prevalent among non-exempt employees, who may use false timesheets to cover up a problem. An employer can correct time records before wages are paid to prevent any further fraud. Falsifying wages is something that payroll officers must avoid.

Falsifying hours worked

One of the biggest problems in the workplace is that employees may be tempted to falsify their timesheets. Even if you are not at fault, it is vital to maintain accurate time records for both exempt and nonexempt employees. It is critical to keep correct documents of all time spent working, including meal breaks and constant changes. You should also justify what will happen if an employee submits a timesheet containing false information. You should always review your timesheet policy with your employees and ask about any discrepancies in time records. This way, you can resolve any issues before payroll time arrives.

Another ordinary mistake payroll officers must watch out for is the use of ghost hourly employees. This type of employee uses the payroll system to steal from a company. In a larger company, ghost hourly employees may use this scheme to take advantage of the company’s payroll system. Regular audits of payroll records will help you spot irregularities and inconsistencies in payroll budgets. Falsifying hours is also possible with sophisticated time clocks that require employees to enter a unique passcode for each employee.

Falsifying tax forms

While employers who pay their employees in cash have many risks, one of the biggest is the risk of misclassifying them. If payroll officers don’t classify employees correctly, they may violate federal tax laws. The consequences of misclassification can include fines of up to $25,000 per instance and penalties and back payroll taxes. To avoid such a scenario, payroll officers should work with a competent payroll company to classify employees correctly.

Falsifying sick days

In the workplace, employees must give as much notice as possible if they will miss a shift. Unfortunately, many will try to resolve the issue, saying they will return later, but this isn’t appropriate. Instead, call to explain that they’re sick and tell your employer when you expect to return. While coming in with a cough may be uncomfortable, it is still better than not coming in.

While some employees may be able to make it through the workday with the excuse that they’re ill, some might try to fake it. This can cost a company money and goodwill, so it’s vital to have a system to catch false claims. A drive-by of an employee’s house is one way to catch someone out with fake sick days. When a supervisor sees someone on camera, they’ll be fired or given their job back.

Falsifying vacation

There are multiple ways in which an employee may be misclassified as a fake employee. In some instances, employees have been caught doing something illegal, like falsifying vacation hours, and payroll officers are often responsible. Payroll officers may have detected irregularities and declined to process them, but employees and managers have also criticized them. Falsifying vacation and severance hours for employees can be a significant problem, and the consequences of these actions could be costly.

How to Excel in a Partnership Project

/in /by

StrategyDriven Project Management Article |Partnership Project|How to Excel in a Partnership ProjectA successful business requires financial investment, hard work and time, and a bit of luck as well. Working within one’s own company might seem easy and comforting as you know the scheme of systems, however, the real task starts when you have to work within a partnership project. Managing different crews of vendors and collaborators spread out can be pretty tough, especially when they have verbal, cultural, economic, political, and social barriers that separate them from the rest of the partners. Aligning different people of different caliber and bringing them at a single pace is a difficult task, but with proper planning and management you can excel in a partnership project, and here is how you can achieve it.

Find a Common Interest

Certain clashes are sure to occur when different people with different organizational interests work together. Conflict arises even when people have to work with different teams of the same company. To proceed in a partnership project, you have to sit with other team members and discuss the points where you share common interests with others. Find a common ground on which you all can fixate your task assignments. To find a common interest, communication serves as a key, interact with your partnership team members and clients, stakeholders, and vendors to know them better.

Create Data Rooms

Virtual data rooms help several businesses, teams, and collabs to work simultaneously on a single project and get easy and safe access to project documentation and data. Firmex is providing excellent services in organizing virtual data rooms for partnership projects and giving a secure way to keep the paperwork flowing. Virtual data rooms are a safe way to share important documents with other companies and this specifically helps while you are dealing with several partners at once in a project.

Time is Crucial

Every partner works at its own pace but the deadline for the project is often the same for every partner involved. Time management is very crucial when you work with different partners on a project. You might have to face new challenges while dealing with different companies and people, however, it is the project manager who has to be alert and keep things running at a flow. A delayed delivered project would bring every involved person at risk, so it’s better to keep the differences aside while working on a project and work as a team.

Stay in Touch

It is quite possible that your partners are not from the same place where you are from. The intercity or interstate differences always cause an issue in managing a project symmetrically. To avoid any problems you must always stay in touch with your team members. Email them, call them, share screens while working, and stay on the same page. Technological inventions have made it quite easier for the business partners to align their work pace and thus keeping in touch is not a difficult task anymore.

Digitize Your Partnership

Digitizing the partnership means that you have to work on common, reliable software to speed up the work tasks. Outsourcing can bring many disparities to the different parts of your partnered team but they are all united under a common goal by taking assistance from the software and apps, whatever that might be for this project. You have to provide your teams with simple but dependable software solutions. This ensures quick, glitch-free performance and also gives you a common measure for determining the productivity of each team, especially if it includes time recording or task management.

Be Flexible

When you work with different companies and partners, giving others an edge is equally important. You have to be flexible and listen to what others are saying. Keep your homework ready, keep your plans ready but always give some space to other partners also. Discuss what they want and how they want. Working collaboratively improves the relationship and increases the likelihood of delivering the results and outcomes expected from the project.

Aim for the Best

It is important that all the partners are optimistic and positive about the end results of the project. When people are positive about achieving a task, they put their best and work efficiently. This brings success to the project partners and aids in business growth.

Four Reasons Outsourcing Might Be The Right Choice For Your Business

/in /by

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Reasons for outsourcing|Four Reasons Outsourcing Might Be The Right Choice For Your BusinessBusinesses today must handle a wide range of duties, with numerous parts and facets of the business to consider. Having said that, most businesses now face the prospect of outsourcing. While it is wonderful for a company to manage everything in-house, it does not make financial or operational sense. Given this, we will assist you in determining whether or not you should outsource more aspects of your organization.

Does It Make Financial Sense?

When it comes to outsourcing, this is the first question you should ask yourself. You must ensure that the company to whom you outsource will save your organization money. Many people overlook outsourcing since they believe it will be the more expensive option. However, it is frequently the less expensive option in the long run. The best thing to do is to look at the expenses over a longer period of time, such as a year, to obtain a true grasp of which choice is the most cost-effective. After all, hiring a new employee and handling everything in-house can be expensive.

Could You Benefit From Expert Help?

Aside from the financial aspect, you should also examine whether you need to capitalize on a superior experience. When it comes to hiring accounting support for your business such as Perks, this is a fantastic example. You must ensure that you have adequate IT assistance in place to ensure that your systems operate effectively at all times and that you have adequate safeguards in place to protect you against the possibility of a data breach. If you do not have this experience in-house, you must engage the services of someone who does.

Are You Always Swamped With Work?

The third factor to consider is the passage of time. One of the primary advantages of outsourcing is that you will gain time, which will allow you to focus on the most important operations at your company, i.e. the ones that drive your bottom line and make your firm more money. Outsourcing can be quite useful in terms of business growth in this situation.

Do You Need To Reduce Costs?

Hiring and training employees is one of the most time-consuming and expensive operations in any organization, regardless of size. These procedures can take months, and even then, there really is no guarantee that the individual in issue will be a worthwhile investment and a valuable member of the team. Outsourcing enables you to transform labor costs into variable costs by just paying for the services you intend to use.

Most businesses have seasons of the year when they have more work and, as a result, more capital, and times when they have less work and, as a result, less capital. In ordinary circumstances, you would pay all of your employees the same wages year-round, as well as other expenses – office and toilet supplies, furniture, specialized equipment, computers, servers.

Final Words

When it comes to deciding whether or not outsourcing is good for you, there are numerous aspects to consider. Outsourcing is quite advantageous in a variety of situations. It can benefit your company by allowing you to leverage on higher talent while guaranteeing that you only pay for services as and when you require them. When you examine this, it’s easy to see why outsourcing has become such a popular option for so many individuals today.

Helping Your Staff to Experience Success

/in /by

StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Experience Success|Helping Your Staff to Experience SuccessRunning a business is no easy feat, but having the right team behind you can make this venture a whole lot easier. Sure, you may want to retain as much control as possible over your business, its products, its brand and its operations, by managing as much as you possibly can yourself. But as time goes on, and as demand on your company increases, you’ll quickly find that you can’t do everything on your own. Not only does hiring staff allow you to distribute your workload, lifting a weight from your shoulders, but it can also give you access to individuals with specialist knowledge and expertise in different areas that will help your company to progress beyond your own limitations. Of course, when you take staff on, you do become responsible for them in many ways. You’re going to want to make sure that they experience success and are happy in the workplace and their position. Here’s some more on the topic!

Why Help Staff to Succeed?

All too many business owners make the mistake of thinking that if they train and improve their staff, their staff will leave for better opportunities elsewhere. But this isn’t necessarily the case. In fact, employees that are constantly encouraged to experience success through support and training are much more likely to be satisfied in their roles and this can seriously help with staff retention levels. Holding onto good staff members will reduce recruitment costs and prevent you from having to experience dips in productivity as you hire, train and introduce new members to your team as a replacement. On top of this, when you train staff, you benefit from the skills and expertise that they acquire through their training. You will simply find yourself with the best quality team you can possibly have.

Software and Tools

Make sure that your team has the software and tools they need to do their job to the highest standard. Whether that’s communications software like Microsoft dynamics phone integration or a new piece of machinery that helps with the manufacturing process. Ensuring that your team has the best tools in the trade will make sure that they can do their job to the highest standard. Unsure of developments in different areas of equipment and software to specific roles? Chances are your team working in that area knows about the latest developments and releases. Talk to them. They’ll be able to advise you on whether their current options are up to scratch or whether they could do with an upgrade.

Training

The most straightforward and logical way to help your staff to experience success is to provide them with job-specific training. There are so many different options that you might want to consider. A copywriter might benefit from training in SEO. Management may benefit from knowing how to use Excel and other spreadsheet software. Someone in marketing could benefit from a marketing masters degree. The list goes on. Make sure to do some research and consider which areas you want your team to progress into. This can help to introduce you to training programs that benefit everyone. You may also want to consider health and safety training, such as how to do CPR, fire steward or fire marshall training and more.

Personal Development Plans

Remember that not all training has to be completely job-specific. You can help your team with personal development in areas that aren’t necessarily directly relevant to their role. Instead, you can help them to build traits, confidence and other skills that will supplement their position and help them in a variety of professional situations they may find themselves in. For example, if someone feels uncomfortable with public speaking, you may want to help them with some therapy, confidence building exercises and courses in public speaking or speech making that can help them to overcome this. If your team member wants to be healthier, you can help them along their fitness journey, which can help them to feel healthier, fitter and less likely to take time off work. If your team member wants to learn a second language, you can help them with lessons or language learning software, which will then benefit your company if you ever decide to expand into overseas markets.

It really is essential that you help your staff to progress and experience success while they’re working for you. This will keep them on board and significantly increase productivity, which benefits them and benefit you and your business.