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Give Your Startup A Great Start Online

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StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Startup|Give Your Startup A Great Start OnlineWhen you are setting up a new business, there are so many things that you need to be aware of in the first instance if you want to make it as successful as possible. One of the most important things that you will need to spend some time and effort on is the online side of things – your company’s presence, but also your ability to engage with people and convert their attention into sales and onward contacts. Let’s look at how you can give your startup a great start in the online world.

Build A Professional Website

The website is your major starting point, and the place that you are going to be aiming to direct people back to again and again. You need to therefore make sure that it is as professional as possible, and the best way to achieve that is to hire a professional to do it. You should absolutely be prepared to put some of your seed money towards this – as it will help to bring back plenty of revenue in the long run. A good website is going to help your business look the part online, so it is a sound investment.

Develop Your SEO

Now that you have a professional website, you are going to need to draw people’s attention to it as best as you can. All this comes down to a series of processes and methods known collectively as Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, and it’s something that is worth spending some time investing in, as it can really pay off in the long run. By hiring a good SEO company, you can expect your website to become hugely popular in the searches people carry out related to your business venture, and that will boost your visibility hugely over time.

Don’t Forget About Social Media

However you feel about social media, the fact is that it is an extremely effective marketing tool, and you would be foolish to ignore it. The main thing you can use it for, at the very least, is to provide plenty of backlinks to your website. You can also engage with customers and the general public there, and developing a brand identity which is somewhat socially aware or even just funny can really pay off very well on Twitter and Facebook and the like. Be sure to have a proper social media strategy, and dedicate someone to the task if you have the resources.

Forge Your Own Path

It’s important to bear in mind that these are just ideas, and you can achieve much more by making a point of forging your own path in some way. That means you should be unafraid to fail, if it means that you will ultimately come out better off for having tried. This is an important point that a lot of people overlook in their attempt to do all this ‘correctly’. Make sure you are doing what makes sense for your business above all. That is what is going to lead to results in the end.

5 Proven Ways to Create Eye-Catching Video for Social Media

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Video Marketing|5 Proven Ways to Create Eye-Catching Video for Social MediaWhether you have a product you want to sell or wish to reach more people on your social media, video marketing is a tried and tested method that guarantees results.

There are various challenges that the modern day content creator faces. Most social media users are overstimulated, and there are multiple brands vying for the user’s attention. So, how do you stand out when the stakes are high and the competition is tough?

In this article, we’ll talk about 5 ways you can make your video stand out among the others.

1. A Good Hook

The content of your video doesn’t matter if you don’t have a good hook. Users will only pause on your video for one or two seconds, if at all, and that’s all the time you’ll have to make them stay.

Include keyword phrases designed to catch the attention of your target audience. Create suspense or ask them a question directly that makes them pause for the answer.

And it doesn’t just end with a good hook either. Now that you have your audience’s attention, make sure to give them something that makes them glad they stayed. It could be information, or the answer to your initial question, or something that you know your target audience wanted to know in the first place.

2. Include Text

Most of the time, people watch videos on Instagram and Facebook without any sound. It hurts your brand and it hurts your engagement if your users don’t find your videos worth watching, or pause because of one reason or the other only to find that they need to turn the volume on to understand what’s being said.

Most of the time, they’ll keep scrolling. And every person who doesn’t engage with your post might be a customer lost. Adding text even gives you a unique opportunity to add some color and motion to your video.

Have the text appear and disappear from view in different ways. Maybe it pops up and out of sight in fun ways, maybe the colors of the text go well with the background and the video’s aesthetics.

3. Make a Script

It’s good to sound natural in your video- in fact, it’s probably best that you do. But that doesn’t mean that you should wing it either.

Sounding unprepared or beating around the bush in your video is something you can’t afford to do. There is a whole world of content at your viewer’s disposal that they can switch to any time, so if you don’t get right to the point and utilize every second of the video to tell them what you want to, you’ll hurt your business and brand.

4. Create a Good Looking Video

Content creators are beginning to understand the importance of visually appealing content now. People have more chances of pausing at a video they find beautiful and professional.

If you want to shoot indoors, invest in the proper lighting and some props to make your video look good. It might be a good idea to use a single colored sheet as the background to make your product or the subject of your video stand out. Make sure the colors don’t clash!

Another great idea would be to shoot outdoors. What’s stopping you from shooting at a beautiful spot in the forest or a bustling mall? Keep your brand’s identity and focus in mind, then choose the best looking option for your video.

5. Look Good!

If you’re going to be in the video yourself, make sure to look your best! Even if the video contains shots of the kitchen, living room, or just the product, you need to make sure that nothing looks sloppy or out of place.

It doesn’t serve you well to look unprofessional when you’re trying to attract people to your page- it’s the expertly made, high value and visually appealing and professional content that they’re looking for.

In the end, creating an eye-catching video is a combination of planning, good camera skills and a great location, so take your time in making it to make sure you get it right.

Quick Tips to Building a Strong Brand

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Building a brand|Quick Tips to Building a Strong BrandBuilding a business is undoubtedly a difficult thing to do. With all the pushes and pulls of your various responsibilities when establishing a business, it can be hard to find time to dedicate to refining and developing your brand. However, effective branding is often vital to the success of any business endeavor, and failing to keep up with the demands of building a strong brand could be fatal to your new business. What you need, then, is a way to quickly, efficiently, and effectively establish your brand without having to dedicate large amounts of time or manpower. Read on for quick tips to do this.

Refine Your Logo

Consider, if you will, the companies that you most associate with success. The chances are that a company like Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, or perhaps Google came to mind. Now, while there are doubtless a variety of factors that these companies have in common, one of the most important for our purposes is that they all have powerful and respected brands. A major element of this is their logo. When a customer sees Nike’s telltale swish or Twitter’s little blue bird, they immediately know what they’re looking at. Customer recognition is a powerful thing, as loyal and dedicated consumers can define the success of your business endeavors. One of the best ways to achieve this is through a carefully designed and implemented logo. Take the time to carefully think through how you want your brand to be perceived through the logo and think about colors, font, and how unique it will be.

Be Consistent

Once you have a well-designed and recognizable logo, one of the most important things you can do when building your brand is to be consistent. It takes 5 to 7 impressions for someone to remember a brand, and consistent and ubiquitous branding could be the key to ensuring your consumers are exposed to those impressions. There are a number of ways to improve your brand consistency. If you produce a product that consumers will use repeatedly, then you could consider investing in high-quality labeling services that would improve the presentation of your brand. Additionally, you could ensure that proper branding technique is employed in any correspondence with potential or current customers. Finally, a possibly useful way to build recognition for your brand through consistency is to be seen in support of socially important and high publicity causes.

Be Authentic

People appreciate honesty and clarity in the companies they support. In fact, 86 percent of consumers say that authenticity is important to them when choosing brands that they want to support. This means that consistency is of vital importance in the messages that you decide to align your future brand with. If your brand is aligned with a cause or ideal, then it is crucial for the future success of your business that your brand is shown to be consistent and honest in its support and dedication to said ideal. Trust is key to a brand’s success and, if you show your brand to be honest, authentic, and trustworthy, you will likely find success in building a strong and recognizable brand.

Putting Down Roots: What to Do After Establishing Your Business

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StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Establishing your business|Putting Down Roots: What to Do After Establishing Your BusinessStarting a business is hard work. You have to get used to the routine of constantly checking every aspect to ensure that it is ready for operations and then oversee them continuously until they can operate with minimal supervision.

That process can easily take anywhere from a few months to a year, depending on your chosen industry’s complexity. Once you get used to that kind of hectic schedule, transitioning to a calmer one can be difficult because you might feel something is missing from your daily routines.

When that day finally comes, what you need to do is fill the void with another activity. All the hard work you placed in creating your business has finally paid off, so now you can focus on the other parts of your life, such as a family, house, car, or even more business. The choice is yours to decide.

Start a Family

When you’ve found your footing in the business world, you will have more time on your hands to focus on your future. This will be the perfect time to start a family if that is what you want, especially because you no longer have to worry about your business getting off the ground.

Building a family takes hard work, and stable finances, particularly because raising a kid can be expensive. You will need to spend on milk, diapers, vitamins, and other baby needs. And when they get a little older, you will need to send them to school.

The responsibility of being a parent lasts well into your children’s adulthood or until they can stand on their own two feet without your assistance. That’s why you need to be financially, physically, and mentally prepared to support them before you go and start a family.

Buy a House

Many first-timehomebuyersoften consider taking a government-insured mortgage from the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) because it requires low minimum credit scores and down payments. This is in comparison to what conventional loans from banks would require from aspiring homeowners.

Taking out an FHA home loan will allow you to have fixed interest rates over a 15 or 30-year term plan, which is more practical considering the risks of running a business. Of course, you will still need to undergo an application process like applying for a conventional loan, but the terms are better in your favor.

With this, you won’t have to worry about the housing market factors affecting the interest you need to pay because it’s already fixed over the course of your mortgage plan. You can efficiently manage your finances, both personal and entrepreneurial while enjoying your new home.

Get a Car

There’s nothing that signals success more than investing in yourself. All that hard work that you put into establishing your business has finally sprouted fruits in the form of financial freedom. When you finally have enough saved up to buy yourself something expensive, maybe you should consider getting a car.

A car may not be a necessity because you can always use public transportation to get to where you need to go, but it can be more convenient for you. Besides, having the ability to buy a car is a fruit of your labor, so you deserve the convenience and prestige of being a car owner.

Think about it. You won’t have to go through the hassle of rush hour commuting or making sure that you have enough spare change to pay for public transportation. You also won’t have to deal with rude cab drivers when you’re late or with inappropriate passersby who steal the taxi you hailed.

Expand Your Business

If you don’t want to spend your hard-earned money on yourself, then you can always put it towards expanding your business. You can branch out to other markets, industries, or business endeavors. Another way is to scale your business so that you can cater to a wider target audience.

All business owners know that to grow money, you will first have to have money. You can’t decide to expand your business if you don’t have the resources to make it happen. But now that you do, it’s the perfect time to see just how far your business can go.

You might be surprised at your business’s potential, which you wouldn’t have been able to see without the additional funding. Building a business doesn’t end with getting it up and running; rather, it has to be continuously grown and developed to rise to the top of your industry.

There are so many things that you can do after finally getting your business to take off. You can choose among all the options stated above, or you can do them simultaneously. But make sure that you don’t put too much on your plate at the same time because that can be really overwhelming.

An Overview: Agile and Enterprise Architecture

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StrategyDriven Project Management Article |Agile Architecture|An Overview: Agile and Enterprise ArchitectureAgile project management is basically a philosophy that accompanies a way of working. It goes beyond the simple process because it encompasses a way of understanding how our work, our organization, our way of interacting and responding to stakeholders has changed.

Many large multinationals already have it integrated and it is part of their culture, and more and more organizations are doing the same. It is not a fad; it is not something that can pass you by, because it has fit into a changing, demanding and information overdose environment. You have to know how to be agile, flexible and decisive. The smart working is something that has come and hopefully to stay.

Agile origin

Back in 2001, what we know today as the Agile Manifesto was born, by the hand of several American CEOs of the technology sector (software) and they decided to combine various ideas to propose an alternative to the slow working methods that were not responding to the current ones needs, before your organization and your customers. They put together new ideas and formulas to come up with what they understood could help, through continuous improvement.

The goal was to improve quality, productivity, engagement, and be fast.

What is agile?

As you can see, it is a methodology that aims to modify many of the internal processes of organizations to improve performance and productivity.

How does Agile architecture add value to the business?

In this article we are going to see how architecture is changing in practice. From going from being a mainly technical discipline to new approaches such as participating in strategic business issues, that is, helping traditional companies compete with digital disruptors.

Agile architecture is based on the 360 ??customer vision as the core of any digital design and strategy. Enterprise-level architecture supports the strategic themes and portfolio vision by understanding the portfolio backlog, product vision, and roadmap.

The new approach to architecture makes it possible to offer companies innovative digital models and technologies.

  1. Based on the order book and vision, we have to analyze which solution or platform should be new and which solution or component should be reused in order to optimize cost.
  2. Based on the IT digital strategy , the choice of the new technology has to be decided according to the requirements of the company.
  3. The enterprise architects are the bridge between management product portfolio and high – level view of enterprise solutions and development initiatives. For example, collecting, generating, designing and analyzing innovative ideas and technologies to use in the vision of the product portfolio.
  4. Support the evaluation of the solution in terms of cost benefit in the ecosystem and aligned with the business strategy, stakeholders and portfolio requirements.
  5. Support the implementation of the proposed design , that is, work closing the solution architects within the Agile teams during the delivery of the product, CI and CD and DevOps. Being a reality what was designed and being in practice the business and digital strategy.

We can also optimize the budget and profitability of the product or digital asset as part of the investment in technology and support the business vision and the delivery of the product.

Agile architecture features in practice

Architects play a horizontal connector role as they often combine a technical foundation with business acumen and communication skills.

In this age of rapid change, we need architects who can act as mentors and bridges between project teams, between domains and between different layers of the organization, and with strong technical skills as well. It is a combination of business and technical knowledge.

The roles of Agile architecture distinguish the responsibilities between the architect company, the architect of solutions and systems architect. They collaborate at different levels of the business and service domains. In practice, it means:

  • Enterprise Architects Tool are the bridge between product portfolio management and the high-level vision of enterprise solutions and initiatives under development. They participate in strategic themes, portfolio vision, product roadmap, and portfolio backlog, working together with the venture owner and other stakeholders (see image below). EA collects, generates, designs and analyzes innovative ideas and technologies to use in the vision of the business portfolio.
  • The solution architect and system architects are part of an Agile team. They are part of a tribe or squad to participate directly in the implementation of the solution or the delivery and deployment of the product. They provide the technical design of each case in the delivery of the product.
  • There are some architectures, such as data architecture, security architecture, and enterprise architecture, that are part of the shared services hub. These roles are also considered solution architects and technicians.