Easy Ways to Expand your Business

by | Blog, Contributed Post

If you want to expand your business then you will know that sometimes, this can be difficult to do. After all, you need to plan out your product offerings, the budget that you have and even how you’re going to increase your workforce too. All of this can become very stressful, very quickly so it’s important to brainstorm some ideas so you can simplify the process.

Add some New Products and Services

This strategy may sound simple, but it can also be challenging. To begin with, you need to find out which services and products your customers want and how much they’ll be willing to pay for them. You then need to work out how much profit you need to make. The best way for you to do this would be for you to do some very thorough market research before committing to a price increase. Chat with the current customers that you have now and ask them if there are any new services they feel as though you should add.

Sell More to the Customers You Have Now

You also need to try and sell more products to your existing customers. One way for you to do this would be for you to perform a market analysis. This will help you to find out which customer groups are most likely to buy from you, so that you can really focus your sales and even your marketing efforts on those areas.

Tap into New Sales Channels

Another thing that you can do is try and tap into new sales and even delivery channels. The internet is the best example of how having a new delivery channel can transform any small business. For example, if you have a brick and mortar company and you wanted to expand then a website and internet sales channel would help you to reach out to international customers and an entirely new client base. If you want to take things to that next level, then it may be worth getting a salesforce consulting partner, as they can easily help you to analyse every aspect of your funnel.

Buy another Business

Buying another business is a fantastic way for you to expand your own and it is also the fastest way for you to grow. Merging with another company can easily double the size of the one you have now. It can also help you to grow your sales and your revenue too. You do however have to make sure that you do your due diligence when performing any business merger. This is especially the case when you look at the financial condition of the company. Think about it, do they have a good client base? How are the management team? What strengths does the company have? By focusing on all of this, you can then be sure to make the most out of your acquisition.

So, there are many different things that you can do to try and expand your company, and by following the above tips, you can be sure to find an avenue that works for you.

Contributed Post

Photos courtesy of Pexels.com

Why Every Business Website Needs A Chatbot

by | Blog, Contributed Post

A chatbot is that little thing that pops up when visiting a website that asks if you need any assistance with anything. It is a piece of software that has been designed to make a customers user experience easier by initiating a conversation between them and an expert.

There are two different types of chatbots: one that uses Artificial Intelligence to respond to a customer, and another that has multiple choice answers to whittle down what a customer needs. 

How can having a chatbot on your website help your business?

Engagement is absolutely key when it comes to your website. Everyone is using technology to stay online and engage with businesses and quite often demand interaction and responses at all times of the day.  You may be available to answer questions at various parts of your day, but what happens when you have had to pop to a meeting, or even to the bathroom, let alone during the middle of the night? Well, this is where a chatbot comes in. They are there 24/7 to help your customers with any inquiries they may have and resolve their issues.

The vast majority of us own a smartphone and use this device to access websites. Because of this, it is essential that your website is mobile-friendly. Not only will it make your customers experience more seamless, but it will help you rank higher in search engines. Thankfully, technology means that chatbots can adapt themselves based on whether the visitor is on a desktop computer or a mobile device.  You may think that because you have an app for your site, it is unnecessary. However, trying to encourage people to download an app and engage with it is not always easy, whereas a chatbot is easy and is always available, any time of the day or night. Of course, it is important to do your research and find out about the right ones for you, which you can do on the bot information page.

Chatbots are incredibly intelligent and are aware that your end goal is to convert visits to your website to sales. They are able to monitor what your consumers are looking for and then send similar items like this for them to view, and more often than not, these convert to actual sales. It is even able to send your customers coupons and discount codes for money off their next purchase, and help to resolve any issues that they may have. We all know that customers like to know that you, as a business, are paying attention to their wants and needs. This encourages them to remain loyal to you. It can be hard to do this single-handedly, and employing a team to cover this full time can be extremely expensive. A chatbot takes that stress and expenses away from you.

Contributed Post

Photo by Fabian Irsara on Unsplash

4 Tips For Working As A Full Time Blogger

by | Blog, Contributed Post

You may have been blogging for a while and have decided that you want to now turn your hobby into a full-time job. Or perhaps you are new to this whole blogging world but are determined that it is for you and want to make a go of it professionally. Whatever your current situation and stage of your journey, we are going to share with you 4 tips for working as a full-time blogger.

Be professional at all times
If this is going to now be your full-time job, you will need to treat it as such. 

Always be friendly and professional both online and in real life. Ensure that when you are working with brands and businesses that you communicate clearly and effectively and always meet agreed deadlines. 

If you are working on a project with a brand, ensure that you thoroughly read through any contracts, terms and briefs before agreeing to collaborate, and then make sure that you do deliver on all counts for them. 

Keep on top of the admin side
There is quite a lot of administrative tasks that come with being a blogger, which might well take you by surprise. 

You will need to be precise in your bookkeeping and you will need to submit your own tax returns. You might like to work with an accountant and over time you might want to invest in some digital VAT software and accounting programs. 

There will also be plenty of emails. This is, of course, a good thing and you will want a busy inbox, but keeping on top of all of them can be time-consuming. It is worth filtering out the opportunities that you wish to reply to and taking your time over those, and then sending polite messages to those that are not suitable for you. 

Learn some of the technical aspects
If you are not that tech-savvy, it is worth investing some time into learning a few blogging basics. 

You might want to improve your blog’s SEO and work on your Google rankings, or you might want to dabble in the design and features of your blog. Think about the areas that you most often run into difficulties and focus on those as your priorities to learn. 

Make connections
You will want to make connections within your industry. This could mean other bloggers in your area or in your niche, so take the time to interact with their blogs and their social media accounts. This might mean people who work in the industries that your blog focuses on, for example, publishers and authors for book bloggers. And then there are the PR companies and brands that you might want to work with. Work on curating long-term relationships with all of these people as they will be key to your success and longevity. 

Social media is an entire area that you will need to focus on, and you will need to master several platforms. Many brands will want their content featured on certain social media sites so take a look at the ones that most bloggers seem to spend most of their time. Work on building up your genuine following on all of these and share updates and content regularly, whilst interacting and engaging with others.

This is a contributed post.

4 Ways To Google Up The Rankings

by | Blog, Contributed Post

***Contributed Post***

 

There is no question that ranking high on Google will lead to desirable results.  But, with so many websites pitching similar ideas, it is a big challenge.  

But, it is a challenge that you can accept!  Let’s look at some ways that you improve your SEO rankings in Google.                                            

 Usability 

First and foremost, your website MUST be user-friendly.  If it is hard to navigate your way through the website, you are going to struggle to get the Google recognition that you desire. Check out using Google search console for keyword research.  This can help you see how some of the keywords that you are using and how they can be upgraded for optimal success.  

In addition to being user-friendly, you need to make sure that your content is broad.  Don’t keep posting similar content, but rather, build off of the content that you already have in place.  Strong content creation can really bring your website to whole new levels. 

Mobile Friendly 

Most people are doing their searches on their mobile device.  Some websites are not mobile friendly, and people won’t spend the time trying to make it work.  You should be using mobile tasks and performance as Google will generate mobile versions in their search engine ahead of desktop pages. Take the mobile friendly test to see where you currently stand with your webpage. 

You need to also think about the purpose of your webpage.  What are you hoping visitors will see?  Be sure that whatever your goals and objectives are for the site can be easily accessed by visitors.  Don’t make it difficult for them to find it. 

Speed It Up 

Google will now be incorporating the speed of your website as part of its mobile search ranking factors.  If it takes too long to load because you have overloaded the site with videos and pictures, people are going to click off of it and move on to another similar site. 

When loading images to your page, be mindful of the dimensions of the image as well as utilizing the image compression and optimizer tool.  If the picture is too big and distorted, it will slow down your site and make it look unorganized. 

Links Are Key 

Links may have the biggest impact on your website ranking.  Make sure that all links are working and you delete any broken links.  You also want to have solid anchor texts to help solidify the internal anchor text.  Don’t get too cute with it. 

Look into getting mentions into your links.  You want to generate buzz and acknowledge anytime that your brand is being mentioned across the web.  You can set a Google alert to help with this process.  Think of how many times you’ve been on a website and became intrigued by the mention of something else?  It works and it will get people to your page. 

Google is certainly King right now and they offer a lot of programs to help you find ways to get noticed on their Search Engine.  Take the time to be thorough with the development of your website as well as teaching yourself the ins and outs of Google.

Mastering The Issue Of Productivity

by | Blog, Contributed Post

***Contributed Post***

In any startup, there is always going to be the very important issue of ensuring that the necessary work gets done, and that it gets done as easily and smoothly as possible. If this is your first business, you might well find yourself a little at a loss as to how you can ensure that you are going to be able to keep productivity high, and the truth is that many employers and business owners in your position know that feeling all too well. However, it is going to be essential that you try to find a way to master the issue of productivity, and in this article, we are going to try and make this a little simpler for you. As long as you consider the following, you should find that you are able to much more effectively master productivity in your business, and so hope for the brighter future your startup deserves.

Valuing Employees
One of the most essential things that you will want to look into here is making sure that you are actively making a point of valuing your employees. As long as your employees feel valued, they are going to find it much easier, and a much more natural thing, to be able to do the work they need to do when they need to do it. This is because they will understand much more effectively and deeply what it is that they are doing, and why they are doing it. It is therefore hugely powerful to take some time aside to speak to each employee directly, one-on-one, and ensure that they are well versed on why their job is important and what they are doing in the grand scheme of things.

When your employees understand in this way where they stand within the whole framework, you will absolutely find that their productivity goes through the roof. It is a lack of this feeling that mostly produces lack of work, and this is one of the major things that you should focus on if you are keen to try and increase and improve productivity in your workplace. You will also find that actively going out of your way to value your employees more openly will result in a happier, easier workplace and that everyone is going to be considerably more satisfied as a result.

Strong Policies
In a sense, you do need to make sure that you are policing the work that goes on in the office, although you of course don’t want to go too far with this either. However, you can strike a balance and make it clear to your employees that you need them to behave in a certain way, which will in turn mean that productivity is going to always be on the up. The best way to make sure that you are doing this properly is to look into developing some clear and strong policies which your employees need to follow. Having policies will mean that you are clear on what you expect in the workplace, and that level of strictness is often exactly what is needed for a much better way of promoting productivity.

There are plenty of types of policies you might want to adopt, many of them relating directly to ensuring that you are getting the most out of your employees that you can. Having a strong mobile phone policy such as that found at this link will ensure that your employees are not distracted by those devices too much, as will developing a policy around break times. The more that you have these in place, that you make sure you are going to enforce them and train your staff on them, the more likely it is that your employees will be as productive as you would hope, and that is certainly something to think about.

The Power Of Deadlines
Most people find that they work harder and more effectively when they have a deadline in place, and for the majority it also produces much stronger work too. You should consider making full use of this in your business to ensure that your employees are fully aware of when their deadlines are and what they need to do by when in order to achieve them. However, you should not consider deadlines to be the be all and end all. Instead, it is a good idea to focus on them as a means of encouragement, rather than possible punishment. You should make sure that any deadlines you give are entirely fair and that they are not expecting too much, and that you can allow some flexibility. That will mean, for instance, that you need to give longer deadlines for work, which is going to obviously take longer, rather than having a single, top-down deadline which everyone needs to work to. In any case, having deadlines and being fairly strong on them will ensure that your employees get much more work done, and that will benefit your business hugely in a number of ways.

Delegation
A good manager knows that it is important and wise to delegate, so you should make sure that you are doing this as much as you can too if you want the productivity to really be as high as possible. With good delegation, you can be sure that the work is going to get done, but you need to make sure that you know who to delegate what work to, and that you are not merely giving it out willy-nilly. If you can be sure of that, you will find that delegating is much more effective, both easing your own workload and also ensuring that the office as a whole is going to be much more productive. Bear in mind too that people will resent it if you give them too much work to do or that which is too above their pay grade, so you need to exercise caution here. But if you make a point of prioritizing and promoting those who take on this work regularly, then there is a decent incentive here which will only further improve the rate of production in the office. As you can see, delegating your work can indeed be a very powerful thing that you might want to consider doing.

Tools & Equipment
Any job needs specific tools, and the more aware you are of the kinds of tools and equipment your teams and individuals need, the more likely it is that you can help them to do their work as effectively as possible. Finding the right tools and equipment is something which can take a long time, and which you need to think about in order to make sure that you are getting it right, but it is a vital thing which you will want to make sure you are putting a lot of effort into for that very reason. When your employees have all the tools they need, their work will flow much more easily, and you will be able to ensure that your productivity is certainly being looked after well for that reason alone. Make sure you listen to them, as they might know better than you what kind of equipment they need, and you will want to make sure that you give them what they really do need. Do that, and your business will be very thankful on the whole for being provided for in that essential way.

As you can see, there are a lot of things you might want to consider in order to master productivity in your business, and as long as you have thought of these you will find that it is much easier to do just that.

How To Keep Your Business Safe Online 100%

by | Blog, Contributed Post, Website

***Contributed Post****

As more businesses grow an online presence, the security risks for any business can increase. Hackers and scammers are becoming more skillful in their abilities to infiltrate and so it’s important to remember the tips that can keep your business safe. Here’s how to keep your business safe online.

Have A Security Policy In Place

A policy is something that can be really useful to distribute to current staff and for new staff to become aware of when joining the organization. This should include some of the following; proper usage of computers and devices, requirement of strong passwords and consequences if the policy isn’t followed correctly. Regardless of how small or big, the company is, size is irrelevant and your business should have this policy or statement in place already as mentioned in this infographic, 10 elements of cybersecurity for businesses.

Protect With Passwords
As part of your policy, all applications or confidential documents must be password protected. They should be strong in terms of complexity and ideally all different. This is handy if any of these applications are hacked, at least it’s likely to be just the one occurrence if all the passwords are different. It is difficult to keep track of all the passwords, but it is beneficial in order to strengthen the security of the business as a whole. At least if you forget the password, you can simply reset it. The less vulnerable areas you leave available, the better.

Train Staff To Be Cautious
Your staff should be trained to proceed with caution when it comes to browsing the web and opening suspicious emails. They can prove to be a potential risk to the company’s security as they are accessing the internet on a daily basis. So, bring in some regular training sessions to keep your staff well informed of what to look out for, especially as hackers’ approaches seem to change fairly frequently.

Strengthen Your Security
As much as you can do internally, you should be working in the background to strengthen your overall security. That includes having the right anti-ware installed onto your systems so that your files are protected. You should also be keeping tabs on how to improve the security and strengthen it on a regular basis, making sure you have the latest updates or version of your anti-ware software.

Be Careful When It Comes To Social Media
Social media is a powerful thing but if not used wisely, it can end up leaving your business in a vulnerable situation. Make sure you are aware as to who in the company is running the social media on behalf of the company and monitoring the content that’s going out, making sure it all gets approved by a second pair of eyes. Provide some guidelines about what can and can’t be said and if something you are posting has a risk of facing backlash, it might be best to approach it another way.

The security of your online usage should be considered a top priority and it’s always a good idea to keep an eye on the changes in security and navigating the online world safely.