Who’s the Boss? Starting Your Own Business

November 15th, 2012

Take a second and close your eyes. Think about your dream job. What do you see? Are you a restaurant owner or the owner of a ballet studio? Are you painting in your own studio or running your own daycare?

Before you run and quit your day job, think about what it takes to start your own company. Don’t put in your two weeks quite yet — many entrepreneurs use evenings and weekends as a start to pursue the business dreams.

According to an article by MSN, the baby boomer generation entrepreneurs — boomerpreneurship — is becoming a more notable trend. With many members of the boomer generation getting ready to hit retirement, there’s a growing number of retirees using this time to start their own businesses.

Before you race out to start your own company, here’s what you need to know:

First Thing’s First, Consider the Financial Implications

Can you afford to start a new venture? Look at your finances and figure out what you can tackle. Don’t expect to go out and open up 20 boutiques all over the United States. Start small and open up a new company you can be proud of and that you can handle. Make a to-do list and plan out the first year of your business. Plan to have at least the amount of money you would need to buy property and keep the business going for at least six months.

Do Your Homework

I’m sure you’ve built relationships over the years, so take advantage your resources and business networks to learn what you need to know to set up your venture. According to MSN, you should gather relevant industry insight and look into the potential tax implications of the new startup business.

Never Use a Personal Credit Card

Using a personal credit card to start your business is not a great idea. If you aren’t careful, you could be setting yourself up for financial downfall, leaving you with mounds and mounds of debt. According to a recent study from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, almost 60 percent of startups rely on credit cards for financing during the first year of business. The smart way to go is to apply for a business credit card from American Express or another leading business credit card provider specifically designed to accommodate the operational needs of small businesses. Small business credit cards make it easy to separate your business and personal expenses, which will make things much easier for your accountant during tax season.

Do the Pros Outweigh the Cons?

Yes, becoming your own boss promises flexibility and can seem like the perfect dream job, but most likely, you will be working double the hours you used to all while decreasing your income. Don’t open a business expecting it to become lucrative right away, because it will take a few years at least to start seeing positive cash flow. But once you start getting money, enjoy the benefits!

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Posted in Entrepreneur, Financial Intelligence, Guest Post, Investing, small business | 6 Comments »

Business Leadership Shortcomings and Remedies

October 29th, 2012

It’s easy to dwell on the the corner office or flexible schedule, but the perks business leaders enjoy are accompanied with enormous responsibility. Anyone can hide away from his or her employees or berate workers constantly, but it takes commitment to crawl into the trenches with your employees and provide genuine leadership. You won’t find any simple recipe to providing quality leadership, but you can avoid common pitfalls that will limit your business’s potential.

Business Leadership

Lack of Feedback

Employers consistently challenge their workers to increase productivity with rousing “buckle down and try harder” speeches, but diligent employees will become frustrated with constant claims questioning their work ethic. There’s a time and a place for a kick in the pants, but successful leaders generate productivity by helping their employees work smarter, not harder.

Personal and candid feedback empowers employees to improve in areas of weakness and build on strengths. Employees tend to dismiss group criticism as someone else’s problem, but frank feedback keeps employees accountable and demonstrates a commitment to their success. The next time you start writing a speech to fire up the troops, consider adjusting your strategy and write down a recent success and shortcoming for every employee. Then, look each one in the eye and discuss how he or she can succeed — that’s leadership.

Refusal to Delegate

Whether you started your own business or earned your way to the top within a company, chances are direct business action got you to the top. A proposal presentation, design concept or customer interaction may have led you to the top, but the ability to delegate responsibly will cement your status as an effective leader. The resource management, conflict resolution and problem solving that accompanies leadership means you can’t be as involved in the direct function of the company, so stop trying.

Delegating important tasks can feel like handing your baby to a stranger, but in order for your company to grow, new employees must be challenged. Leadership guru Jim Collins says “An organization cannot be truly great unless it can be great without you.”

Inconsistent Vision

During a time of transition or a slow quarter, it’s tempting to uproot the current processes in favor of trendy alternatives. Tinkering business leaders always want to find an edge, but too much process turbulence compromises your business’s vision. If your employees seem to be making inconsiderate business decisions, perhaps they don’t have a clear definition of success. Do you?

Your business’s purpose and goals should be easily recognizable to potential customers and, more importantly, your employees. A direct mission statement provides employees with a picture of success, making it easier to define goals. Regularly express the company’s vision from different angles, whether it’s at the start of the meeting or at the bottom of an email thread.

Day-to-day functions are the product of a greater vision. Keep everybody informed as your processes transform and you’ll reach your business’s goals.

Posted in Entrepreneur, small business | 3 Comments »

Why SEOs Fail In Social Media

October 19th, 2012

Few years ago, website owners who desire quality and consistent traffic of targeted consumers will naturally turn to a professional SEO (Search Engine Optimizer – that is a professional who practices search engine optimization of websites).  Well that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. The trend has suddenly changed because webmasters have noticed that SEOs are not as successful with Web 2.0 media environment as they were with its predecessors. Why are the SEOs failing where they formerly succeeded? What is the implication of this to webmasters and small business owners seeking for customers online.

SEO

The simple answer is that SEOs fail to adapt to the new Web 2.0 media environment and attempt to apply rules of the older Web to the new situation. Human beings are dynamic. What they like today, may not necessarily be what they will like tomorrow. So, a strategy that worked yesterday, may not deliver a good result tomorrow. Let’s look at some reasons why SEOs tend to fail in Web 2.0 media environment.

1) Preference to automation

It is an established fact that SEOs love to automate. On the contrary, social media encourages conversations among people. This tendency of encouraging automation makes SEOs a failure in social media. After all one prefers engaging conversation to an automated conversation. Your website must not place priority on the search-bots over human visitors.

2) Improper marketing strategy

SEOs believe in highlighting their services without caring if the people are listening. This strategy does rarely work as people care only when you ensure that you are caring for their needs. SEOs rarely do market research and instead go about bloating about their services. One converted social media user can do a lot of free marketing for you in his or her social media circles.

3) Materialistic approach

SEOs have become more materialistic with changing times. Their sole interest lies in increasing their brand value and earning more money. They lag behind on promoting social issues and rarely pay attention to social values and issues impacting our daily lives.

On the contrary social media has become a face of youth with a range of options available to showcase concern on issues affecting ones lives. Be it environment, culture or degrading social values, social media has risen to the occasion. SEOs are increasingly busy in minting money and hardly pay attention to this fact, thus making them perform miserably in social media.

4) More attention to keyword stuffing

Keyword stuffing seems to be a mantra of success for those in SEO business. They hardly take pains to ensure that the work becomes an interesting read. This makes their task even more difficult as a common reader only wants engaging content. This is possible only if thorough research has been conducted. Repeating keywords in order to attract search engine bots produce a negative result with human visitors. Someone coming to your site for information on meeting a particular need will simply get irritated when he or she discovers that he was lured to a page that cannot meet such need. Social media scores a point on this account, thus leading to devaluation of SEO when it comes to sharing information when it comes to SEO sharing their information via the social media way.

5) Focus on page rank

SEOs still live in the past. They pay much attention to page rank. Page ranking was an imperative few years ago but changing scenario over the last few years has brought about a radical change in this thinking. A website may be having Page Rank 9, but it might still reflect at 1 position on Google. It’s all about quality content and fulfilling the aspirations of new tech smart generation. SEOs seem to be lagging on this front, thus making their task difficult when it comes to promoting services in social media.

6) Sneaky enough

Instead of building upon their brand through quality content promotion, people in SEO segment believe in quick gains. They fail miserably on social media as the audience is smart enough to smell a rat in this haste.

As webmaster or a small business owner, you need to consider the facts discussed above you part with your hard earned cash engaging the service of a self-acclaimed SEOs. Don’t get someone who will simply splash some keyword rich content on your website to attempt luring the search engine bots to position your website on page 1. Getting to the first page of the search engine result is not the goal, staying there and attracting consistent visitors who will become paying customers is the goal of every business website. So, there is need for your SEOs to understand your target market so that he can know how best to engage and keep their attention with dynamic content on your website.

When SEO tactics are over-used, they may end up harming rather than benefiting. Make sure you use SEO tactfully so as to maintain your readers’ loyalty without compromising quality. Many weary business owners have been burned by SEO firms who promise the world and then never REAL results. It might surprise you but it is a fact that SEOs have failed to make an impact when it comes to adapting to the rapidly evolving world of social media. It is unfortunate that many search engine optimizers still follow SEO 1.0 and have failed to adapt to web 2.0 media environment.

SEOs need to rethink and rework their strategies in order to make a worthy appearance in social media. Times are changing and the one who adapts to changing scenario will emerge victorious.

About The Author: Carol is an internet marketer. She loves writing and marketing. She is a big fan of Latest technology. These days she is thinking about latest technology used in upcoming iPhones.

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Posted in Blogging, Guest Post, small business, Tips & Tricks | 1 Comment »

Top Ways to Have Stress Free Blogging

October 8th, 2012

Blogging is an excellent online business to make money. But, it is not a funny job, unless you are creative and posses the passion to post your blog on the top of the list. To run your blog successfully, your blog content must be unique and natural. To achieve this, you may sometimes feel placed in a stressful environment. By indulging in this activity, sometimes you may forget or may not find time for social activities like outing with family and friends. Here are some of the top ways to have stress-free blogging.

1. Planning your activities

Planning is the first step that is essential for a successful blogging. Don’t attempt at doing things randomly. Some people begin with a task and before completing it they simply jump on to the next one and end up without completing any of them. Though they are found busy working for the whole day, they end up in having pending tasks. You should plan well before performing any activity. Planning helps you to allocate time for different activities. You must also take care in seeing that each of the activity does not overlap with the other. It is of no use, if you just make a plan and do not follow it. By sticking on to the parameters of a schedule, you will be completing the task more easily. Hence, you are left with more time to enjoy.

2. Make use of the available tools

No business achieves success without using its related tools. Blogging tools like SEO help you in producing and promoting quality blogs. It improves your chances of getting exposed on searches for a particular thing and therefore eases your work and saves your time. So, you must not forget to incorporate SEO in automating your tasks.

3. Limit your expectations

You need to be realistic in this blogging domain. You should not think of becoming rich overnight. If you think so and fail to achieve the goal, you may end up in stress. By limiting your expectations in this career, you can expect a bright future.

4. Think positive

Negative thoughts tend to wreck your mind. These thoughts don’t have any role but only cause you to develop stress. If you remain positive in your thoughts, you are going to achieve success in the right direction. If you happen to encounter some negative thoughts in your career, you can simply overcome them by not concentrating much on the results.

5. Sharing your work

You can choose a person of similar interest and take him as you partner in sharing your work load. He may be assigned with activities like site designing or marketing. His social network also promotes increased traffic. Therefore, sharing your work load greatly helps in leading a stress-free blogging life.

6. Make time for family and friends

When you feel stressed, you can try reading other blogs. This way you will be educated, entertained and relaxed. This method also equips you with new ideas for your blogs. You can also spend some time with an outing with family or friends. This gives you a small break from the stressful activity and those happy moments will energize you to work with extra passion.

Hope you learnt something with the above tips that would be helpful in developing a stress-free blogging life.

About The Author: Margaret is a blogger and internet marketer. She loves writing and travelling. Blogging is her passion. Recently she did an article promoting Local rank tracking on Google. These days she is working on rank tracking tools used by SEO companies.

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Posted in Blogging, Guest Post, Tips & Tricks | 3 Comments »

Improving Your CRM Equals Rapid Growth

October 5th, 2012

In a tough economy, staying in touch with customers is more important than ever. Customer Relations Management (CRM) requires consistent involvement, and  Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) can help integrate new strategies for maintaining strong connections. Customer relations will always boil down to a personal connection between a business and consumer, but new technology can eliminate roadblocks that kept businesses from meeting their customers’ needs. The right email service, for example, will not only enhance your business’ logistical process, it will also provide a valuable line of communication between you and your customers.

Social tactics, new technology and proven business techniques combine to make up modern customer relations. Your business won’t be benefit from every new development, but an CRM boost could be just what your business needs to keep customers happy.

New Directions For CRM Improvement

Recently, businesses have turned to Pinterest to softly promote their business. While it’s not unusual to use social media to gain new business and continue old business, Pinterest is a little different than Facebook and Twitter in that it’s more introspective and personal. In essence, Pinterest helps people create their own online imaging page, and many companies from IT to Target are getting in on it. Developing a Pinterest page for your current clients is one new direction to take your business and make it grow through an alternative CRM improvement.

New Assets For CRM Improvement

When you live and work in a digital world, traditional customers service techniques stand out like black sheep. A phone call or email follow-up with a grace period of a few days used to be acceptable, but in a social world, personal contract is expected. Companies are finding live person chat may be more effective in resolving select customer needs (while potentially driving sales). Don’t spend your CRM budget reacting to the competition’s latest developments. Find the thought leaders in your niche and keep up with the latest offerings so you can choose which to implement in a timely manner.

Exploring Options Is Always Best

You’ve got work to do—whether its expanding your online store or developing a new product. While you shouldn’t use up too much of your time trying to choose the best, newest and latest approaches to CRM, you still need to consider the impact on your business of some major decisions. Should you go with CRM software in the cloud, eliminating the need for expensive hardware? Or maybe CRM hybrid software and infrastructure, offering the best of both worlds?

Open source CRM is very popular, but is it right for you and your company? A CRM can produce immediate results, so are you prepared to deal with a wave of new customers all at once. Nothing is perfect, so expect to deal with a few bugs as you transition over to any new CRM platform.

Keep in mind your capacity for troubleshooting in-house before you commit to a cheaper self-serve option. If you can’t handle the IT load, cheaper infrastructure might end up costing you more in the long run.

CRM, Rapid Growth, And You

Once you find what works for you and your company, choosing a strategy and sticking with it makes all the difference in whether you’re growing rapidly or just trying to stay afloat. You might be comfortable with the new CRM software, but your employees usually carry the brunt of the day-to-day work. Give your employees time to adjust to a new CRM system, and if a new process compromises something that was working, don’t be afraid to merge the two concepts. When you hit your stride with CRM, there’s no doubt that you will recognize it for what it is.

CRM is the backbone of your business. Without a satisfied customer base, how would you pay the bills? Take chances to improve CRM processes and you could find new customers headed your way.

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Posted in Entrepreneur, small business | 1 Comment »

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