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5 Compelling Business Reasons to Carpool to Work

November 27, 2012 by Guest Author Leave a Comment

by
Paul Ellett

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5 Compelling Business Reasons to Carpool to Work

We’ve all heard those in the eco-climate field tell us about the dangers our cars are using and that we must act now, and we might all be sick of it. There is only so much talk about “being green” that we can handle at any one time. This is why many dismiss car-pooling as one of those options that are always discussed but never so seriously. I mean, who would want to share their car with someone who they only occasionally speak to at the copier at work, right?

Wrong. There are in fact several compelling reasons why carpooling or car-sharing to work is a viable way to travel. Whether you share a ride either each day or a few times a week, it makes solid sense and can grow your business and professional career to do so. Keep reading to find out more.

1: Strengthen Relationships

Because workplaces see many people from various backgrounds come together every day and interact regularly, there can often be little in the way of common-ground which can make for awkward lift-conversations or lunchtime conversations. If you’re in a job for the longhaul, change this outlook now! You may even find that you have a lot more in common with particular individuals than you originally thought;whether it be material things like sports, or deeper circumstances like lifestyle. This bonding can make team-projects or exercises that much easier and smoother. Additionally, if we have someone with which to coordinate with to get to work, we can teach ourselves to be more careful with how we manage our time, if we know someone else is relying on us.

2: Company Incentives

If you do take part in carpool schemes within your company, you may be able to apply for petrol-incentives or have these reimbursed in return. Ask your supervisor, human resources representative or even boss about this. This may be possible if your company pays for public transport travel costs for some employees currently. If you can show that you can save money, the person who you speak to within your company will be more susceptible to that as everyone is looking to save where they can.

3: Your Boss

Some people find it hard to stand out from a crowd which can be a killer when it comes to promotions in a large company. It can be a case of really being able to present yourself on a one-to-one basis rather than in a group or during the general workday. If you can arrange something with your boss, then it might be a grand opportunity to let them get to know you. You might find some common ground you didn’t know you had, and show them qualities that don’t make themselves so clear otherwise. Carpooling can be a lot less formal than being in the office too. If your boss can see from these daily interactions that you are capable, you’ll be more likely to be considered for projects and promotions.

4: Share the Stress

Often road-rage arises from a fear or frustration that we’ll be late for work, but why? Probably because we’re scared that we’ll look inferior to our colleagues and be knocked down the totem pole. If we’re late often, then we can often feel like we’re the only one in the world where we shouldn’t be and it can gain unwanted attention from those higher up if a frequent occurrence. It makes sense that if we’re late with someone else, we share the brunt of this stress and are less likely to feel so on edge that we’re running late. The company we get from having someone else with us in the car, can distract us from stressful situations we would otherwise focus on. It also makes sense that if more people carpooled, there would be less traffic on the road in certain areas, like heavily-congested motorways which join cities to surrounding areas.

5: Can’t Drive?

Often the jobs we apply for depend on how easy or possible it is to travel to it each day. This can limit the options available to us which impacts how we make a living. You may also wish to consider what happens if your circumstances change for the short-term. What if you’re found guilty of a drink driving offense and are temporarily suspended from the road? What if your own car is off-the-road due to repairs? Are you taking any medication which makes it difficult to drive or that requires you to stay away from heavy machinery of any kind? Can you get to work via public transport or would it be easier to speak to someone about carpooling? Will it save you money if you do this? In a large company there should be at least a few others who travel the same route as yourself; you just need to find them. Carpooling may be your only viable option to get to work and save money.

Author’s Bio:

Paul is working with a firm of drink driving solicitors in London and across the UK, who defend those who have been caught speeding, driving while under the influence etc.

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Filed Under: management, Productivity, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, business growth, carpooling, LinkedIn, ride-sharing, small business

5 Smart Ways to Differentiate a Successful Business

August 6, 2012 by Guest Author 2 Comments

by
Grant Tilus

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Did you know Americans create more than 500,000 new businesses every month? It’s true, but only 50 percent of those businesses will still be operational within five years. While the amount of new businesses every month is encouraging, our rate of failure is unfortunate and must be improved upon.

5 Smart Ways to Differentiate a Successful Business

One way you can increase your business’ chance of celebrating its five year anniversary is to differentiate your business among your industry peers. Stand out from the crowd. Use these five ways to differentiate to build a smart and successful business. Each key point provides real-world examples of what you can do to improve your business.

1. Focus on the Customer

The best and often the most successful entrepreneurs create businesses they are so passionate about they will do anything for their customers. Over time many business owners tend to lose focus and begin straying away from having the needs of their customer be a top priority. However, by maintaining a customer-centric focus you will create a positive customer experience that will allow you to build your brand all while creating a loyal base of repeat and new customers.

Example: Stuffed Giraffe Shows What Customer Service Is All About

2. Be a Social Media Juggernaut

In our digital world social media cannot be ignored by even the smallest of businesses. Focus on creating a unique social community by engaging and educating your customers about your brand in a way that’s both entertaining and helps them feel connected to your business. We all know it’s easier to keep customers rather than finding new ones; social media can help you do both.

Example: Impressive Small Business Facebook Pages You Can Learn From

3. Don’t Focus on the Competition

Every smart business owner has conducted a SWOT analysis for their business venture. Far too often business owners get caught up in the threats of competition, which causes their own business to suffer. However, by focusing on the unique opportunities your business has to offer you will help it stand out among the rest as a clear and distinguished option for your targeted customer base.

Example: Your Competition, Isn’t

4. Make It Personal

Creating personal connections is part of human nature. In the midst of creating a business we subconsciously hide our own personality, and that’s not necessarily the best thing to do. Customers need ways to connect with businesses beyond the advertisements and sales pitches. By being transparent and humanistic your customers can begin to create a relationship with your business and become more than just a customer. Tell your story and learn your customer’s story as you build your business.

Example:


Papa John Telling the Papa John Story

5. Keep Things Fresh

Changes within your target market, technology, and the economy often require your business to make adjustments. In order to stay relevant and continue building a successful business it’s important to assess and refresh your business’ activities. The businesses that are comfortable maintaining the status quo are the ones that are failing to prepare for true longevity. As a business owner you need to be asking, listening and responding to changes in the market and your customer base in order to succeed in the long term.

Example: Living Business Plans Help Businesses Flow with Future

Differentiate your business in 5 smart and social ways to build success. Use social avenues to focus on and connect with customers personally by sharing stories. Then you can let your competition worry about you.

What successes have you had with differentiating your business in smart and social ways?

Author’s Bio:
Grant Tilus is an Inbound Marketing Specialist at Rasmussen College. He creates superior content and blogs about accelerated bachelor’s degree programs, other online business school degree programs or inbound marketing best practices. Feel free to connect with Grant Tilus on Twitter and Google+.

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Filed Under: Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Strategy/Analysis, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, business growth, customer connections, customer focus, differentiate your business, keep it fresh, LinkedIn, small business, social media juggernaut

Do You Have an SEO Game Plan for Your Small Business?

July 18, 2012 by Guest Author Leave a Comment

by
Miguel Salcido

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SEO and ROI

With all that small business owners have to do on a daily basis, a thorough SEO game plan can often fall by the wayside.

In fact, some business owners end up neglecting SEO altogether, leaving them with missed opportunities for traffic back to their sites and a better return on investment (ROI). Think about it, your small business could very easily be missing out on free traffic, from qualified leads, who are interested in your products and services.

As a small business owner, do you feel you have a strong SEO game plan in place, an average one or you’re simply missing the boat when it comes to SEO?

Do You Have an SEO Game Plan for Your Small Business?

Get Started
BigStock: Get Started!

In the event you find yourself in the latter category, take some time now before you fall further behind to see how you can get on the boat and sail towards better returns.

Among the advantages for your business having a solid SEO presence include:

  • Increasing sales through qualified business leads from search engines;
  • Better Web site performance and more traffic showcasing your brand awareness;
  • Added credibility and legitimacy for your brand;
  • Tie in to specific keywords that consumers will utilize to come to your site.

In taking a look at some of the above-mentioned items, keep in mind that your goal at the end of the day is to drive traffic to your site, preferably traffic that is interested in purchasing from your business. With the right SEO game plan, you are able to gain the attention of top business prospects, increasing the chances of a sale.

Another factor to keep in mind is that you are better served putting out products and services based on the keyword search terms that led visitors to your site in the first place.

Okay, doing what was just mentioned above makes sense, right? In order to successfully do that, you need to be recording and analyzing your SEO metrics.

Make sure you are able to see via statistics where you have a competitive edge over the competition and where you need to increase your efforts. Find the keywords that rank best for you in leading traffic back to your site, stay on top of the ones that are working, and look to improve upon other terms that need a little boost.

Lastly, many small business owners are working on tight budgets to begin with, so they go back-and-forth as to whether or not they should hire someone for in-house SEO or outsource it.


Remember that the most important question to answer is discovering how many people are searching for what you sell.

If you are a tech-savvy business owner or have a tight budget, you may look to do SEO efforts on your own or contract them out. If you have more of a budget to work with, consider hiring a company that specializes in delivering SEO results to small businesses.

At the end of the day, your small business wants and needs a steady stream of referrals coming to your site with the potential to buy.

When deployed properly, SEO marketing can be a very cost-effective means by which the small business owner drives quality traffic to their site, traffic that can very well lead to a purchase.

Author’s Bio:
Author Miguel Salcido, held executive positions with large search marketing agencies over the years and now runs an SEO consulting services agency and loves fielding questions over at his organic SEO blog so feel free to reach out to him there.

Thank you, Miguel. Understanding SEO as part of social business is so important.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Filed Under: SEO, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, business growth, business referrals, LinkedIn, SEO, small business

5 Must-Attend Events to Understand Online Business Growth

July 3, 2012 by Guest Author 2 Comments

by
Ann Smarty

Understanding Online Business

If guiding your business startup to the point that you’re breaking even is your first major hurdle, the second is focusing on sustaining that growth in order to turn your business into the profitable machine that you’ve always known it would be.

Just like the first leg of your entrepreneurial journey, the general idea of growing an online business covers many complicated fields and endeavors, often leaving you in the dark as to the best possible step to take in a given situation.

If getting bigger is what you’re about then you’ll need all the help you can get; check out these five must-attend events to understand online business growth:

1. SOBCon NW 2012

Business owners of all kinds are invited to attend this year’s SOBCon event, a conference that offers education and inspiration to startups, entrepreneurs and small business owners. Starting off with its theme of Starting Up Strategically, SOBCon NW 2012 will offer six unique “Mastermind Models” that focus on the key elements of a successful startup alongside interviews and talks with those in the know and panel discussions to allow you to benefit from others in your niche.

For those focused on entrepreneurial non-profit efforts, Give Back Sunday is set aside to provide you with the kind of information and insight that you need in order to achieve the best possible results with your charitable efforts.

When & Where: SOBCon NW 2012 is set to be held at the Urban Studio in Portland, Oregon, from September 28-30, 2012. Live chat with Liz if you have any venue and location questions.

2. The Conference Board – The New/Next CMO: What it Takes to Win in Marketing

Startup success and business growth depend, in the end, on marketing and marketing alone; buyers rule. With this fact in mind, it’s easy to understand exactly why a strong mind for advertising is a necessity, especially in today’s crowded business landscape, and The New/Next CMO conference offers marketing professionals big and small the tools and ideas they need to help their business to excel.

This event will help you to better spot and leverage marketing opportunities in your business, focusing on how to achieve real world results while giving you the take-home ideas and inspiration you need sell your brand to the world.

When & Where: The Conference Board Conference Center in NewYorkCity will play host to The New/Next CMO conference on November 8, 2012. There’s no official venue information at the event site but you can book a hotel using NewYorkHotels.org

3. Pivot Conference 2012

Speaking of marketing, Pivot Conference 2012 is another great event for brand builders and marketers, helping online entrepreneurs to gracefully tackle the many challenges and risks to be found in the rapidly evolving world of social media. Attended by some of the biggest and most successful names in social marketing and engineering, you’ll learn how to take advantage of emerging platforms in effective ways while never losing focus on the good old-fashioned art of connecting on a meaningful level with your customers.

When & Where: NewYork, NewYork is the city that Pivot Conference 2012, to be held on October 15-16, 2012, calls home, offerings attendees an exciting travel opportunity in itself! Here’s the official hotel and travel information.

4. Ignition: Future of Digital

In a world quickly moving towards paperless money, digitized business and technology-fuelled everything, digital media professionals need to stay educated in order to stay on top of their game! Ignition: Future of Digital promises to give attendees the information they need to stay ahead of the competition, no the matter the niche in question.

When & Where: New York City continues to hold the spotlight as it hosts the Ignite conference on November 27, 2012 at the Time Warner Center. More location information and registration is available here.

5. Business Growth Conference

Visit a city on the cutting edge of technology and digital media and rub shoulders with the best and brightest minds available by visiting the Business Growth Conference, a full day of professional development activities designed to help any business owner to grow surely and steadily.

When & Where: A visit to beautiful San Francisco, California on October 17, 2012 will be in order if you’d like to attend the Business Growth Conference. More info on the event location is available here. Union Square also boasts many other hotels.

Are you visiting any of the above? Please let us know in the comments!

Author’s Bio: Ann Smarty is a blogger and guest blogger with 6 years experience. She is a control freak and she loves when she is busy, so her hands are always full. One of her largest projects is My Blog Guest, the free community of guest authors and blog owners who preach the “high-quality” approach to guest blogging. Follow Ann on Twitter at @seosmarty and Google Plus


Thank you, Ann! Great information, Great guest post! Great birthday present to include SOBCon among them! 🙂

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Filed Under: Business Life, SOB Business, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, Business development, business growth, events, LinkedIn, small business

5 Ways to Bring More Customers in the Door

June 15, 2012 by Guest Author 2 Comments

by
Jake Oates

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Getting more customers is not just worthy, it is necessary to keep your business alive. In order to enjoy success you have to continually build upon what you have. There are a number of things that you can do to grow your business. With a bit of planning and investing just a little time, you can begin enjoying a steady stream of new customers. Here are a few tips to get you started:

  1. Ask for referrals – Getting new customers in the door could be as simple as asking for them. Ask your current customers to refer you to new customers. Note that you have to be providing satisfactory services to your existing customers before you can begin to expect referrals from them. After every sale or job that you do, ask your satisfied customer if he or she knows of someone else who would benefit from your business.
  2. Penetrate your market – Your existing market can be a great way to increase your business revenue. Getting new customers is great but you have to remember the customers that you already have. Take care of them and they will continue to use you for their needs.
  3. Innovate your products – Find new ways of using your products or services in order to entice new customers. There could be many ways that you could use your products or services. Find these new ways and begin promoting them.
  4. Reach out – Extending your market reach is a great way to find new customers. Opening stores in new places or building a website with an online store could really help you to add to your customer base. Once you have tapped into this new market, choose advertising methods that will reach your target audience.
  5. Think trade shows – Trade shows are an excellent way to promote your products and services and reach new customers. Trade shows draw in people who already have an interest in your market so participating can help you to reach new people. Choose trade show displays that highlight your product or service and work well with your business needs. A good trade show display can have them lined up around the corner just waiting to see what you have to offer.

What ways do you use to engage customers and keep them coming back for more?

—-

Author’s Bio: This post was written by Jake Oates on behalf of Display Wizard, UK – specialists in design, printing and distribution of display stands for exhibitions, trade shows and events. You can find him at displaywizard.co.uk.

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Filed Under: Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, business growth, customer engagement, LinkedIn, small business

Turn Procrastination into Business Building Ideas

March 19, 2012 by Liz 11 Comments

You Know You’re Procrastinating When . . .

insideout logo

. . . cleaning the refrigerator takes on a new and miraculous sense of urgency with a heavenly glow.

Go ahead give in and do it, but don’t lose to procrastination. Turn that refrigerator chore into an exploration for ideas. Here are three things you might think about.

  • What is your customer experience of the products that you are tossing out? Can you use those experiences to seed an article for your blog?
  • Refrigerators are filled with products. How do the companies who make those products promote them? Can you rethink any of their ideas into ways to promote your business or your blog?
  • Is there a brand in there you are attached to? What do you value about that brand? Can you put those thoughts and feelings into words? How can you use that brand value you feel to strengthen your personal brand and the experience people have when they meet you?

Procrastination just became an idea session, and on top of that you’ve cleaned your refrigerator! That’s productivity where you could have been doing what I’ve done — standing in front of an open refrigerator door thinking about how the light goes on and off.

Bet you can think of more ideas to find inside of that Big Box. How about sharing some with us?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Filed Under: Idea Bank, Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, business growth, ideas, LinkedIn, personal-branding

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