This is one of the 50 sculptures from the annual Swell Sculpture Festival that lines Currumbin Beach for 10 days in September each year.
This sculpture spoke to me. I could see this being somewhere a child or children would be drawn to sit in and look out to the sea and just imagine……..
A Peaceful Moment by Dion Parker
Take a moment to be peaceful.
– Suzie Cheel
There is a common statement that everything that has an advantage also has a disadvantage. Now this is very true regarding small businesses when compared with big companies or brands. Yes, a small business will most likely not have the kind of marketing budget that a big firm has, but this does not mean it cannot get some of the customers of its bigger competitors. So how can small and medium scale businesses achieve this? Well, by leveraging on their strengths or put in another way by taking advantage of their unique strengths.
Here are five simple ways that any small or medium scale business can adopt in order to get more customers and earn more.
This might be the easiest way yet. You see SMBs can leverage on the size of their current customer base to connect with them on a more personal level. Since customers like to say that they know the person that owns company XYZ. So if you own or mange an SMB let your customers know this, and make them feel like you have a personal relationship with them. This personal connection with clients can go a long way in making such people actively recommend your business or company to others. Who in turn will also do the same with other people? If you canât meet them one-on-one, then consider connecting via social media, phone calls, emails, etc.
Ensure that every interaction with your business by customers; prospective or not is made simple. One of the challenges that customers have with big businesses is their bureaucracy. Reduce the processes involved in getting things done for your clients. One area that this should be seen is regarding your website. Users want to be able to navigate this easily. Also, they want products that they can use easily plus services that meet their unique needs. Therefore, making sure that every process, service or product is simple will certainly drive more customers from the big players your way.
Providing excellent customer service is another means that small and medium scale businesses have been using to get customers from bigger competitors. You know it; we all know it that dealing with an SMB will often result in us receiving better customer service. They do this by going the extra mile with their clients. This is why even if you are doing this very well right now; you should look for ways to improve on same.
Since SMB owners and/or their employees are usually in touch with their clients on a daily basis, this gives them the opportunity to know and solve the core problems these people are facing. The real-time feedback plus knowledge that SMBs have is something that big businesses want to, but cannot replicate. That is why any SMB should take advantage of this by continuously solving their clientsâ core problems.
There will always be opportunities in the market. But the problem is whether one will be able to respond to this quickly. For big businesses it is often difficult for them to respond to such opportunities in a timely fashion. But this is not the same with small or medium sized companies that can feel the market and take advantage of the situation more quickly based what customers are saying. Such opportunity may be regarding a product offering or working with another in the same industry to form a strategic alliance.
Small business has the ability to leverage these 5 abilities as advantages by the very fact that small business is small.
When people ask about me, I usually have two main descriptions I go to: I am a travel-lover and a blogger. These two things make up so much of who I am and my life that they are the very first details that spring into my mind. Which is great, because they are two parts about my life that I truly love and would never change.
You would think the two would naturally intertwine, and in a way they do. I have plenty to say after each journey, and love showing pictures and videos taken along the way as I speak of my experiences. As I started out backpacking around the world in my earlier days, I have some serious stories about it. Which I am always eager to tell.
The problem is finding time to blog while I am traveling. This is something I have always wanted to be able to do, as my impressions and details would be much clearer and more accurate when it had only just happened.
It took me years to develop this skill properly, rather than relying on guest bloggers or hiatuses to get me through. It all comes down to a few tricks of the trade.
No matter how good your intentions are to blog while on the road, it won’t always happen. Your best bet is to have a small collection or prewritten articles in draft. That way you can publish on those scheduled days where you don’t have the time, ability or just energy to write.
Here’s a detailed guide on how to stay connected with your iPhone. Here’s another one for Android. It all comes down to which apps you choose to stick with as there are plenty!
Rely On Photo Or Video Posts
You don’t always have to tell about your day with words. Instead, you can post a vlog or collection of photos. It gives you a post, will update your viewers and also engage them visually.
You know those days that you can’t bring yourself to go out and do anything? Even the most experienced travelers in the most beautiful and exciting destinations feel like this once during their trip. Take that day to lay low in your hotel room or hostel, and take advantage of the available internet connection. If they don’t have one, spend an hour or two at an Internet cafe or business with free WiFi. Knock out a few blog posts so they are ready and scheduled to go out. Then you won’t have to worry about it. If you are fast and determined, you will actually be surprized how much you are able to do in ten minites!
I mentioned before that I don’t like to rely on guest bloggers when I travel, and that was true. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like them at all. I love guest bloggers, and they have saved my butt more than once. I always have one on hand when I travel, who knows they will be called on to write at specific times. Or will just be expecting an email if I need them. MyBlogGuest is also always there to rescue!
This is one of my favorite ideas. Ask readers who are interested in writing for the site submit their ideas or blog posts on a relevant topic. Hold it like a contest with the winners having their posts published while you are traveling. You would be surprised by how many responses this tactic can get, especially from other writers looking for some exposure.
It isn’t always easy to keep up with a blog when you are a frequent traveler. But that doesn’t mean it is an impossible feat. In fact, it is quite simple to do if you just spend some time preparing for it. The tips above should help you out.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Three years ago I left my home country of Canada to go work abroad. I had just graduated university with a pretty useless art degree and I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life.
The only thing I knew was that I was creative, loved to write and daydreamed about traveling the world. I wanted to do something amazing with my life, but I just wasnât sure what it would be. So, instead of settling down into a âcareerâ I applied for a work visa and bought a flight to New Zealand just to roll the dice and see what would happen.
Now I make a living as a full time freelance travel writer, which allows me to wander the world and work from anywhere I choose. In the past couple of years I have traveled and lived in New Zealand, England, Portugal, Italy, Scotland, the USA and Thailand and I am writing this from a hostel in Malaysia with many more Southeast Asian destinations in my near future.
How did the decision to work abroad allow me to create my dream business?
I had a job when I first arrived in New Zealand, as a tour guide in a creepy old prison on the North Island. It was there that I met Lee, a gregarious English guy who completely won me over with his down-to-earth charm. After a couple months of working on the North Island I wanted to see the South Island so I headed down to Christchurch where Lee happened to be working, having left the prison a few weeks before me.
My plan was to find a job in Christchurch as well, but things didnât go as planned. I struggled to find full time work even though I was sending in applications every day. I found a part time job as a pub crawl host but that was only one night per week and my travel savings were quickly disappearing. I started to get more and more desperate and I began to think of any possible way that I could make some cash, including offering my gardening and babysitting skills on the local classifieds.
I remembered that my parents had mentioned a freelance writing website and I started to look around on the internet for places that I could find paid writing jobs. I was getting nowhere with my job search and writing random articles for a few extra dollars would be better than having to look under the couch cushions for enough change to buy lunch.
Sometimes it is only when you are in a situation where things start to get desperate that you are forced to think outside the box and try something unconventional.
I did a few little articles here and there and earned a few bucks. I started to like the idea of online writing, but I didnât really take it seriously until the next stage of my working abroad adventure.
After we had lived in Christchurch together for a few months, Lee and I realized that our travel romance had the potential to be something more and he asked me to come back to England with him. I said, âwhy the hell not?â and I jumped on the plane to Manchester.
When I arrived, the first thing I did was take the first job I could find (I was penniless, remember?). I soon went from being unemployed to working 45 hours per week at a daycare facility plus Saturdays at the local football club. Although I enjoyed it and I was glad to have money again, it was hard work.
Meanwhile the little bit of writing work that I had done in New Zealand was beginning to grow into the odd article here and there. I kept at it, working on my writing during evenings and weekends. Between my two jobs and my writing projects on the side, I sometimes worked around 50-60 hours per week.
I started to realize that the conventional full time 9-5 job wasnât for me but if I was going to be able to make a living on my own terms I would have to put in the work first to earn that freedom. I invested hours and hours into building up my freelance writing portfolio.
I worked more on my writing when I had to squeeze it in around a full time job than when I was unemployed and had all of the time in the world. That seems backwards, but it is true. Do you know the saying âif you want something to get done, give it to a busy person?â When I had all that time, I was lazy and stretched everything out so it took longer. When I was super busy, I needed to make every second count and I was more motivated to get stuff done.
When you fill up your plate with a lot of new challenges, sometimes you can surprise yourself with how energized you are to succeed.
One of the most important parts of building up my dream business was not what I did while working abroad but who I met. I wouldnât have been nearly as successful as I am now without my amazing partner Lee.
Our skills complement each other out because although I love writing I am not so good at the organizational and planning side of things. Leeâs logical business minded brain has helped me take my raw talent for writing and turn it into a business model that actually works. He helped me with solutions for time management, ways of organizing my work and my invoices, strategies for increasing my productivity, tools for recording my progress and so much more. My writing business grew in leaps and bounds and it started to actually look like a feasible source of income!
When you go take your business on the road and work abroad you end up meeting people who share the same goals as you and are able to offer you fresh insight that is vital to your success.
It took me just over a year from those first writing assignments in New Zealand to the day when I was able to quit my âday jobâ and start writing full time. That was over 18 months ago and we are still going strong as we travel around the world.
The experiences during my time working abroad were the essential catalyst to my success as a world traveling freelance writer, a dream job that I would never have created if I had stayed in one place.
As you read this, I should be happily rubbing elbows with Liz, Terry, and tons of other smart enthusiastic entrepreneurs and small business owners at SOBCon NW in Portland.
The trip inspired me to share my personal pre-conference to do list.
I hope it helps make your next conference experience more productive!
Note that this is the ‘attendee’Â version of the list. Mitch Joel posted the definitive ‘speaker’Â version of this list a few months ago.
What do you do to make the most of your conference attendance?
Thank you, Rosemary!
You’re irresistible!
ME “Liz” Strauss
Google analytics provides a reporting which would make you understand little bit easier that efforts you put in social media marketing are worth the investment. Also it gives you in-depth analysis about which social channel gives value to your business and which plans are most effectual.
These new reports are framed in a way to span the gap between business metrics and social media. Using these reports, you can assess the traffic/clicks comes to your site from different social channels and how they leads to conversions, future conversions, and where the users navigate within your website and many social activities that are going on and off the website which enables to do in-depth analysis and take further actions in social media for the growth of your business.
If you are unaware of these updates, check through as you log in next time. Here are few things that you can keep an eye.
By the above overview report, we can have a quick look at how much conversions has been produced by social channels. Also it gives you comparison between the money invested and profit obtained from all your goal completions obtained through social referrals.
We can evaluate the conversion rates of each social channel whereby it allows marketers to measure the value of each social network that drives profit and supports your business. This conversion report gives influence of the social content whether it may be from facebook conversion post, or Google plus post or stumble upon post or new video.
Social plugins report gives good insight of how the article pages of website is influenced by the social media through the social buttons (like facebook, Google plus, twitter) being clicked on the article page to share them. By this, clear picture can be availed of which articles are most engaged, interesting among the users and how the users are following socially with your content on and off your site.
All other reports would depict the social content as how it is being engaged inside the website, While this activity stream report will present the activities that are carried out in the social content off the website across the social web.
Social content shared publicly as how it is shared, where it is shared (through facebook, twitter, Google plus, stumble upon etc), what people have commented and URLs of all these sources can be seen. Presently activities are covered for Google+ and the list of social data hub partners is growing which includes Meetup, Badoo, Hatena, Echo, etc…These new reports can be availed through standard reporting tab.
This report gives visits received to the site through different social referrals and how users behave in the site, as shown in the parallel comparative picture . The in-depth details of conversion metrics of each social network and how the content is engaged and interacted among the people is depicted. This report turned out to be handy, because whether visitors are getting the desired outcome in the website can be examined here, which is essentially and really you want to know.
Recently, Google analytics has brought few updates which enable the users to get adept understanding about their social impact. For the long time this was lagging being unable to find how much the content was socialized. But now Google analytics is able to measure the social reach of content/website/product/services. Notwithstanding the availability of tools on hands, social reach is all about how the content is being used and shared. Keeping all these in track, Google has released few updates designed in its analytics tool. Two significant new updates are centered on assisting the users to get clear understanding on how the content is socializing online and how itâs being viewed across different devices.
Users can experiment content to test and improvise the website. Site owners can create different versions of a page say A, B, and C experiments to measure how effectively each versions get the visitors to convert. Google analytics already have this facility called website optimizer. It is now called as âcontent experiments’ and incorporated into analytics. Website optimizer isn’t a standalone product any more from August 01_2012. Content experiments assists to hone toward the goals that have already set in the Google analytics which will help to find out which page design and content is most effectual.
To start up with these content experiments, open Standard Reporting of Google analytics, and in the Content section, click Experiments.
Here you have to go through four steps to complete the set up wizard.
The visible portion of a web page is very smaller than the actual screen resolution for the users who are accessing through mobile platforms due to many toolbars and welters. Essential factors for conversion rates are items that are above the fold on a web page. To find the percentage of visitors for whom the page items displays below or above the fold is really baffling. Therefore Google analytics facilitates users by creating a visualization to ascertain which parts of page are viewable to which percent of visitors.
Go to the Content section of Google Analytics, and click In-Page Analytics. Then click on the browser-size to see the shaded portions of the web page that are underneath the fold. Now click in at any place of the screen to find how much percent of visitors can view it or just hold the threshold percentage by using the slider.
Clicking on show-percentiles will display the summary visualization of several percentiles. This depiction will help to get the clear picture of how the browser sizes are dispersed among different devices. For instance, if you select to compare all the visitors of mobile device traffic, solid difference can be noted.
Concentrating on the good content and where the content flows is so essential to the sound health of any website as well as the experiences it gives to users. Thus far, web analytics focused on page clicks/visits and traffic sources to get the picture of what is working and what not is working in the website. Although it is significant, it is also as important as to perceive how content in the each page of the website impress the userâs/visitors. With this new website optimization tool, more mystification comes into picture!
These new reporting styles will significantly and ultimately help the marketers to generate the desired results who want to produce solid numbers and assist them in furthering their marketing efforts. Nevertheless, it is important for the company to set the fair and sensible goals which would really convert them into indispensable and worthwhile.
