Successful Blog

What Could Changes to EU Internet Mean to Your Business?

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Ideas and Infographics

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Changes in European Internet Access

The EU is in a digital race to decrease its dependence on financial services and improve its Internet access. What exactly is on this agenda?

Europe plans on making high-speed broadband connection available to all EU households by 2012 (a lofty goal given the time frame) and a 50% subscription rate of more than 100 Mbps by 2020. Because of the recession, EU countries are fighting to be the first to reach these goals in hopes of opening up opportunities for businesses.

So what does this mean to you? An increase in global Internet usage could mean more international business opportunities for you. To put this into perspective, let’s look at a graphic that visualizes this race.


Click image to open full-size version (via Interxion).

According to the infographic, the UK is leading the pack in the number of consumers purchasing goods online. Moreover, it’s B2B purchasers aren’t that much further behind. Yet despite so many people purchasing goods online (79%), only 15% of businesses are selling goods online.

That means there is a huge demand not being met. So while businesses in Europe are slowly trying to lessen this gap, there is prime opportunity for your business to steal some of the international market share. Especially if you are already in the e-commerce business, there might be an opportunity to gain international exposure easily.

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Author’s Bio:
Adria Saracino is a marketer and blogger. When not developing content strategies, you can find her writing about style on her personal fashion blog, The Emerald Closet.

Thank you, Adria!

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

How to Be Leader of a Small Business

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Every leader should take their responsibilities seriously and treat their position as one of great importance. Whether you manage one employee or a thousand, your actions and attitude will determine the success or failure of those who work below you. Even the best employee will fall to pieces in the face of a bad leader, and even the worst employee can rise to the expectations of a great motivator.

That being said, one position of leadership requires an extra level of care and vigilance when it comes to cultivating the right culture and producing the highest possible level of motivation and productivity within their employees. That position is the leader of a small business. Due to the small, intimate and hands-on nature of the position, the leader of a small business holds a truly disproportionate sway over their employees and their organization.

Taking Small Business Leadership Personally

To successfully lead a small business you need to take great care of your own time and energy. All leaders lead by example, and need to appear to be someone worth following. Leaders of larger, more impersonal firms may be able to fake these qualities, but leaders of small businesses work so closely with their employees that few secrets can exist between them.

If you constantly run into problems of low energy, flagging motivation, lack of time, an inability to prioritize your work, and a near-constant disconnection with the larger picture of what your organization hopes to achieve, then you better believe your employees will notice your malaise, and eventually mirror it themselves. Any attempts to direct your employees when you are clearly incapable of taking care of yourself will be met with skepticism at best, and resentment-filled-refusal at worst.

As the leader of a small business you need to personally embody everything your organization stands for and you need to clearly demonstrate everything you expect from your employees.

Staying Connected with Your Employees

Simply demonstrating a rock-solid command of your personal resources isn’t enough. If you are the leader of a small business, you need to remain personally connected with your employees at all times.

The internal culture of a small business is incredibly intimate but it’s also often very stressful, centered on everyone constantly firing on all cylinders. If, in your work-oriented myopia, you lose sight of who your employees are as people, you will lose your ability to connect with them in a meaningful way. If you stop connecting with each of your employees on a one-on-one basis, then you will lose their trust and respect.

When you lose your employee’s trust and respect you will lose the ability to speak with them candidly, to learn where they are feeling overwhelmed and where they feel they can contribute more to your shared goal. A small business quickly becomes something of a family with you at the head, and if you choose to embody the “distant parent” archetype your employees will return the favor and play the “surly teenager” role, doing just enough to get by but never feeling understood or appreciated.

It isn’t enough to embody incredible qualities while keeping your employees at a remove, just as it isn’t enough to connect constantly with your employees but to fail to inspire them with your personal conduct. Yet by combining the two, you will become the sort of leader that every small business employee dreams of working for.

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Author’s Bio:
The post is written by Wilson Campbell. He is a HR professional, with an exceptional skills to understand knowledge and behavior of employees. He not only has subject matter expertise, but he is also adept in team building and team building activities.

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

6 NICE Marketing Tricks to Boost Your Small Business

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If you are the owner of any small business, the most serious problem that you face is to arrange the required finances. This is very important since you require fixed as well as working capital to run your business. Here, it is to be noted that you have a wide variety of financing options too. You can take out a commercial mortgage loan or you can opt for a commercial mortgage refinance. But, anyways, you need to ensure that you can repay the mortgages. Besides this, another thing that you must look into very seriously is the marketing. Through proper and intelligent marketing you can open the various channels to sell your products. This in turn helps you raise your business revenues. Here we discuss about some successful marketing strategies that you must take into consideration.

Use free classifieds

One excellent marketing strategy to promote your small would be to use free classified ad services. You can explore various online classified ads to prop up your business. Apart from these, there are some other free offline classified ads options in your local area. Even options are there for free inclusions of ads in local print media. Through these routes, you can indeed boost your business. In order to know more about these options, you can conduct online searches.

Tread social media routes

In modern times, social media platform has opened up excellent opportunities to promote your business. Various social media websites offer you wonderful and free way to market your products and services. This platform can be gainfully utilized to enhance business connection, gain leads and to bring in more customers. You can also participate in various online forums to enhance your knowledge.

Resort to mutually beneficial advertising

One smart way to market your products and services is to engage in reciprocity advertising. You can look for cross promotion of the products and services with other business owners located in your area. You can easily find out some business owners who are also willing to do this. The aim of this marketing strategy is to raise the customer base of your business.

Marketing through writing or blogging

If you have knack of writing, you can take the help of different article writing and blogging websites and can write articles about the products and services that you sell. This way you can surely bring in some customers for your products and services.

Advertise through press releases

You need to regularly write press releases and need to send those releases to appropriate routes. After going through those press releases, many buyers may become interested to the products and services that you offer.

Explore networking options

You need to keep yourself updated about various networking events that are taking place in your locality. These events and meet ups are like mini-marketing campaign. Moreover, these help you keep yourself updated about different developments related to your business.

These are only few marketing strategies which help you raise your sales volume. Apart from these, there are various other marketing strategies that you can follow for your small business.

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Author’s Bio:
Samantha Taylor is the Community Mentor of MortgageFit and has been contributing her suggestions to the Community since 2005. She has made notable contributions through the articles written on subjects related to the mortgage industry for the MortgageFit community.

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

What to Know Before You Choose a Loan to Finance Your Business or Your Life

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Borrower Beware

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All loans are scary, because you are signing yourself over to a debt; but some loans are much scarier than others. Some are scary due to the product you are purchasing; some because of who the money is being borrowed from; and some due to their very structure. It is a sound plan to know what type of agreement you are entering into.

It is a good idea for your financial well being to avoid these loan monsters:

  1. Lifestyle loans. Whether you are taking out a loan to fund a vacation, a big-screen TV, plastic surgery, a wedding, or something completely else, loans for lifestyle changes are bad for your finances. Usually the improvement in lifestyle is short-lived, and then you still have loan debt to be repaid.
  2. Home-equity loans. Considering the way that the bottom dropped out of the housing market in recent years, its amazing that anyone would want to risk borrowing against and their home. As the economy begins to improve, it is very likely that the home-equity loan will regain its former popularity with banks and consumers alike. When a person borrows against their house, it can be a strong indication that their spending habits are out of control. Many people that do take out this type of loan do so to pay off a car loan or credit card bills, which is not wise because a home-equity loan is a 15-30 year loan being used to pay for products or services which will only be useful for a fraction of that time.
  3. Interest-only loans. Taking out an interest-only loan does not get one any closer to paying off the product the loan paid for. These loans only benefit the lender, because the consumer pays interest indefinitely, way over and above the amount they would have paid for the product to begin with.
  4. Loans with a longer term than the useful life of the product. No one wants to continue paying on a product after its useful life has ended. It’s very risky for the lender, and any borrower who would knowingly do this must be crazy. The only incentive to pay off such a loan is the threat of a lawsuit or damage to your credit report.
  5. Pawn shop loans. Pawn shops value your sellable possessions much less than you do, and thus almost never lend the full amount that the borrower wants. This is because the pawn shop wants to be able to make a profit on your electronics, jewelry, or other valuables should you not repay your loan and they have to sell your possessions.
  6. Credit card cash-advance loans. Credit card cash advance loans start charging interest immediately, not every month like regular credit card use. A person would be better off just using their credit card regularly, and paying it off at the end of the month to avoid interest charges.
  7. Debt-consolidation loans. Debt + debt = debt. Most people who get a debt consolidation loan wind up running up the credit cards again they used the loan to pay off, which completely defeats the purpose. Then they are back to having multiple payments to make. It is much wiser to compose a budget, and stick to it.
  8. Co-signed loans. Co-signing a loan can be very dangerous because it obligates you to pay off the loan, should the other party fail to pay it. Why would you want to pay for something that you didn’t own? Sometimes parents will co-sign a loan for their children to help them build credit, but a secured credit card is a much safer option for that purpose.
  9. Car title loans. Unless you like the possibility of losing your car, taking a loan from a title loan shop is not smart. If you fail to repay your loan, the lender will take your fully paid-off car and sell it. The lender also does not have to return any money to you, when they profit from selling your car.
  10. Overdraft Loans. If you need an Overdraft loan, then you should be paying more attention to your bank account. This type of inadequate attention can get you into financial trouble. Know how much money you have, and don’t spend more than that amount
  11. Tax refund anticipation loans. If you have a tax refund coming, you should never get a loan from your tax preparer. If you really need your tax refund money faster, have your paperwork e-filed, and ask that your refund be direct-deposited into your checking or savings account.
  12. Payday loans. Taking out a payday loan is the beginning of a vicious cycle of debt that is very hard to break. Payday loans are designed for very short periods of time, usually up to only a month, and have very high interest rates which make it hard for borrowers to catch up. Many only manage to pay the weekly minimum, which doesn’t even cover the full interest.
  13. Margin loans to purchase stocks. There are people out there who have made a lot of money by buying stocks on margin, but this is only when they are lucky enough to have the stock they bought increase in value. If you take out a margin loan, and your stocks decrease in value, the broker can demand cash deposits to your account to cover the loss. If the loss is bad enough (usually 25% of the amount you borrowed) the broker can sell your stocks, and you could end up owing money to your broker and having no stocks at all.

For the sake of your pocketbook, avoid these loan monsters. More often than not, they do more harm than good on the borrowers side.

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Author Box
George Martin is mortgage loan expert also he provides expert advice on credit card balance transfer and credit card management.. He provides advice on high interest credit card and sensible credit transfer.

Thank you, George, for this practical advice.

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

3 Writing Mistakes that Erode Trust in Your Small Business

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Careful or Careless?

In today’s social media-driven society, where more interpersonal interaction takes place on the Internet than ever before, one of the best things a small business can do to steer themselves toward success is develop a strong Internet-based presence. From a functional webpage to well-managed accounts with top social networking sites, consumers need to access and learn about your business from their laptops and smart phones during their busy and often Internet-focused lives.

Your website should be a snapshot of your business, introducing clients and consumers to your brand and influencing them to trust in your services. Because of that, it is imperative that you avoid these common, easy-to-make writing errors that may broadcast your business in the wrong light.

  1. Incorrect or no punctuation. A missing or improperly placed comma can change the entire meaning of a sentence, and over-zealous use of exclamation points may read as campy or unprofessional to your website viewers. Have a member of your team who is well-versed in the rules of punctuation look over any copy before you hit “publish.”
  2. Mixing up homophones. They’re, their, there. Two, too, to. Than, then. Your, you’re. Affect, effect. When typing, especially in a hurry, it can be easy to mix up these homophones and use the wrong one. When you do that, not only does your sentence take on a new meaning, but also, people notice. For many, mixing up those words is the visual equivalent to running nails across a chalkboard.
  3. Writing chunky blocks of text without any visual appeal. Though not a grammatical error, improperly forming paragraphs or not minding the visual structure of a paragraph can be just as irritating for a reader. We tweet in 140 characters, update our statuses in a sentence or two, and skim the book jacket before opening up to the first page: we’re busy, and we want our information quickly. When visiting a business’s website, readers don’t want to read a novel. They want quick, accessible information that gets to the point and tells them what they need to know without searching through blocks of text to get there.

The problem with these errors is that they send the message of carelessness or neglect to your readers. While we’ve all made mistakes, such as misplacing an apostrophe or writing who’s instead of whose, consumers want to bring their business to companies who take care of the details of their brand. It isn’t uncommon for consumers to even leave a webpage after finding a few of these errors.

The subconscious thought process for many consumers is that if the business can’t even proofread their webpage, why should I trust them to give me the best service possible?

To ensure your small business’s website and online content is presenting potential clients and consumers with the best possible image of itself, take care to avoid seemingly small writing mistakes and blunders. People will see how much you care about your presentation as an indicator of how you will care for them if they decide to bring their business to your company.

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Author’s Bio:
Amanda Valenti is a writer and content editor for College.com She also writes and publishes for a variety of other blogs/websites on the topics of traditional campus schools as well as accredited online colleges

Thank you, Amanda.
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Be Irresistible

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

Making Sales for Small Businesses More Predictable

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A Guest Post
by Cynthia Kocialski

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Seeing Sales as a Solution

Every business needs revenue and the more the better. Most don’t have cash reserves or access to capital like the big corporations to shore up operating expenses, and so getting sales right is crucial. What every small business wants to know is how they can increase sales with minimal effort and how their sales can be more effective.

I have to admit I didn’t begin with a background in sales. I had to learn it by doing. Everyone does it this way. As far as I know there aren’t any college degrees in sales. As I’ve gone through many start-ups, my view of sales is far from where I begin on my first start-up.

Without a sales background, I had an immediate dislike of this business function. It seemed a necessary evil. If someone mentioned sales to me in those early days, I’d cringe. I had visions of a sleazy used car salesman that would lie and cheat his way to closing the sale.

Now, I have a completely different outlook. Why? I looked at the sales from the customer’s point of view. As any customer, I have many problems in desperate need of solutions. Most of my issues don’t have easy-to-find answers. I want to know if someone can fix my problems. I want them to tell me about their solution. I am tired of dealing with the problem and I want it to go away forever, never to come back to bother me again.

Let’s flip back to the sales side, your customer wants you to tell them the solution to their problem. You are doing them a favor. You aren’t bothering them; they want to talk to you. It’s only when you are trying to sell them something they don’t need or want that you’re acting like a sleazy, greedy, unethical used-car sales person.

Once I was able to see myself as not becoming the used car salesman, I was able to embrace sales and learn how to do it much better.

Focus on the Customer

The first place to start is to begin by reviewing your sales of the past several months and to conduct some customer interviews. You want both the good and the bad customers, but focus two-thirds of your efforts on the satisfied customers. For your existing customers, answer the following questions among your staff before conducting any interviews. Then look for similarities among customers.

  • What problems are your customer trying to solve and what are they hoping to accomplish? There is a difference; the later are bigger customer goals.
  • Is your customer using the product in the way you intended?
  • Is there a specific feature to your product that they are using to solve their problem?
  • What is the financial cost if the problem is not solved?
  • Whose job is it to solve this problem? Who are your contacts and what are their titles?
  • What problems are blocking the customer from accomplishing their goal?

Customer interviews are important. You hear established business talking about how they have lost touch with the customer all the time. If your company doesn’t have any customers or your closing rates are low then customer interviews are immensely useful. I’ve sent my staff back to call on failed sales to ask questions. Most former prospects or potential customers will spend 15 minutes on the phone with you. You don’t need many phone interviews, 15 or 20 are enough. Patterns emerge quickly.

When conducting customer interviews, add a few more questions to the list above. Prepare the questions you want answered ahead of time, but always be prepared to let the customer take the conversation where they want it to go.

  • When your customer was in the process of buying your product, what concerns or questions did they have during this process?
  • What do your customers think of your competitors? Is there anything you could learn from them?
  • Have your customers interacted with your customer service and what did they think of it?

Why did you do all this work? Sales is a search for the customers that are most likely to buy. The shotgun approach of talking to anyone and everyone, hoping that someone will buy is not effective. You need to know who your most satisfied and happiest customers are and why they are buying. For example, if your happiest customers are using feature X with benefit Y, then why is this tenth on the list in your marketing materials. You want to find more like them, and not waste your time with the others.

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Author’s Bio:
Cynthia Kocialski is the founder of three tech start-ups companies. In the past 15 years, she has been involved in dozens of start-ups. Cynthia writes the Start-up Entrepreneurs’ Blog and has written the book, “Startup From The Ground Up – Practical Insights for Entrepreneurs, How to Go from an Idea to New Business.”

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Thanks, Cynthia!

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