Successful Blog

Social Media Decoded for Small Business Owners

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Kenneth Javellana

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Social Media Decoded for Small Business Owners

Every small business has a chance to become a bigger fish in a bigger pond, but this opportunity is always tied in with your ability to take full advantage of social media. Unlike other marketing platforms, social media consists of numerous ways to advertise about your business effectively but without paying a single penny for such services. More importantly, social media is a platform in which you rarely require third party services like an advertising firm or a marketing consultant to create and handle your company’s online marketing campaign. Social media is yours to conquer but only if you are willing to work hard at learning its fundamental principles and continuously hone the skills required by online marketing.

Always have a specific goal in mind.

When people talk about social media, you often hear people say it’s incredibly important to be “creative” and “unique”. That’s all well and good, but at the end of the day, social media marketing is still about making money. You still need to establish goals that would result into higher profit margins. As such, the same principles for goal setting still apply. The best goals are still SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound.

Prepare a solid foundation.

At present, every small business should have a consistently active account on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Having your own private-domain website and blog are also critical components of the foundation of your social media campaign.

Be where your market is.

You also hear a lot of people saying that Facebook should be the hub of your social media campaign. That may be true for most markets, but it’s not always so. In the end, you should focus on the websites which your target market spends most of its time in. Are they really active on Facebook or do they prefer LinkedIn?

Knowing which websites your target market frequents allows you to allocate your time and resources more effectively. Of course, this does not mean you should ignore other aspects of your social media campaign. Rather, it just helps make your priorities clear.

Make good use of feedback.

Feedback is incredibly important in social media. It’s the best basis for determining whether a particular technique is successful or not. You can create opportunities for receiving feedback by inviting readers to comment on your posts or email you their opinions. As for unsolicited feedback, you can configure search settings of Google so that it will notify you every time the name of your business crops up in the Internet.

Prioritize quality over quantity.

It’s been said over and over again, but it’s remarkable how so many small business owners still ignore this all-important social media tip. If you want your presence to matter online, then you need to give people a very good reason to follow you on Twitter, like your page on Facebook, and link to your website or blog. For that to happen, you need to consistently provide them with high-quality posts instead of simply maintaining a specific number of posts each week.

Social media success is ultimately dependent on the consistency of your efforts. As such, it is important that you spend as much time online as needed. For this to happen, you may want to contact a broadband expert about upgrading your current Internet service plan.

Author’s Bio:
Kenneth Javellana is a writer on technology, lifestyle and businesses at Broadband Expert. During his free time, Kenneth writes for relevant blogs in order to share his ideas on his favorite niches.

Know Yourself … as a Strategy

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Does the Unexpected Undo Your Best-Laid Plans?

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We can’t plan the people.
We can’t plan the surprises.
We can’t plan the creative solutions to problems that we never expected.
Planning too tightly removes our chance to leverage those rare opportunities that is the serendipity of new adventures and new people.

Rather than planning out every possibility, know yourself and you’ll have a strategy for work and for life.

Have a Strategy for Your Work and Your Life

So don’t just plan. Have a strategy. Know yourself as well as you want to know your business. Have a strategy for yourself in work and life as you do for your business. A strategy is a realistic framework that moves you forward over time by leveraging opportunities that are uniquely yours. A strategy leaves room for opportunities you might not see when you first start a plan. To build a great, working, living strategy you need to know a few things.

  1. Know who you are, what you’re building, how you’ll build it, and why you’re building it. That way you’ll know which people share your values and which opportunities will help you move forward.
  2. Know where you’re standing and where you’re going, so that you know which direction to focus on. That way you’ll understand which choices are detours on the path to your golden destination. Besides knowing where you’re going is irresistible. People who are drawn to your goals will figure you’ll know how to help them achieve theirs too.
  3. Know your own cycles and patterns of behavior and those of the people you care to about. That way you’ll be able to make some predictions, choose the behaviors that keep you winning, and learn how to lose those that don’t.
  4. Know how to make decisions based on your experience, goals, and values. Then you will know how to kill off the stuff that gets in the way of your successful mission without killing off yourself, your relationships. A great decision will keep you from wasting time that you could spend on a world of choices that are more fun and alive.
  5. Know who you include in your personal development, care, and support systems. Make a list of who truly cares about your life, your goals, and your dreams for the future. That way you’ll be able to always show them their importance in your life.

The key to leveraging opportunity is knowing that who you are and where you stand has as much to do with what can move you forward as where you want to go. Get know yourself deeply and you’ll be aware of what work and life opportunities fit your best strengths, when they’ll be coming, and how you might best incorporate them into your plans.

Know yourself and you’ll know how you can move forward.
Know yourself and you’ll know how you can help others.
Know yourself and you’ll be able to see how our goals align so that we can make things we could never make alone.

Take a few minutes now to go through the list and find out …
what do you need to find out about yourself?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Thanks to Week 366 SOBs

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Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

Purple SOB Button Original SOB Button Red SOB Button Purple and Blue SOB Button
and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

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They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

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Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

How to Choose an SEO Agency for Your Business

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Brian Taylor

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How to Choose an SEO Agency for Your Business

Well-optimized, effective websites aren’t just for Fortune 500 companies and tech companies anymore. Now more than ever, it’s important for small business owners to fully understand just how beneficial a successfully executed website can be for them as well.

In order to make your website successful, you need to make sure it’s fully search engine optimized and unless you’re an SEO expert yourself, you’ll no doubt want to hire a team of experts to help you get the job done right. Here’s how to make sure the experience goes as pleasantly as possible.

Have Faith in the Professionals You Choose

As is the case with hiring any other team of professionals to help you with your business, trust is an extremely important factor in your relationship with your SEO team. Once you’ve chosen the right professionals for the job, it’s important to have faith in their ability to do the job right and deliver you the results they promised. Avoid micromanaging and nagging at all costs.

Be Patient

Even once a given SEO strategy has been formulated and officially set in motion, it still takes time for the changes to yield results. Rome wasn’t built in a day, after all! The SEO agency you’re working with most likely gave you an estimate as far as how long it would take for you to start to notice results. Definitely give it that much time to work and take root.

Treat Your SEO Agency as a Partner

When working with any SEO agency, it’s of the utmost importance that you treat them as the partners they are. These are trained experts who know their craft just as well as you know yours, so they should be treated as equals working toward a common goal. Be professional in your communications and realistic in your expectations. Definitely address questions or concerns politely and with respect.

Pay for Quality Work

The SEO agency you hire to help you make the most of your website is made up of qualified business professionals that are doing what they do for the same reasons you are – because it’s their profession. As such, they expect to collect payment for services rendered according to their terms of service. Respect and adhere to the company’s business terms and be sure to pay them promptly for good services rendered. Always be sure to hold up your end of your business contract in every way, shape, and form as well.

Teaming up with an SEO agency in order to get results that deliver for you is simple when you follow a few simple guidelines.

Author’s Bio:
Brian Taylor is the VP, Business Development at Forix SEO in Portland, OR. a team of crack SEO experts with an impressive record when it comes to results, experience, and expertise. Forix offers affordable and ethical SEO services in Portland helping small businesses with their Internet marketing needs.

The Benefits of Investing On Your Employee Health and Fitness

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Being a business owner or employer, you have got more than one reasons to be concerned about the well being of your employees. You might think that you should only be concerned about their performance and productivity, regardless of how physically or mentally fit they are. After all you are just an employer and not a guardian, and as long as you have provided them with proper working environment, you are not responsible for their health and well-being. Besides, you are paying them good remuneration, so what’s the need to go one step ahead and invest in workplace wellness programs like health education, weight management coaching, on-site exercise equipment, healthy diet options, or activities like fitness boot camp?

Truth is, taking care of your employees’ health and well-being is extremely important, not only because it sounds ethical or virtuous, but also because it will directly affect your business. Let’s see how such an investment can make a difference.

  • To start with, healthy workforce means fewer employees calling in sick. And knowing that too many sick leaves on frequent basis can be costing your business in more than one ways, it will save a lot.
  • Even if the employees don’t take a day-off when they are not feeling well, they will not be able to put their best foot forward and perform their tasks proficiently. Even worse, they might pass on the disease to fellow workers
  • Showing concern and taking care of your employees’ health will result in loyalty and a sense of attachment on part of your employees, and that alone is a cause worth investing in
  • If your employees are not fully fit, they will be more prone to errors and mistakes, they wouldn’t be able to think clearly and come up with ideas, they will lack creativity, and they will lack the stamina or energy to get the things done
  • You can plan while keeping the public holidays in mind, but some team members getting ill and going on sick leaves in the middle of an important project cannot be anticipated, and it will make it difficult for entire team to deliver in time
  • Obesity is becoming a major cause of concern in developed countries, and looking at the nature of jobs, it will continue to grow unless businesses and corporations take concrete steps
  • Good health and a general sense of well-being is a big morale booster, it can be quite difficult to motivate someone when he/she is not feeling good

All in all, healthy workforce will result in more work and better productivity, which will bring in more money and profit for your business, so the investment will more than pay off in the longer run.

Things To Do:

Now that you are (hopefully) convinced on the importance and benefits of investing in your employees’ health and fitness, here’s how you can put it into practice.

  • We are what we eat, so you need to start from food or nutrition, by providing access to nutritious diet and encouraging healthy eating habits like bringing food from their homes instead of ordering junk food. You can invite in some nutrition expert for a small session to speak on healthy eating habits at work
  • Lack of physical activity is one of the biggest culprits behind many ailments, for example obesity. Again you need to work on staff awareness, and allowing them to take small breaks for moving around. If possible, invest in an on-site gym or some sports equipment like table tennis or Foosball
  • Another big contributor to bad health is work related stress. Not only it messes up our mind, but it can push us towards many different unhealthy practices like overeating or smoking. So you need to create an environment and work plan that reduces stress
  • Use print outs and posters on walls to promote healthy lifestyle, for example motivational messages to help them quit smoking, cutting down on tea or coffee consumption, importance of organizing their work for minimum stress, or inspirational messages to raise their spirits
  • Last but not the least; organize day outs, trips, and similar events on regular basis, while making sure that these events involve some adventure, sport, and lots of physical activity. Arranging an event like fitness boot camp or hiking trip can be a great idea to rejuvenate the minds and bodies
Rahil writes on health and fitness related topics for fitness boot camp that offers services like fitness holidays, luxury boot camps, and weight loss camp.