Category: Tips and Tools

You’ve got to spend money to make money is an old cliche but it’s stuck around for so long for a reason. It’s actually really good advice for businesses and if you aren’t investing in yourself, you’ll never grow. That doesn’t mean you should start spending money on anything and everything until your bank account is empty, then sit back and wait for the profits to start rolling in. It means you need to spend money in the right areas and you’ll see a measurable return on it. But that’s easier said than done and working out where to put your investments can be a struggle. There’s no right answer and it depends entirely on what your business is and where it’s at right now. Having said that, most businesses would benefit from spending a bit more money in these areas.

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Design

A good product is obviously the key to a successful business. Beyond that, you should market it well etc. But most people often overlook the importance of design. According to research, the main thing that draws customers to a product is the logo and the packaging. The same concept is transferred to the online sphere in the form of the website. The design and branding of a company tells you something about their personality and if a customer engages with the design, they’re likely to engage with the product itself. That’s why it’s important to invest in a good web design agency and work with them to come up with a design that tells people who you really are as a company. If you get that message wrong, you aren’t going to attract the right customers. It’s also important that all of the branding is coherent throughout the website and any other marketing materials.

Legal Advice

Keeping a legal professional on call at all times is pretty costly and lots of business neglect it because they think it’s wasting money. The thing is, getting into legal trouble is going to be way more costly. Often, in situations where somebody might be trying to sue your company, you can make the situation a lot worse by reacting to it in the wrong way. Having immediate access to a legal professional can help you to avoid making any of those silly mistakes that will cost you more money in the long run.

Insurance

If you do end up getting sued, or somebody robs the office, or an employee gets injured at work, you’re going to need insurance. Just like a legal professional, companies often think they don’t need to be paying for insurance because they don’t need it right that second. But when something does happen and you don’t have it, you’ll kick yourself and wish that you’d taken some out from the beginning. It’s not that expensive most of the time and you can easily factor it in if you just move some things around a little.

It’s important to spend good money on product development and marketing, but don’t neglect these important expenses.

Accidents are prone to happen in any environment. In fact, you’d be surprised to know that most common accidental injuries occur at home, especially in the kitchen around the festive season. Not that this article is designed to scare you about your Christmas celebrations, but it’s there to show that accidental mistakes happen anywhere and to anybody. The workplace is, of course, not an exception. Whether it’s someone sending the wrong email or an employee tripping over an uneven carpet, smooth and uneventful days can be rare at work. Some pessimistic minds would argue that something is always bound to happen as you can’t avoid human error. While there is some truth in the statement, here is not the place to judge whether errors are making us more human and less reliable. Instead, here’s the place to consider a different kind of accidents and mistakes that can take place in the workplace – whether it’s an office or a factory – and to help you deal with them as effectively as possible.

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Health & Safety: how to avoid accidents and how to act

Health and Safety regulations are essential for every physical business, from the warehouse to the office. Surprisingly, they are becoming more and more an issue to introduce in startups and new businesses, as a lot of them have started their existence as a remote digital entity. The introduction of new rules is a novelty for these. As a rule of the thumb, H&S regulations are designed to protect the health of your employees and your customers and to make the workplace environment safer for all. It’s not only a nice thing to have, but it’s also a responsibility of every business owner, as you could encounter legal pursuits if you fail to train your staff to H&S standards in your industry. Consequently, you need to run a risk assessment audit with a specialist in order to define the best regulations for your company. You will then be able to assess the training requirements and necessary equipment for your situation. Failure to do so will always result in legal complications, especially in the case where people get injured on your premises.

The safety of the public

The problem with H&S regulations is that they apply primarily to your safety and the one of everybody on your premises. But at the end of the day, it’s about the safety of your team and customers. What about the safety of those who don’t work with you? That’s precisely where the need for a public liability cover arises, as a way to ensure that people outside of your premises can be protected – and more importantly that your business is covered against their claims. Imagine working on a construction site with your team, and suddenly a gulf of wind throws heavy bricks onto the cars parked in the street. The right cover can ensure that you’re protected from legal actions. It also covers damages on the belongings of others, as well as their health recovery costs.

What happens when you get something wrong at work?

What if you’ve noticed that you’ve made a mistake? The best approach is to own it as soon as possible, as the longer, you wait, the longer it will take to fix. There is a variety of strategies you can deploy to ensure that the mistake doesn’t affect a lot of people. You could offer a solution as you bring the issue to awareness. It will not only help move further towards a resolution, but it also shows you in a better light.

What if someone from your team makes a mistake?

When your employees make mistakes, it’s crucial that you remember that punishing is not always the best approach. In fact, a lot of leaders recommend expressing disappointment and assisting employees in ensuring that the mistake isn’t repeated. However, leadership strategies differ when it comes to interacting with your employees after a mistake. Some like to remain distant to emphasize their displeasure. Others are quick to forgive accidental errors, as they consider people should learn from their mistakes without fear. Accepting that mistakes will occur is essential to keep your team united.

What if your supplier messed up?

What if your supplier messed up and customers complain to you? You need to own the mistake in front of them, as their sole point of contact. Blaming it on someone else doesn’t look very professional. Then you can sort out the problem privately with the supplier.

Mistakes happen. It’s not always about avoiding them, but it’s about dealing with them in the most effective and professional manner.

Establishing a brand for your business is important. It immediately tells your customers who you are, what you do and will be on of the primary ways they will remember you. That is why it is important to create a strong brand that is consistent throughout all of your businesses practices.

Social Media

In this day and age, social media is one of your best tools for establishing and growing your brand. You should set up business accounts for all the major social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. You should the use this to inform people about your business; who you are and what you do. However, it is important that you don’t just use it to try and sell things. This won’t work. You need to strike a balance between that and also sending messages about other things that are tangentially related to your business. This will show people what is important to you and make you feel less like a corporate entity and more relatable. Images work great on all of the platforms (especially Instagram), and LinkedIn is great for networking and linking with peers in your industry.

Website

You will need a website. On your website, you will also need a blog. Your website might have an online store or other ways for people to contact you so that you can get work, but it also needs to have a blog. You can use your blog posts to tweet on Twitter or send messages on other social media platforms, too. The reason why you need to have a blog and regularly update is that it will help to establish your brand. Through blogging about your industry and things that are important to your company, customers will learn who you are and what you are about. Blog posts are also excellent for getting clicks on your website which could turn into business for your company. If you don’t want to do the blogging yourself, then you might consider hiring a freelancer to produce and article on a regular schedule. Your website itself needs to speak to your brand and be consistent with how you have presented yourself on social media. This means using the same color scheme, type of writing and, most important of all, your logo.

Logo

Your logo is what people are going to remember the most from your business. From Pepsi to McDonald’s, the logo is at the forefront of their businesses. It is from the logo that all other design and marketing decisions grow. You need to have a professionally designed logo that can represent your business. You will want something that means that customers can at a glance see and it will instantly remind them of your business and what it is that you do. Once you have a logo, you will want to begin to put it everywhere. It will want to be on everything from your business cards and stationery to social media and your website. If you produce t-shirt, then it should be on the labels. You can get all of these made for you including the business cards, and the consistency is the key part of growing your brand. Sites like GB labels can make labels with your logo on, and Vistaprint can create your business cards. You will feel far more professional with branded items rather than just plain white or only your company name on them.

Packaging

This one might not apply to everyone as not every business will sell products, but if you do, then you should try to put your branding on your packaging. This might make the costs increase slightly, but it will be worth it. The packing is the first thing a person sees when they get on of your products, so showcasing your brand and forcing them to recognize and associate it will go a long way to them remembering you in the future. It doesn’t need to be a lot; just your color scheme and logo will do. These two things are the core of your branding, but including links to your website and social media accounts will also be beneficial as it will encourage them to engage with you after they have made their purchase. This could be as simple as using colored packets to send your items and then having your logo made into a sticker with a business card with your website and social media accounts on. It doesn’t need to be layers of branded packaging and can be just as effective with a more minimalist design – plus this way it will be cheaper, too.

Image: DomJ

Image: Stokpic

Yep, that’s the estimated number of blogs there were online in September 2017. But more are created every day so you can bet that number has risen significantly. Let that number sink in for a moment, 440 million. That means over three percent of the world’s population has their own blog set up, running online. But, let’s put that into perspective a little here.

First, you have to realise that not every blog online is going to be successful. In fact, there are plenty of blog owners who are never going to get more than fifty followers and will never make a dime with their writing. There are many more who have no intention of being a success either because they just want to write about their thoughts and feelings. Don’t forget that in the beginning, a blog wasn’t a business tool. It was for people to connect with others and share what they were going through and for many people, that’s what a blog remains. And, of course, then there are business owners using their blog as a side product of the website. It’s not the main feature, but, it’s a useful add-on that can be a content dump.

Business owners who use their blog like this know that fresh content is one of the easiest ways to boost SEO. Adding content to a site is a great way to make sure that the search ranking is boost without the use of dangerous forms of SEO. Of course, content still needs to be of high quality and that’s also true for bloggers. But we’ll look into that a little further down.

For now, we need to think about that number. Even taking off the dead sites, the business owners, the people who are not taking blogging seriously, it’s still going to be in the high three hundred millions a least.

Of course, we can narrow that number a little further. And perhaps, this is where we should begin when considering how to make sure that your site stands out online in a sea of millions.

Choose A Niche Topic

Do you know the easiest way to get lost in the shuffle of blogs online? Don’t pick a topic, don’t pick a subject just write about anything and stuff it on your blog. You might think that you know lots of blogs that don’t seem to have a set topic or subject, and that could be true, but they may not be successful. If they are, they have found another way to stand out which we will also explore. But for now, let’s think about how to narrow a topic down. For instance, you might write about a parenting blog. Okay, but as harsh as it sounds there are millions of these and most don’t have any unique features. But they can if the topic is narrowed down. Maybe you are on the autistic spectrum? A blog on the subject of a mom or dad dealing with their autism while learning to be a parent could be a compelling read and will attract a target audience for sure.

Or, you might be writing about keeping a beautiful home. Rather than focusing on random style choices, you could focus on how to style your home in a way that is green friendly. Now, it is worth pointing out that you will still have a lot of competition in both these cases. There are plenty of blogs about decorating in a way that is eco-friendly. It’s just that the number is smaller than the typical design blogs.

Write What You Know

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It’s old advice, but it is still fairly useful. By writing what you know, we mean that you should write about something that you yourself have experience in. For instance, you might love to write about the movie industry and write about the news on different movies as they come out. The problem is that you’re competing against blogs run by people who have experience in this industry. They’ve worked in them and as such have contacts for exclusives. As well as this, they will be able to give their unique professional opinion on certain situations. You won’t be able to do this.

Blogs on business are often similar. You will find that plenty of business blogs that give advice to people who want to run a business actually have experience doing this themselves.

It’s all about having a professional advantage or some degree of experience on the matter that you are discussing. You don’t have to be an expert. You may just have some experience working in landscaping. If that’s the case, you could have a unique edge when setting up a blog on gardening.

Write In A Way That Is Exciting

You need to make sure that anything you release on your blog jumps off the page. If it’s boring, dull or mundane, then you are giving users every reason not to bother and instead pass onto the next blog. Dotcom Gains have some key info that you could use on how to effectively write a blog that is exciting. But it’s not just about what you write but rather how you write it. What tone do you use? Some bloggers are very formal, others quite jovial. Many won’t write anything in the first person, and others will speak directly to the reader engaging with random commentators. It’s all about the blog you want to run and what you think your audience will and won’t appreciate or respond to.

Expand Beyond The Blog

Finally, to give you the best chance at being successful, you should go beyond blogging. You need to give your readers more than this. Something that they can really connect to and a brand that they can follow. Make sure you setup every social media account that you can think of and of and use them all as much as possible. This is the best way to gain more attention for your blog and make sure that you’re not forgotten in the sea of other sites surrounding yours.

 

When you’re super busy trying to balance a successful business with a fulfilling family life you can sometimes start to put pressure on yourself. No entrepreneur is perfect and everybody is guilty of taking on too much at once. If you’ve started feeling the strain and you feel that there aren’t enough hours in the day anymore, take a step back and re-evaluate how you’re spending your precious time.

On Top Of Your Organisation

The most creative and talented of people can still have scatterbrain qualities which can definitely hinder your work. You have important business deadlines to meet as well as doctors appointment to make, so let’s make sure you’re on top of everything. Keep your personal calendar up to date and never forget to schedule in upcoming meetings. Create alerts and alarms for yourself to stop yourself getting distracted by a new project. Focus on the most urgent tasks first and prioritise your workload whenever you can.

Ask The Experts

Stop spending hours pondering over things you’re not really sure about. We can’t be perfect at everything and if you need help with a project don’t be afraid to seek out an expert. Perhaps you need a hand designing your website design or developing a new idea. There are tonnes of companies like Magento which will save you precious time everyday. It’s not a sign of weakness to take on some extra help now and again. In the long-run you’ll be grateful and you’ll gain time to focus on other important aspects of your life.

Open Up Your Office Options

Think about when and where you are working. If you’re commuting to an office which is miles away from your home you might need to rethink your working location. Think of the wasted hours you spend travelling to jobs every single day. Try and work from home whenever you can. It’s not always feasible, but it will save you so much time if you can base a lot of your projects from the comfort of your own home. You shouldn’t feel guilty about wanting to make time for your family, so take every opportunity to work as close to home as you can so that you can sit down for dinner on time or pick the kids up from school for once.

Take A Break

The most effective way to boost your productivity is to take moments to relax. When you’ve been staring at a computer for several hours at a time your brain will start to shut down. Take frequent breaks away from your screen and you’ll return to your job with an energised attitude. Mix up your breaks too, so you’re getting the most out of them. Take a stroll in the park for your mid-morning pick me up and make a cup of tea in the afternoons to keep you refreshed for the rest of the day.

These small and simple tips will save you an abundance of time and will allow you to strike a healthy balance between your home and work life.

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