Business Plus Baby

March 11, 2015

3 Simple Skills Every New Business Owner Should Master

Starting a company requires you to master various different skills.

Whether it’s drawing up a business plan, learning how to negotiate or hiring new members of staff, cutting your teeth in the world of commerce can be as daunting as it is exciting.

While we all have dreams of floating a company on the stock market or branching out into foreign markets, prior to this vision becoming a reality, you should take the time to weigh up your abilities.

After all, if your aptitude for business means you can barely corner the market in your hometown, what are the chances of successfully dipping a toe into overseas ventures?

Slim to none.

With this in mind, we’ve compiled a list of three simple skills every new business owner should master before their hopes and aspirations are crushed like a paper aeroplane under a giant’s foot … Continue reading “3 Simple Skills Every New Business Owner Should Master”

March 3, 2015March 3, 2015

8 Key business skills that make moms great entrepreneurs

In the competitive business world, so often stereotypes of ruthless men or tech-savvy geeks are held up as the ideal entrepreneur. However, as we all know, the real world is far more diverse than that. Many great and successful companies are led by women and mothers who, with their unique skills, take their organisations further than anyone else could. Companies like Cannon Hygiene are a perfect example of a business that has been built around a strong female team, and others would be wise to follow their lead.

Today, we’re taking a look at the entrepreneurial skills that make mothers the perfect choice for business leaders in the modern world. As you’ll see, moms are special. They have more than a few skills that allow them to spearhead business endeavours that are both successful and well-recognised. Let’s take a look at some of the key qualities: Continue reading “8 Key business skills that make moms great entrepreneurs”

March 2, 2015March 4, 2015

Four ways to increase traffic to your blog

So you have a blog but no one is reading it. It’s a common conundrum and it can be very disheartening. But don’t lose sight of your goal. Continue to create top-quality blog posts, but consider using a few of these tips and tactics to increase your blog traffic.

Share your posts more often on social media

If you’re active on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or Pinterest, share a link to each new blog post as part of your regular interaction. Include a teaser or a snippet to motivate clicks. Include a link to your post. Now that social media is more visual, it’s important to include an image, too. But don’t post your link just the once, go back and post links to older posts with evergreen content, too. Continue reading “Four ways to increase traffic to your blog”

February 27, 2015February 26, 2015

Why use visual marketing?

Pictures tell stories in ways that words cannot. Pictures combined with text will make your story come to life in a new way.

Any time you have the chance to include images in your marketing − whether it’s your social media profile, your website, your blog or an advertisement, it’s important to give a lot of thought to every image and all the visual cues that you put on your marketing material.

Whether it’s a banner on top of your blog or a logo for your business card, each image speaks to your audience and tells them part of your story.

Marketing is all about communicating a precise message to a specific audience. With the advanced tools available today online, you don’t even need to be a graphic designer to make very effective images to help complete your marketing story.

To be successful at creative visual marketing it’s important to understand what it means, how it works, and the tools that you need to make it work.

Because people are so visually oriented, visual marketing allows you to use design elements, graphics, photographs and videos to tell the story of your brand. The visual cues you use to tell that story will help make your brand more memorable to everyone who views the information.

Using visual cues to help tell your story will attract the people in your audience who are interested in the topic but who don’t want to read a long text-based story. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If this is the case, the graphic images you show will enable you to tell your audience a thousand words of information with just a simple glance from them.

Plus, when you use graphics, photos, and/or video with your text information, blog posts, and sales pages, you make it easier and more likely that others will share the information via social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. In addition, it makes it easier for the search engines to locate the information due to the tags you place with the images.

Images such as infographics are read more often than text-only information such as blog posts that deliver the same information and data. Some marketers estimate that infographics and images are read more than 30 times as much as text-only information. This is quite a difference when you want many to receive and digest the information you are distributing. Using all the visually creative marketing material that you can craft will help you get information out to more people, because they will be more likely to share something that is great to look at.

If you’d like to learn how to make shareable social media images quickly and easily, I’ve created a training module on this in my Online Business Club. Click here for your 7 day trial

February 26, 2015

From dingy to darling: crafting the ideal office

It’s heart-breaking – you could be facing a group of whip-smart workers without a clue about interior design, and it’s probably driving high-rollers straight for the exit.

Indeed, without an effective workspace you’ll have less creative employees with lower morale, unimpressed clients and lacklustre business appeal.

With that in mind, we’ve come up with a few top-notch ideas to turn your workplace from dump to divine.

Pick up a Picasso

Picasso, Monet, Renoir and Dali – what do they all have in common? None of them are sitting in your office.

You’re more likely to have a series of crumby aspirational posters, the type of art that could only inspire the truly banal. They feature pictures of mountains or blue skies, and use quotes like “Ascend the peak of motivation” or “Gear your mind for blue sky thinking”. Utterly stomach churning.

Why try to inspire your employees with such mediocrity when you could be using art that evokes strong feelings from the off?

That doesn’t mean you have to invest in a real-life Picasso for your workplace. All you really need is corporate art to evoke and inspire. Find a piece that enthuses you and you’ll see your inspiration trickle down to your employees. Who knows what creative spark it’ll conjure in your workers!

Open office = open minds

The open plan office has had its detractors over the years, but it’s consistently been championed as a strategy for open thinking, effective teamwork and a friendlier atmosphere.

Just think of the enclosed, claustrophobic cubicle you inhabit – wouldn’t it be better if you let in some light?

Hire a professional interior designer or, better yet, an expert in Feng Shui to bust you out of your cubicle and foster the art of positive thinking within your workplace. You’ll be chin-wagging with your colleagues in no time – and growing more successful.

That’s the power of plants

As you stare out of your office window, do you find yourself fantasising about running through floral meadows or lounging in rose-scented linens? You’re not alone – secretly almost everyone desires to remove the handcuffs from their desk and flee to the great outdoors.

But you don’t have to feel trapped without floral treats. Invest in a few plants to oxygenate your office, leaving it brighter and less stuffy.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to creating an ideal office. If you can think up any more, let us know in the comments below!