Archives for August 2018

Can You Do More To Improve Your Business? The Inside Tips To Consider

August 10, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

When you get the idea for your business, you can feel all consumed about your plans and idea to make the dream a reality. The business can often feel overwhelming at first. But once you get settled the next steps that you need to do is consider the steps to take to see if you can improve your business in some way. I wanted to share with you some of the insider tips you could try.

Improve Your Business

Improve your own knowledge

One of the biggest changes you can make when it comes to wanting to drive your business forward is how you are yourself. Your knowledge, your attitude and your drive and passion to succeed. Improving the knowledge you have can only help your o improve as you start to look at different ways to approach your business. You can do it while running a business and things like a triple-accredited mba in business administration could be the ideal step to take.

Have a plan for the business progression

You can’t do anything without some sort of plan. A plan that will help you steer your business in the right direction. Many entrepreneurs begin their business journey with their business plan, but this shouldn’t be the only time you map out your business directions and look at things differently. Use this time to plan out your next moves and steps. Think about ways that you can handle your business differently and be confident to take on new approaches.

Take the time to invest and take the risks

When it comes to business growth, the biggest threat and worry is investing to expand and taking risks. Bit sailing along as you are right now is not going to change things or improve things in any way. Sometimes you need to have take and the risks. It might be that you are moving from working at home into a business premises. It could mean ordering more stock or expanding your lines. Think about what you could invest in and take that leap of faith.

Looking after your employees

If your business has progressed then the chances are you may have people working for you. This is where your responsibility within your business changes as you need to start taking into account others around you. This is so important when it comes to keeping people happy and healthy in your working environment that you create. In turn, having happy employees means that you can make the most of moving your business forward with a dedicated team behind you.

Making the most of the customer experience

Finally, no business can succeed without customers of some sort. So you really need to think about the customer experience you offer to ensure that these customers come back or recommend you. Customers drive a business forward. Without them you have nothing. Looking after them and ensuring you do what you can within your power is a great way to make sure you provide the level of service you want to.

Improve Your Security

You also need to think carefully about your security provisions. Have you installed CCTV? Do you have people monitoring the front desk? Have you got name tags for visitors and clients? If not, then you might want to consider investing in these measures. For instance, you can buy your own card-making machine that will allow you to create ID tags for people entering your building. Don’t put off security measures. You could be putting yourself at risk.

I hope that these tips help you to improve your business.

Starting Up A Construction Company

August 9, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

With so much focus being placed on E-commerce and retail, it’s important for individuals starting up small business to remember that these aren’t the only options out there. There are plenty more fields that you could pursue. Construction is just one of them. But if you’re interested in getting involved in the field of construction, how should you go about setting a construction company up? Here are a few steps to consider!

Take on Competent Staff

When employing construction workers, you need to ensure that all of your staff are competent and fully trained and qualified. After all, the work that they are carrying out holds the potential to hurt themselves, others around them, and individuals who use the structures they’ve built once the work is complete. Conduct rigorous interviews and have a thorough screening process to ensure that every worker has the right to carry out the tasks that you are giving them, and that they have the right paperwork or certification to prove that they are qualified to take on the role.

Have Sufficient Storage Facilities

Construction workers use a whole host of materials to be able to complete their work. Think just how many materials are required to build a bridge, house, or commercial property. Whatever they’re building, they’re going to use a whole lot of bricks, mortar, sand, grit, salt, and other products to get the job done. So, you need to ensure that you sufficient storage facilities to hold all of these items until they are needed. You can invest in a high-quality structure that will guarantee secure storage space from Calhoun Super Structure

Legally Protect Yourself

The construction professions comes hand in hand with various dangers, as employees will be working in environments filled with potential risks. You should be well aware that where there’s risk, there’s the chance for an individual to make a claim against you. Of course, if an employee chooses to disregard your regulations and guidelines, you may think there isn’t much that you can do. But if they experience an accident in the workplace or injure themselves at work, they will have a potential case against you. You need to be aware that there are measures that you can take. Individuals found to be working outside of guidelines and rules should be given warnings and dismissed if their behavior continues. Their work is not worth putting themselves, other workers and the public at risk. If an individual is hurt through no fault of their own, you will have to compensate them. Know your construction law, so that you know exactly what you’re dealing with when such situations arise. Make sure that you have a good lawyer who can advise you well.

There is, of course, a whole lot more to take into account when setting up a construction firm. But hopefully these simple steps will help you to get started on the right foot!

3 Ways Small Businesses Waste Money On Digital Marketing

August 9, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Managing your money properly is essential in any business, especially when you’re just starting out. Finding ways to cut back on costs is important, but there are some areas where you’ll need to spend money if you’re ever going to get the business off the ground. Marketing is one of those areas, digital marketing in particular. It’s the best tool you have to generate sales and start making a profit. Most business owners know that and they’ll invest a lot of money into their online marketing campaigns. What they don’t often realise is that they’re wasting a lot of money because they aren’t getting it right. These are the most common ways that new businesses waste money in digital marketing.

Small business digital marketing

Building A Brand

There’s a lot of advice online about how important it is to build a brand. You want your company to be instantly recognisable and for customers to have a good impression of your business. But the problem is, people often get it backwards. They think that they have to put a lot of time and money into creating a popular brand and then the sales will follow. In reality, it’s sales that create a brand, not the other way around. Big companies that are instantly recognisable managed to get to that position because people loved their products and bought a lot of them. You can’t create a successful brand by telling people that you’re great, you need to prove it by selling them products they love. Small businesses often waste a lot of money here because they put all of their cash into creating branding materials and don’t focus on more direct marketing methods that will get them the sales they need. If you really want to create a strong brand, let your products speak for themselves and it’ll all fall into place.

Website Hosting

Having a good website hosting service is important, otherwise, your website will run slowly and nobody will want to use it. The problem is, there are a lot of bad ones out there and you can easily end up wasting money on one if you don’t pick right. One of the best is InMotion Hosting; Jerry from WHSR loves this host and he runs a site about web hosting so he knows what he’s talking about. Your site will run well and they’ve got great support with a live chat function so if you’ve got any problems, they’ll sort them out straight away. If you end up paying for a terrible hosting service, that’s just money down the drain.

Not Tracking Results

Tracking the results of your online marketing campaign is probably the most important thing. If you don’t, you won’t know whether a strategy is actually working or not and you could end up pumping money into it for ages, even though you aren’t seeing any return from it. But if you are tracking results, you’ll know pretty quickly if a certain part of your campaign isn’t effective and you can stop wasting money on it right away and redivert those funds to a part of the campaign that is generating sales.

Avoid these 3 pitfalls and you won’t end up wasting loads of money on your digital marketing campaigns.

Keeping Your Side Hustle Legit

August 9, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

We’ve all been fed a lie. Well, perhaps not so much a lie as an anachronism. We were raised to believe that if we worked hard, learned our craft, dedicated ourselves to our studies and paid our dues that the path to success would be laid bare before us. While this may have rung true for previous generations it certainly doesn’t bear scrutiny in the current job market or economic climate. This is the age of wage repression, of zero hours contracts and career stagnation. It’s an era in which an entire generation of well educated and hard working women and men are languishing in jobs that offer neither the pay, the opportunities nor the challenge that’s worthy of their talents. In an era where their best never seems to be enough, it’s no surprise that these enterprising people turn to side hustles in their free time to achieve economic balance and take their future into their own hands. There are a plethora of ways in which you can make money from home outside of working hours, many of which could eventually become thriving businesses.

Side hustle legal

But if your side hustle is to be your passport to financial freedom and possibly even the start of a lucrative new career in entrepreneurship, it’s essential that you do it right and keep it legit. Your side hustle is a business, and that means you have certain obligations…

Tax… It’s not optional

However much money you make from your side hustle, you need to know that it is taxable income. If you fail to declare it to the IRS and are found out, the consequences may be serious and could at the very least torpedo your nascent business and your chances of financial freedom. And if you’re advertising your services online to gain custom, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll be caught out.

The rule of thumb is that when in doubt you should always declare your income. The IRS is far more understanding when it comes to income they know about than income that is kept from them. Be sure to enlist the aid of a tax specialist to help with your tax preparation. They’ll help you stay on the right side of the IRS while also ensuring that you declare any tax deductible expenses incurred in the running of your side hustle.

Incorporate your business

While not a legal necessity in your early days, this is still a good idea, for your own protection. Incorporating your business will allow you to stay on the right side of financial compliance by keeping your business and personal finances separate. This will also insulate your personal finances should something go awry with your business. It can also help to protect you from intellectual property theft. If someone steals your ideas it can be difficult to prove in a court of law and you need to afford yourself whatever advantages you can.

Whatever you do… Don’t use work time or resources

Even if you hate your day job, there’s a good chance you rely on the income it brings you. So keep your side hustle on the side! If you dedicate your workplace’s resources like computers, telephones, stationery, photocopier or office space to for running your side hustle, this could land you in real trouble. This kind of activity may be seen as a breach of contract by your employer that could get you fired. Work on your side hustle on your own time.

If you do it right and protect yourself, your side hustle could be your golden ticket to a brighter tomorrow.

It’s All About The Aesthetics Of Your Website

August 9, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Your website is going to be a big selling point of your business. In fact, we would definitely say that it is the biggest selling point. Your customers no longer like to roam the shops for anything other than groceries, your customers are looking for a fast and effective way to get what they want, and that’s done through websites. So, now you see how much power yours holds, and how much effort you should put into it. But, we believe that one area of a website that companies seem to fail at, is the aesthetics of the said website. There is more of a focus on how to sell the products, rather than how your website is actually going to look. So, here’s what we think you can change or add to the aesthetics of your website, and how much of an effect that it will have on your sales.

Drawing People In At First Glance

First impressions are everything, no matter what we’re talking about in life. But with your website, first impressions can mean the difference between a customer exploring, and a customer clicking off quicker than they clicked it. So, think about what your homepage is lacking at the minute. Things need to stand out in your customers face, and one of the best ways to do that is by learning how to make a banner. A banner is a form of display that you can put anywhere on the front page, and is designed to capture the attention of the user away from the writing. Although the writing on your front page is probably very important, a banner gives you the opportunity to advertise something that you really want your customers to see. If you want to draw them in at first glance, it’s going to have to be something like a sale, or a discount that a new customer or returning customer can receive.

Never Go Too Colourful

You don’t want to blind the customers, and you don’t want your website to look tacky. Granted, you want to try and make your company stand out, but doing it by overloading your website with colours really isn’t the way forward with this one. So, you need to think about subtle colours, and colours that are going to make your website more appealing. Try and follow the colours on your logo somewhat, but throw in some light greens, blues, pinks, or any colour that just isn’t going to be too bold.

It’s All About The Layout

The layout is so important if you’re going to keep your customers coming back. If things are all over the place, and the website is hard to navigate, then obviously people are going to divert right away from your website. Keep everything fluid, and get yourself a web developer to help you do it. Even if it means completely changing the layout and approach of your whole website, it might benefit you more if more customers are staying due to the ease of use of it all.

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