Archives for May 2022

How to Stay Healthy and Fit At Home or In Office

May 16, 2022 by Guest Post Leave a Comment

The last couple of years has brought on a big change to where and how we work. With many of us working remotely from home, it’s brought on the flexibility that’s allowed us more time to focus on health and fitness goals. Random workouts during your work day and healthy meals at home during your lunch break, these daily habits have been a huge part of keeping us healthy—physically and mentally. In fact, a survey conducted by Pew Research Center found that 6 in 10 people said working from home has made it easier for them to balance work and personal life.

But, with many gearing up to head back into the office, it may be hard to keep up with these healthy habits we’ve adopted. With Employee Health and Fitness day approaching on May 18th, here are a few tips on how you can keep those good habits alive no matter where you work.

Make Time for Movement

With so much flexibility throughout your day while working from home, making time for exercise was a lot easier. A quick change into your workout clothes and you were out the door for a quick sweat session away from your desk. But, when returning to the office, you might not have as much flexibility or time to get up from your desk and enjoy a workout. Here are a few tips to maintain your fitness from anywhere.

In office:

Take a walk during your lunch break to get your steps in.
Embrace your daily commute by biking or walking to work.
Utilize your office gym or do a stair workout for a quick burn.

Remote:

Use your lunch break to hit the gym, go for a run or try out a new workout class.
Replace the time you would have spent commuting to work in the morning with a morning workout, like yoga or HIIT.

Eat Healthy Meals

A study conducted by the American Heart Association found that 82% of employees said that having healthy food options at work is important to them. Here are a few ways you can strive for eating healthy meals in the workplace.

In office:

Prep your lunch and snacks the night before and reach for ones that are nutritious—like fruits, veggies and nuts.
Suggest healthy food and snack options for your employer to stock the office kitchen with.

Remote:

Plan your lunch and snack times so you’re able to take a break and eat nutritious options.
Shop and prepare food that you will look forward to eating.

For more tips on how you can stay healthy and fit no matter where you’re working, check out the infographic below.

Top Digital Marketing Ideas for 2022

May 16, 2022 by Guest Post Leave a Comment

In 2022, more brands understand that their marketing plan requires a digital component.

An estimated 80% of the public uses the internet to research, sign up for services, and complete purchases. Brands that want to find their target audience can find them online.

How you distribute your marketing budget among online and offline resources depends on your business and target audience. Industries that benefit the most from online marketing include:

Health
Fitness
Nutrition
Food
Entertainment
Technology
Education

Others benefit from having an online presence to capture new audiences. A website doubles as a 24-hour salesperson. It disperses your company’s contact, services, and product information.

Digital marketing builds on itself. Videos, social media, and affiliate add-ons improve a website and brand’s online presence.

Let’s look at the seven top digital marketing ideas for 2022.

1. Search Engine Optimization

Like so much technology, search engine optimization has existed for a couple of decades. However, SEO didn’t pick up prominence until the late 2000s. Once marketers realized that they could own keywords and use the search engine algorithms, they paid more attention to SEO.

Now digital marketing professionals integrate SEO elements into the structure of websites when they build them. Next, they optimize campaigns.

SEO has taken on several forms including SaaS SEO. Other common SEO types are:

Local
On-page
Off-page
App store

Idea: Find relevant keywords and own them through SEO-optimized campaigns and online assets.

2. Social Media

An estimated seven out of 10 Americans use social media to find new content, engage with others, and share information. Therefore, digital campaigns on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram can deliver.

Idea: Create social media accounts and link them to your company’s website. Then, monitor them and use them to interact with your customers and prospective clients.

3. Mobile

Professionals who study search engine trends noticed that Google made its search result pages mobile-friendly. Once they dug into the numbers, they found that an estimated 50% of web traffic comes from users on mobile devices.

Plus, 74% of Americans won’t leave home without their smartphones. An estimated 71% check their smartphone within 10 minutes of waking up. Therefore, the public is rarely too far away from this device.

Idea: Adopt text message campaigns by using permission marketing strategies.

4. Video

According to Pew Research data, YouTube tops Facebook in users. YouTube might have traction from the streaming trend.

An estimated 81% of the public uses YouTube. Moreover, the platform has a great cross-section of users. The platform transcends age groups, income brackets, and education levels.

Idea: Whether you film ad spots or explainer videos, ensure that your brand incorporates videos into the marketing mix.

5. Niche

Algorithms and automation have entered all realms of life. Even public relations professionals look at metrics and data to craft optimized campaigns for clients.

In PR, professionals will use six metrics to measure campaign success in 2022. Metrics include:

Audience reach
Website traffic
Social media shares and mentions

Some platforms provide this information to users for free. Thus, take them up on their offer.

Idea: Compile data reports from social media platforms to help guide your campaign decisions.

6. Email

Experienced marketers have found that email marketing still has a place in the marketing mix.

Professionals point out that social media requires users to scroll their feeds. Once the new tweets and posts become buried under the latest ones, they’re gone.

Data shows that 89% of the public checks their email at least once a day. It’s easier to scroll through unread emails than through a social media feed.

Idea: Announce product releases, sales, and service discounts through optimized email campaigns; remember to use a catchy title.

7. Affiliate

The goal of digital marketing is to create organic traffic that pays dividends long after the campaigns run.

In some ways, affiliate marketing is the original influencer strategy. Affiliates like influencers receive a commission for sharing posts and links about a company’s products and services.

Companies who must mind their budget can start with trading links with partners. It widens the circle of influence without exchanging money.

Mommy bloggers have had success with the affiliate strategy. They market their homeschool curriculums, recipes, and speaking services to other moms and young adults.

Idea: Start with a small influencer campaign to test the waters. Then, make a decision based on the results.

Conclusion

Keep in mind that professionals in the digital marketing space remain available to brands. Otherwise, you can task your team with keeping up with the trends and data. Then, they can customize a plan to fit your goals. Start with a website. Then, add components to the digital marketing plan.

What Defines A World-Beating Healthcare Start-up?

May 15, 2022 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

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Getting into the healthcare sector is exciting. If your business model proves successful, you could be responsible for saving thousands of lives and helping families avoid suffering, pain, grief, and loss.

But actually succeeding in the sector is notoriously difficult. Theranos, for instance, promised everything but wound up delivering nothing at all.

If you’re thinking of setting up a healthcare business, here’s what you need to do:

Knowing That You Have More Than One Type Of Customer

Standard business advice is that you should set up a business that targets a niche group of customers. For instance, diaper companies target women between the ages of 20 and 40.

But when it comes to healthcare startups, you’re rarely appealing to a well-defined group of people. Instead, everyone eventually needs support with their health

As such, you’ll need to think about your target audience in a more sophisticated way. Instead of building a picture of their requirements using demographics, instead, think directly about their core needs. Think about what solutions they actually want and then cater to them.

Understanding That “Fail Fast” Is Not A Good Approach

In the tech world, startups love the idea of “failing fast,” usually while “breaking things.” Unfortunately, that cavalier approach won’t cut it in the healthcare startup world. If you try to move at speed before the product or service is ready, you’ll run into all sorts of regulatory problems and issues.

To prevent falling into a conventional startup culture rut, you’ll want to implement multiple strategies. For instance, you might want to implement ISO management practices to ensure that your oversight is where it needs to be. You might also invest heavily in research supporting your propositions, and then publish your findings in journals for scientists to critique.

Providing A Real Service

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At the same time, you want to provide patients with a consumer-focused service. As Brad Schaeffer of MedComp likes to point out, improving technology means that more startups in the sector can offer novel products and rapid turnarounds, often bypassing the conventional medical system.

Understanding That Healthcare Data Is Problematic

Healthcare data can be a blessing, particularly if you leverage it to improve your products and services. However, over time, you will also discover that it is a curse, too.

Healthcare data is complex and kept in a variety of silos, including paper documents, EHRs, and patients’ brains. Getting it all to match up is notoriously difficult and probably isn’t feasible for most startups.

What’s more, you’ll likely have to deal with confidentiality issues and patient privacy along the way. And even if you do find a way to obtain data, it is often so heterogenous that you need to manually correct it by hand.

The trick here is to either avoid any reliance on data or generate your own. If you’re not sure how to do this, look for examples in your industry.

In summary, creating a world-beating healthcare enterprise is challenging. Entrepreneurs face an uphill struggle, perhaps more so than other entrepreneurs. However, the rewards of success are also greater.

Do You Really Need Business Insurance?

May 12, 2022 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

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As a business owner, you should try everything in your power to protect your company and the people working for you. Therefore, insurance shouldn’t really be something you debate.

Nevertheless, some business owners wonder if it’s actually needed. It feels like an extra cost because, if you run your business right, you shouldn’t ever have to deal with the problems associated with insurance. So, can you save money and reduce your expenses by skipping insurance?

Technically, you can avoid buying some types of business insurance. However, there are a couple of things you legally need to have. Plus, I’ll go over why insuring your business is more beneficial than you think!

What insurance do you legally need to have?

By law, every business in the US must have workers’ compensation insurance, unemployment insurance, and disability insurance. This is a requirement put in place by the federal government, so there’s no way of avoiding these costs.

Depending on where your business operates, the state government might have rules relating to other types of insurance you legally must have. The only way to find out is by visiting your state’s website, or contacting the local government directly.

What insurance isn’t legally required?

Put simply, any other type of commercial insurance that isn’t any of the tree mentioned above. This includes things like liability, bodily injury, property loss, malpractice, and business closure insurance.

How can you save money on insurance?

One easy way to cut the costs of insurance, while still protecting your business, is by picking and choosing the coverage options that make sense to you. As you can see on CommercialInsurance.net, there are plenty of coverage options available, many of which your business will not need. For example, malpractice insurance is usually only needed by businesses in the medical field.

Likewise, liability insurance isn’t necessary if you work remotely. You have no business premises, so there’s no chance someone will injure themselves in the workplace. Or, if you do all of your work online, there’s no chance of injuring someone while you work.

You see, it’s a careful case of analyzing your business and consideriny what insurance you actually need. You will soon realize that money can be saved by reducing the coverage to some essential things – rather than paying loads for umbrella insurance.

What are the benefits of insurance?

The obvious reason to get insurance is that it protects your business. You are financially protected when certain things go wrong, allowing you to avoid suffering massive losses that could lead to the closure of your company.

Secondly, some types of insurance can actively help you attract clients. If you display that your business is insured – particularly if you do contracting work – then it makes clients trust you. You’ll see more leads, meaning you make more money.

In short, certain types of business insurance are legally essential. As for everything else, it’s entirely up to you to decide what you need. Save money by picking the coverage that’s right for you, and protect your business!

Your Start-Up Can Compete With The Right UX: Discover More!

May 11, 2022 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

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There is no underestimating how important the design of your company’s ‘product’ is – i.e. your website, mobile application, or software. This does not only relate to what it looks like, but also how long it takes to load and whether navigation is easy and effective. Unfortunately, there is no magic formula when it comes to getting the design right. However, there is a path that most designers seem to be going down, and that is user experience design – commonly abbreviated as UX design.

What is UX design?

In essence, this design centers on addressing the needs of your users at every stage of your product life cycle. Business owners are too commonly telling their users what they want them to know, instead of considering what the user needs. When it comes to UX design, everything from receiving an email invoice to the usability of the home page is considered with the user in mind. Several years ago this style of design was considered a niche, but now it is a well and truly a necessity.

Compete with big industry players

There are many reasons why UX design is so important. When it comes to start-ups, it gives you the chance to compete with the bigger players in the industry. Good design and user experience are not something that can be duplicated easily. Therefore, if you manage to achieve this, you can really set yourself apart from the competition – including the mature products in your industry.

Break down the trust barrier

Moreover, one area where startups also face obstacles is in relation to trust. After all, why should a consumer trust you when they don’t know anything about you and you have no track record? Design and UX help to create the atmosphere of confidence you require. You won’t be able to keep a loyal consumer base without it. Whilst a consumer may purchase a product based on its features, this will not keep them interested in the long run. They will only keep coming back if the experience is a good one.

Further benefits associated with effective UX design

It is evident that users are at the heart of UX design, and therefore to gain the advantages that have just been mentioned, it becomes imperative for you to get to know your clients if you are going to integrate this approach effectively. From ecommerce integrations to live chat, everything needs to be done with care. You need to be able to spot the problem of your future users. You need to define it and determine the issues it causes, and most importantly, you must eliminate it. This is the recipe for successful UX design.

Yet, it means that you need to take a different approach to the one you are likely to have now. You need to actually talk to your clients and get to know them. If you fail to do this, you are merely guessing what your customers feel, and so you fall back into the trap of providing them with what you think they need, rather than what they actually need.