What does it take to build a startup that can compete with the best in the industry? It’s a challenging question to answer, especially when dealing with similarly ambitious entrepreneurs looking to take the limelight. But, as a business owner, it’s your responsibility to ensure your company rises to the top of the corporate food chain.
That said, just because things are challenging doesn’t mean it has to be an arduous process of trial and error. Nevertheless, you can build an effective foundation for your new business, provided you stay consistent and work on industry trends. Here are some tactics to help guarantee the success of your business.
Using modern tech to power your business
One of the first steps is to ensure your business has everything it needs to succeed, even in a competitive environment. One of the best things you can do is harness modern tech through a data management platform. Not only does it help automate various business processes, but it also keeps everyone on the same page. For example, effective data management allows new business owners to run their companies from the comfort of their homes. Remote team management is only possible with an effective data platform thatâs easy to access and manage. With a proper platform for success, itâs possible for even your employees to work at home.
The reason why this is such an effective method is that most people want a job where they can work from home and not have to worry about traveling to the office. As a result, you’ll have more opportunities to invite new employees into the fold, helping your company thrive.
Circumventing the need for trial and error
One way to help businesses make the most out of every opportunity is to take the latest industry trends into account. It gives you an insight into the way your competitors work and provides an adequate means of gauging their performance. For example, if you have plans to launch a specific digital marketing tactic, chances are your competitors have likely done the same thing. You can gauge the potential success of your business compared to their marketing campaigns, giving you even more information to work with.
Getting brand recognition and loyalty
If you want your business to succeed, itâs crucial to get brand recognition and loyalty as soon as possible. You can do this by focusing on SEO (search engine optimization) marketing as early as you can. With the help of SEO agencies, you can gain brand recognition without taking risks.
You can also gain the loyalty of clients and employees by focusing on customer service and incentives. Take good care of the latter; they’re sure to make your clients happy.
Conclusion
As a startup, there are plenty of ways for things to go wrong and potentially cause stagnation despite your best efforts. As such, the best solution is to follow the best-practice methods above to help you build a proper foundation for your company endeavors. It might take some time and effort, but youâll undoubtedly gain the respect of your peers and the attention of your target audience.
If your internet plan does not include unlimited broadband, then going over your internet usage for the month can be really frustrating. If you are often finding that youâre going over your usage or your Wi-Fi at home is simply not fast enough to put up with the tasks that you are doing online, then it might be time to think about upgrading your broadband at home to a faster option. Today, we live in a world where fast internet connections are essential, especially with the rise of working from home. Thereâs nothing worse than trying to have a conference call with colleagues or watch your favorite TV show only to have it lagging and buffering. If you do any of the following a lot, it might be worth upgrading to a faster internet plan.
TV Show Streaming
For many households, TV show and movie streaming sites and apps like Netflix are some of the biggest bandwidth users. If you get most of your home entertainment through Netflix, or are using it instead of cable TV, then it may be worth upgrading your internet package to the Wyyerd fiber internet service to make sure that you are getting speeds that are fast enough to keep everybody happy when watching their favorite shows and movies.
Video Calling
If you are working from home, then all those video calls that you have to do with colleagues and clients might be using up a big chunk of your bandwidth. Video calling applications like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet or even Facetime can use up a lot of bandwidth every month. If youâre started going over your internet usage or have had slower internet since you began working from home, then this could be a big reason behind it.
Music Streaming
Playing our favorite songs while chilling at home, doing household chores, cooking or working has become much easier thanks to music streaming services like Spotify. But if youâre streaming songs using the best quality sound, then you could be using up a lot more bandwidth than you realize. While there are options to reduce the sound quality, it can still add up to a lot of bandwidth use per month if you play a lot of music at home.
Backups
Backing up your files to the cloud is highly advised and will help you make sure that you have access to everything that you need should anything go wrong. However, it can take up a lot of bandwidth. This is especially true if you have a lot of devices that are set to back up automatically including smartphones and tablets along with the files from your PC or laptop. If youâve noticed that your internet speeds have gotten worse since you set your devices to back up automatically, this might be to blame, and it might be worth going for a faster internet package.
While most of us use the internet at home without giving it much thought, itâs a good idea to be aware of the online activities you do that use a lot of bandwidth, especially when choosing a new internet plan.
When it comes to finding a career that you enjoy, one of the best options available to you is to get involved with technology. A constantly expanding and evolving field of technology has such brilliant job prospects that many people think that it is the future of business. So if you’re interested in how you could get involved with tech careers, then this article aims to help you on your way.
Finding a Career that Works for You
One of the most important things you will ever do in life is finding a career that works for you. An inescapable element of day-to-day life is that we all have to work to make the money we need to survive. However, so much of our daily lives is taken up by our work that it is important you find some things you can enjoy doing.
Discovering Your Passion. One of the most important elements of enjoying what you’re doing is finding a career for which you have real passion. After all, if you don’t genuinely care about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, then it can be difficult to truly enjoy your work. Nobody wants to spend hours of their day doing something that they don’t care about.
So one of the best things you can do for yourself is to start trying to figure out what you feel passionate about. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways for you to start investigating you’re your true passions are, and the process is normally quite fun.
A great way to start is to examine what you do in your spare time for fun. More often than you’d think, people are already engaging with their passions, even if they don’t know about it. So if you look into the things you do for fun, you could find that there is something that that you really genuinely care about.
Why You Should Get Into Tech. If you’re looking for a great career to get into and you aren’t yet sure what interests you, then technology can be a great place to start. It is an incredibly modern and innovative business in which there is are a lot of chances for variety and profit. Beyond that, technology is where some of the most interesting work in the world is done. So if you are looking for a great career opportunity, working with technology can be a brilliant experience.
Considering Self-Employment. One last point that you should keep in mind is the possibility of going into self-employment. For some people, the traditional working environment simply isn’t the best choice. There are many reasons why this might be the case, but by embracing a break away from traditional working and pushing yourself into something more self-driven, you might be able to find a working life that is far more suited to you.
Becoming a freelancer or even a small business owner can be a difficult thing to do, however, so you should definitely make sure that it is the right path for you before you dedicate yourself to it.
Building Your Experience
Now that you understand the importance of finding a career that works for you, the next thing you should think about is how you can start building up relevant experience in the field. Employers for preferring to hire people with experience, which means you can massively boost your chances of finding a job if you work to boost your experience as soon as you can.
Upgrading Your Skills. While experience is incredibly important, most people don’t realize that you don’t necessarily have to have experience in the job you’re looking for to have relevant experience. Improving your experience with specific skills can be a fantastic way to give yourself an edge in any field, even if you can’t necessarily work in it yet.
Fortunately, there are plenty of ways for you to develop these kinds of skills, from engaging with an entire university degree to spending some time online with eLearning sites. Anything you do to increase your ability in a relevant skill set will always be beneficial to you overall.
Finding an Apprenticeship. Alternatively, if you are set on finding experience within the field that you want to be working at, then you might want to consider taking up an apprenticeship. This can be a brilliant way to learn the skills that you need while also gaining relevant experience in the field. Of course, apprenticeships can be difficult for land, but if you can get your hands on one, they can be a fantastic way to start your career.
Deciding on a Career
Speaking of careers, there are plenty of potential avenues of employment that you might want to pursue. After all, the tech industry is a wide and multifaceted one.
Software Developer
An incredibly interesting and entertaining way to work in the technological industry is to take up the career of a software developer. The software itself is integral to the creation and running of any computer system, not to mention the fact that it drives everything a computer can reasonably do. This means that as a software developer, you can work on the creation of applications and systems that drive the technological world. Of course, if you’re looking to find a job in this field, then you will probably need to be qualified.
Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to get yourself properly qualified for the job, from pursuing a masters in software engineering online to taking up an apprenticeship with a tech company that is willing to train you as you go.
Consultation and Repairs
Alternatively, if you know a lot about technology, how to fix it and how it works, then you might want to get into the business of troubleshooting and repairs. With so many people dependent on technology and so few understanding how to repair it when things go wrong, tech support positions like these are important to keeping the world running. Plus, it can be nice to be needed.
Data Analytics
Finally, if you know your way around a computer and you have a strong understanding of mathematics and statistics, then you might want to consider getting into the career of data analytics. One of the most powerful tools available to a business looking to expand their influence, data analytics can be an incredibly lucrative field and a great way to find consistent work.
Having a blog can have huge benefits for your business. It can help you to establish your brand as a thought leader in your industry, it’s a great way to share news and disseminate important information, and, of course, it does wonders for your website’s SEO. But only if your blog is well executed.
It’s not enough to just add a blog section to your site and throw up a post whenever you remember to. You need to post with strategy and intention. You need to think about things like your blogging schedule and keywords.
This guide is going to help you to learn how to create a blog schedule and go into how and why you should be posting. Read on for everything you need to know.
Benefits of Having a Blogging Schedule
Now that we’ve answered the question “do I need a blog?” let’s tackle another: why should you have a blogging schedule? In fact, there are several good reasons. The first is that a blogging schedule will help you stay on track.
If you don’t have a schedule, it’s easy to forget to post or lose track of what topics you have and haven’t posted on. A blogging schedule will help you to stay organized and on point.
Your blogging schedule is also a necessary part of your overall SEO strategy. If you have a strategy, logic dictates you’ll have a schedule to support it.
How to Create a Blog Schedule
How often should be uploading a new blog post to your website? Here’s the thing, there’s really no such thing as too many blogs. The more quality content you’ve got on your site, the better.
Yes, you probably want to avoid putting up more than one blog per day, but outside of this, you can be as prolific as you like. The tricky thing is coming up with enough content to fill out your blogging schedule.
How often you post will of course depend on how much content you have at your disposal. If you’ve got a big stock of blogs (or a writer who’s actively working on blogs for you) then twice a week is a good amount to aim for.Â
You want to try and be as regular as possible. At least once a fortnight, but if possible, once a week is even better.
Then, you should think about what time of day and what day of the week you want to post at. Think about where and how you’re going to push your blog out on social media. For example, the best time to post on LinkedIn will be midweek, sometime before noon.
Make Your Perfect Blog Schedule Planner
Having a blogging schedule is a great way to remind you to generate fresh content, keep you accountable, and keep track of when and what you’re posting. All you need is a simple spreadsheet and you’re good to go! If you’re looking for more actionable advice for your digital marketing strategy, check out some of the rest of our content now.
So, you wrote a great article a few years back, but now itâs kind of outdated, what should you do?
The answer is there are lots of things you can do to spruce up your old content, and you might well find that they give it a whole new lease of life. Anything you have on your website has the potential to be an asset, so why not go back and give your old content the touch up it needs?
Update Â
You might have an old piece of content that used to rank well but has gradually dropped down the rankings until itâs not getting any traffic anymore. If this is the case, then the page needs updating, and it can return to its former glory.
The world changes very quickly, so itâs normal that the information in your old blogs can become outdated. It doesnât take long to update the old information and add new sections to spruce up your old content, and it can make a big difference to your rankings.
Reformat
You might have some old content where the information is excellent, but you didnât quite nail the layout and format of the page. Just because a page isnât getting traffic doesnât mean that the information is not valuable, so itâs a good suggestion to go back and see if you can format it in a more friendly way.
This might mean breaking up texts with images, adding lists, or fixing some headings, all of which can help give your page the extra boost it needs to have a second lease of life.
Video
If your old content didnât include any video, then this gives you an excellent opportunity to add something new to the page. Videos are a great way of connecting to your visitors and can help give your pages the boost they need in the rankings.
There are some great videographers out there who can help you craft the right message and turn your old content into high-performing, customer converting, newly repurposed content.
Follow Up Series
If you have an old piece of content that you particularly enjoyed, then a great option is to do a follow-up series. This allows you to expand on the original article and extend the story to your audience.
You can then go back to the original content and insert the links to the follow-up articles, keeping your audience engaged with your website for longer.
Keep Sharing
When you write an article on your website, it shouldnât have just one âgrand openingâ and then get forgotten in some corner on your website. You can use your social platforms and email lists to keep sharing your articles and keep people engaged with your great content.
Make sure youâre sharing your articles more than once across all your platforms. If the information is still useful, then keep sharing it.
Now that youâve touched up your old content, youâve got a great reason to get sharing it.
It is likely you spent a considerable amount of money on your computer. Yet, small and large mistakes could be damaging the technology each day and shortening its lifespan.
If you want to ensure your device works like a well-oiled machine throughout the years, you must aim to preserve its health, which can prevent you from replacing the technology in the near future. Read these top tips on how to make your computer last longer.
Keep Your PC Clean
Dust and dirt can take its toll on your computer, as they can clog up its gears and limit the technologyâs functioning. It is, therefore, important to regularly clean dust and debris from your computer to prevent it from reaching its inner components.
For example, you can use canned air to eradicate dirt from the fans, which can otherwise cause the device to overheat. You also must clean the monitor with a screen cleaner and ensure you never eat food or consume drinks over the PC.
Avoid Regularly Switching Your PC On and Off
While it is essential to turn your computer off when not in use to save on utility costs, you must avoid regularly switching the technology on and off. While it is fine to turn the PC off once per day, you must avoid turning it on and off multiple times throughout the day.
If you do so, you could place great stress on the internal components that are attempting to regulate the systemâs temperature. Ultimately, it can cause your PCâs hardware to both contract and expand. So, donât switch off your PC when taking a lunch break or heading into a meeting. If you are conscious of rising energy bills, browse the market for cheap business gas suppliers.
Buy a Surge Protector
Voltage spikes can lead to the frying of your hard drive and can often occur during storms. To prevent your computer from frying unnecessarily, you should invest in a surge protector. You also will need to replace the surge protector following a direct lightning strike, which will have caused your home or businessâs power to go off during a storm.
Donât Move Your PC Too Much
Regardless of whether you have a desktop computer or a laptop, you must avoid moving it more than necessary. Always aim to be gentle when moving the technology from one location to another; otherwise, you could damage or cause a shift in the internal components. Also, if you need to pick up a laptop, ensure you hold it by the base and not the screen.
Invest in RAM and Hard Drive Space
If you paid a small sum for your PC or laptop, itâs likely it came with limited memory and hard drive space. To ensure your computer runs faster and, in turn, lasts longer, you must invest in a computer that offers an exceptional RAM(random access memory) and hard drive, which can take some of the stress and pressure off your computer.
In a world where updates are instant, delivery takes place on the same day, and customer service is only ever a few clicks away, visitors to your website will not stand for it being slow. If your pages take more than a few seconds to load or if your media takes too long to buffer, theyâll leave your site without a second thought.
If your siteâs visitors are looking for a service specifically in your market, when they leave your website, theyâll head straight to your competitors. Not only could you miss out on clicks in this instance, but you could also miss out on potential customers.
To ensure that your businessâs days of missing out are behind it, you have to resolve to better your website performance. To see how this can be achieved, read on.
Train your employees
The internet moves forward at a frantic pace, and if your employees canât keep up with it, neither can your company website. Itâs essential then that you invest in staff training regularly. By doing so, tech fluency around your office will become the norm, the dayâs top trends will continuously be adhered to, and most importantly, your websiteâs performance will remain optimized no matter who is tasked with working on it and fixing its faults.
One specific type of training that you should certainly consider investing in is a graduate scheme. By offering internships to the tech workers of tomorrow, youâll ready your businessâs website for the future in the best way possible. This is because this type of employee will have grown up with internet technology at the forefront of everything theyâve been exposed to. This kind of knowledge will prove unrivaled as you seek to better your website performance going forward.
Align yourself with external experts
In addition to ensuring your internal team has the tools they need to better your website performance, youâre going to need a number of external experts by your side as well. Without this kind of assistance, youâll find it hard to devote the necessary time, effort, and resources to your website optimization, especially when you have so many other areas of your business to be focusing on.
In this instance, there are two experts in particular that you should consider turning to:1. A website auditing service, such as DMGâby having an audit conducted for your website, you will be able to see where itâs failing, why itâs so unpopular, and why itâs languishing so far down in Googleâs search rankings2. A website monitoring service, such as Pingmeterâthis kind of service will keep a constant eye on your website to ensure that it remains live at all times, notifying you instantly should it deem something to have gone wrong with your siteâs performance
If you want to better your website performance, then your employees need to become well-versed in fixing faults as and when they happen, and you need strong external forces backing you up. Taking the above advice and putting it into practice, then, is essential.
Efficiency is one of the best words in business. It means you have mastered the art of the supply chain and are wasting the least amount of materials and products as possible. When your company is efficient, you have less to sell at a discount, can provide excellent service and stock for your stockists, and of course, recoup as much money as possible. Improving the efficiency within your supply chain, however, is not quite so straightforward. Supplier to supplier, or business to business, can become quite convoluted. You might personally only work with one supplier and one stockist, but do you know who supplies that company?
Knowing who
you work with and improving
the efficiency along the entire chain is how you will save on costs
and reduce risk all at the same time. At the same time, implementing the right
tools can help increase your sales and reduce the processing time at the core
of your operations.
It isnât easy to work as a middleman in the supply chain, but with these tips, you can make the entire process easier and more efficient.
Carefully Vet Your
Suppliers
Transparency
is the name of the game, and it is only
when you know where every aspect of your product has come from and where it was made can you mitigate risk from the source.
In some cases, the risk involved could be in a faulty product that has not
passed all safety tests. In others, it could be a risk to the lives of workers
along the supply chain, as was the case with the Rana Plaza Disaster in 2013,
where suppliers illegally built warehouses to such an unsustainable level they
collapsed in less than 90 seconds.
In short, know who your suppliersâ suppliers are, and vet them to ensure the safety of the product and those working there. Customers and businesses alike are becoming more demanding when it comes to where their products came from, and doing this can help you discover inefficiencies in the supply chain that can be easily rectified.
Improve Collaboration
with Your Supplier and Buyer
A great way
to reduce processing times and improve B2B operations is to operate an easy to
use portal where your customers can self-serve information online. The Omnia
product suite from www.weaveability.com
offers a
range of digital transformation solutions that provide a truly personalised
customer experience. In this digital age,
both businesses and consumers expect to easily purchase from and communicate
with suppliers online. With the power of Omnia, you can customise the
experience for every type of customer without any additional integration or
hardware. You can also enable real-time communication thanks to instant access
with your master data.
Use Data Management in
Your Favor
Another
great way to improve the efficiency of your company is to use
your own numbers in your favor.
One of the biggest wastes for any supplier or retailer is buying too much stock
that then goes wasted. This stock will either be
held up in storage, or it will need to be sold on at a loss. By using
your data to find the sweet spot of supply vs. demand, you will be able to
provide enough product to your customers without overdoing it.
Like it or not, we live in a world where the cleverest marketing strategy attracts the best customers whether your product/service is the best or not. Popular brands are powerful, and, in the end, they get to take the bigger slice of pie.
Similarly, in the world of business, a well-developed personal brand matters more than the level of quality one is able to deliver. The personal brand defines your work experience, your capacity to solve problems in your field of work and talks about how you communicate with customers.
While it sounds a bit far-fetched, there are studies that show people who managed to put together great personal brands tend to get the best projects and earn more than the average Joe. And this doesnât happen because they are smarter or more knowledgeable. It happens because they understood the power of branding and learned how to apply it in their professional life.
Still, the concept of personal branding is a work in progress. As a result, itâs difficult to find high-quality and actionable advice that fits your particular situation. This is why we put together a guide with some of the most efficient personal branding techniques that are easy to understand and apply.
#1: Surround Yourself with the Right People
There is a quote usually attributed to motivational speaker Jim Rohn, that says âyou are the average of the five people you spend most of your time withâ.
While the quote is highly debatable, there are some truths to it. Basically, what the author is trying to convey, is that we are influenced by the people with which we get in contact on a daily basis. However, we are also influenced by the people we follow on social media, by the books we read, and videos we watch.
So, take the quote and transform it according to your needs. If you have the possibility, get in touch with specialists in your field and establish a connection. They can be your co-workers, your managers, or even people you met at a conference. You donât have to be friends with them or even spend every single day talking; you just need a way to communicate your thoughts and get feedback.
Furthermore, make sure your social media feed is loaded with publications and posts from authority content creators in your field. People love getting messages, shares, and comments on their posts, so it will be easier to find a connection.
The idea is that you absorb the information and type of behavior you see every day. So, to become a highly regarded professional with a strong personal brand, you should surround yourself with people who are already established as such.
#2: Continuously Improve Your Skills
The fuel that drives a strong brand is represented by your willingness to improve yourself. Just like a product or service grows by implementing customer feedback (positive and negative), you also need to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses.
Furthermore, a professional who is open to the idea of improvement sends a strong message to their clients or employers. It shows you are ready to grow without someone pushing you from behind.
The good news is that you have a plethora of resources and materials at your disposal. For instance, if you want to improve your business management skills, you can take a leadership and management course online or you can buy the book thatâs most recommended by specialists in the area. The same goes for every new skill you want to master.
In the end, in an ever-changing business environment, itâs important to upgrade your knowledge and set of skills.
#3: Find Your Uniqueness
Your uniqueness is your very own advantage in building a strong personal brand! Itâs the element that attracts the right type of customers and the force that gets you where you want to be.
So, if youâre not sure what makes your brand unique, have a look at your activity. Read the feedback you received from clients or analyze behavior reports received for annual evaluations at work.
You donât need something thatâs Earth-shattering and paradigm-changing! You only need to identify that element that makes people remark you as a professional. It can be anything from âhigh-quality work at a fast paceâ to âunlimited access to high-end resourcesâ.
#4: Find your True Voice
Unless youâre a Steve Jobs type of person, it can be extremely difficult to find your voice from the very beginning. But thatâs normal; we are not all geniuses and we donât have to be.
So, when you first start, your personal brand will be a mixture of elements you learn from the people you admire and follow (see point #1). But, as you learn and grow, your voice has to change. You need to be on a quest for authenticity so, in the end, youâll get to identify your uniqueness.
The voice of your brand must represent your true aspirations and opinions in life. Also, make sure to stay true to your brand, even when the times arenât as favorable. This shows integrity, a quality thatâs highly valued in todayâs business environment.
#5: Create a Toolkit for your Brand
The main purpose of a strong personal brand is visibility. You invest time, money, and energy in a wide range of activities to make sure the right clients or employers take notice. However, some tools are more effective than others when it comes to creating the right type of visibility.
To this aspect, we created a short list with the tools that are bound to produce the most positive impact:
Your Website
In todayâs day and age, if you donât have a website, you donât exist. Whether youâre an entrepreneur or an employee, make sure your site or page (it can also be a LinkedIn profile) is up to date and running. Also, include information about things such as: â˘Â Professional achievements â˘Â Projects you are passionate about â˘Â Awards and nominations â˘Â Affiliations with interesting people and projects â˘Â Certifications & Academic degrees â˘Â Publications and participation to conferences
Social Media Presence
Yes, a web page and a social media profile are two different things. And you need both to increase your visibility!
We recommend selecting the channel that is most likely to get your post in front of possible customers (LinkedIn, a blogging platform, or another professional network). Itâs important to stay active and develop an authentic style that speaks about your level of professionalism and dedication.
Speaking Engagements
Should you ever have the opportunity to participate as a guest speaker at a conference, make sure to RSVP yes! This type of events gather all sorts of people from your field of interest and are an amazing opportunity to increase brand visibility.
Sure, you have to be delicate with the process and avoid becoming a nuisance, but it helps to stay on your clientsâ mind. This way, when they need the services you offer, youâll be the first to call.
Written Materials
A book, articles in an authority publication (online or offline), a PDF you send with newsletters, any type of written materials can improve brand visibility. Even more, if you are a published author in your field of activity, it strengthens your position in the eyes of customers.
Wrap Up
In the end, itâs important to get involved and be present in your field of interest. It may take some time, but every step you take is a brick for your professional future. A strong personal brand canât be built overnight and it has its own challenges, but with the right tools and inspiration, you will succeed
Oli Kang Oli is a working mum who has a passion for teaching and all things educational. With a background in marketing, Oli manages the digital channels and content at Courses.com.au
We are excited to step into 2019, which will be an exciting year for all of our customers. Hitsteps is working toward integration with a session replay recording service Reactflow which is currently under development and we at Hitsteps are monitoring the development and providing help wherever necessary.
Additionally we are working toward integration with iOS Numeric app which allows you to view your dashboard statistics on your mobile phone and Apple Watch.
Hitsteps growth did not stop in 2018 and there is no sign of slow downs! we are looking forward to 2019 and upcoming partnerships and integrations.
Wish you a happy new year from everyone at Hitsteps
