Business

As an employer, you want to make sure that you’re getting the most out of your employees. After all, you’re paying them, so it’s normal that you want to make sure that you’re getting the most out of your money.

If you’ve recently been seeing a dip in your employees’ productivity, it may have you worrying that it’s something you’re doing wrong. However, rather than focusing on what’s going wrong, try to focus your energy on how you can make things right. Here are some of the most effective ways to boost your employees’ efficiency and increase team morale.

Give Them The Right Tools

Regardless of what your industry is, it’s vital that your employees have the right tools that they need to successfully complete their tasks. Just like a painter can’t paint a masterpiece with a cheap paintbrush, you can’t expect your employees to do great work without the right tools.

As an employer, it’s critical that you make sure that your workplace is designed for efficiency. Otherwise, production time will be much slower. When your employees are working slowly, that means time is lost. In the world of business, time lost is money lost. The idea is to get them to be as efficient as possible in the shortest amount of time possible.

Set Clear Guidelines

Your employees will do their best work if they have a clear idea of what they should be doing. By clearly setting your expectations from the beginning, there won’t be any grey area about what your employees are expected to do.

Before assigning your employees tasks, make sure that they’re SMART. Smart, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely.

Provide Breaks

A lot of employers make the mistake of assuming they will get the most out of their employees by making them work longer. However, many studies prove that employees are actually much more efficient if you allow them to rest in between tasks.

People need time to take a break and gather their thoughts before moving on to the next project. Exhausting your team only leads to poor performance and slower work speed.

Discourage Multitasking

A lot of people are used to multitasking throughout the day. It may seem like you’re getting more done by doing more at once, however, in reality, this isn’t the case. In fact, you’re putting minimal effort into each task in an attempt to get it finished. However, when you focus entirely on only one task at a time, the end result will be much better. Focus on quality over quantity if you have to choose.

Encourage Teamwork

Your team will work much faster if they rely on each other. Encourage teamwork by engaging in team building activities regularly. Teamwork increases communication and an overall better atmosphere in the workplace. Happy employees mean busier employees!

To read more on topics like this, check out the business category.

In addition to making sure your business looks good, you need to ensure the premises is customer friendly. You may run a very successful business but if your premises is unkempt people will not want to visit it. Do not worry, we have a few tips that will help you make your business premises much more customer friendly.

Put Plants Here and There

Plants and flowers can make your business premises, particularly the reception area much brighter. While some businesses are happy to use plastic plants they soon start to look old and worse for wear. Bring in some real plants and flowers so that they can be seen and enjoyed by your potential customers. Don’t forget to water them so they thrive.

Clean the Exterior of your Building

You need to make sure that the exterior of your building is clean and tidy. A Power washing company can help to make your building look cleaner and fresher. Don’t forget to sweep up any leaves so they don’t pile up near the entrance. When the exterior of your building is clean it will look much more inviting. Try to clean the exterior of your building at least once a month so that it continues to appear looked after.

Keep the Reception Area Clean and Tidy

If clients or potential customers are going to be spending time in your reception area you need to keep it clean and tidy. No-one wants to wait in a dirty and messy area even if it is just for a few minutes. A clean and tidy reception will also say a lot about your business. Make sure desks are not cluttered, that there’s adequate lighting and the carpets or tiles are in good condition.

Paint your Premises

If your premises is looking a little worse for wear you may want to consider painting it. Paint the interior and the exterior if you wish. A fresh coat of paint can breathe new life into the whole building. What’s more, is your employees and your clients or customers will appreciate it. Newly painted premises tells people that you care.

Work on your Windows

Many businesses fail to keep an eye on their windows. While they may be cleaned once a month they aren’t likely to be painted very often. Paint your window frames if they are in good condition. If the frames are starting to rot you may want to consider hiring someone to either replace or repair them.

You may also want to think about what you put next to your windows. Do you want potential customers to see stacks of files or would you prefer them to see plants? Create a good impression by changing the view your customers have of your premises.

You can make your business premises more customer friendly. Just use the above tips and everyone who comes through your door is more likely to feel comfortable being there. A little bit of work can make all the difference.

 

As a retail business owner, your days are often filled with “putting out fires” and attending to one issue after another. Sometimes it seems as though nothing is ever just quiet and simple. Then there is the fact that consumers can be rather fickle at times, constantly changing what they want and what is in demand. There is no doubt that you’re constantly looking for ways to improve the efficiency of your business and make sure that profits stay where you want them to be.

One option that many retailers end up eyeing is cloud hosting. Cloud hosting services and solutions can help retailers of all sizes, and could just be the best decision you make. Here’s a look at why cloud hosting may be right for your retail business.

Ensure the Supply Chain is Visible

One of the biggest factors in determining a retailer’s success is having a supply chain that is efficient. You need to be able to see exactly what is happening at all times, at any given area on the supply chain. This allows you to pinpoint possible problem areas before they can balloon out of control and throw the supply chain out of whack. It also helps business owners to identify areas where cost savings can be realized.

With cloud hosting services, your supply chain will be highly visible at all times. You can check on inventory, stock-outs, shipments, and so much more – all in real-time. There will be no question areas, as it will all be clear.

Get a Better Sense of Your Customers

Because you’re seeing activity in real time, you can also zero in on the customer service experience and make sure it is up to par. Not only that, you’ll start to get insight into your customers so that you can offer a more personalized experience overall.

When you are using cloud services, you’ll have the ability to connect all the digital data you are collecting with your in-store data. This gives you a much more complete overview of your customer and what it is they are looking for and demanding.

There Are More Cost-Effective Routes Nowadays

One of the things that used to hold retailers back from installing these cloud services is the fact there was a fairly sizeable initial investment required. Today you can find cost-effective and flexible solutions, which means your business won’t need to make a massive investment.

A great example is Oracle cloud services by Logic. With this product, you’ll be able to get a full retail software platform packaged in a hosted model, yet you won’t have to make that initial large investment. Typically, it can be run with what you’ve already got in place. This saves both money and time, as you won’t have to hire IT specialists to train your staff.

Cloud Services Could Be the Way to Go

While it’s true that each retail business is unique and has its own set of customers, more often than not, cloud services can offer a real benefit to the company.

You can’t spend too long online without encountering clickbait. Ever seen a sensationalist headline you can’t resist clicking on, then find that the article is lacklustre and a letdown? Welcome to clickbait.

There’s no doubt your title/headline is important. The term ‘clickbait’ may have been coined recently but the theory is older than the internet itself. The most well-known proponent was advertising guru David Ogilvy, who famously said: ‘On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent 80 cents out of your dollar.’

Clickbait has earned its reputation for good reason, so is it a legitimate strategy for travel marketers? The problem isn’t the catchy title, it’s the fact that the body copy doesn’t live up to the hype. Done badly, clickbait titles disappoint consumers and do your brand more harm than good.

However, there is a huge advantage to writing your titles in a way that motivates people to click through. Here we’ll take a look at how to write great titles that get people going and do justice to the quality of your content.

Get the keyword in your title

When thinking about page titles on SERPs pages, the most important thing to do is put the keyword in there. If someone types in ‘flights to Madagascar’, they’re much more likely to click on a page that references that directly than something like ‘flights to East Africa’. And the earlier you show this in the title, the better.

Don’t fall into the trap of adding the keyword without context. Make the title is interesting to read and in proper English. If the keyword is ‘hotel Copenhagen’ Google won’t penalise you for calling your page ‘cheap hotels in Copenhagen’ – it will understand the context.

Once more – with feeling

It’s shocking how a single superlative can change a boring sentence into something truly amazing. While this might be a bit over the top, words like ‘shocking’, ‘unbelievable’, ‘incredible’ or ‘amazing’ can have a huge effect on the number of people clicking through.

Think about this example. Which would you rather click on?

‘7 facts about Turkey’

or

‘7 crazy facts you never knew about Turkey’

It’s clear which one is more emotive. But remember, whatever you say in your title must be backed up in your copy. If you say your facts are ‘crazy’ or ‘unbelievable’ then make sure they are, otherwise all the hard work you’ve done will be for nothing.

Incorporate popular trends

To make your titles come alive and resonate more with internet users, you can include popular trends or pop-culture references.

For example, we all know how popular Instagram is and how much people like to take great photos to show their friends, so incorporate it into your titles. Something like ‘the 10 most Instagrammable holiday destinations’ implies to users that your article is full of impressive locations they could visit to become the envy of their followers.

Add a sense of urgency

You’ve probably heard this one before, but conveying a sense of urgency to users is almost guaranteed to get you more clicks. A report by Experian found that email subject lines conveying a sense of urgency got 14% higher click-to-open rates and twice as high transaction rates compared to their average marketing emails.

Again, make sure you don’t do anything too sensationalist, but by adding a ‘now’ or ‘today’ to your title, you may get clicks from people who would otherwise have walked right past.

Add some ‘unbelievable’ statistics

Everyone loves a big number – it sounds impressive and begs the user to find out more. A title like ’10 reasons why the Thai tourism trade is worth 2.53 trillion Baht‘ suggests to the reader that Thailand is a destination already popular with tourists, so would be worth a further look.

On the other hand, when it comes to the price of holidays, low numbers can work well, too. Something like ’25 amazing places to eat in New York for under $10’ will attract savvy shoppers eager to get the best value.

Proceed with caution

A clickbait title is a great way to get your visitor numbers up, but as we’ve warned throughout, you have to keep a reader interested past the title. To have a real and long-term impact, all of your content needs to have SEO principles at its core. Make sure titles aren’t too long and give your reader a true sense of what they’ll find when they land on your site. A bad experience will actually have a negative effect on your performance.

The key takeaway is to create engaging and shareable titles that inspire action. If you’re not sure where to get started, a proven content marketing agency like Ad-Rank can help.

Working from home is one of the best ways of living life these days, which is why so many people are quitting their nine-to-five jobs and choosing to work remotely. You can wake up when you want, make time for the gym and responsibilities such as picking up the kids from school, and you can choose what pace you work at. It seems like a dream come true, and most of the time, it is. But a risk that goes along with working from home is that it can be easy to become unproductive. Especially if you’ve become burnt out from lots of work lately, or you’re juggling several projects, you can suddenly find yourself having trouble staying motivated.

Luckily, we’ve got some great tips you can follow if you want to get back on track. It’s all about trying them out and finding what works best for you–so read on to find out!

1 Create a daily schedule

When you work from home, it’s tempting to work whenever you feel like it. After all, why not stay in bed an extra hour, or take a Netflix break between assignments halfway through the day? There’s nothing wrong with breaks–a topic we’ll get to later in this article–but consistency is key to productivity. Create a daily schedule you generally follow and make to-do lists before each day so that you know what your goals are. 8 million Americans worked from home in 2017, so if you aren’t sure where to start, check out online examples of daily work schedules.

2 Have a dedicated workspace

One of the dangers of working from home is that it’s too easy to work from bed. Or to try to solve problems on the go, only to realize that you’ve left essential documents at home. By creating an at-home office or joining a coworking space that’s specifically dedicated to getting work done, you’ll feel ready to work the second you sit down. This, coupled with the daily schedule mentioned above, will give your work a sense of stability even if you’re a freelancer with a variety of clients.

Market researchers have predicted that, by the end of 2019, there will be 21,306 coworking spaces worldwide, so find out if there’s one near you.

3 Plan out your projects in advance

An additional organizational strategy is planning long-term projects. That way, you won’t get too overwhelmed when you’re working on several. If you’re running your own company, write up a list of milestones for the entire year, so that you can slowly work on them over time. For example, if you need to research what a podcast is used for before creating one, you can make that research one month’s work before deciding on your content.

86 percent of employees say they’re most productive when they work alone–and you can up that productivity even more by planning ahead.

4 Give yourself time off–and breaks

Once you have a set schedule and workspace, and your projects organized a few months out, you’ll be able to work regularly. But without time off, you’re likely to get burned out. After all, people who work from home don’t get paid days off the way people working in offices do. If you’re running your own business, then it’s easy to avoid taking any days off, out of the fear that you might miss out on a promising email or an exciting industry trend. But you need time off, so schedule at least a few weeks a year and a couple long weekends for vacation. Additionally, don’t forget the importance of breaks. Using a strategy like the Pomodoro Method, which splits up work with breaks in a productive way, keeps you from burning out on the daily.

Don’t forget that getting out of your head is a break too. Whether that means going to the gym three times a week or joining a book club, do an activity that gets you out of your isolated self-created office and into a different mental space. In a study, 82 percent of telecommuters reported lower job stress, which is no surprise considering that you can choose when to take your breaks and what they are.

5 Stay off your phone

Finally, stay off your phone when you’re working. It’s too easy to get distracted by Facebook or Instagram, and a quick unexpected call can waste that entire half hour left when you could have finished a project. And considering that the average person spends over four hours a day on their mobile device, which is half of a workday, it can be easy to use your phone way more than you realize. If you check your favorite website too many times, think about using a site blocker, too.

These are some of the best ways you can stay productive when you’re working from home so you can get everything finished faster and feel happier, too. What other strategies do you use to stay productive?

 

Employees across many different industries are forced to deal with a lot of work that wastes their time. As a result, the overall effort across the company ends up poorly optimized and unbalanced. A common problem that can be seen in multiple lines of work is that employees need to spend a lot of time looking up the same information over and over again. Another issue is the poor availability of certain working resources, sometimes requiring employees to jump through hoops just to get their jobs done.

Streamlining Bureaucratic Work

Inefficient bureaucracy is by far one of the biggest issues for most companies out there. Depending on your company’s field of work, there might be a lot that you have to deal with in this aspect. From providing the right insurance plan for each employee to ensuring that legal considerations are taken care of, it might often look like the tasks just never stop coming in.

Taking advantage of certain modern solutions can improve your company’s work a lot in this regard. Benefits administration technology is something that few companies seem to be looking into as actively as they should, which is a shame given how much it can help both employees and the company alike.

Improving Access to Information

This can be extended to the overall access to information that employees in your company have. It’s important to pay attention to any complaints about the unavailability of critical pieces of data. These issues will only stack up and become more prominent in the future if you don’t address them early on. A centralized approach is often ideal here. You should have a knowledge base that can be accessed from anywhere in the company, one that provides each employee with answers to their questions.

The Benefits of Remote Work

Speaking of access, you should also pay attention to how easily your employees can get to the information they need when they’re not physically in your offices. Remote access can be a game changer when implemented correctly, although you should also be careful to avoid security issues. As long as you have a careful approach and do everything step by step, your employees will eventually be thankful for the increased access capability you’ve provided them with.

Remote work is becoming a popular concept across many different industries, and major companies are starting to experiment with integrating it into their workflow on an even deeper level. It will be interesting to see how the landscape looks just a few years from now.

The bottom line is, there are plenty of modern solutions to some of the common problems you’ll encounter as a leader of a company. Regardless of the size of your business, there are some things you’ll always want to pay attention to. And if you’re not sure how to go about implementing something, remember that you can always hire a specialist to guide you through it. Consultants of all types can be surprisingly affordable if you know what you want from them in the first place.

How can you build your business to protect you from competition that you may never see coming? Today competition is as likely to come from China as it is from Chicago even if you are located in Saint Louis. You also have to worry about business that are not even in your industry coming in because they think that they think that there are inefficiencies that they can exploit or they simply want to use your industry products or services as a loss leader to build market value for their company.

For small businesses just trying to create and sustain success and perhaps get the wind under themselves and begin to start flying high, times today are very perilous. They must utilize their tight budgets to figure out how to hire passionate and skilled employees, create and sell products and services that resonates deeply with Target audiences, and figure out how to attract partners and vendors who act like company owners and who assist in growing their businesses.

Also and as importantly, a company must become graded marketing its products and services to audiences that are much more sophisticated about valuing and selecting what the company sells. What this means in today’s new media and internet world is that a company must excel at online marketing. In short the company must engage online marketing services that exceed their needs and get them ahead of the competition. Here are some of today’s hottest online marketing strategies and how they can keep a small business growing.

You Need to Do SEO

No matter how wonderful your products or services are, unless customers can find you on line your company will not be successful. Search engine optimization or SEO is a methodology that utilizes tools to help your company’s web pages list higher on the biggest search engines. Google, Yahoo, and Bing, utilize sophisticated algorithms that help them to determine which web pages should be at the top of the list when someone makes a search. These algorithms constantly change and take into account the keywords listed, the popularity and quality of the website, and the way the website and this web pages are built.

SEO agencies are experts at determining the formula that will get a search engine to place a particular web page high on a search. SEO agencies utilize a constantly changing set of parameters that they implement on behalf of their clients doubt them to get on the first page of a search. With more than 1.5 billion websites on the internet, it is important to have effective SEO or you will lose out on the majority of potential customers for your business.

Social Media Marketing Rules

You and probably everyone you know are members of at least one social network. It might be Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, or even Twitter. Today more than three billion people actively participate on social media groups and communicate with friends and family on these all inclusive websites. They congregate there for news, gossip and attainment, the average member spends nearly an hour everyday on one of these sites. Companies today must learn how to Market in social media environments simply because this is where all the people. Online marketing services sis companies with the complicated way to engage social media members. Strategies are often counterintuitive to the average business, Sol hiring a top online marketing firm is the smartest way to go.

 

Every time you spend time online there is a chance that something bad can happen and also the internet offer opportunities for people to hurt you and your reputation.

Although companies continually come up with solutions to protect us that are one time flies, the reality is that any real way to combat online threats to you and your reputation must be one that is continuous. Part of the reason is that the internet is constantly changing and so any of that worked yesterday stands a good chance to be ineffective tomorrow.  Here are two of the biggest online threats to individuals and companies and the best ways to combat them today.

Threats to Your Online Reputation

On the internet individuals and companies can face constant threats to their reputation. For a business there are multiple issues. Threats can come from disgruntled, employees, vendors and customers, and they can come from competition and even random people just trying to create mischief or even blackmail the company. Businesses know that having a positive online reputation can positively impact their bottom lines. People today will search for the reputation of a company and use it to determine if they want to purchase their products or services. If they turn up negative information of the company, it will definitely affect their decision of whether to choose to do business with the company. Online reviews are great but what happens when the reviews are fake or inaccurate and put there simply to damage the company?

For an individual who may depend on his or her reputation for their job, standing in the community, ir personal and professional relationships, having negative information circulating online can be devastating. Imagine if a pilot or a politician had some very scandalous info all over the internet. It would affect their jobs and their lives negatively.

Reputation Management Agencies

Reputation management agencies help to remove any untrue or inaccurate information from the internet, for the information that cannot be removed, they can help bury the information where it is very difficult to access and they also monitor your name and constantly combat any negative information about you that shows up online.  The majority of celebrities, sports figures, politicians, business executives, and others who can suffer great damage if there is negative information about them on the Internet, utilize reputation management agencies to check, repair and monitor their online reputation.

Cyber Security Companies

Online identity theft is the largest negative challenge when utilizing the internet. We all visit many sites online and give our personal information which is protected by passwords and usernames. Their mini bag characters online including hackers and others seeking to get this information because it can be used to impersonate us, take money from my bank accounts, and purchase items utilizing our identities. Many of these thieves are very sophisticated and used tools that are nearly impossible to detect. One common approaches to create a fake website that looks exactly like a reputable website. This might be a banking website. The user goes to that website and puts in his or her usual information. The information is then captured by the hacker and sold on the dark web. The information can be used to make fake credit cards to draw money from the individuals banking account.

Cyber security begins with software that and protect users from fake websites and from giving their information out to the wrong players. It also protects an individual’s passwords and usernames that are currently being utilized throughout the interior. Cyber security experts also have strategies for clients that help them to avoid dangerous situations online. The combination of these tools and strategies and go long way to help people protect their identity online.

 

Whether you are new to the business world, you might not be familiar with the term “electronic data interchange”, but now is the time to do your research. In an increasingly technological world, more and more companies are turning to web EDI services to help them run more efficiently.

But what exactly is EDI, and how can it increase the success of your business? Here is everything you need to know on the basics of electronic data interchange.

What exactly is electronic data interchange?

EDI is the quick and easy paperless exchange of business documents. This could be anything from important contracts to detailed invoices. The exchange of these documents is not just fast, but also completely secure. You can send your documents from anywhere in the world to any destination in the drop of hat.

Electronic data interchange is a accomplished using a software, so the sending and receiving of documents is completely automated. This means that every business using EDI converts their docs into a standard format that is easily interpreted and completely universal.

Who uses EDI?

Companies all over the world are using electronic data interchange, no matter how small or big their business. EDI is used in all major industries, including automotive, retail, finance, and even aerospace. It is the most efficient form of communication, and even has translation capabilities.

What processes are involved?

Once you have secured your EDI software, there are three steps involved in sending your documents. The first is to ensure all data is collected and prepare the documents for sending. Once the document is generated, the next step is to translate it into standard EDI format. If you are sending to a foreign country, you can even have the data translated into another language.

Lastly, it is time to transmit the documents to the recipient. This is quick, easy, and completely secure. Depending on the EDI service you are using, there are several methods for transmission.

What are the benefits of using an EDI software?

If you have already deemed electronic data interchange as an unnecessary service, you might change your mind when you read up on the benefits. First and foremost, the most significant benefit is cost reduction. The automated EDI service has been shown to cost just ⅓ of paper-based services like postal and fax.

With automated document exchanges, your employees can focus on more important tasks throughout the company. Overall, your business will run more efficiently, and not just because of the increased productivity of your team members. EDI also speeds up the ordering and delivery time of your product – as much as 30% faster.

Another major perk of using electronic data interchange is the environmental friendliness of the service. By going completely paperless in your document sending and receiving, you won’t just cut costs. You’ll also significantly reduce your CO2 emissions. Invest in an EDI software to show that your business values environmental sustainability.

Lastly, there is less margin for error when EDI is in the mix. The average paper-based invoice is riddled with up to 5% errors, but this can be avoided with an electronic service. Since electronic data interchange is a software that requires little human interaction, there is much less risk of human error.

 

If you asked your staff to review your business on site such as Glassdoor or Indeed, how do you think that you would get on? This is an issue which many companies now face and they are beginning to see that despite what they previously thought, their workplace is in fact not an altogether happy place. These reviews just as important for businesses as customer reviews because in order to attract the very best staff, your business must be considered to be a good place to work. A perfect example a positive workplace is Best Version Media, an international publishing company who have clearly created a super positive and vibrant culture which brings together the very best people in the industry. If you want high caliber staff and a happy workforce, you must ensure that you are doing your bit to create it, and here is what Best Version Media have done which their staff love.

Work Hard Play Hard

There should always be an injection of fun into the workplace and as long as you are careful and make sure that you are actually striking a balance between work and fun, you can achieve great results. Staff are more inspired and energetic when they have a smile on their face and even if they don’t adore their job, they will work hard if they know that they can have a bit of fun at the same time. Best Version Media have created a relaxed and friendly culture where the staff are rewarded for great work and they invest time and money to make sure that the workplace has a fun and positive vibe.

Value

Making staff feel valued is one of the most basic requirements for a business but it is unfortunately something which not enough companies do. Valuing staff is about listening to their ideas, giving them one to one attention, taking an interest in their lives and rewarding them for outstanding work. Staff are not just numbers and you must ensure that you never treat them as such. If staff feel valued like they do at Best Version Media then you will see a huge uplift in productivity and happiness, something which is infections and will help them whole team.

Arrangements

Our staff have personal needs that a business must support with, this could be vacation time, doctor’s appointments, a lat start or an early finish or perhaps even a day of working from home. What companies like Best Version Media do is to be flexible with these working arrangements in order to offer their employees both support and the chance to deal with any personal issues. So many companies and teams of management have issues with the fact that the staff have lives outside of the workplace and can often be a stick in the mud when staff need something. If you can be flexible and open to a member of staff having such needs, within reason of course, then you will be showing respect to them and the result is that you gain it back from the member of staff, resulting in better productivity and an inclination to help the business when it is required.

Best Version Media have created a vibrant and positive culture around their workplace which results in high level work, high caliber staff wanting to work there and a team who are willing to give their all for the business. Follow in their footsteps and you can do the same for your business.