Archive for: business
There is no doubt about the fact that blogs help to further the cause of businesses. Blogging also needs some planning, organization and clarity about the aim and purpose of the blog. The most important thing is that the blog must be just right and fit into the business perspective and appear to be an extension of it.
Points to remember while planning the blog
- How visitors will navigate the site for content- The internet visitor has a short attention span and little patience for fluff-he wants to get straight to the point, and get to the content he needs. Visitors either scroll down for the relevant title, or search from the newest. Therefore blog posts can be placed in excerpts on the home page, or titles listed, or assigned to categories which can then be searched.
- Include the search option-this simplifies things for visitors who can use keywords in their search and get straight to the relevant post.
- First timers who browse- A first time visitor would like to browse through every part of the blog. It would make things easier if internal links and references could be placed as options.
- Active posts that invite comments- Visitors seem to like their opinion being solicited and like to post their comments. The blog can decide to be an active one and also post these comments for others to see.
- Main website menu in blog- this will help visitors reach the main website straight from the blog, and will help to improve website traffic.
- Easily spotted menu- visitors should not have to search for the main menu and therefore it is better to place it on top so that it is clearly visible.
With these clarifications, the blog will take a shape and design that will help to push the blog in the preferred direction and visitors will find it easily accessible.
Blog content-when and what
The next crucial decision is about the blog content.
Frequency- Should blog posts be added every day, or alternate days, weekly or monthly? This is a tricky question, again linked to the perspective of the business owner. Experts believe that if regular posts are not seen, blogs die out and are ignored by search engines. If the blog has regular visitors then thrice a week makes sense, since they would like to read new material each time. If however, the blog just expresses expert opinions and is informative about topics then it need not be so frequent, and posts may be added as and when a new topic is introduced. Infrequent posts must not mention dates since dates may reveal that the post is old, and the reader will lose interest.
Personal or business content- Small business owners prefer personalized content to get the visitors involved about every aspect of the business. Including personal details, pictures and photos gets the visitors interested and more involved. A bigger business will have a blogging team and these blogs will be more business oriented, and used for promoting public relations, sharing news, advertising an event and so on.
Active posts with visitor participation- Comments from visitors seems like an interesting prospect but this can also have an adverse impact for a business if negative comments are posted or some unpleasant remarks are made. Comments need to be constantly monitored, and if found harmful, they must be removed before they cause damage.
Blogs offer tremendous opportunity, but it is “to each, their own”. Businesses need to figure out what suits their business the best, in terms of blog content, design and all other intricate details.
This is a Guest post by Neil Jones, who Specializes in launching ecommerce sites, he is currently plying his trade as head of marketing for eMobileScan. With 18 websites based all around Europe they are on course to be one of Europe’s largest online retailers of Industrial handheld computers and label printers like the Motorola MC75 terminal or Symbol MC9090. Neil has been an online marketer for the past 6 years and in that time he has owned and run a range of sites all built around the ecommerce platform.
Drafting contracts can be a time consuming process when you’re running a business. This is why many companies are now choosing to use computer programs to help save time.
Contract management software can help your business to effectively produce and manage the contracts you make with customers, employees, partners and vendors. Instead of managing contracts using a manual human-edited method, software can help you manage these contracts more effectively.
Through an automated system, the software can monitor the negotiation of a contract, compliance to the terms and conditions of the contract and renewal of the contract.This can help you save time so you can focus your attention on other areas. A computer program can reduce the effort needed to negotiate and organize contracts, and simplifies the administration process.
Contract management software is useful for anyone that runs a business that deals with several contracts. It keeps your contracts all in one place and notifies you when they’re about to come to an end.
Choosing the right software can help you to increase efficiency, lower operation costs and enable you to monitor your contracts more effectively. However, like most products, some are better than others and the transition period can be hard work, but the results are worth it. It is important to do your research, because some are easier to use than others.
To help you choose, you should be looking at contract software that comes with great customer support, to help you with any problems. Think about what you need it for, and whether you need it to perform complex tasks or just simple ones. Choose the right software for your company’s size. If you run a small business, you might not need the software that a large organization would use.
You also need to pick a system that will be useful in the long term as your company grows, to avoid having to purchase new software and start all over again.
Look at whether the software offers an automated email response system to notify your clients of any contracts that are about to expire. Try to select software that has a good system for the client side, so they can obtain electronic copies of any agreements and amendments. Good contract management software will allow you to track payments and figure out how effective your strategies have been.
Similarly it is helpful if the system can be connected to your email, to notify you of these expiring contracts.
Pick a system where you can do a search for specific names or dates, so you can search for a particular client or set of details.
Since you are dealing with very sensitive personal information, it is essential that you choose software that has a very high level of security, to avoid information being leaked.
Finally it should be simple and easy to use (above all else!), because the whole point of using a contract management software system is to save time.
If the software comes with a trial version, this can give you a chance to test it out and decide whether it is right for you and your business.
Take a look at comparison sites to help you choose and compare the various products available. This will save you money in the long-term and ensure that your investment is a wise one.
Some people see business blogs as a big waste of both time and good money. This is because so many people just think of them as marketing tools. But that doesn’t by any means make them less effective. They are truly one of the most useful and successful tools that a business website can utilize. They can help to pull in massive amounts of targeted traffic to your main business website.
Whether viewed as marketing tools or not, people still read them and get a glimpse of the blog’s writer. This gives the company a very important voice that relates to their public and to their customers. The general public has always liked companies with a distinct personality that can connect with them. It makes them seem more like the people next door than some far away conglomerate.
These blogs give people a feel for what the company is truly about. They feel as though they have a voice and a say-so about the goings on, being able to give feedback and suggestions. They feel more like participants than just someone who comes to leave their money.
Aside from the benefit of giving your company a voice, there are more advantages to be had. One is having an industry authority in regards to your business blog. If your blog shows that your company can change and grow with your industry, then by sharing this with your visitors, they will gain you respect for your professionalism. This really enhances a company’s reputation. Once the public catches on that you’re on top of things, it snowballs, word gets out, and your business grows.
Because of this, your company is able to gain public trust, and they’ll find your products more appealing. Let’s face it, if you thought your products were sub-par, you wouldn’t be selling them.
A business blog can really reap big benefits for any company, and for your main site as well. By regularly keeping fresh updated content on your blog, the search engines will constantly index the site, giving it a higher page rank in the results pages. If you do some SEO work and optimize your blog for keywords that you add to your contextual links, you could see a massive surge in your page ranks. Using these things along with wise choices of domain names can give your website quite a boost toward success, and this is why so many businesses are adding blog to compliment their sites and business.
Guest post is written by Thomas Alling, the owner of the successful make money online niche blog. His blog features reviews and a free home business classifieds section.
If you’re a company looking for an easy way to schedule your staff then look no further than
Shift Schedule’s award winning Shift Planner. The software is downloadable online and used to be known as Easy Shift. Shift Schedule is an award winning company for the amazing easy to read and well designed spreadsheets that it has put together for companies big and small. Since 1998 they’ve helped to create scheduling software that makes it easier for management teams to keep track of their staff, save money, and keep their businesses running.
The scheduling spreadsheets are functional for a variety of shifts. Whether you’re working with rotating shifts, fixed shifts, or split shifts, the spreadsheet software appropriately adjusts to ensure that all employers can see the hours their employees are putting in while ensuring that they save money in the process. Digging deeper it can also manage multiple individual tasks, crew tasks, or entire floor schedules. The flexibility is built into the spreadsheet and will only very based on the number of people you have to work with.
Looking for a web-based scheduler? No problem! Whether you’re working with 20 people or an entire corporate structure, the software comes with online components that allow you to schedule, plan, and share that feature with other managers who will need to refer to the spreadsheet. In a partnership with Shift Hound, a leader in online shift planning, the two have come together to create an online experience that can help ensure your company or business is running smoothly. For example, if you’ve got holes in your schedule, the software can help you schedule, request time off, and swap shifts. Any changes made happen in real time and come with not only real time notifications, but emails as well. This creates a collaborative effort that everyone will appreciate.
Finally, if you’re looking for specific templates, this software comes with many award winning designs to kick your schedules into high gear. Didn’t think spreadsheets could win awards? Think again, Shift Schedule has done some serious work on the planning software.
If the name of this post turned you off, I don’t blame you, what’s fun about flow charts? If your’e still reading this, you’re nuts, because honestly, what’s fun about flow charts?
But seriously, from time to time whether for school, for personal projects, or for work, flow charts are visually appealing to many and offer a clearer view than perhaps a report detailing the same information. So in order to get people on board with visually appealing processes, you need an application that works exactly to that point and that application is Lovely Charts.
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Ever find yourself in a situation where you need to send a document for a client or employer to sign? I have. But doing so is hard. Not everyone (myself included) has faxing facilities or are willing to pay the fees for using online faxing services.
Creating contracts only takes a few minutes after signing up (which in itself takes “ten seconds”, just as the banner promises). Basically, you first create a contact then create a template for your document using the rich text editor that’s built into the service. Then you create your document like in the screenshot below.
Before you send your document you have the final chance to customize it as you can see in the screen below. You can add in extra terms and monetary amounts. You can also decide if the document should have an expiration date. The feature I like the most was that you can choose several ways for the recipient to authenticate the document such as via Twitter or OpenID.
When you’re done, click ‘send and save’. Then, on the final page, customize the e-mail the person will receive and then send the document along with the documents URL (this is included as standard). This is an quick and easy way to process documents and contracts online.
Check it out at www.docshaker.com
There’s a lot of sites out there that offer collaboration tools. From the simplified office collaboration tools like Google Documents and Zoho Writer, to the more sophisticated like Basecamp. In the end each of them appeal to different markets, different segments of the industry and each of them function differently. So with those options we choose one that best fits our needs and we run with it. But what if there was a sexier option, something with real personality, but still maintaining all the same functionality?
Now there is. Introducing WIPspace, the creative collaboration tool that offers up multiple levels of engagement in a sleek, sexy, yet functional package. The image blow is a visual diagram of all the things WIPspace is capable of.
You feeling it yet? There’s real fire under this engine, and the multitude of offerings it has makes it a very robust package. Working on projects or movies, this space allows you to fully interact with off-site teams, and engage the client all at the same time.
Be sure to watch the videos and test drive it. Let us know what you think and how it compares with Basecamp or some of the other collaboration tools out there.
NEC is a company that’s been around for a while, and chances are if you’ve worked in anything related to tech from design to IT, then perhaps you’ve come across an NEC product. Known for innovation, they’ve really outdone themselves with the creation of the NEC CRV43.
Rather than struggle with a dual monitor setup, NEC went ahead and just combined the screens into a massive 43in. curved display that not only gives you the same dual monitor feel, only with out the need for two screens, but it also fully immerses you with the curved design making it easy to follow your work on the screen. Now while I love the concept, and the idea of reducing two monitors into one is ideal, it’s the price tag that worries me.
I can probably pick up two monitors for under $500. Both of them would be LCD screens, at least 20in+, so the price tag of approximately $5,000 seems just a little steep. Now not sure about you all, but I don’t come around 5k all that easily, so again, what is it that really makes this monitor stand out? Aside from being curved, HD, and having a seamless display? You be the judge.
Real estate, whether it’s hot or not, one this is true, it’s all about the location. With that in mind, for those of us that are seeking a place to hang our hat, to call our home, there’s lots of apps out there that can help us find that dwelling. Whether your single, married, roomates, there are apps out there that can help you find the right place for you. In the UK there is one specific app that we had a chance to play with, and that’s MousePrice.
MousePrice is an extremely web and mobile app that can share pricing of real estate, provide you quotes, and some basic information based on your needs. The web app is a very simple website that asks you three questions before you submit and move onto your information. In an effort to increase transparency in the industry MousePrice puts as few roadblocks between you and the results. Finding the properties available in the area you selected then makes it easy for you to find the place that best fits your budget.
Alternatively the mobile app for the iPhone works just as effectivly. After inserting some basic information on the location you want, or using your specific location at the moment, it will map out, using GPS, the entire area providing you drop pins to click on in order to get your information. Once the information is displayed, properties in green mean the value has gone up, property in pink means it’s gone down, and yellow properties simply mean that there is not enough information to accurately give you the most recent information.
Interested? Well if you’re in the UK looking for a bit of real estate, I’d be curious to hear if you’ve used this and if you like it. If you’re a real estate agent, do you find this effective for what you do? Leave a comment and let us know.
Entrepreneurs and start-ups alike are prime candidates for branding opportunities. Existing companies looking at changing their appearance, their direction, or product/service may also be looking for a way to change their existing branding, and what’s quicker than instant?
Nothing.
BrandStack is the quickest way to get your new logo and start building your brand. The depository has hundreds of designs, but along with the logos, you also get domain names pre-registered for you along with other additions that will get your business off the ground instantly.
Previously known as Incspring, Brandstack is literally stacking the layers of possibilities to make your endeavors as profitable and successful as possible. Founder Wes Wilson is always looking for designers who want to upload their extra logos to the site and further expand what it has to offer. A definite most for those looking to purchase and build, and designers looking to sell their extra or new designed logos.
Give BrandStack a try and take the stress of the creative process off your shoulders and start with the real details that will help build your company for your customers.
