There’s no judgment here, whatsoever, but you’re in the minority if you don’t have a blog attached to your business’ website. You may have noticed other businesses with blogs and wondered why they are bothering with it. Here’s the basic function and purpose of a blog for your business. The Mainstay of Content Marketing Content marketing encompasses quite a few different elements which can work together to promote your business online. The mainstay, however, is a blog. If you don’t have a decent website, first of all, then you’re already shooting yourself in the foot. Creating a website is Step #1. Then, your second order of business should be adding a blog, or even multiple blogs. But, start with one. Why Does Every Business Have a Blog Now? Probably the two best ways to market your business today, no matter what size it is, are blogs …
Is It a Good Idea to Use Cloud Backup Services?
We’re all familiar with cloud data backup services, but how many of us actually use those services? A lot of us do use them because a variety of cloud backup providers still have quite a few customers. They’ve been around for a while now, taking individuals’ and businesses’ data and storing all that information on their own servers. Let’s take a look at why the service is so successful and whether we should be giving them our data. Why Do We Need It? “Need” is a strong word, but we definitely have use for these services. Like many other services, they essentially give you the opportunity to pay them to do something that you don’t have the time to do, yourself. When you can’t cut your grass yourself, you can hire a company to do it for you; when you don’t feel like backing up all of your documents, you …
Should You Have a Podcast to Promote Your Business?
Podcasts can be very tricky. Like any other up and coming medium, there are a ton of people creating their own podcasts to try and break into the limelight and get an audience to tune into whatever their content is, which obviously means fierce competition. You can make it work for your business, but of course, there is some strategy to it. A Little History of Podcasting Podcasts are something of a phenomenon today, but they’re by no means a new thing. They have been available basically since smartphones have existed and have developed over the years, only recently advancing significantly and gaining serious momentum through YouTube, social media, and still-increasing interest from audiences. There were only a few podcasts in the beginning, but now you can find one that focuses on virtually any subject, ranging from education, to entertainment, to comedy, to just absolute nonsense. Many celebrities …
3 Ways to Configure Any Business Phone System
One of the things that makes a virtual phone system great is that it is so versatile and adaptable, no matter how many or what kind of phones your business will be using. In this post, you’ll find 3 specific configurations that you can use to make sure every business call that comes in will be served quickly and be directed to the correct person, every time. 1. Single Cell Phone If you are currently running your small business from your cell phone, rest assured that there are a multitude of other business owners who are doing the exact same thing. Using a virtual system like Talkroute is the perfect solution for that scenario, and your customers will never know that you are taking every call on a single cell phone. Here’s how it works: Add a call menu It doesn’t matter if you have one business phone …
Can You Make It Anywhere as a Small Business?
At some particular point in your life, you decide that you are going to be an entrepreneur. You thought about it for a long time, maybe discarded the idea a few times, and then one day, you settle it within yourself that you are going to start a business. At that time, one of the thoughts that may cross your mind is that you need to relocate to some special place where people start businesses. Is that a valid question? And if so, where would that place be? The Question of Location To begin with, this question is probably irrelevant, but there are business fields that may benefit from operating in a certain area. This would apply to businesses such as local farming supply (not to put too fine a point on it), a recording studio that needs to be close to where the musicians live, or really …
4 Reasons Virtual Phone Systems Are Better Than Traditional
Communications technology is moving into the future, allowing businesses capabilities that haven’t been possible with a traditional office phone system. Furthermore, it isn’t just the new features that make virtual systems superior to traditional; there are improvements to infrastructure, speed, diversification, and more. These are a few of the elements that greatly benefit businesses of all kinds. 1. Easier to Manage Making adjustments to the settings and/or functionality of your office phone system, in the past, could be a huge hassle. If you wanted to add a phone as a forwarding number, change the number of rings, add music for callers on hold, or pretty much any other adjustment like this, then you might have to call your tech person or possibly contact your service provider to make the changes. When you have a virtual phone system, on the other hand, you can quickly and easily make any …
Why You Should Be Using Twitter for Your Small Business
Yes, you should be tweeting about your business. Even though you may have zero interest in Twitter, there is no questioning the amount of influence it has on our culture today, in every capacity. If you aren’t sure how to use it effectively, then you might want to start looking into it. Customers Will Engage with You on Twitter If you’re not familiar with it already, the key to making Twitter work for you is engagement. As far as your business is concerned, it doesn’t matter a whole lot how many people are following your business on Twitter. The number of people who are actively engaging with you on the platform is way more important. If you’re utilizing it properly, then you’ll get comments, questions, and direct messages from the public, which is really what you want because this amounts to social proof. People Are Lazy Yes, you could argue …
4 Actionable Steps to Avoid Starting Your Day Late
Even the most professional people can have trouble starting their day on time. It typically stems from a couple of wrong moves right at the beginning, causing a domino effect that can set back your entire day. By correcting those things from the time you wake up, it’s quite possible to begin every day like clockwork. 1. Start Thinking About Tomorrow, Today When you’re finishing up for the day, you’re most likely putting work behind you and out of your mind. That’s actually really healthy, but before you hang it up for the day, take 20 or 30 minutes to go over the next day’s tasks and responsibilities, at least for the first portion of the day. That way, you can anticipate when you realistically need to start, while also minimizing surprises. 2. Learn How to Say No Speaking of those surprises, a lot of them have …
Dead Space in Your Phone System and How to Eliminate It
Though it’s not usually one of your highest priorities when you’re setting up your automated phone menu, this is something you might want to give some attention to. Your service provider will likely have a system with the preset options which you can easily implement; however, there are multiple spots where it’s possible to end up with dead air in the audio. What follows below reveals those potential trouble spots and how you can fix them. Speech of the Voice Actor This is a problem that you can easily solve, but you need to identify the points in your recorded audio files when it is happening. You’re probably going to have a few audio recordings on your phone menu for callers to tell them what number to press or to give directions, hours of operation, etc. Whether you have a professional voice actor recording this audio or you’re …
Is YouTube a Viable Platform for Small Business?
It’s a new age of small business, and the ways in which entrepreneurs approach it are changing right along with it. You may think, if you’re a traditional thinker, that something like a YouTube channel is a ridiculous platform on which to build a business model, but as YouTubers would say, you’re just a hater. And they would be right. Can it be a Real Business? Here’s the thing: It is absolutely a viable platform for business, and those who are reigning in the cash cow currently provided by YouTube are throwing money in the bank with nearly zero overhead cost. The only reason that anyone can make any money through the platform is because the masses haven’t quite come around yet, to the idea that the money is there for the taking. It’s true that YouTube doesn’t monetize videos as heavily as they did in the recent past (for …