Manage & Automate Your Business’ Social Media with Hootsuite

Before we get started, you should know that if you don’t currently use a management service for your business’ social media outreach, you’re probably spending way too much time and energy on it. Doing it yourself without a management platform will work just fine if you don’t have any real campaign for promoting your business on social, but if you do, it’s a pretty basic practice to use a service like Hootsuite. While there are a few services who do this, Hootsuite pretty much leads the industry in SMM (Social Media Marketing) tools. Take this under advisement if it sounds like something you could use. We’re going to go over the features that you’ll need if you’re serious about promoting on social media. Social Media Management Can Be Way Easier When you don’t have a program to manage it, social media takes a great deal longer than it needs to. …

Creating Responsible Content

Creating Responsible Content: Why Should You Care?

Responsibility in writing content is not something that many people are talking about these days, especially for content that you write for a business blog. The thing is that if you have a blog on your website where you are posting articles, then this is something you should be interested in because the rules for writing published work apply to online content just as much as they do for any other form of written work or published media of any kind. This actually benefits your business, which is what we’re going to get into here. It’s Easier than Ever to Be Careless The massive wealth of information that is now available on the Web doesn’t come without its consequences. This is the issue: Anyone can write something and post it on the Internet, and then people will blindly rely on that information as fact that they will assimilate into their …

Why You Need More than a Cell Phone to Run Your Business

There inevitably comes a time when your business outgrows your cell phone, at which time you’re going to need some kind of a system. Running your business from a cell phone works great at first; however, when a ton of orders start to come in, call volume increases dramatically, and you begin to hire employees, the capacity of your single cell phone will hit its limit. If you’re still relying solely on your cell, then these are issues that you’re likely already becoming concerned with. What follows are the key issues that you can easily address by adding a virtual phone system to your cell phone to manage every aspect of your business professionally. Professional-Grade Voicemail Voicemail is one of the first things that will require your attention. A standard, personal voice mailbox that comes with your phone just isn’t equipped to handle all of the messages for your business. …

6 Ways to Show Employees that They’re Valuable

As someone running a business, making the extra effort to show your employees that they’re valuable is probably not the highest item on your list of priorities, with so many other things to worry about that are necessary to keep your company running without a hitch. It should, however, rank somewhere on that list because the happier your team is, the better they are going to perform. It doesn’t take a whole lot to give your team members an occasional pat on the back and instill your confidence in them. Let’s look at a few ways that you can do this. 1. Regular Increase in Pay If someone is doing an exceptional job for the company, the last thing you want to do is to forget to give them a periodic raise. It doesn’t have to be a large raise, unless you believe it appropriate to do that, but the …

Why We Love Moz & How It Can Help You Improve SEO

  Not to put too fine a point on it, Moz is an outstanding resource for content marketers. There are a ton of sites, apps, and blogs out there who deal in SEO, as you’ve no doubt seen already, but the information and instruction that you may get from them is often inaccurate or downright useless. You know how you’re always hoping that you’ve finally found a resource online that is actually one of the good ones, that will provide you with the information about SEO that you really need and teach you how to effectively use that information? Moz is that source. Here are just a few of the reasons that Moz stands out, and we know that you’ll find them to be as helpful as we have found.   One of the Greatest Resources Available Today   As SEO becomes more and more complex, we all need some …

Why You Need to Know What Your Domain Authority Is

  Domain Authority (DA) is one little number with big implications for your site. One of the most interesting things about the DA rating system is that is wasn’t created by some central governing body, and it wasn’t created by Google. It was actually developed by the SEO research organization, Moz, in an effort to give any online marketer a better idea of how likely their site is to rank highly in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), so that they can then organize their SEO strategy accordingly. This is one of the reasons that it’s extremely beneficial for you to know your site’s DA rating. Let’s go into a little more detail about how it works, and how you can take the most advantage of the information.   What is Domain Authority, Exactly?   First, let’s look at the literal definition. As defined by Moz on their website, domain authority …

10 Phone System Terms You Probably Misunderstood

  As users of phone systems, people generally assume that they understand most things about them and what all the words mean because after all, we’ve all used phones for our whole lives. The only problem with that is, phone systems have changed quite a bit over the past few decades, and the words have changed, too. In the first place, you may have misunderstood some terms the whole time, anyway. In this post, you’ll see 10 phone system terms that you may or may not be familiar with, and the explanations for each.   1. Port   The term, “port” is not exactly common knowledge; however, just about every adult alive today has ported a phone number, whether they realize it or not. A port is simply the transfer of service for a phone number, from one service provider to another. So, if you have ever switched cell phone …

Is Squarespace the Best Website Builder for a New Business?

Website builders are one of the greatest things that has happened to small businesses in a long time. They make it extremely fast and easy to build a site for your company that looks and works beautifully, in very little time and without the need for a web designer. These services have it down to a science now, and Squarespace is one of the best because their focus seems to be on giving pretty much anybody the ability to create a great website, no matter what your level of experience or technical proficiency. This is what you’re going to get if you use Squarespace to build your site. Website Builders Are Awesome Now If you think back 15 years ago, or even just 10 years ago or less, you’ll remember that it was a complicated and expensive ordeal to build a website. There were few places where you could get …

Blog Actionable Content

Actionable Content: Why It’s the Key to Your Blog’s Success

What is actionable content? If you’ve never heard the term before, then now is the time that you acquaint yourself with it, as a content writer or marketer (as well as a business owner), because there are few things in content creation more integral than this. In a very short definition, actionable content is content that people can read and then use that information for something in the real world. This is the kind of content that performs the best for your blog, and when you create actionable content, it will immediately separate you from the considerable number of blogs out there who are not doing this. Giving People Real Value The bottom line and foundational idea behind actionable content is that whatever you’re posting in your business blog needs to provide real value for the reader. It’s actually not always easy to do, but as best as you can, …

5 Things You Shouldn’t Tell a Customer On the Phone

Phone calls with customers are peculiar situations because, first of all, they’re still a pretty essential method of serving customers, even in the age of the Internet. Also, a representative of your business needs to conduct themselves a little differently than they would if they were speaking to someone in person. We obviously have to be courteous, polite, and helpful as always, in the same way that we would be in an in-person meeting, but customers almost expect an even higher standard of service and bedside manner, as it were, when they’re on the phone with you. Most of the time, we intuitively know what kinds of things we should and should not say to a caller; however, there are a few things that we either let slip from time to time, or don’t realize at the time that it was a mistake. What follows here are 5 things that …