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Blogging may have been around for 50 years, but business blogging has gained traction in the last decade more than any other time. The developments in technology and computing are to thank for this, and so blogging has grown exponentially. If you want to give your business a little more oomph, starting a blog to tell the world about yourselves is the best way to do it. The trouble is that there are so many different ways to do it, it can be difficult to untangle what the best for your business is.

There are many business social media sites, such as LinkedIn, that really put emphasis on business blogging. This is mainly because blogging can help you generate leads and gain more traffic to your site, so promotion is key. Business blogging still remains a fairly niche category, but there are far more platforms for business blogs than ever before. Still confused about where to start? Don’t worry. We’ve put together five of the best business blogging platforms around so you can make an informed choice of where you start showing your personality to the world!

WordPress.com/WordPress.org

WordPress is a user favorite among personal and businesses bloggers, mainly because of how simple it is to run. It’s also the biggest content management system around on the web today. You can choose to use it simply for the blog you want to run, or you can build your company website around it. You can look online for a WordPress hosting comparison so you can choose the best place to have your blog running from. Don’t forget that the .org site is the software and .com is the social network built around blogging. It’s easily confused.

LinkedIn

Not just a social media site for businesses to network, LinkedIn now allows its users to publish content directly onto the website. It’s always been hailed as a businessman’s Facebook page, but now they’re expanding into something more, allowing your content to be seen by business professionals worldwide.

Medium

You may not have heard of this one, as Medium is fairly new to the blogging world and is exactly what it says on the tin. WordPress has developed substantially in its capabilities but it has inspired sites like Medium to stay as solely a blogging platform.

Blogger

Google-owned, Blogger is one of the original blogging platforms and is a social network that has been built around blogging and isn’t software that you would directly install onto a server. You can share gadgets and widgets on your blog with Blogger, and make it interactive.

CEOPress

Only launched last year, CEOPress is a new blogging platform exclusively to CEOs, startup businesses and entrepreneurs. This will allow for a little exclusive networking for the business community and be a good place to start something that is solely for business use.

The platform you use for your business blog can really determine its success. Doing the right research and utilizing the right platform will surge it to success.

If your business is going to succeed, it’s going to need the right people working for it. This all starts with the hiring process. Many employers forget that it’s not just the candidates that need to impress them. It’s just as important for the business to attract the right candidates and to show them why their business is one that they should want to work for. Here’s how you can make that happen for your company.

Have an Impressive Benefits Package to Offer

Candidates always look at the benefits package that’s on offer from a company when they first think about whether to apply. Make sure that it’s available straight away. You want them to be sure that they are getting something positive in return of working for your company. Everyone likes to be able to make the most of certain perks and benefits, and if yours stand out more than other companies that are looking for employees, you might be able to attract the best people.

Use the Opinions of Your Existing Employees

The opinions of your existing employees do matter quite a lot, and you should use them to your advantage when you are running your business and hiring people. For example, you could make testimonials available to your candidates. This could show them what it’s like to work for your company according to the opinions of people that already do. Indeed Reviews can also be very helpful for this kind of thing. They can show that people really do enjoy working for your company. That can make all the difference when it comes to attracting the best.

Run the Business in an Innovative and Ambitious Way

It’s up to you to make sure that your business is the kind of place that looks like a company that people want to work for. If people don’t look at your business and see it as being exciting and interesting, it means that fewer candidates will want to work there. They won’t even apply for positions. And the ones that turn their noses up at your business for lacking innovation and ambition are usually the very best candidates. So, this is not something to take lightly.

Impress Them as Soon as They Walk Through the Door

The way your office looks when those candidates first walk through the door and into the room matters a lot. This is the first impression they get, so you want it to be good and positive. If it’s not, they will just feel disappointed, and their opinions of the business could be affected for the worse. So, make sure that your workplace always feels modern and up to date. It should have a bespoke design and layout that aims to look modern while also meeting the needs of the people that work there.

Hiring the right people could be the difference between success and failure for your small business, so you need to get it right. Make the most of the ideas discussed above.

There’s good news, and there’s bad news. We’ll start with the bad: it’s no longer enough to only develop a marketing campaign. Putting all your resources into marketing will be a waste of time and money if you’re not adopting a sophisticated approach. And now the good news: you have everything at your disposal to incorporate that sophisticated approach, which will, in turn, allow you to foster a more substantial relationship with your customers. Below, we take an in depth look at how you can personalize your marketing, as well as the benefits of doing so.

Benefits

Right, before you begin the journey toward personalizing your user experience, let’s take a look at what you’ll actually get in return. For starters, you’ll be making your customers happier, as well as making it easier for them to continue doing business with you. If you treat them as individuals rather than just another number, you’ll also be making it more likely that they stay as customers in the future (and improving customer loyalty is always a good thing). On a practical level, having one eye on personalization can help focus your marketing and develop a long term strategy.

Problems and Difficulties

Of course, personalized marketing doesn’t just happen. It takes effort, sometimes more effort than a company can give. If you’re intent on reaping the benefits of personalized marketing, you’re going to need a dedicated team to untangle the vast amounts of data that is needed to make it a reality. Also, you should be aware of the limitations: you will not be able to precisely tailor your marketing to each customer. You’ll need to make a few assumptions and guesses here and there; it’s more about making it generally personal rather than comprehensively so.

Different Shades of the Same Color

Everyone is unique, but not overly so. People have characteristics that make them stand apart from the crowd, but only slightly. It’s like a zig-zag in the ocean: up close, the points look far away from each other. From a distance, it just looks like a straight line. As such, people of the same age and who have the same income (more or less) will have more similarities than they do differences. This allows you to create a number of “customer personas,” which you can then apply to your clients. One character might be “aged 29-36, $50,000 income, likes high quality, eco-friendly goods’. From there, you’ll be able to create marketing materials that you only send to your customers who fit that persona.

Targeted Emails

If you’re not making the most of email marketing, then it’s time to start. The stats surrounding email marketing not only suggest that it’s effective; they say that every company, no matter the size, should be incorporating them as a central part of their marketing campaigns. Put simply, people respond to emails. If you’ve already got a database full of email addresses, then put it to good use: the addresses you have are of people who have already shown an interest in your company. They are “on the hook,” so to speak. If you can make it so that each email uses your customer’s name, then all the better. Blanket emails are more and more failing to make it through spam filters; if someone has signed up to your mailing list, and you have their name, you’ll notice a significant increase in click through conversions.

Exist in their Personal Space

The lines between a customer’s personal and private space are becoming more and more blurred, for the simple reason that the vast majority are carrying in their pockets a device with which they do everything. There’s enough information about mobile marketing to suggest that it’s a highly useful tool, provided that you use it wisely. It’s easy to abuse this function, but if you do so, you’ll quickly lose the trust and patience of your customers. Sending an SMS message with a particular offer, ideally one that is time limited is a great way to prompt your customers to make a purchase. Mobile marketing isn’t just about SMS, either: you can also create an app and send targeted promotions through that. People have little objection to this form of marketing, providing it’s relevant and not spammy.

Tailored Website

You shouldn’t just have one website: you should have thousands, each unique to your visitor. Of course, your site will only have one address, and these “thousands of websites” will only differ slightly, but they will have differences. You have enough data at your disposal to show a version of your website that is relevant to your visitor. For example, if a customer has previously bought – or search for – say, a hiking bag at your website, then you should be showing them more camping supplies the next time they visit because it’s obviously something they have an interest in. For a closer look at this approach, look no further than Amazon’s recommendations system: it accounts for a staggering amount of the website’s income.

Appealing To Their Desires

There are smart ways to personalize your content to a user, and one of these is to allow them to customize their content. There’s a great example of this, which formed part of an Iberia Airlines marketing campaign. They asked their customers to pick a place on earth they would love to travel to, as well who they would like to travel with. That’s a nice question to answer, and many did – and they also provided the email address for the person they would go with. From nothing, Iberia Airlines have created a deeper connection with their existing customers and boosted their mailing list at the same time. It’s also just a great way to conduct market research: rather than just asking customers for feedback, which is pretty boring, you can dress it up in a way to ask them what they want.

“Personalized” Rewards

If you have an ecommerce site, you’ll know all too well that many people put things in the basket, go to checkout, and then vanish from your site altogether without making the purchase. It happens all the time. One way you can get round this is to intercept your customer before they have a chance to leave. If they’re inactive on the checkout page for thirty seconds or more, it’s more likely that they’ll leave without buying rather than it is they’ll make the purchase. If they’re suddenly offered a “unique” discount that applies just to them (for whatever reason you want to invent), they’re more likely to complete the transaction.

When in Doubt, Don’t

Of course, there are ways in which personalization can go wrong. And that is when you get the personal details wrong. If you’re a customer called Steve, and you get an email or other correspondence that begins “dear John,” then you’ve just lost a customer. While personalizing your content to your clients is a good idea, you should only do it if you have the workforce and resources to get it right. It’s much worse to get it wrong than not do it at all!

Getting Too Personal

And talking of getting it wrong, it would be a bad idea to go too far the other way, and get too personal. People have, for a good reason, become more guarded about their privacy. Using their name in an email is fine: getting too specific, such as using information they haven’t volunteered but which you have access to (such as location) is crossing a line. Above all, respect your customer’s privacy – you’ll never get them back if you use the data you have to gain an unfair advantage, using information that they have not voluntarily given up.

Pay Attention

In many ways, it’s not so much about how you personalize your content. If you’re trying to make your customer feel like an individual, then you’re on the right lines. In some cases, it’s the small details that can make the biggest difference. For example, if a customer hasn’t yet made a purchase, then the focus should be on gently nudging them in the right direction. If they visit your site after the purchase has made, then the tone should shift to making sure they’re happy with their experience, with links to your customer service team. Personalisation should be mutually beneficial: all great relationships work best when they flow both ways!

To The Future

We’re really just getting going when it comes to personalized marketing. As technologies and attitudes evolve, we’ll see it forming a much greater share of a company’s marketing campaign. The biggest barrier at the moment isn’t data – there’s plenty of that – but decoding the data that’s the issue. In any case, over the coming years it will take off, and by implementing it into your strategy now, you can position yourself ahead of the curve.

The scope for personalized marketing is limitless. Engage with your customers, treat them as the individuals they are, and you’ll see an improvement on your conversions and sales.

We all know that your trusty website is one of the most instrumental tools that will help you grow a startup. It’s a landing page for when others link to your services and products, it’s a way to expand your business into the digital realm and it can be used in conjunction with social media like Twitter and Instagram to grow your brand. It goes without saying that without a website, you’re not going to have a good time growing your business, but it pays to learn how to utilize your website in order to get the most out of it.

The most common type of content on a website is in written form. Be it articles, blog posts or product descriptions, content is usually put into word form because it’s the easiest to produce, it’s cheap to order and most people appreciate being able to read something that their own pace. However, that’s not to say that other forms of media can’t be used, and this article will show you how to leverage other types of media in order to grow your business.

Images

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and there’s no better way to show that than to put it in a business scenario. Instead of explaining what your products can do, pictures to show them in motion and in their intended environment will sell your wares a lot faster than a bunch of text. However, you need to learn how to mingle text and images together to create the best content. Images are one of the key ingredients that make great content for your website, and it’s important to focus on using the right images at the right time in order to bring more attention to your business. Using stock photographs from free websites all the time can get boring, which is why taking your own photographs or creating your own images (or ordering them from a freelancer) can be a much better choice.

Video

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video would be worth millions. Shooting video will require some dedicated equipment (or a smartphone if you’re feeling frugal). Most startups and small companies can’t afford film crews to help them create an advertisement that looks presentable, but there are services like Rotor View that could provide you with some excellent stock footage to be used in your videos. By using drones, you can film large landscapes and buildings to use with your products (if it’s applicable) and it’s far cheaper than hiring a professional film crew to get the shots you need.

Audio

We can’t forget about audio either. Many bloggers are also involved with podcasting, which is similar to a radio talk show only on a smaller scale. Episodes are released at the podcast owner’s own pace, and they can cover almost any topic that you can imagine. If you have a blog on your website or if you want to provide a service for the visually impaired, then you can use audio to your advantage.

Future Media

With technology advancing at such as fast rate, it’s inevitable that new forms of media will be introduced that you can take advantage of. The early birds are going to catch the worm in this case, so be on the lookout for ways to use virtual reality and augmented reality in your business marketing strategy to stay ahead of the game.

You’re passionate about law- you’ve completed all of your education, have gained the necessary experience and are now ready to make big bucks. Setting up your own law firm is one way to go about this. However, as with any kind of business getting off the ground can be difficult. Here are some things you will need to bear in mind specifically when it comes to law.

Plan Ahead

You will need to think about financials, market analysis, mission statement, competitive advantages and so much more. You need to know how much it’s going to cost, and how much you will need to earn in your first year to keep everything ticking over and break even. It’s worth saving a contingency fund just in case things don’t go exactly to plan, that way you leave yourself a buffer without risking going broke. Another thing you will need to plan is what area of law you will be going into. You are sure to have your favorite areas, but of course, some are always going to be more profitable than others. There’s always a call for family lawyers for example, and personal injury does well too. For the most part, these are clients that won’t have worked with a lawyer before and will be more easy to secure. Start specializing in corporate law or other areas and you might find it tricky to get hold of those clients, especially in the beginning.

Finding Clients

You won’t have any clients in the beginning when you first setup your firm, but that doesn’t mean you have chance to laze around. Quite the opposite, if you want to make it a success you need to find ways to get your business out there. Invest in a good website design for lawyers, get all of your social media setup and work on marketing. Just like any business, if you don’t get the word out there, how are people going to find you? It’s worth getting some additional help if this isn’t your area of expertise, but make sure you know what you’re paying for. Some companies will happily take your money without actually doing much, and whatever you try it’s not likely to be an overnight fix. When it comes to marketing, you have to think of the long game.

Business Premises

As a legal firm, you will want to portray a very professional image, so the premises you choose is incredibly important. Smaller businesses can usually get away with small, shabby offices to save money, but since you will be having clients come in this something that has to be right. Legal offices don’t need to be right in the center of cities, you could save money by setting up in a location that’s a little further out. As long as it’s still accessible, it’s not like a shop which relies general passing individuals to go in and purchase from them. Make sure your office is nicely laid out, the signage is professionally done, and the interior and exterior are both clean and well decorated.

The energy industry is one of the most important sectors in the economy for most countries. Companies across the globe use as much as 15 terajoules of energy per year, meaning small businesses are often sought after for cheaper alternatives to sate the growing demand. It’s hard to find your way as a small business in one of the most competitive and large scale markets around the globe. However, startups can employ ideas that bigger companies wouldn’t consider on a larger scale, and offer cheaper alternatives to mainstream energy.

Good things about working in the energy sector

The energy sector will always have jobs and business opportunities available due to the amount of people worldwide using energy. A few extra bonuses come with a paycheck from an energy company, with another main plus being progression training schemes that start you off with basic training into a fully qualified role. Similarly, working at the forefront of technology will provide you with all the latest developments in the tech world, and award recognition not seen in any other sector.

While working in pre-established energy companies is an excellent idea for breaking out of the usual job role and expanding your know-how, creating your own energy business is a similar alternative that puts all you’ve learnt to good use. With the rising need for green, renewable energy in the modern age, many opportunities have opened up for business ideas that depart from the conventional energy flow.

How using an uncommon energy source can make you stand out

Many sources of energy exist in the world. One way to make you stand out in terms of energy needs is to use a renewable and affordable uncommon energy source, such as briquetting. By using a press to create blocks of biomass waste from materials such as excess wood and sawdust, a cheaper and cleaner alternative to traditional fossil fuel methods is easily created. Plus, they burn about 50% hotter per pound and work out as more cost effective and accessible for customers compared to logs for open fires or wood burning stoves. Briquettes can be used in a variety of areas such as residential heating, agriculture, and gasification.

You’ll be able to branch out into a more niche market with emphasis on green energy. This can work wonders for effective advertising due to green energy concerns holding over $200 billion of disposable income in the current market.

The necessary skillsets

Being active in such a busy sector would require any startup employees to be above all, hard working. Flexibility in a technological field will give you the edge due to the unpredictable nature of working with power. As the energy sector often works on a grid, having a trustworthy and reliable team around you is essential to making it further in your business goals.

Creating your own startup for energy needs is an excellent option in this economic climate as more demands for green and inexhaustible fuels are created daily on an international basis.

Manufacturing a product can take a long time. From concepts and designs to the product on the shelf, a lot of work has to be done to make sure the item comes out just right. Most of this work is done on the factory floor, with employees testing and checking goods. But, this isn’t the only thing a business can do to improve their products. Along with it, the equipment you use in your factory will also make a big difference. To help you to make your products just a little bit better, this post will be going through several of the parts you’ll need to gather to put your factory together. With this in place, you’ll see a noticeable increase in the quality you’re able to produce.

Employees

The dream of automation may not be far away for a lot of factories, but for most small ones, this sort of resource is still a long way off. Instead, little companies have to rely on people to do this work for them. The employees you choose to fill the roles in your factory will make a huge difference to the products you make. Along with this, the people you choose to design the goods will also impact them. You should always look for employees through a recruitment agency. This will enable you to avoid any bad candidates for your job, only looking at the very best of the bunch. When it comes to interviews, you can handle them yourself or have someone else do them in your place. Ultimately, though, their employment will be your decision.

The Building

With some people to work for you, it’s time to consider the building you work from. When a large company opens a facility like this, they will often have it custom built to meet their needs. Smaller businesses can’t take this sort of action, though. Instead, they have to find a building which meets their needs and already exists. The help of a commercial real estate agent can help you with this, providing you with loads of resources which you wouldn’t otherwise have. Along with this, this sort of professional can help you with the legal side of the transaction. This is one of the best ways to ensure that you don’t make any mistakes along the way.

Machines/Tools

With your building out of the way, you can start to consider the beating heart of your factory; the machines. This part of your facility will be incredibly important. The quality of machines and tools you use can have a huge impact on the products you make. Of course, though, even the cheapest manufacturing equipment is still expensive. Getting your hands on CNC machines, 3D printers, and the other gear you need can be hard. Thankfully, a lot of the companies offering these devices also allow small businesses to take loans to buy them. This gives your company a good chance to start off with the best possible machines, instead of having to deal with poor quality alternatives.

Power/Redundancy

The machines you buy will almost certainly use a lot of power. To make the most of them, you’ll also need them to be running as much as possible. Achieving this goal might require some upgrades to the building you decide to use. Factories need to have much beefier power delivery systems than homes or offices. Without this in place, you could risk fires or damage to your property. Along with this, power cuts can be very regular in some parts of the world. So, it could be worth having a battery backup to make sure that you never have to worry about being without power. With this sort of technology in place, it will be easy to keep your business running day and night.

Consumables

Once you buy a machine, it’s not a simple matter of powering it to keep it going, though. In fact, some machines will require almost daily refreshments to their parts. Finding an industrial supply company to support you with this is nice and easy. This sort of business will be able to provide you with everything your factory needs, from tooling and sandpaper to full-blown repairs. Centralizing your supply like this will make it easy to keep up with orders. Along with this, most manufacturing companies will set up subscriptions with their suppliers, making it even easier to keep on top of the orders. Like the quality of your machinery, the quality of the consumables you use will also impact your products. So, it’s worth looking for the very best options you can find.

Health And Safety

The law surrounding manufacturing is very strict. You have to use the right materials and tools, to ensure that products don’t end up dangerous. And, you have to make sure that your products will last for long enough. Along with laws that protect your customers, there are also a lot which are designed to protect your employees. Health and safety regulations differ from place to place but are still vital to the quality of your products. Having a safe factory will make it a lot easier for employees to carry out their work. They won’t have to deal with risks or threats, making it easy to focus on what they need to do. You can pay another business to come and audit your factory for you, ensuring that you meet the guidelines set by your government.

Hopefully, this post will give you a good idea of what can be done to your factory to improve the quality of the products that come out of it. A lot of small businesses avoid this sort of investment, leaving it until they grow. But, this can make life very hard for you in the future. As your business gets bigger, your workload will increase alongside it. This can make it hard to start thinking about better machines, as you won’t have to time to do research. By getting this out of the way early, you’ll save yourself the trouble of having to do it all at the same time.

There is article after article about improving your website’s traffic and boosting its page rank, but what about measuring its success in the first place? There’s a common misconception that most business owners know all the best tools to use when it comes to measuring the success of their website, but that’s not actually the case. There are a lot of entrepreneurs (and bloggers) who are in the dark when it comes to monitoring their online success.

A lot of newer business owners presume that if their website is sleek, smart and stylish, and easy to use and navigate, that it’s bound to be successful. However, the truth of the matter is, it’s not just about aesthetics, there’s more to website success than that. To determine how successful your website is, you need to dive into the data and analytics.

To make the process of measuring your website’s success easier, below are some hacks.

Utilize analytics tools

For tracking your website’s pageviews, analytics tools are crucial. There are a wide range of analytics tools that can be used to track your website’s data, one of the most popular of which is Google Analytics. This is one of the most popular analytical tools due to the fact that it is free to use, whereas many other similar tools come with a monthly premium. The reason that these kind of tools are so popular is because they allow you to see not only how many pageviews your site gets each month but also where these visitors come from. It’s this information that is incredibly useful when it comes to implementing a digital marketing campaign.

Measuring your site’s SEO score

Another way that you can measure your website’s success is by monitoring your site’s SEO score. It will be low, to begin with, but over time you can watch it grow. To track your score, there are plenty of tools available. If you contact an SEO company, you will probably find that as part of their SEO services they offer an SEO score checker where you can check your website’s SEO score for free. Once you’ve got your score, you can then work to improve it – teaming up with an SEO specialist could be the answer to this.

Tracking your DA, PA, and spam score

DA, PA and spam scores are all vital measurements for your website’s success, so tracking them is crucial. DA – aka domain authority – tells you how authoritative your website is and how well ranked it is in search engines. PA – aka page authority – is similar to DA except that it relates to a specific page of your website, such as your ‘About Us’ page or a page from your blog. As for your website’s spam score, the lower it is, the better. This is because websites that have high spam scores are more likely to be penalised by search engines like Google. You can track your DA, PA and spam score via Moz.

There you have it, a guide to the best methods of measuring your website’s success.

There has been plenty of blogging literature concerned with how to survive the early days of your startup. Tutorials exist detailing how to staff your departments, encourage sales growth, market your products wisely and set up an office with a tight budget. Guides exist detailing how to effectively manage your employees new to a startup firm, how to operate as a new boss, and how to implement clear fiscal planning to overcome the rock foundations upon which every startup stands.

What’s sorely lacking in this content is how you should act and plan for startup success. That’s the goal you began with. So why not plan for when it is achieved? Startups only succeed when success is considered an actual option. In the mad dash to survive and stay relevant as a startup, you might forget that success is even the goal. Daily considerations with startups are intense, and can distract you to the point where you get stuck in short term thinking, instead of long term planning.

When you do start becoming successful, it can be amazing to witness, but requires arguably more of a time investment and understanding of how to navigate these paths of growth. The following in-depth guide will give you the details necessary to achieve your growth with style and stability, all the while opening doors to even more future success and growth.

Know Your Market

You’ve made certain strides thus far, and that means you have successfully been able to market your product, gain exposure for it, and capitalize on this. If you have carved a niche out of the market you inhabit, you should congratulate yourself. However, the responsibility now rests with you to understand the market you have been successful within. Using analytic data, you might have been surprised at where the sales have accrued from, and the demographics your product has been popular within. Once you have established this data, you need to analyze it. Knowing your market serves two benefits. One, it allows you to tailor your future marketing strategies to try and retain this customer base. Two, it allows you to, while clinging to the original customer base, pivot your plan to try and make it more accessible to new interests.

The first few months of a startup not only serves an exercise in intense, focused business practice, but also serves as a testing chamber for new ideas. When you have limited relative exposure, you have the freedom to try new marketing strategies and product derivatives that a larger firm might not be able to try without negative corporate imaging consequences. Luckily, at this time you will be in the sweet spot of having the financial backing to try and implement new ideas, while also still being in the ‘testing stage.’ Customers simply won’t respond to bad ideas with as much venom as if you were a more established business. Through knowing the market, you can know yourself.

Assess Your Success

Of course, the only way you can capitalize on success is if you assess what went right in the first place. This should not be a self-congratulatory effort, but simply a surgical self-reflection that gives you the almost scientific data needed to try and replicate your success and emulate what you did right in your future exploits.

Some businesses fail to keep up their innovative and creative ability in this instance, in an effort to simply rinse and repeat what may have worked before. You should try and find a balance between your original vision, and refining your strategy to incorporate what worked.

Update/Add Departments

As you increase in sales capacity, grow a customer base and develop more refined methods of marketing, you will need more staff and more departments to handle this load. It’s likely that as a new startup, you have tried to take on multiple roles at once. Now your role will organically shift to more of a leadership mindset. You simply cannot balance between support, sales, leadership, and accounting as you did beforehand.

Your business will only continue to grow if you reinvest in these added departments, and staff them with at least one competent individual east, at least to begin with. The time this will free up for you will help you try and solidify that golden resource, whatever it is, that has made you successful to begin with. Upon creating these departments, you will need to make sure that you enact each one with a company policy and methodology for working. You shouldn’t simply hire employees to staff these departments and let their competency do the work. You should sit down and figure out exactly how you want to proceed.

For example, when setting up a support department, you should find out exactly what platforms of support you want to provide to your audience. Next, you should ascertain what scripts they should use. Scripts can come off as impersonal, but they help provide your support staff with the exact framework they need to understand what to provide your firm with. It will give them a clear and concise way to effectively solve many support tickets in a day. Without a script, the support team can seem unprofessional. Despite your initial startup interest in seeming human and accessible, with growth comes the necessity for compromise and change. You simply cannot cope with the overwhelming amount of support tickets that arises from successful sales and provide a neat, tailored and customized solution for each one. Compromise where needed, and excel where you can.

Dedicated Accountants

 dedicated accountant or team of accountants are required to keep up with the budgeting, accounting security, money management and tax requirements of a growing firm. Even if you are a whiz at mathematics and fiscal planning, this will be a full-time job, and your talents will be best used elsewhere. If necessary, you can outsource, but it might be more cost effective and beneficial long-term to hire someone and pay them a salary.

Develop

Always develop something new. Your established base of customers will only be satiated if you launch new product lines, new additions to your service, or some form of better infrastructure that benefits the end user. This can help you seem relevant, useful and exciting as a firm, labeling yourself as one to watch. Now have more standing,  you might find that crafting your own software through bespoke software development can give you the tools necessary to embedding your internal IT solutions with fluidity and accuracy regarding the nuances of your operation.

New Space

If you’ve been using a makeshift home space, or a small office, you can now give your staff the space they deserve and hire a proper office, with security, spacious office desks, IT support and maybe even air conditioning. Your staff have been good to them, so it’s time to reward them now you have the funds to do so. This will mean much more than simple gift rewards, as it will improve the entire working experience of your employees instead.

Solid Contracts

In the spirit of rewarding your employees, now might be the time to bestow solid, reliable contracts and salaries for your employees, as well as any benefits you might now be able to afford. This can help an employee feel like all the risk they placed into working for your startup was worth it, and now they are being rewarded with the security they hoped for. Make a big deal of this. It’s an important milestone in the story of your business journey.

Don’t Lose Your Edge

We mentioned earlier in the article about the need for compromise as your business grows, using the example of a more uniform support structure to help meet the demand of your clients. You might find that there are more and more considerations like this that become more of a melting pot of competent ideas as opposed to the efficiency of a clear vision.

If you decide to go public, you will notice that you will compromise more and more in order to satisfy your shareholder meetings and try to provide sustainable growth at all costs. Be careful. Despite the temptation to grow your operation at all costs, remember why you took the risk of opening a startup to begin with. It’s likely because you were tired of the standard corporate and semi-soulless methodology of success.

If it means retaining your integrity and preserving what made you a hit as a new standout in your field, then be sure to never lose your edge, and stay fast and true to the business plan and desires you laid out at the very beginning, when you were worried if you were going to make it through the next month.

Refine Competency

Just because you’re successful doesn’t mean you can’t keep learning. As a startup CEO, you have more of an obligation to yourself than ever to keep refining your competency. Larger businesses require better captains at the helm. Become one, making use of blogs like this one, and the free exchange of online information that can keep you sharp as a razor.

These 9 top tips can help anyone overcome the increased demands of startup success.

Sorry, but there is no way around it – businesses have to cut costs. If they don’t, the odds of survival are not high. Considering, that 80% of new companies fail within the first year, you are going to need all the help you can get. But, it isn’t as easy as slashing away and hoping for the best because there is a human element. As soon as employees see cuts, they start to get edgy and this can affect the office’s morale. A healthy working environment is imperative to success, so you have to avoid this at all costs. The question is, how?

Keep Cards Close To Chest

As the boss, the workforce is only privy to information that you choose to release. So, if the office were to figure out that the firm was in the process of cutting costs, it would probably come from the horse’s mouth. With that in mind, think twice before telling anyone about the company’s finances. Instead, involve your trusted managers and come up with a plan to slash costs incrementally so as not to arouse suspicion. A prime example would be to address overheads and eliminate the ones that are unnecessary. That way, you can avoid widespread panic until a later date. Remember that ignorance is bliss in some cases.

Target Information Technology

The wage bill is the easiest and most tempting expense to cut because of the size. Plus, tech and software are cheaper and as productive. The problem with firing employees is the fact that the cat is out of the bag. Once people see their colleagues leaving, they will jump to conclusion and it will be chaotic. The good news is there is no reason to fire anyone if you are willing to cut the waste from the IT department. Can you access information offline? With the Office 365 package from Better Online, you can work from anywhere in the world. Do you have an in-house team? Then outsource it to a third party. There are always ways to make the business leaner.

Communicate

Last but not least, don’t forget to communicate succinctly and coherently when the truth does come out. Keeping cost cutting measures a secret is a good option, but only if the rumors don’t start to fly. Once the gossip begins, there is no way to maintain the secrecy any longer. Instead, the best option is to tell the truth and explain the situation. However, the good bosses understand that basic facts will not do, so they go one step further and appease people’s fears. For instance, you could say that you are not looking to save money by reducing the labor force. Quite simply, this is their biggest fear and they will want reassurances.

There is no doubt that cutting costs does have a negative effect on employee morale. After all, it is a small leap from cutting costs to losing a job. However, with these tips, it is possible to tackle the issue without losing the trust of the workforce. That is vital because they are the people that will help the business through these tough times.

When you’re the owner of a business, it’s incredibly easy to get into the mindset of assuming that you can handle everything yourself. After all, it’s your business; you’re in control; you know what’s best. Right? Well, even if you do know what’s best for your business, that doesn’t always mean that you’re the right person to put things into practice. One thing that you cannot do as a business owner is let your ego get the best of you. If you’re not able to step back and accept that you may need help and support, then your business is as good as doomed. To prevent that from happening, here are a few places where it might be best for your business for you to ask for help.

Marketing

Far too many business owners assume that marketing is something that they can learn easily without putting in too much work. However, the reality is that it’s an incredibly complicated, nuanced field that often requires a great deal of care and attention to pull it off effectively. This is especially true now because of the rise of digital marketing, which requires an entirely different skillset to traditional marketing. Sure, there are a plenty of places to learn about things like SEO and Adwords, but you may well be better off focusing on other things and bringing in an outside organization to deal with your marketing.

Waste management

Your business’s environmental impact might not be something that you’ve considered before but, in the modern age, your business simply cannot afford to be wasteful. Not only is it going to lead to you wasting a lot of money, but it’s going to seriously impact the way that customers view your business as a whole. By connecting with a company like Direct Resource Management, you can make sure that your business’s waste is being correctly dealt with. This is especially true for things like electronic waste, which far too many businesses tend to ignore altogether.   

Accounting

Considering how important money is to the success of a business, it’s remarkable how often something like accounting get’s left at the bottom of the “to-do” pile. This is usually because accounting is that awful combination of complicated and boring, which leads a lot of business owners to ignore it for as long as possible. By hiring an accountant, you can be sure that your finances are always being carefully monitored and taken care of, without having to dedicate huge amounts of time to wading through invoices and tax returns.

Employee care

Just because you’re a great business owner doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be a great manager. Your ability to run a business rarely translates to an ability to motivate and engage with other people. If you find yourself in that kind of position then hiring a manager to help keep your employees on track at all times might be the best choice overall. It might sometimes feel as though you’re giving up your business to someone else, but it’s important to remember that you’re still the core of the business. It’s simply the manager’s job to relay your desires and intentions to your employees in a way that keeps them engaged and happy.

All business owners should think about ways in which they can assist their team members to progress. That helps the individual because it means they can take advantage of more opportunities. However, it also benefits the company because workers are less likely to leave for something better. The issue is that most people have no idea where to start when it comes to that process. Thankfully, there are some fantastic strategies in this article that entrepreneurs might like to consider. If bosses get this right, they will build a brilliant reputation, and they should reduce staff turnover rates.

Advertise all vacancies in-house first

Whenever there is a new job opportunity at the company, it makes sense to let current employees know before advertising the vacancy online. Lots of business owners use sites recommended by Better Team. However, the in-house method is preferable. That will give people already working for the company the chance to apply and try something new.

Of course, those employed by the brand at the moment will have a reasonable understanding of how the operation works. That should help the business owner to save money when it comes to initial training. It’s still sensible to hold interviews in the same way bosses would when assessing other candidates. However, entrepreneurs should either mention the new positions at staff meetings or promote them on a notice board somewhere in the building.

Provide educational opportunities

There are lots of ways in which business owners could offer educational opportunities to their team members. They include:

• In-house training
• Funded college placements
• Online e-learning courses

People who opt for something like the ClickMinded SEO course would then have the chance to move departments and help out with web design or marketing. Those who manage to complete a management training program could gain more responsibilities within the business. That makes sense, right? Just look for educational programs that will benefit both the company and the individual.

Create career development pathways

Many people benefit from learning on the job in the modern business world. So, it’s wise for bosses to design career development paths. That means drawing a line that shows employees how they rise through the ranks to better positions. For example, company owners might highlight a development pathway from working in the warehouse to becoming part of the logistics team. That might go something like this:

• Start as a warehouse operative
• After one year, apply for a team leader role
• After one year, apply for a team management role involving logistics
• After one year, apply to work with the logistics team

If employees have information of that nature to hand, it makes them feel more confident in their roles. The action stops workers from thinking they are in a dead-end job where they can’t improve their prospects.

All the ideas outlined in this article should assist bosses in providing the best opportunities to their employees. People who do that will experience a greater level of success in the business world because they won’t have to worry too much about staff turnover. When all’s said and done, it’s hard to work on the development of a brand when entrepreneurs have to spend all their time interviewing new candidates. So, smart bosses will use some of the ideas from this article to improve their hiring process and help expand employee loyalty!

One of the most common worries of a startup company is whether or not they will succeed. You can have a great idea, a solid business model and a business plan that is watertight for growth. However, none of that is a guarantee for a company to be a success. The world is full of opportunities and with the birth of thousands of young companies waiting to swim with the big fish out there, the competition is fierce. A startup needs a leader with enough tenacity to take on the many uncertain and ambiguous challenges that are involved with starting a company. There are many of these challenges ahead and you have to decide if you are ready for them right now.

Unfortunately, 90% of new businesses will fail in the first year. It’s your job to be one of the 10% that succeeds. It’s a difficult truth to get your head around as an entrepreneur; especially as you likely are full to the brim with boundless optimism about the brilliance of your company. Reality is a bitter pill to swallow and if you hope to get ahead, you have to face it early. Hearing the statistics shouldn’t put you off wanting to do well. In actual fact, statistics that say you are likely to fail should make you want to work better and work harder to do well. It’s classic reverse psychology for companies.

Success is about more than the location of the company headquarters. It’s about more than where you start out – usually in the spare room of the house! It’s about noticing the popularity of your product or service rising and hitting the market at the right time. It’s about expanding your business enough that the spare room no longer suffices. That you have to bring in more staff, move to a larger office space and need Windows VPS with RDP to cope with the sheer volume of work and staff numbers. Everything down to the equipment you have to expand into should be taken into consideration. It’s needing more of everything because what you have just doesn’t last you enough for the success you are gaining. Ultimately, it’s about putting your all into your startup and guiding it exactly where you need it to go. It’s because of all this that it’s important to understand what it is you need to succeed with the big dogs and not be the local one hit wonder. There are six major bites of the apple that you need to understand to get to the core of your success, and we’ve put these together for you below:

Customers.

Your company cannot succeed without customers. Identifying the potential market and figuring out their unmet needs is essential for success. You need to ask yourself what it is you can provide that others cannot. It doesn’t matter whether what you offer is that on a large scale or a more niche opportunity, you have to be able to foresee whether the work will dry up too soon. Look at the need versus the market and you should have your answer as to whether you will be able to make a long-term go of your dreams.

Product

So, we’ve talked about meeting an unmet need, but how do you figure that out? Focus groups! You see reality TV shows that portray business wannabe’s who ask focus groups about a proposed product, and do their market research, only to go against what the public want. Never do this! The only way you are going to be able to bring in more people to buy your product is to listen to what it is that they want. Research is crucial here and reading articles like this one about how you should stay steady with your product from planning through to development is going to help you. Work out your costs to make sure you are going to be able to get back some of the money you have spent in profits.

Timing

As with most things, timing is everything. You have to bring your company and your product at the exact right moment that they need you to. Every single industry has a lifecycle and there is a limit on the amount of time you have to bring the product to the public eye, before people move on and want something else. You have to time it perfectly so that you don’t bring your new innovation to market too soon, and you can read more about how that can affect your business here. When it comes to working out the best time for you, it’s going to take some research and watching market trends to know for sure.

Competition

Every startup that has an idea they want to bring to the market will be aware of the fact they will have competition out there. The key is to make sure you don’t have too much of it before you bring your product to market. If you are finding that you have a lot more competition than you realize, then it’s worth noting that you are entering a saturated industry and your product likely will not succeed, unless it can offer something above and beyond. This is the reason that studying the competition is so important. Not just what their product is, but how they market it and who they aim it towards. This type of insight will allow you to understand how you can best your competition.

Finance

Money makes the world go around. It also will be the thing that brings your product to the market. Planning ahead is key here, as you have to understand how much up-front capital you will need to put into your product development. You also have to plan for the gap between accounts payable and accounts receivable. The financial risk you will be anticipating doesn’t have to be huge, but it does have to be enough to give you time to plan solidly. Your business – as like every other one – will require money to get started. Business loans like these can get you there, but you have to work out your profit and loss projection and come up with contingency plans in case something goes wrong.

Team

It’s a given that as a startup, you need to have the best people on board with you to get your product ready. You should have specialists in all departments, and the most important will be those who can understand the customers even better than you can. Technical experts, IT experts and those who are charming enough to handle marketing and PR will be essential assets to the team that will bring your product to success. The costs of hiring the right team can be high, it’s true, but is this an investment that you would be willing to skimp on? We didn’t think so!

Your success is going to very much depend on these six elements working in perfect synchronicity. You want to be able to bridge the gap between rushing in too far to impress the customers, with having a successful product model that you can offer. It’s important that you evaluate every opportunity, identify every weakness and look for the ways your startup can fail before it does so you can catch it early. You success will depend on you – are you ready to go and get it?