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Utilise Social Networking And Gain More Fans

July 22, 2011 By

Whatever service your business offers, social networking is growing so big that it’s likely to contain your customers – if you aren’t using it, you should be!

First, work out your target audience group. This should be easy to do, using your business plan and looking at who frequently purchases your products, but needs to be kept up to date in order to be useful.

Next, set up a Facebook page, and a Twitter account. It is is better to do this at the same time, to give you better chances of getting both names. Using your business name, or very similar, is a good idea, to allow your customers to find you easier. If you use a different name, try to keep it consistant across your social networking.

Link your social networking accounts on your homepage. Twitter provide a button which you can use to link to your twitter account on your website, making this very easy.

Offer competitions to encourage people to find and ‘like’ your page, or ‘follow’ you. Commonly, companies give something away (a small product, or service) once they reach 100 followers, 500 followers…this encourages people to join. Once they have joined, they will see posts you make on their social networking feed.

Post regular updates. Be careful not to mix personal and business posts, and do not post anything controversial – keep it to topical conversations, and making updates about your products – you could post pictures of the production process, or ask customers about colors and patterns.

When your customers log on, your posts will be shown, reminded them of your business and ensuring they will remember you – this is a very effective marketing campaign which can really make a difference to your business! One final tip – schedule the time you spend on this each day, to ensure you don’t ‘lose’ too much time.

Filed Under: Adding Value, Increasing Success, Business Tagged With: , ,

Does Your Small Business Use Twitter?

June 19, 2011 By

Most small businesses have realized the advantages of connecting with their customers through Facebook. Not everyone, however, has seen the potential in using a Twitter account to market small businesses. If you have been on the fence about whether to open a Twitter account for your business, then you will want to consider these advantages before you make a final decision.

Use Interesting Posts

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...

Image via CrunchBase

No one likes to receive boring posts. If you have ever gotten messages such as “drinking coffee,” “I hate Monday,” and “back in the car,” then you know how little it takes to stop following a dull poster.

When you use interesting Twitter posts, though, you get the opportunity to share your business’s personality with customers. This can help you create a brand identity without spending any money on advertisements.

Advertising Through Twitter

You can also use your interesting posts to keep customers in the loop. A café owner might post a message that says “next ten people through the door get a free latte!” to increase business on a slow day. You could even use Twitter to offer special deals to your customers by posting “today only, 10 percent off to anyone who says ‘hooligan’ during checkout.” That’s like sending a coupon to your favorite customers without even paying for paper and printing.

If you don’t see the marketing potential of Twitter, then sign up and start following some of your favorite businesses. You will quickly see that some companies have made a fine art of posting messages that stimulate business. What are some of the best Twitter messages that you have seen?

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The Risk of Making Money in the Stock Market

June 6, 2011 By

 

NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 18: Traders crowd around ...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Everyone knows that the stock market can fall or rise considerable amounts in a single day. What many people don’t realize, though, is that volatility equals opportunity. As long as you know how to take risks reasonably, you could find that you increase your profits year after year despite how the stock market performs.

Buy Low and Sell High

Falling stock market prices certainly look scary. Why would anyone want to invest in a company that has lost value recently?

As stock values fall, you get the opportunity to purchase them at lower prices. If you have done your research, then you should be able to make educated guesses about how far the price will drop. If you manage to purchase stock at its lowest value, then you just have to wait for the price to start rising again. Then you can sell the stock that you do not need when it reaches a price that can earn you a substantial profit.

The Risk of Buying Stock

If you have been trading stocks for a long time, then you might find that you can spot certain trends in the market. No matter how much experience you have, though, there is always the chance that you will make a bad bet. Spread your stocks out over several industries to help ensure that you do not lose all of your investment capital during a correction. That way, you control your loses by mitigating risk.

Many people love the money that they get from buying and selling stocks, but they also love the rush. What are some of your biggest victories?

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High Profit Forex Trading Strategies

May 20, 2011 By

Contrary to popular belief, you do not need to invest a large amount of money in the forex trading market in order to make money. You can invest a small amount of money to turn a large profit, but you need to know how to make wise investments. One of things that you need to learn before entering the market is that there is not a sure fire way to ensure that you will make money.

Many people think that to successfully trade forex online, they have to follow the trends. The problem with following trends is that trends end. While you might make money while the trend is happening, you will likely lose money as soon as the market shifts. Rather than follow trends, look at patterns to determine what happens next. It is also wise to diversify your portfolio so that if one area of the market is not doing well, you make money in another area.

Another thing that you need to consider is how you manage your money. While money management may not seem like a strategy, it is one of the most important ways to succeed in the trading market. One of the facts of trading currency is that you will lose money at point or another – it is just part of the game. However, you can minimize the damage of the loss if you managed your finances so that whatever you are losing will not be overly damaging. The most important thing is that you have diversified your portfolio enough so that you can continue to play.

 

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Hiring a Business Development Manager

May 18, 2011 By

If you’re serious about your personal development and career management, then you should consider hiring a business development manager. A good consultant can help you keep your business on the right track with its financial goals, and expand its growth at the same time. However, there are few things that you should take into consideration before setting out to hire anyone.

For instance, you should make sure that your consultant has completed a degree program that has fully prepared them for a career in financial development. In order to get the most out of your business development manager, you should consider paying tuition for their online classes. Furthering their education will keep them updated on the trends of the industry, and it will ensure that you get the most for your money. Fortunately, online classes are something that they can complete on the side while they are still working for you – the class work won’t take away from your work day.

In addition to making sure that your financial consultant has a thorough understanding of profit, revenue, and supply vs. demand, you will also want to make sure that they are reliable. Trustworthiness, and always coming through on their word, are two of the most important things that you can look for in a development manager. After all, you don’t want to get let down in the middle of a financial crisis, or a big deal that you need to see through. The best way to find a reliable development manager is to ask other professionals in your industry for reviews.

 

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Supplying for Everyone

May 18, 2011 By
Supply and demand

Image via Wikipedia

Everyone knows about the rule of supply and demand. If there is no demand for a particular offering, the supply of it dwindles to nearly nothing, withering on the vine. However, if the supply is insufficient for the demand, prices go up spectacularly. When you can find a place where the demand is high and isn’t yet being met, you have found the niche to launch your offering. You may eventually end up supplying for everyone.

Take food, for instance. Everybody eats, and there are plenty of places where a person can get food. However, every time a new restaurant chain takes hold of a particular section of the market, a new need seems to have sprung up out of nowhere. Naturally, a new need hasn’t appeared, but merely the old need for food has been redirected yet again. Only a person’s status quo bias keeps them from initially recognizing how potentially amazing an offering might be. This kind of supply and demand relationship should open your mind to a possibility many people never even consider.

When it comes right down to brass tacks, you can supply whatever you believe has an underlying demand, even if the general public has no clue the potential for a need even exists. Many people lack imagination, and would simply dismiss an idea out of hand. You can call this a lack of vision, or you can call it the exact level of pressure you need to seriously consider a proposition in the first place. Many times in life, your best ideas are going to have the most resistance, precisely because they’ve got real potential.

 

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Filling the Need

May 9, 2011 By
Leotis engages attendees in the value proposition

Image by One Laptop per Child via Flickr

There is an old saying when it comes to entrepreneurialism- all you have to do is find a need and fill it. However, sometimes identifying a need you can actually fill becomes a serious challenge in itself. If you really think through the ideas you have, you might even identify several places where you can fill different needs. If not, you can always simply modify an existing value proposition to work for a different group.

Everyone who markets intelligently knows that when you want to target a particular group, you can do far better than if you tried to target everyone. While some massive companies have the kind of budget necessary to target numerous different kinds of individuals or companies, reaching and successfully marketing to everyone is a pipe dream on its best day. Once you have identified a need, all you have to do is figure out who both understands that they have this need, and is willing to compensate you accordingly to fill this need for them.

When you meet someone else’s needs, you do a lot more than just connect one person with something they desire and earn a profit in doing so. You open yourself up to all sorts of additional opportunities you might have otherwise never even considered. As you fill needs, you will usually find all sorts of additional needs connected to your original one. If they are reasonably similar, you may end up filling half a dozen needs without deviating much from your original business plan- which should always be open to some alterations as your business expands outward.

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Increasing Your Profits

March 28, 2011 By

Increasing the size of your business or the amount of sales does not always lead to more profits. Many companies fail because they can not keep up with production and still others spend any money they do make on marketing. Of course having reasonable level of sales and a certain amount of marketing are important aspects to business but investing in this alone may not lead to profit.

Take the example of the dairy farmer with 30 milking cows. This farmer is able to run the farm on is own with help from his family and maintaining a limited amount of machinery. He is able to send his kids to college so that they have choices and his family lives a reasonably comfortable life. Then consider the dairy farmer with 300 milking cows. With two many animals to work on his own and huge amount of feed to harvest, he must create infrastructure and invest in machinery for faster and larger production. He needs huge storage facility and has all sorts of increased costs due to this. The second farmer makes less profit for his family than the first farmer.

The point is that growth isn’t always the best answer to maintaining a business. For many businesses there is a proper size and a certain amount of profit one should strive for. Not all business is like selling t-shirts on the side of the road, where you get more profit for every shirt your sell. Once the business gets larger, you have more responsibility, and a larger work force to complete the work. Don’t grow your business because you think you have to do it. Set goals and enjoy your work.

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Increasing Your Sales

March 24, 2011 By

In the case of most businesses increasing sales is one of the most important goals. Increasing the amount of money that the company makes is of primary importance, almost above anything else. But for a minute just consider that the idea that a company must always grow and increase its sales isn’t the most important goal.

What other goals might a company have other than increasing sales? One of the most important questions is actually how big do you want your business to become. If you are working for yourself and you have no intention of hiring employees then there is a limit to the size of your business even if you work extra long hours and don’t take vacations. There is a limit. If you only want a number of employees that you can manage on your own and don’t want managers and supervisors then there is a limit to the size of your business.

The goal may be actually to continually improve your product or service to offer the highest level of business that you can. Once your business reaches your intended size there is less focus on sales and marketing and more focus on maintaining a product that you want to supply and that people want.

Too many businesses are spending all their profit trying to market something that isn’t worth it, because it isn’t the best option. Restructuring is an option to refocus on providing quality instead of only quantity. Many businesses in the United States were founded on this principle and continue to uphold it. It isn’t the only determining factor but quality should be of primary importance.

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Focus on the Customer

March 20, 2011 By

For years the words, “the customer is always right” seemed to be the mantra of the commercial sales world. One has to wonder if the customer is always right then what voice does the owner of the company have? Do we really want people in our economy that believe they have no voice and that anyone that comes in off the street has more voice than the person that spends every working day of the week inside that retail space, at the customer service desk or on the telephone.

The statement “the customer is always right” couldn’t be more wrong. The truth is that it is important to be clear about what your business is selling and what you are willing to provide. The idea that a customer can come into the restaurant and get anything that they want, on the menu or not, is honestly not good business. In this example the kitchen will slow, the money made off that meal will be less and there is opportunity to loose valued customers because of slower production.

The statement should be “Do whatever you can to make the customer enjoy their visit within the scope of the companies mission”. In other words, the customer is always right as long as they came to the right place in the beginning. Often a staff that feels empowered and capable of standing up for the product they are selling will do far better than bowing and acting sheepishly to every customer. The idea to keep in mind is that empowerment will sell and will be respected by the people that really want your products.

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