Selling A Brand By Using The Right Branding Statement

StorytellingBrands have evolved to become both the identity of the product that you wish to sell and the essence of what your customers want to buy. A brand is not simply a product offering; in fact, it signifies quality, service, and reliability. A solid brand has a story to tell of its own, one that makes its captive audience loyal to it forever. What all great brands have in common is an amazing story and a unifying statement that tells customers everything they need to know about it. When a customer hears that statement, they will know exactly what the brand will do for them. Continue reading “Selling A Brand By Using The Right Branding Statement”

Public Relations: A Necessary Tool in Your Marketing Kit

Interviewing businessman or politician, press conferencePublic relations, by it’s most basic and simplistic definition, is using media contacts and exposure to make a person or business famous. It’s an important facet of any marketing strategy, and is, unfortunately, also one of the least practiced and understood.

So, what are public relations? Well, it’s basically an effort to influence the public or target demographic in some way. This could mean drafting a press release, pitching media or coordinating media outreach for an event.

The key to an effective PR campaign is understanding what IS a story and what is not a story. This can be a tricky task if you have no experience working with media. But there are a few guidelines that, if followed, may help you better how to navigate these muddy waters. Continue reading “Public Relations: A Necessary Tool in Your Marketing Kit”

Top Three Advantages of Video-Conferencing

Businessman video confrencing with colleguesThe business world thrives off of communication. In many instances, the failure of a business can be traced back to a lack of communication between its different divisions, and an inability to execute its mission effectively. Businesses, small or big, need to find an effective option when it comes to communicating with different levels of management. A popular format that many businesses are turning to is video-conferencing.

Video conferencing has been a staple of the corporate since the 1980s, and its use has slowly perfused into the small business across America. If you are convinced that video-conferencing is right for you, the reasons below will help persuade you to make the switch. Continue reading “Top Three Advantages of Video-Conferencing”

Begin Your Journey Towards Mastering Anything

For many people, the hardest part of getting good at anything is consistently repeating and practicing a certain task until they are good at it. For others, just getting started is really difficult in and of itself. It’s easy to admire skilled musicians and artists for what they can produce, but what you don’t see is the years of practice, hard work, and mistakes that led to their mastery. Because of that, many people fail to realize their true potential – they are unable to chart out a clear path towards realizing the goal they have in mind. They want results but have no way of achieving them.

What do you hope to achieve in the future? Do you want to learn how to play an instrument? Do you want to learn how to speak a foreign language? Do you want to educate yourself in a demanding yet rewarding field? Now ask yourself why you haven’t done it yet. Most people give themselves the same kinds of excuses year after year: it’s too difficult. They don’t know how to get started. They don’t have a natural talent that other people have. They don’t have enough time in their day. Continue reading “Begin Your Journey Towards Mastering Anything”

Common Cash Flow Problems and How to Remedy Them

Past due billsAre you experiencing troubles with maintaining consistent cash flow in your business? If you are, you may find that you can’t pay your bills on time, and expenses are fast getting out of hand. Cash flow problems plague every small business owner at one point or another – it’s natural to go through the occasional rough patch. However, that doesn’t mean that these rough spots can’t leave lasting damage to your finances. To avoid letting these problems ruin you, here are few ways of improving your net cash flow.

Accept Credit Cards From Customers

You do not have to be a retailer to accept credit cards. Many small business owners make this mistake, and it can potentially cost you a lot of business. Consumers use credit cards to make a variety of purchases, and a lot of them don’t carry cash on them. When they use a credit card to pay for things, you will typically get the money in two to three days. While this can seem like a bit of drag at first, it will quickly remedy itself as the cash flows from these transactions pour in. Continue reading “Common Cash Flow Problems and How to Remedy Them”

Which Key Elements Are Present in Every Small Business Success Story

People at a party talking to eachotherIt is the dream of most entrepreneurs to hear that their business has become the “next big thing” in the eyes of its customers. For most business owners, this is the single driving force behind everything that they do. All of the long work weeks, sleepless nights, stress-filled days, and agonizing decision-making are to make their dream become reality.

Unfortunately, reality does not typically work like that. In order to have your very own small business success story, one must put in a lot of effort, time, hard work, and dedication. However, you need to do so much more than that. A common element in small business success stories is that the owners did more than just put in long workweeks. There are key elements which play a very important role in helping one achieve their very own success story, and you would be doing yourself a disservice by disregarding them. Continue reading “Which Key Elements Are Present in Every Small Business Success Story”

Fostering a Positive Business Image and Culture

Humor at the meetingHow you conduct yourself in the business world has real-world ramifications on how potential customers perceive you. Large corporations collectively spend billions of dollars curating an image that encourages people to spend their hard-earned money on what they’re selling. With the emergence of social media over the past twenty years, even local and independent businesses take advantage of the exposure they get. While you can put out slick ads and videos to raise awareness of your brand, ultimately the way you conduct yourself and the values you embrace will be the deciding factor for many people. Continue reading “Fostering a Positive Business Image and Culture”

True Leaders Are Not Invincible

True LeadersThe word “leader” often conjures up an image of a driven, successful, almost super-human person who has the power to shape the world around them with their ample amounts of charisma, work ethic, intelligence, and powers of persuasion. Leaders are looked up to in times of crisis, and they are counted on to keep a level head in any situation. This status sometimes lends an air of invulnerability to these people; they are sometimes seen as not possessing human flaws and emotions. That cannot be further from the truth – no matter how confident and head-strong leaders can seem, they feel the same fears, indecisiveness, and insecurities we do. They may put on a facade of invincibility, but they are just as human as you and me. Continue reading “True Leaders Are Not Invincible”

Your Most Precious Resource is Time – Use it Well

Most precious resource

If you ask a business owner what their most precious resource is, they’ll usually give one of a few answers. Money is the most common, while others say their employees, community, or family. What is less stated is the one resource that can never be replenished or gained back – time. Once you waste your time with something, you can never get it back again. Some busier business owners understand this, but newer ones haven’t yet learned how to utilize their time effectively.

Business owners that don’t have enough time to do things usually have the same problems: they don’t delegate tasks well, they don’t prioritize tasks, and/or they aren’t well-organized in their day-to-day life. These issues are as simple to fix as they are common; most of the time, you only need to make a slight change in how you accomplish or go about completing certain tasks in order to squeeze more productivity in the time that you use. Continue reading “Your Most Precious Resource is Time – Use it Well”

How to Delegate Effectively

How to Delegate

How to delegate effectively means understanding that delegating tasks and authority is a defining aspect of being a boss, yet personal experience has likely shown you that it’s a skill that many managers lack. Whether it’s a lack of delegation, too much delegation, micromanaging, or putting the wrong people in the wrong places, a failure to properly assign tasks to people can result in a dysfunctional workplace. As the boss of your own workplace, you’ll be responsible for deciding who goes where and who does what. Much of your workplace’s productivity and morale will depend on your ability to not just lead but lead well. Continue reading “How to Delegate Effectively”