Archive for the ‘business info’ Category

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How a business can volunteer

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

Corporate volunteering obviously helps the community as well as being positive for the supporting business.

Don’t think that the only way to support local community is to give money donations, though. Even businesses on their own tight budget can help local groups, and all businesses can find a means of giving that suits their specific structure and products/services.

Here are a few suggestions – what else can you add to this list?

  1.  do some pro bono work – a web designer could create or update their website, a plumber can put new washers in all their taps, food places could offer goods at cost (i.e. do the cooking for free) and an IT company could do a security check of their computers. I know I have written and edited various documents for community groups at minimal or no charge
  2. offer good or services at discounted rates for events or specified periods – e.g. a bakery could offer bread at cost for their fundraising events and a mechanic could offer an annual car service
  3. offer discounts to volunteers or members of the group – for example, a hairdresser may offer 20% off for people referred form a women’s shelter or soup kitchen volunteers get a free physiotherapy check up
  4. make employees available to volunteer at a community group. This could be everyone is off volunteering together once a year or a roster of people helping once a month or fortnight. Think about what works for your business and for the group you’re helping (not all places have space for an extra 10 people at one time for example).
  5. whenever you are upgrading (computer, phone, printer, etc) consider if it has enough value to pass onto a community group
  6. offer to print their newsletter to save their costs – collating, folding and so no are also possible tasks you can offer
  7. promote the group – put a banner on your website, link to their site, mention them in your newsletters, add their logo/details on the back of your business cards, add a donation box to your shop (or button on your website) and so on.
  8. add a collection box in your office/shop
  9. have a stall at their fete or other events – your fee and attendance will help more than it may appear
  10. invite them to speak or have an information booth at your big events

What other ways have you seen businesses support their local community?

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Building a happy new year

Sunday, January 1st, 2012

Clock and calendar with a notepad for planning aheadAs it is the first of January, Happy New Year! I hope your year is better than you expect and dream of, and that it is successful in many ways.

As well as wishing you well for the year ahead, I want to share some ideas for starting 2012 in a way that will establish a great business year. No matter what has come before, you can set some good foundations for your business (and life!) now and make your life a bit easier.

1. simplify and streamline

What can you get rid of – maybe there are time wasters you can stop or activities that would be better outsourced, or perhaps you offer a product or service that costs more than it brings in.
What can you simplify? A complex pricing structure may be unnecessary or perhaps there is no real need for some steps in your packing or ordering process.
Now is a great time to review last year and think about simplifying and streamlining your business

2. standardise and record

Having procedures in place saves you money and time, allows you to get more help and writing them often shows up improvements to your method. Consistency is important for many aspects of business, and procedures are the easiest way to ensure things are done consistently (as long as your team uses them anyway!)
Taking time to also standardise document codes and updating, repeated communications (think of those emails and letters you write over and over) and having clear terms and conditions will also save you time throughout the year, and probably give you a better result as well.

3. review your prices

The financial success of your business obviously closely relates to how much profit you make from each sale so pricing is a critical balance between being acceptable to clients and generating enough profit.
When reviewing your prices, take into account new or increased costs (including flood levy, higher Victorian electricity rates and potential carbon tax impacts), competitor prices (don’t just copy them but take note of what others are doing), changes you have made (e.g. if you give greater value or have reduced costs maybe your prices need to reflect that), use of newer technology (including social media expectations and possibly updating your website for mobile access) and reasonable profit margins.
A price review can take time and it may be better introduced later (such as after the carbon tax comes into effect) but a new year is often a good time to assess things and make the necessary decisions.

4. simplify non-essentials, too

Remember to look at the support activities around your business as part of your streamlining. These tasks don’t directly bring in any income so reducing the time you spend on them gives you more time to generate income, and if you outsource them they will usually be cheaper services than things like design or IT work.
Hire a cleaner once a fortnight, get a junior in once a month for filing, get bulk stationery delivered, pay someone to run errands (deposit cheques, grab stationery, buy stamps, stock up supplies, etc) once a month, and so on.

Of course, if this time of year is quiet for your business, now is also a good time to think, get creative and plan for the next 12 months. Taking a week or two now to make adjustments and plan ahead is a good investment – don’t feel you have to be outwardly productive to be a good business week.

Enjoy looking at your business in a new way, have a fantastic 2012 and use your words wisely!

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Business volunteering

Thursday, December 29th, 2011

Ever thought about why a business should give to their local community?

There are many ways to give, and it can be a regular thing or just when it suits, but volunteering in some way can help your business:

  1. your business gets increased exposure just through your presence or by acknowledgments in their brochures, website, noticeboard or similar. And it may well cost less than similar exposure through an ad or other marketing campaign
  2. your business earns respect, trust and goodwill from the people involved in that community – and people are likely to try your business first if they appreciate your efforts in something they are passionate about
  3. you get to learn more about your local community, and potential customers, so you can adjust your products, services and marketing to suit
  4. if you allow employees to volunteer in your time, you will also build morale and team spirit – this helps your business in many ways, including attracting and maintaining quality staff
  5. allowing employees to volunteer will teach them more skills that can further help them perform for your business. In particular, staff helping a charity will need to be resourceful when working with tight budgets and limited resources – and being resourceful and using initiative can be great for any business
  6. you can mention your community work, too. If you do pro bona work within your community, it will also give you valuable case studies and testimonials to showcase your abilities – this can be really useful for a new business or a business offering a new service.

Has your business ever been involved in comment projects, either through employee time or other donations? Or maybe your community has been helped by a business in the past?

What advantages have you seen come from businesses contributing to the local community?

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Learning social media rules

Thursday, December 22nd, 2011

I have been using a lot more social media (specifically twitter) recently as part of my Love Santa project. It because abundantly clear that some people have no idea (or don’t care) about how to effectively use Twitter.

Top most is having an understanding that twitter is for communicating and building relationships – not for blatant ads like old-fashioned media (e.g. a newspaper ad was a one way message). I saw a few businesses tweet their ad at least every couple of hours with no other messages in between. For one business, they had 3 variants of it and ran them in succession once every hour or so during their business hours. I wasn’t their audience anyway but seeing it so often bored and annoyed me, and gave me an uncomfortable feeling about them as a business.

Next is to have one honest profile. It because obvious when 3 twitter users repeatedly sent the same tweet straight after each other – a number of times. It came across as trying to trick and con people, plus it seemed they were desperate for business rather than offering quality or showing a genuine interest in people watching their tweets.

The other behaviour that was annoying while I was on twitter a lot (I haven’t really seen it when just keeping up with people I follow on twitter) was an excessive use of hash tags*. To me it was like reading a blog post or webpage written to show off keywords rather than actually communicate something – boring, annoying and an insult if they think I am impressed by such actions. Adding # to key words within a message is fine, adding a keyword or two after the message is also fine, but the following wasn’t so fine:

  • adding five or more hashtags after a brief message
  • adding hashtags that were about advertising not the message (e.g. adding #santa after a message about a computer breaking down to get noticed for Christmas or adding #webdesign to a message about dreading a visit to the dentist)
  • making the entire message hashtags with a link

Tweets are like any other content you write – make it about the message and people reading it, not about SEO and getting noticed by more people, as that is what will genuinely get your message heard and distributed.

I can’t say what results those people get from their tweets, but I know I would never retweet or follow them (and I’m sure I’m not alone). I can say that most of the retweeted Love Santa tweets were those based on replying to someone else – in other words, ‘talking’ to people was appreciated and earned greater exposure to other tweeters.

Twitter can be a great marketing tool but it needs to be thought of as a relationship tool with marketing bonuses to have the best impact on your business.

Or maybe you are happy to read tweets with some of the above characteristics? Or have found them effective for viral marketing?

* A hashtag is simply adding # at the start of a word (or group of words without a space in between) that can be used to highlight a topic and make searching for relevant information on twitter easier.

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Using Santa for trustworthy content

Monday, December 12th, 2011

Right now, Santa and all things Christmas are popular topics and adding these keywords to your content can be useful.

At any time of year, using topical words and common events in your marketing can be valuable. For example, think about a chocolate company that advertises all year but leading up to mid February, they use more romantic concepts to tie in with Valentines Day.

If you don’t sell gifts, however, you may not think Christmas and Santa can help your marketing.

Actually, you may be surprised at how you can use current events to promote your business (and I’ll give some ideas later in the week) but here is an example from Jeff Bullas where he used Santa in a heading and one tip to tie an article on building trust to the Christmas season.

Let’s face it, are there any people more trusted than Santa? Would people trust your business based on your online presence?

If you do try to link your business in with Christmas, Santa or some other major event, it is important to do it in such a way as to build and maintain trust; make your message relevant to the added keywords rather than just adding topical words in a heading or description for purely keyword and SEO purposes.

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Price your message in context

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

At about the same time as I learned about aiming your content at your target audience, we looked for and bought another house and I learned another lesson from real estate agents.

In this case, the lesson was to understand your product specifically in the selling context.

First, the story… We found the house we wanted (and still happily live in) and decided to go for it at auction. The agents had shown disinterest in selling us the property (there was no way they would open it up outside of the allotted inspection times for instance) which is symptomatic of the whole situation.

We won the auction – yah!

The price was great – still a lot of money but cheaper than we would have expected. A house in the same block but on a main road and in bad condition sold for $500 more just a week earlier.

Signing the paperwork, it was obvious the owners and agents were very happy with the price as it was well above reserve.

Good to see a win-win for everyone.

Of course, the agents were less happy when they heard about the $500 more house near by. And were last seen driving towards it to see for themselves.

The point was that the owners had used non-local real estate agents who obviously thought our suburb was “lower” than the houses they usually sold so they devalued the property. They hadn’t done any research in the area so did not know the value of the land or comparisons with house styles in the area.

Our win but a valuable lesson – if selling, use someone who knows the product in the context of how it is being sold.

It’s like knowing you won’t get the same price for something at a school fete as you would in a craft shop in a tourist area.

Do some research to know your product, the context and what prices the market will accept.

Adjust your content to match, too – for example, ‘excellent value’ will work in many contexts, ‘exclusive touch of luxury’ will be out of place and ineffective at a school fete and ‘bargain bin’ does not inspire high prices.

Have you seen prices skewed because someone hasn’t understood the context or target market?

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Aim your content at your target

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

Whether it’s content for a blog, a newsletter, a website or anything else, it is going to produce the best results if the content and writing suit your potential buyers (your target audience).

Sounds simple, yet it isn’t always done…

Earlier this week I read a post by Paul Hassing which reminded me of when I was selling my house a few years ago. Aiming to sell the house, we tried an agent with an apparently different philosophy to most real estate companies. However, he didn’t like my cute little house (for one thing it didn’t have picture rails like our neighbour’s house did!) and couldn’t sell it. We swapped to a woman at another company who was great and sold it for an extra $20K to the same person the first agent had spoken to.

I think one factor that helped her do a much better job was her enthusiasm for the house – at her first visit she was imagining what people could do in the home and the type of furniture they’d like, and so on. She looked for what was good about the house, thought about the type of people it would appeal to and came up with ideas to feel them on the lifestyle it would give them.

The first agent didn’t like the house himself so couldn’t imagine any extras to sell to potential buyers. Agent two used passion to understand and sell to her audience; agent one saw it as a commodity and tried selling it without emotion, imagination or real interest.

So when writing content remember to pitch the message at the right people and help them picture how the product or service will fit into their lives. Targetting the right people may reach fewer people but it will get more action from those people.

Have you seen real estate agents pitch the wrong house to people, or excite people by pitching the right house to them?

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Breaking it down

Friday, November 18th, 2011

Breaking big issues into smaller pieces makes things manageable because:

  1. it less daunting to look at small tasks than one huge task (remember the elephant – I can eat one bite but putting an entire elephant in my mouth is overwhelming!)
  2. you then can earn a series of achievements to feel rewarded and satisfied, and see your progress. Working on one huge task means you have to do a lot of work before you can see results
  3. finishing small tasks can sometimes be fitted into small time slots such as between meetings or while you’re waiting for someone to arrive
  4. you may be able to get others to do parts of the job. For example, when I manage a client’s annual report I break it into content and design first so I can outsource the design work before breaking the content aspect into sections. I also get my admin support to arrange the printing and to review the designer drafts for any missed corrections.
  5. you can set deadlines for small tasks and therefore make sure you are on track for the big project – it is hard to know how close you are to finishing and meeting deadlines if the job is just one big task
  6. you will feel less stressed and overwhelmed, you will feel more in control and capable. Feeling good is a worthy aim in itself, but it also makes you work more efficiently and effectively so you will probably finish the project sooner, too
What projects have you found easier once you’ve broken them into manageable pieces?

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Break it down

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

There is an old saying that I like: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Whenever there is a big issue in front of you, your best chance of success (and completion for that matter) is to break it down into manageable pieces and work your way through those pieces.

So I liked another of General Cosgrove’s quotes:

I find complex issues drain energy from people. Many can be overwhelmed. Young people may not know how to attack the beast. Breaking down problems is critical.

Is there a problem you’re facing that you could break into bits? Maybe finding someone to help you break it down would help?

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Being a leader

Friday, November 11th, 2011

Last night at cubs, I spoke to the pack council ( a group of older cubs given the responsibility of leading groups of their peers) about leadership.

Asked ‘what is a leader?’, their answers included:

  1. someone who sets a good example
  2. someone willing (and able) to help others
  3. someone who does jobs to get things done for the group
  4. someone who doesn’t have to be at the front or look like they’re the leader

In a coincidence of timing, I just read a summary from the current ASFA National Conference* and noted two prominent speakers discussed leadership.

Alexander Downer is quoted as saying that consultation is important but “leaders had to have courage…[and] implement their plan.”

General Peter Cosgrove followed on with “sometimes you can opt-in, sometimes you can opt-out, but sometimes leading is unavoidable…Leaders were able to continue to lead even in times of turmoil.” The summary also states General Cosgrove ‘pointed to the importance of professionals to lead saying that no matter how daunting and overwhelming, professionals had to ask the rhetorical question “if not you to show leadership, then who?.. You are in position, you can’t avoid responsibility.”’

That’s leadership from the young and publicly experienced – what do you think leadership is? Is leadership a role or behaviour? Are you the leader in your business?

* ASFA is the Association of  Superannuation Funds of Australia and they run an annual conference for leaders in the. super industry

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