Business

In the last ten years we have seen a huge rise in the number of companies who are using reputation management consultants to help repair, improve and manage their online reputations. This has come about as more and more companies learn the importance of what a positive reputation can mean for their business and the success which they have. There are a number of benefits which these services offer a company and if you are looking to improve your online reputation, this may very well be an option that you should consider. When you do use a rep management firm, here are the benefits that you can count on.

Improved Reputation

Whether your online reputation is damaged, neutral or positive, the team at a reputation management company can still offer you a great chance to improve your online reputation on the whole. These experts know exactly what is needed in terms of helping you to increase the positivity of your reputation online and with a matter of months they will have made huge strides in this regard.

Increased Sales

If your business has a negative reputation online then it is going to directly impact your sales figures and it will put off many customers from buying your products or your services. It goes without saying then that once the reputation management consultants have improved and boosted your online rep, the consequence of this is going to be an upturn in sales. It is for this reason why so many businesses view the price of a service like this as an investment rather than a cost, because the increased sales which you see will cover whatever a rep management firm is charging.

Market Share

Sales aren’t just about putting money in the register, it is also about taking up market share from your competitors. This is another great benefit which businesses can count on when they use a reputation management company. Even if your competition are already investing in the management of their online reputation, at the very least you will be able to level the playing field and get back some of that market share which you have been losing as a result of this.

Marketing

Almost every company understands the power that marketing can have on their business but there is little point in launching a marketing campaign if you don’t have a great reputation online. In fact if you do have a poor reputation then all a marketing campaign is going to do is highlight exactly why customers shouldn’t use your business, the complete opposite of what you are actually trying to achieve.

Branding

Create a loyal brand will help you to grow as a business and increase your levels of success. A great online reputation will be essential in creating a great brand and that is another strong benefit which you can count on when you use the services of a reputation management company.

 

If you have a passion for fabrics and textiles then this is the post for you, we have the incredible Misha Kaura helping us to deliver some great tips on how you can turn your love of velvet, cotton, linen and wool into a business and launch yourself into this competitive industry. Misha built her business from the ground up, making mistakes and learning along the way, and this is why she is the perfect person to help you do exactly what she has done. Let’s get started then with some top tips on how to get into this industry.

Working Inside

If you don’t already have a position in a textiles company then this is going to be a great place for you to start where you can really learn how the industry works. The key before you launch a business is to have a full understand of how the industry operates and a position at any level will help you to do that.

Market Insights

You aren’t going to be able to launch a huge business offering every type of fabric and textile right away so it will be essential that you have a good understanding of the market early on. Look out for customer trends and areas to focus on so that you can be sure that your limited selection in the beginning will still be desirable.

Making Relationships With Sellers

The key to getting great deals on your raw materials will be strike up strong bonds and relationships with sellers. To do this you can visit trade shows, make cold calls and do whatever it takes to start speaking with sellers about what they can offer, what prices they have and what their logistical process is. The better relationships you have with these sellers the better chance you have of hitting the ground running when you launch.

Knowing Cash Flow

To build on the point about getting to know your market, you also need to have a solid plan of attack regarding your cash flow. There is little point in you investing a large amount of your capital in slow moving fabrics as this could restrict you from buying more of the hot sellers. Understand the importance of keeping the cash liquid and use that to plan your attack in terms of what fabrics you are going to buy in the beginning.

Think of Location

Getting the right location for your business isn’t easy so you’ll have to spend a lot of time on this if you want to break into the industry. A city center location may be great in terms of getting more customers in but your rent is going to b pretty high. An out of town location will be cheaper but you’ll have significantly less chance for customers coming in. Also consider the utilities you’ll need like water and good electrics for the machinery which you are going to use.

Do this hard work before you launch and you’ll have a much better chance of doing well once you have.

 

We are delighted to have the great Adam Ferrari with us today who has been helping us to answer all of your mineral related questions. Adam is an expert in the field of buying and selling minerals and we are very happy that he accepted our invitation to give us some support on this subject. Today we are going to specifically focus on what red flags you should keep an eye out for when selling minerals beneath your property, so that you can ensure that you don’t make any mistakes. Once your due diligence is done, a valuation is reached and an offer is made, here is the details which you have to keep an eye out for when selling minerals.

Lowballing

If you receive an offer which is way below the valuation then this isn’t just an error that someone has made, this is someone looking to capitalize on a seller who doesn’t know their value. If you are selling to a reputable and large company then they will always have done their homework and brought you a reasonable offer, if you get lowballed like this then alarm bells should start ringing.

Bank Drafts

If you are selling to a reputable and well known business then they will pay for the exchange of your mineral deed via cashiers check, certified check or perhaps even a wire transfer. When payments are made like this for the signed deed, the funds will be in your account right away. If they pay via banker’s draft however it may take days or weeks before that is available. Before selling ensure that you are not getting paid in this way as it raises many potential issues.

Reading the Fine Print

You should always read the fine print for any deals like this and one ting in particular to look out for is the mineral acre v royalty acre, two very different deals. You may think that you are selling a non-participating royalty interest when in actual fact your are selling your minerals. If you are in any doubt get a lawyer to look over the agreement.

Time Pressure

You should be given sufficient time to review your offer and consult with any advisors and experts. This is why an offer which has an expiration time is something which should be a cause for concern. Any pressure on time such as 24 hour offers or immediate acceptance should be refused on the grounds that you don’t have enough time to properly review, don’t be pressured into your decision.

Title Search

A title search should always be carried out ahead of the finalization of the deal to ensure that you own the property in question and to look through the history of the ownership of the property. If you are asked to do this or if it not done then this should raise concerns ahead of the deal.

Keep an eye out for these red flags when you are selling minerals.

 

So much of marketing today is visual, and it’s important to focus on making those visuals stand out. You’re always in a race against others in your industry, and if your visuals aren’t at the top of their game, you’ll lose the race.

The problem with this race is there are millions of competitors. You’re likely sharing your content on social media where visuals are commonplace. If you want yours to be noticeable, you’ll need to employ a curated strategy. Here are some tips any business can use to improve the visuals in their business.

1. Hire It Out

Sure, there are many programs that make creating visuals from scratch simple. However, it’s still a time-consuming process, especially if you’re not well-versed in the methodology of design. You might also fail to properly space, color, and word your images as well because you’ve never studied the art.

Outsourcing your design to a media creation agency can save you a lot of time, energy, and mistakes. In many cases, the company will also market your visuals for you, bringing greater traffic and revenue to your company. With a great company, the return should be high enough that it will pay for your contract and then some.

2. Mix Copywriting and Graphics

If you’re trying to describe complex data or lengthy lists of statistics, an infographic can be a valuable tool for conveying the information to your customer base. It’s still a popular form of visual presentation, and a 2017 study found that consumers found them very helpful and preferred them to slideshow presentations, articles, commercials, and blog posts.

The written word is often the most efficient method of sharing information, but combining it with your visual graphics will help make it more consumable. It breaks up the information and uses helpful colors and pictures that make it easy to internalize.

3. Try Sharing Original Artwork

There are many run-of-the-mill graphics and advertisements out there used to sway consumer opinion in a certain direction. These can be effective and appealing to your audience, but they can often blend in with the many other digital pieces your competitors create.

Original artwork in a watercolor, sketch, or even a sculpture can draw the eye. Consumers aren’t used to seeing this type of artwork on their social feeds, and they’ll pause to take a closer look. Pair your artwork with useful tips, tricks, and information, and you’ll succeed in grabbing your target audience.

Don’t let your marketing strategy become humdrum with outdated visuals and marketing tactics. Go back to the drawing board and create stunning pieces that inform and attract your chosen audience. You’ll easily see the return in increasing social media follows and greater revenue for your business.

Cybersecurity has simply blown up in the last 5-10 years, and that says something about the state of internet security. There wouldn’t be so many wildly successful cybersecurity firms if it weren’t for the thousands of breaches that pop up all over the internet.

If you’re a business owner, you likely have many accounts on the internet and files stored in the cloud. Ecommerce business owners have even more to worry about because they accept credit cards. No matter what type of business you operate, you should know what the business security landscape looks like for 2020.

1. Every 39 seconds, there’s a hacker attack.

This means that one in three Americans experiences a cyber attack each year. Most of the time, these hacking attempts are successful because users don’t use secure passwords. Hackers might hack your information for many reasons, but monetization is the most prevalent.

2. Half of all cyber attacks target small businesses.

Don’t operate under the false assumption that hackers won’t touch your business because it’s small and you don’t have much to steal. Hackers love small businesses because they often operate with significantly fewer security layers than larger companies.

3. A data breach can take 6 months or more to detect.

If you’re not paying close attention, you might not know that you’ve been attacked, and a lot of businesses don’t. By the time it’s discovered, it’s often too late to do anything, and many companies lose their ability to continue operating.

4. More than 60 percent of businesses that experience an attack shut down within 6 months.

Some of this has to do with the financial aspect–it’s extremely expensive to handle the aftermath of a cyber attack. Businesses might also close their doors because their reputation has gone down the drain or they discovered the cyber attack so late that they couldn’t undo any damage.

5. Three industries are attacked more often than others.

No industry is immune from cyber attacks, but the three industries that have problems more than others are government, retail, and technology. These companies tend to use fewer layers of protection, making them easy targets to hack.

6. The cost of cybersecurity is to exceed $6 trillion by the end of the year.

2020 will be a record year for cybersecurity spending. This sum accounts for the businesses that pay for both security against cyber attacks as well as steps they take to mitigate it.

7. Almost all cybersecurity breaches are caused by human error.

That’s right. More than 95 percent of breaches occur because a human being made a mistake. They might have ignored security protocol or used the same password for everything. It could also be as simple as someone sharing a piece of confidential information with a neighbor.

This statistic is perhaps the most important because it underscores the importance of training employees each year on the risks of security attacks.

 

The task of managing your accounts is difficult enough if you are doing it for yourself – what more if you have to do it for your business? And managing business accounts is not a joke, as anyone will confirm, especially since you also have to make sure that you are raking in a profit at the same time. Even small business owners who are just starting need to stay on top of their accounts and financial records, and they need all the help they can get. Fortunately, this is where you have the option of hiring an accountant. But how can you really know if your small business needs an accountant? Here’s how you can find out.

• Assess your business and your role in it

The first step in determining whether or not an accountant can really help you with your small business is to assess your business – and this also comes with assessing what your role is in it. For example, are you self-employed? Then your bookkeeping and accounting needs may be relatively simple. If you are operating as a sole trader, your bookkeeping and accounting needs may not be that difficult, either, since you basically just have to keep a record of your incoming and outgoing expenses. But you also have to inform HMRC that you are a sole trader, and this comes with paying your taxes and NI (National Insurance) and making sure you pay them on time. You also have to do a self-assessment on your taxes every year.

But if you are a limited company, you have to file your accounts at the tax office and Companies House, and your accounts should include both a loss and profit account as well as a balance sheet. If you aren’t sure how to come up with these, then an accountant is worth considering as well.

And even if you decide that you can do your accounts on your own, have you considered the time you would be wasting if you had to do it all yourself? It takes a lot of time and effort, which you could very well spend doing other things to grow your business. If you have to prepare your accounts and take note of everything as well as make sure your deadlines are met, you won’t be as efficient, so it is worth thinking about having an accountant do all these things for you.

• Determine your peace of mind

Aside from thinking of the above, you also have to think about your peace of mind, as the expert accountants from www.gsmaccountants.co.uk attest. What is it worth? Even while you think you can take care of your accounting and bookkeeping tasks yourself, do you believe that you could avoid making mistakes and be sure that everything is done properly and correctly? Bear in mind that incorrectly filled forms can cost you in fines and penalties, and if you are late, you will be faced with even more fines and penalties too.

Also, an accountant is not just there to take care of your financial records – they can also help you by giving you advice on what you can do to expand when you’re considering taking out a business loan, when you are audited, and more. Your accountant can even help you save on your expenses and outgoings by coming up with ways through which you can leverage your tax allowances.

At the end of the day, accountants can do a lot for you and your business; they can guide you and give you highly-useful advice, and they can also be your best partner as your business grows.

 

It might seem to you like the gig economy is everywhere these days. But you might not necessarily know how to use that to your advantage. That’s why it’s good to think of how the modern financial world is operating through the lens of the entrepreneur. If you’ve never studied entrepreneurial techniques and you don’t understand how it connects with the gig economy as it stands, then keep reading to find out a few different ways to benefit from the progress the world has made in this direction.

Entrepreneurs can create opportunities for themselves in several ways, but here are three that might make the most sense to you. First of all, you can use money to make money. Whenever you leverage the idea of purchasing something later against buying something now, there’s an opportunity for profit.

Second, everything that you can analyze will help you make money. If you are the best at analyzing some aspect of some industry, that gives you an immediate competitive advantage. Third, figure out how to utilize your passion wisely, and the gig economy is ripe for the picking.

Use Money To Make MoneyFemp

Using money to make money is a great way to expand your financial portfolio. One way to do this would be to participate in an ATM program. You rent the equipment for cost, and you reap the benefits of your effort and energy. Another way to use money to make money would be through stock market analysis and trading, so this is a direction that many financial analysts go.

There are many different ways to loan money to get profits back on your investment as well, so it’s up to you to research the ones that make the most sense.

Analysis Is Your Best Friend

The more you know about a topic, the higher your ability to make money on it conceptually. For example, if you learn how to analyze advertising, you can make passive income by having a website with automated promotions. It takes some setup and some tech-savvy, but once you have things rolling, you’ll find that you enjoy the idea of making money while you sleep. Very little maintenance is required in most cases, which means that your legitimate, long-term income has nowhere to go but up.

Utilize Your Passion Wisely

In the gig economy, your passion can be your best money making opportunity, as well. For example, if you like driving and talking to people, you can sign up for Uber or another ridesharing service. You like being on the road anyway, so why not make money doing it? Once you get the essential infrastructure in place, you can make driving a car your full-time career, or you can participate in it on the side. Both aspects of the gig economy concerning part or full-time employment can give you more options than with other jobs.

 

Just because you have an excellent product or service doesn’t mean you can necessarily be competitive in a specific market. It takes more than that. It takes amazing promotions. And not everybody is great at advertising themselves. If it feels like you fit in this category, though, there are several things that you can do to ensure that you stay ahead of anyone who is competing with you for the same market share.

Three ideas, in particular, come to mind when it comes to digital niche promotions. First, you need to get your search engine optimization right. Without that, you’ll have no presence on the Internet. Second, learn about every single potential social media platform. A little learning goes a long way concerning this style of advertising. And third, use all of your available analytics.

Daily or weekly reports about different amounts of traffic can give you a whole lot of information about what your next decisions should be when it comes to promoting yourself.

Get Your SEO Right

Especially in highly competitive markets, you need to get your search engine optimization completed in the best way possible. Many times this means hiring a consultant who specializes in such things. For example, as a lawyer, you would contact a search engine optimization specialist that works with law firms. If you didn’t know that such things existed, then even doing a small amount of research will show you that niche SEO contracting companies are both very prevalent and very successful.

Learn Social Platforms

When you learn to use social media for business, it opens up a whole new world of opportunity for you. In the digital domain, social media is King. If you don’t know how to advertise on Facebook or through places like Twitter or Instagram, you’re missing out on huge audiences. Especially if you are targeting a specific niche with your product or your service, social media targeting is the single most effective way to get your message in front of precisely the right people who want to hear it.

Use Your Analytics

Finally, use all of the tools that you have available to read and analyze data. If you can, use Google analytics when it comes to traffic to your website. There are free versions and paid versions of a lot of different analysis software packages, so find one that meets your requirements and learn to use it as deeply as possible.

If the only difference between you and a competitor is how well you use analytical data, then that is a tremendous competitive advantage. If you have never looked at analytics before today, make this your top priority, and you will immediately see a return on your investment of energy into the matter.

 

If you’re set to attend a networking event, you probably feel a degree of excitement… but also another of trepidation. It’s a golden opportunity to meet new people and forge new business contacts, but that’s exactly why you don’t want to mess it up.

Once you’ve decided exactly what you want to achieve at the event, such as securing a new job lead or even just reconnecting with friends, you should prepare yourself carefully to help prevent from drifting into aimless wandering at the event proper.

Dress in confidence-boosting and memorable attire

If nerves are setting in, now’s an especially good time to don that suit or those shoes that you only recently bought but have felt enthusiastic about wearing. However, make sure your clothing looks professional but not drab; businesslike but still capable of lingering in the memory.

That way, if you impress someone with your networking and they want to meet back up with you as the event is about to finish, they will be able to find you again more easily, Cosmopolitan points out.

Bring plenty of business cards in a card case

Think of a networking event and you probably already picture people handing out business cards to all and sundry, but you can’t expect your own cards to impress if they haven’t been carefully designed and printed – or, obviously, you run out of them too early.

Thankfully, buying a printer from a company like Duplo International lets you print those cards yourself in an attempt to reduce the chances of a botched print job. Also, heed The Muse‘s advice that you bring more cards than you anticipate needing – and bring them in a professional card case.

Huddle like a penguin near a cluster of people

Approaching people you don’t know in any situation, let alone at a slick networking expo, can easily feel awkward and cumbersome. However, you can help draw more attention to yourself if you wait on the outskirts of a gathered group of people and wait for a convenient moment to pounce.

That moment could come when someone in the group brings up a subject where you have a truly interesting point to make. Now, this leaves the question of how you should introduce yourself…

Introduce yourself in a friendly, to-the-point way

This means making eye contact, smiling, revealing your first and last name and what you do, and shaking the other person’s hand briefly but firmly. Once you’ve caught their name, use it twice as you converse with them, as you will consequentially come across as more sincere and interested.

Avoid asking just “yes” or “no” questions

Yes, you want to get something out of the event, but so does the person you’re speaking to! For that reason, seek in-depth answers on matters such as how that person likes working for their company, what primary role and projects they have there, and how they got started in their industry. It’s like speed dating – and, sooner or later, you might find a match!

 

Having a consistent brand can be one of the hardest things for a business to do, especially if you’re still a young business or a small business. But in order for your business to grow and thrive in your market, you’ve got to make it easy for people to recognize you, your products, and your values.

To help you in accomplishing just this, here are three tips for creating a consistent business image online.

Be Committed To Consistency

Because being consistent can be very challenging, it’s likely going to take your organization being very committed to consistency for true consistency to be evident.

According to Ivan Widjaya, a contributor to Small Business Trends, some of the biggest and more well-known brands all over the world state that consistency with their branding and identity is one of the main reasons why they’re so successful and have been able to remain competitive in their markets for so long. So while you might not initially think that having a consistent business image or brand is something you should be concerned with, if you want to have long term success, your commitment to consistency should be key.

Especially when you’re thinking about things like how you represent yourself online or what information you have about your business on online directories or citations, being accurate and consistent are some of the most important qualities to have.

Create A Style Guide

To help make it easier for you to be consistent with your business image and online brand, Erika Montgomery, a contributor to Business2Commnuity.com, recommends that you create a style guide that everyone in your organization can study and refer back to when branding questions arise.

Within this style guide, try to include information on things like colors, fonts, language, and more. The more detailed you’re able to make your style guide, the more consistent your brand’s image will be regardless of how many different people may be representing your organization in various platforms or mediums.

Pay Attention To Both On-Line and Off-Line Branding

While you might be thinking more about how to be consistent with your business image online, you also need to think about how things that happen off-line will impact your entire brand.

According to Adrian Fisher, a contributor to Forbes.com, businesses that do the majority of their business offline still need to think about how they portray their brand and their business online because potential clients or prospects will still be looking for them online to learn more about their business. And if your brand isn’t consistent in both areas, you could confuse or dissuade people from working with you.

If you’re needing to be more consistent with your business or brand image, consider using the tips mentioned above to learn how you can better accomplish this goal.