Three focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. There are a number of technologies that are on the horizon in the business sector. It’s important to consider how these technologies impact the environment. The following contributed is entitled, The Importance of Eco Friendly Technologies in Business.
How we are impacting the earth’s resources has become a prominent issue within the last few years. So finding eco friendly alternatives for many companies is becoming a necessity in 2021 in order to save our planet from ruin, within the not too distant future.
When surveyed by the IBM and National Retail Federation in 2020, almost 70% of Americans stated that it is important to know whether the company they are purchasing goods from is following eco friendly practices. This demonstrates the importance of companies adhering to eco friendly ways to tempt the customer into buying their product and remaining a loyalty consumer.
How the US is Progressing in This Area
Many American companies are finding ways to keep up to date with the latest renewable energies. Iowa is a leading example of how one state can be at the forefront of US companies that are adopting renewable technology to run the majority of its businesses.
The US certainly is making progress in this area with Forbes citing the top 100 most energy efficient companies in the world in 2020, with the US and Canada featuring three times in the top 10, out of worldwide companies.
1 Orsted A/S Denmark 2 Chr. Hansen Holding A/S Denmark 3 Neste Oyj Finland 4 Cisco Systems Inc United States 5 Autodesk Inc United States 6 Novozymes A/S Denmark 7 ING Groep NV Netherlands 8 Enel SpA Italy 9 Banco do Brasil SA Brazil 10 Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp Canada
If You Run a Business Instead
If you run your own business instead then you will want to ensure that your business is meeting current energy standards. Companies such as GFF Power are able to provide any necessary support and further information on how to optimise energy performance. So it is certainly worth knowing how they can assist if you are unsure.
Social Media Driving Forward This Change
Social media is having a significant impact with regards to whether companies adopt more eco friendly ways in their business. It has become much easier for customers to express their opinions online about the company’s ethos and any complaints they have with their progress and products they provide.
Things to look out for when buying from an eco friendly company could be the following.
➢ Adopting a recycling plan in the workplace. ➢ Utilizing very little or no paper at all. ➢ Using biodegradable cleaning products. ➢ Installing technology to keep track of energy use. ➢ The use of electric or hybrid cars for company vehicles. ➢ Not leaving lights on unnecessarily in the office. ➢ Using sustainable suppliers when purchasing goods. ➢ Utilizing water, wind and solar power where possible.
Overall, in order to keep up to date with consumer expectations towards eco friendly practices, it would be prudent for companies to not ignore these requests otherwise they risk alienating their target audience.
Three focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. After the events of 2020, changes in the traditional ways of doing lots of things have changed but sector that may have been most effective is the business world. The following contributed post is entitled, 2021 Is A Time For Change In How You Communicate With Your Customers.
Following the corona crisis, many businesses are learning how to re-communicate with their customers and adapt to the needs of the newly created market. The new reality dictates a new order in which every business that wants to survive / succeed must recalculate its path.
In 2020, a reality was created in which small and large businesses begin to examine trends in their industry and create new business opportunities: from upgrading the existing site to best meet customer needs to taking ecological and social responsibility. Good communication adapted to these times, will create an increase in customer involvement in your business and will contribute to an increase in sales. Following this, we have compiled for you a list of business trends for the year 2021, which must be taken into account, when you come to communicate with your customers:
Beyond marketing on on-line trading sites
Increasing mobile marketing
Create an app for your business
Customize customer service
Increase in the percentage of remote work
Creating an online community
Promoting data transparency
Cultivating social responsibility and preserving the environment
Due to declining purchases in physical stores, many businesses have opened an online branch to market their products. They may present virtual events to people also. You should look at Hybrid events.
More efficient business management: The digital options allow, among other things, managing orders and payments, using data-based insights, tracking performance, targeting, issuing online invoices and more, all at the click of a button, which saves time, money and resources and streamlines the business.
Mobile marketing is one of the emerging trends in recent years: Following the rise in the use of smartphones and tablets and an estimated five billion people carrying mobile devices – the most direct and focused channel for your audience is through their phone. The following are some ideas on how to market to your customers via mobile:
Creating a winning mobile site that caters to users who surf through their device most of the day.
Segment your customers and create Google ads that offer relevant products that reflect your shopping preferences
Send a text message, updating on the latest promotion
Using Google’s geographical location, and sending messages to potential customers in your business area
Customizing customer service
In a message-saturated reality, customers prefer personal attention and expect more businesses to follow their consumption habits and tailor dedicated sales offers to them. Subsequently, in recent years (and now even more so), a customized customer service has developed, based on knowing your customer and tailoring the referral and messages to him according to his buying habits. How do you do that? Well, to market properly one needs to study, research and collect data. Once this is known, you can move forwards effectively. One way to learn about your customers is through the use of digital research tools, which will tell you about their behavior, in the context of your business. 2021 is a year of growth, and to make changes for the better. Don’t see these changes as negative, because truthfully, you are beginning an incredible journey.
Two focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. One strategy many businesses are looking to implement now is “Co-Sourcing”. The following contributed post is entitled, Could Two Become One With Co-Sourcing.
* * *
Pre-pandemic, an average 68% of businesses outsourced services, namely IT, but also everything from security through to accounting. After all, taking the pressure off in-house teams has long been hailed as the ‘wise’ option, allowing you to free up people power, lower costs, and enjoy the expertise that a dedicated third-party team has to offer.
Unfortunately, this past year has seen us looking at outsourcing differently. After all, companies have had enough of a struggle trying to stay afloat themselves, without also having to worry about outsourced companies (especially those overseas) who are ill-equipped to adjust to the new WFH norm.
While outsourcing has most definitely survived these recent months, then, many companies are understandably shaken. Enter co-sourcing, a new workplace trend that does exactly what it says on the tin. By bringing some processes back in-house and working more closely with third-party vendors, companies are managing to get services back on track in a way that suits, with benefits including –
Putting power back in your hands
When outsourcing started to struggle, countless companies realised that they had entirely handed over control of key business aspects such as cybersecurity or IT management. This left them very much in the lurch, and that’s an obvious problem.
Such a problem, in fact, that companies are scrambling to take back a level of control that they likely haven’t had since the early 2000s. Only then can they ensure that they’re aware enough of outside processes to pick up where another company has left off if necessary.
Many companies have stopped utilizing the scope of their in-house teams because they simply haven’t needed it. Again, this is a problem and can lead to employees who aren’t fulfilling their potential, as well as knowledge silos that will never be able to bridge outsourced gaps.
In reality, though, there’s a good chance that your existing team can do much more than you think, if only you focus on helping them to achieve that. As discussed in The Smartest Person in the Room by Christian Espinosa, there are real benefits to leveraging the smartest minds in your team for cybersecurity and everything else that you’ve taken out-of-house in the past. By then pairing these newly developed skills with outside expertise, you can reach levels of greatness the likes of which you’ve probably never even considered.
Pulling pricing down when you need it the most
All companies are looking to manage their money better at the moment, and co-sourcing can help there too. After all, with this approach, you needn’t pay full-whack for either your outsourced services or your in-house team. Rather, you can split costs and enjoy more extensive expertise for less, or at least as little as you were paying before all of this began.
Is co-sourcing likely to pull your business right out of the ashes? Probably not, but with business landscapes still increasingly uncertain, it may well be your best bet for getting operations back up and running in the shortest time frame possible.
Two focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. Regardless of your business’ unique product or service, you always have to consider how to generate positive exposure for your business. The following contributed post is entitled, In A World Of Competition, Here’s How To Make Your business Stand Out!
* * *
For most businesses, some healthy competition is a good thing. Indeed, it can encourage growth and challenge, and make sure they are operating in the most efficient way possible. However, as you might have already noticed, too much competition can make it hard for your business to stand out. Happily, there are some tactics you can use to resolve this. Keep reading to find out what they are.
Delight your customers
First, and more foremost if you want your company to stand out above the rest you have to go out of your way to delight your customers. This means going above and beyond the call of duty, not only delivering what you promised but even more!
One way you can do this is by offering amazing customer service, including follow up emails, the chance to rate and review your business, and by being easily contactable in case anyone has any problems they need resolving.
Additionally, you can delight your customers by making sure that any of the important touch points they use to interact with you, such as your website, has amazing UX. After all, the way the user (customer) experiences the process of engaging with your company will determine whether they come back to you to make a purchase or go to your closest competition.
Create unique branding and packaging
Another way you can ensure your product will stand out from the crowd is to invest some serious effort and money into the visuals. This means creating a strong visual brand that reflects your company’s values and is aesthetically pleasing to your target audience.
Of course, your brand should include a logo, as well as a company color palette and font. All of which should be used to create standout packaging so your product jumps off the shelf in stores and online.
Indeed, it is well worth considering high-end packaging finishes too, like the hot stamping and embossing you can visit https://universalengraving.com/lockup to find out more about. The reason being that packaging is more than just how your product is stored and transported, it’s also part of the experience of buying and owning it. Therefore, if you can impress at this stage, you are much more likely to get your product the attention it deserves.
Do some good
Finally, in today’s more eco and socially responsible consumer market you can help your product stand out by making sure you are doing good. Fortunately, there are several ways in which you can do this.
The first is by choosing ecologically sustainable ingredients when making your product. Something that, as you can see from this post https://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Article is becoming increasingly important to consumers.
Secondly, be sure to address social issues such as fair trade, modern slavery, and a living wage in the manufacture and distribution of your products. Then you can highlight this as part of your USP, therefore doing some good in the world as a business, and doing some good for your business too. Namely, that you will have the edge over any competition that is not yet doing these things.
Three focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. Depending what type of business you’re in, case management solutions my be valuable to your operations. The following contributed post is entitled, Case Management Solutions: What are they and who needs them?
* * *
Financial Literacy, Business and Entrepreneurship are common themes throughout the Big Words Space so let us delve into a phrase that has cropped up multiple times quite recently: Case Management Solutions. Is this something you really need to consider for your business? Let’s find out what it is all about and if it could be a beneficial solution for many organizations.
Case management solutions are applications or software systems that are designed to support a complex process and store a range of one’s data, consolidating this into a single database. Through using a system, case managers, whichever industry they may be concerned with, can regulate cases, allow for better record keeping and real-time updates, without the need for overwhelming amounts of spreadsheets and paper.
So, what are the benefits of a case management system?
As many companies move towards becoming paperless and reducing their carbon footprint, case management systems allow for a decrease in paperwork but ensuring that record-keeping is fully digital. By utilizing cloud-based storage systems, all content can be organized and managed via a single dashboard.
With many workers now working from home, along with many businesses being more global, there has never been a better time to have a remote system in place. All data can then be accessed securely by authorized persons, no matter where they are in the world.
Along with this, this is an ever-increasing need and desire to be able to access real-time and accurate information instantly. Therefore, using a case management solution with integrated cloud-based storage can be hugely beneficial to workers. In turn, this increases efficiency and accuracy across the workforce, potentially reducing the need to outsource.
Combining the efficiency and accuracy of the cloud-based data, as opposed to plentiful paperwork or individual spreadsheets, resolutions can be met much more quickly and effectively through collaboration. With access being enabled for all relevant team members, individuals are able to access the relevant information and respond appropriately and speedily, communicating via a single interface. Seamless collaboration in this way also reduces the need for emails to be sent back and forth between various team members, saving confusion and time.
With this more concise communication and audit trail, there is increased transparency – one of the many benefits of digital record-keeping. All steps and communications in the process can be accessed and monitored, with risks being identified and problem areas being addressed. Transparency speeds up any reporting process or actions that need to follow and audit trails ensure that trends are able to be analyzed easily, with metrics and analytics being able to be retried easily.
Through the use of case management solutions, a personalized experience can be created for individual clients or consumers. Customer profiles are more streamlined, with all of the relevant information to hand, so responding to customer queries and questions is much more efficient and straightforward, expediting business productivity.
Two focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. If you have a business idea and want to start your own enterprise, there are some things you need to keep in mind that will really help you out. The following contributed post is entitled, Startup Up Business Ideas.
So you have decided to start your own business, that’s great. However, it can be hard to know where to get started and figure out what your next steps should be. We have listed below a few tips to help you get started on your business venture.
Write A Business Plan
The first step that any business should take is writing up a business plan. Your business plan should include an overview of your business, what you are planning to sell or offer, what your targets and goals are and what makes you stand out from the rest. Set goes for one, five and ten year and check in with it every now and then to see if you are keeping on track and amend if necessary. If you are unsure on how to structure your business plan there are many templates online to help you.
Grow Your Online Presence
Being online is vital for any business to thrive and be successful. Start by creating a website, it doesn’t have to be over complicated, just ensure it showcases what your business does, contact information and T&Cs. You don’t have to break the bank by hiring a web agency there are a few platforms out there that allow you to create your own website for a fraction of the cost. Sites such as Wix, WordPress and Shopify are all great examples of diy websites. If you are not great with technology there are many videos, articles or professionals out there that can help guide you.
Once your website is all up and running, you will need to think about opening up a couple social media accounts. Social media is one of the best ways to get your business noticed. Most platforms will allow you to advertise to a selected target audience of your choice. The leading social media platforms are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok and Pinterest. Make sure you choose one or two platforms to focus on as having too many to focus on at once can become overwhelming.
Have The Right Equipment In place
When starting your business it can be hard knowing what equipment your office will need. Take a look at our must-have list below. ● Furniture – Whether you are setting up your business in an office or at home, you will need some furniture to get you going. You could start with a standard desk and chairs but for the long term we would recommend investing in some ergonomic furniture. ● Technology – You will need a computer that provides access to software such as word, powerpoint and spreadsheet. With everyone still having to keep their distance video calls are a popular way to communicate among customers, suppliers and work colleagues. Find the best software for your business, popular sites include Click4assistance, LiveHelpNow and Proficonf.
We hope these tips helped, it’s now down to you to put these tips in place and start growing your business. Whilst you are here take a look at our post on Should Your Small Business Look To Outsource?
Two focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. You shouldn’t just hastily start your business. You should also have standards and guidelines for it. The following contributed post is entitled, Are You Setting The Right Standards For Your Business?
* * *
The right standards within your business might be very different to the industry’s standard as a whole, but this doesn’t have to be a bad thing. After all, we all work in our own ways, and the market fosters and celebrates innovation. However, you need to make sure your thoughts and goals are shared by your company as an entity.
You need to be sure that your employees or team members all pitch in like you do, and that you’re committing to a standard that your customers enjoy. So, here are some of the best methods for staying on top of maintaining the standards you really want your company to have.
The first thing to do is realise what you want out of your company, and the kind of actions you want everyone working for you to uphold. After all, you’ve got values, and you want your business to grow based on them, so make sure you’ve got a pen and paper, and write down all your thoughts about what you want to see in a working environment every day. Turn them into actionable goals based on these points.
Make Sure There’s a Controlled Measurement
Now, once you have some standards written out on paper, you’re going to need to come up with some ways to objectively measure them. Of course, the biggest mark of success is a bigger profit than the month or year before, but before you reach a stage like that, you’re going to have to get into the details.
So, set an example to your team, then make sure you assess their skills and delegate tasks out accordingly, and always congratulate people on a job well done. Give them targets to reach, and never let a completed goal go unrecognised.
And don’t forget about the inhuman factor either. Run regular inspections on all office equipment, make sure guidelines are written out on how to deal with them – using LEM Products here is the easiest way to get the message across – and consistently update and maintain both software and hardware for a smooth working performance.
Get Ready To Coach Your Staff Through It
And then we come to the fact that some of your team members are going to perform under the standard you want. In situations like this, you need to put in a little more time and effort to really get the best out of them.
They might be finding it hard to adjust, or they might just need a little more coaching from the person who sets and maintains the goals. Simply put, if you really want your team to rally together on this, make sure you put in the work yourself and show them how it’s done!
The right standards in business are entirely up to you. Make sure your vision is shared by everyone else in your company, and always hold regular inspections to ensure your company’s infrastructure is performing as well as you are.
Two focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. Some of the most successful business models are those that no one sees coming. When this happens, they take the world by storm and only a select few experience the explosive profits from them, while the rest of the society benefits from their use. The following contributed post is entitled, New Business Models Nobody Ever Expected Would Be So Successful.
* * *
Throughout history, we’ve seen a bunch of business models develop that have provided the average person with massive value – and made us all much wealthier. The nineteenth-century factory model, for instance, wasn’t pretty, but it was hugely effective, and it meant that the average person could begin living a semi-comfortable life.
In the 1920s, we saw the rise of the “bait and hook” model where manufacturers would lure customers with an initial low-cost product, and then upsell them. And in the 1950s, the franchise model was born, allowing businesses to grow very large while maintaining the incentive for excellence.
In the present decade, we’re likely to see the growth of some brand new and exciting business models, based on innovative technology.
There are already some seriously good examples of cutting-edge companies doing their best to change the way business works. Here’s what’s likely to emerge.
Imagine being able to confirm your identity wherever you went and gain access to facilities, garages, or your place of work 24-hours a day.
At the moment, seamless technologies are few and far between. But Bluetooth could offer companies an entirely different model.
Take the concept of storage smart entry, for instance. The idea here is that people just use their mobile devices to gain access to their storage areas instead of having to rely on keys or on-site personnel. But the same principle could apply across the economy. Stores, for instance, could allow trusted customers to let themselves in whenever they like, pay for products as they shop, and leave, without having to interact with an actual cashier. It sounds crazy, but it could happen.
The Transformation Economy
The more philosophical you become, the more you realize that material wealth isn’t the be-all-and-end-all to personal satisfaction. But that’s creating a problem in the wider economy. Most people don’t know what to do other than chase money. And it’s leading to a kind of existential anxiety where individuals aren’t quite sure why they’re here or what they’re doing.
The so-called “transformation” economy is trying to change that. Here, gurus in various fields are offering their services to help people navigate the strangeness and infinite complexity of life. Now that most people are wealthy (at least by historical standards), the hope is that they can use their money to derive a little more meaning from life. Once you’ve got all the trappings of luxury, what else is there to spend your money on than improving your lived experiences?
Imagine a world in which each person sells their services to a range of companies but isn’t an employee of any.
It sounds a little dystopian, but the reality will be different. It’ll feel way more empowering than having to slog it out with a single employer, year after year. Instead, you’ll be able to dip into different kinds of work, face new challenges, and, hopefully, increase your pay at the same time.
The decentralized economy will hopefully allow anyone to earn money from anywhere, potentially solving the problem of unemployment.
As described in the story of my blog, I wrote for the Examiner prior to starting the Big Words Blog Site. One of the things I realized when starting my own blog was that I now had to do everything myself besides just the writing. The Examiner was a massive operation in itself, and a business that had systems in place for everything, i.e., quality assurance, technical support, and advertising/promotion/monetization of its content. Starting my own blog meant that I had to do all of that which also involved managing unforeseen challenges. Some of the major challenges involved cyberattacks, promotion of my content, and managing my social media’s ‘metadata’.
When writing for the Examiner, even if we, the writers, didn’t promote our own work, the publication did it in the form of grouping and promoting the popular pieces of the week in mass email correspondences (email blasts). I also noticed that all over the Examiner’s site there were advertisements from marketers, which is in large part how the Examiner and other publications made money. They tossed some of the ‘crumbs’ to us which was in large part driven by the clicks and views our writings generated. Through writing for the Examiner one of the biggest lessons I learned among other things, was that while much of our population wastes time on it and in some instances misuses it, social media is an important tool for writers who want to grow their audiences in modern times.
Metadata and Social Media Plugins
When I set out to create my own blog, I needed to understand the conceptual and technical aspects of doing it and thus purchased a copy of Blogging for Dummies. Unfortunately, I only got halfway through it before purchasing my webhosting services from ‘GoDaddy’, my ‘Word Press’ site, and my unique web domain name/URL (Uniform Resource Locator). When initially setting up the Big Words Blog Site, I realized that none of the social media buttons that were available on the Examiner and other websites were visible on my site. After going to back into Blogging for Dummies, I learned that these were called ‘plugins’, and there were multiple free options to choose from in the Word Press store.
I chose the Word Press Social Sharing Optimization plugin because it gave me and my readers the buttons for the social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, Buffer and others. Though I didn’t understand it at the time, I also read that the information captured by these buttons – the ‘likes/shares’ were called the ‘metadata’ described above which updates in real time whenever someone likes or shares your work.
As a writer, until you’ve built up your audience in the way of a Twitter following or through subscribership, your metadata is critical in terms of knowing the popularity of your content. It also tells new visitors to your site how others have reacted to your work. Many readers click on your content and read it, but don’t necessarily comment. Ideally, you’ll get clicks, likes/shares and comments from each reader, but that’s not always the case.
My Blog’s First Cyberattack
Up until early February of 2018, I didn’t really have any significant issues with my Word Press site. Well actually, there was one instance where I temporarily broke it by continuously adding and removing one of the plugins, probably for something cosmetic. Afterwards, the site wouldn’t load, but fortunately my webhost, GoDaddy, restored its settings from the previous day as they were continuously backing it up; something I recommend for all bloggers and website owners.
My first cyberattack came on a Saturday morning (or probably the night before). I had just published my interview with Dr. Cedric Bright, and it was getting lots of clicks and views based upon support from people in his network. I woke up that Saturday morning to an unfortunate surprise. My site, which I had opened and logged into hundreds and maybe thousands of times, was now ‘redirecting’ to a site I was unfamiliar with in the United Kingdom. After contacting my webhost, GoDaddy, it was determined that some form of ‘malware’ had infiltrated my site causing it to redirect. I hadn’t significantly invested in any security measures up to that point and to make a long story short, there were numerous entry points that the malware could have entered. In the meantime, all my operations had ground to a screeching halt.
As GoDaddy set out to fix my site, days went on and I pondered whether I might have to start the Big Words Blog Site all over from scratch, which would have taken a little bit of work because all the pieces were saved in various folders. And all of the comments I received on some of my most popular pieces would have been gone, as well as all of my metadata from the previous two years. It took about almost two weeks, but GoDaddy was able to remove the malware and I could use my site again. There was yet another surprise though.
SSL Certificates and Losing My Metadata
Once my site had been salvaged, I realized something was missing – the metadata for my social media plugins. My cover page, for example, had approximately 8,500 Facebook likes/shares prior to the cyberattack and now the number was zero. When I called GoDaddy initially to inquire about why my site was redirecting, the associate kindly pointed out that Saturday morning that my site didn’t have an ‘SSL Certificate’, something I hadn’t paid attention to out of the thousands of websites I’d visited in my lifetime.
SSL is an acronym for ‘Secure Sockets Layer’, a global standard security technology that enables encrypted communication between a web browser and a web server. My URL (Uniform Resource Locator) was an http and not an https, where the ‘s’ designates the possession of an SSL Certificate. I was informed that I would need the SSL Certificate for my site to gain a much better standing in Google’s search algorithm. Hearing this, I bought the certificate, and my site was likewise converted to an https from an http.
Restoring My Metadata
The reason all of my social media likes and shares disappeared was because of the very thing I had just paid for, my SSL Certificate which converted my site to an https instead of http. The problem is that the Facebook plugin on my site was created under the http. When I converted to the https, Facebook no longer recognized the 8,500 likes/shares from my plugin because it was now essentially a different URL. From a technical standpoint, the “Application Programming Interface” (API) between my blogging platform and the social media sites was altered.
How was I going to get my 8,500 likes and shares back? Could I get them back? Needless to say, I was very frustrated and didn’t know how I’d solve this problem. At some point I had a ‘lightbulb moment’ and decided to simply ask Google. It turned out that I wasn’t the only blogger to encounter this quagmire, and another quick Google search led me to an article with a bunch comments which ultimately led me a company called Social Warfare. Social Warfare sold their own social media plugins and had a feature through their ‘pro package’ which allowed metadata to be retrieved when bloggers like myself unknowingly converted from an http to an https designation.
By purchasing the new Social Warfare Pro Plugins package I now had a plan for restoring my metadata. After uploading the pro plan’s Zip file, I activated the function to retrieve my data and anxiously watched as the numbers gradually ticked upwards, which they did for the most part over a series of days. All throughout my site, the Facebook likes were restored, and I was at ease for a little while until the next set of challenges emerged.
Conclusions
In closing, I think it’s worth noting that while I approached starting my blog as a personal project, you can also hire someone to do it who has all the expertise, assuming you have funds to invest in those services. That may save you some of the ups and downs I described in this piece. You may save some time, but you also won’t learn those valuable lessons. It’s essentially one of life’s many tradeoffs. I think it’s also worth noting that based upon my science training, which was technology intensive and involved learning new methods and techniques on the fly, I felt equipped to build my platform myself once I learned about the available applications and tools.
I was fortunate to be able to monetize my blogging platform in 2017 and build a business around it. I’ve learned that, as a business owner, one has to problem solve and think of creative solutions when disaster strikes without warning (which is usually how it strikes). Sometimes it is creating the solution on your own, and sometimes the solution is out there, and you only need the intellectual curiosity to find it.
The other thing is that you’re forced to learn and evolve when things go wrong unexpectedly, and it did in this instance with my blogging platform. In addition to some of these technical aspects I learned about running a blogging platform in this post (an ongoing process), I also wanted to communicate these general lessons I learned about running a business, and I hope you were able to get something out of this blogger’s tale. Look for more in the future and thank you for reading this.
If you’ve found value here and think it would benefit others, please share it and/or leave a comment. To receive all the most up to date content from the Big Words Blog Site, subscribe using the subscription box in the right-hand column in this post and throughout the site. You can follow me now on YouTube on any of my Big Discussions76 channels, the Big Words Blog Site Facebook page, and Twitter at @BWArePowerful. Lastly you can follow me on Instagram at @anwaryusef76.
Two focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. While a business may be started with specific products and services in mind, seldom is it equipped to have everything it needs to complete its mission, hence the need for outsourcing. The following contributed post is entitled, Should Your Small Business Look To Outsource?
* * *
When it comes to setting up a business and ensuring success, then there will be a time when hiring really is critical. Even if you start small, as a one-person operation, hiring is inevitable. To do well in business, you need to have teams that are going to help and support. The whole hiring process, no matter if you choose full-time or part-time employees is really important, as you want to have the right person for the job.
Although the process is important, it is not something that is easy. If you want to expand and grow what you do, then you will need to have more and more people on-board. Of course, this can help to grow the business, but it also means more costs for wages, as well as additional things like insurance for employees and sick pay, and so on. As this is a consideration, you could also look to hire people to do work for you that are not part of an in-house team. When you outsource to a company or an individual, you just pay for the task that is required, and there is no more commitment. If they do a good job, then you know who to use again. If they don’t, then you know to not hire them again, making it much simpler in many ways than having a full-time employee.
If your business has not thought about outsourcing before, then here are some of the things that you could outsource for, and when you should outsource. Getting it right will help to save the business money in the long-term, as well as help to keep the business thriving.
Businesses can vary so much, and as a small business owner, you might not have any previous experience in this area. So there may be some aspects of business that you have no idea about. Areas like social media are a good idea for small business, especially from a digital marketing point of view. However, if you have a small team, then you’re likely to not have the time or expertise to run it successfully, as an example. In the same way, you will need bookkeeping and accounts for your business, but if no one is experienced in this, then outsourcing this will help massively, and be something that you no longer need to think about. If you hired a full-time accountant to do this for you, there wouldn’t be enough work to fill a full-time role, and it would cost a lot more than using a separate company or person to do this for you.
Time consuming tasks
Likewise, outsourcing tasks to someone else can be a good idea, especially for any tasks that are time consuming. There are a number of tasks in business that can take up a lot of time, but that aren’t too taxing or vital to business, they just need to be done. Your expertise should be doing the tasks that are the things helping to grow the business, rather than the smaller and more time consuming tasks. For example, you might take a lot of phone orders or customer service calls. These calls could be taken by a business answering service, rather than paying for a full-time employee to do it all. There are a range of tasks, and it will vary from business to business, but it is worth looking into if you are hoping to propel your business forward.
If you are deciding whether or not to outsource or to hire someone to your team, then there are a number of things to think about. It starts by taking a look at your business needs, as there are a number of advantages to both options, as well as disadvantages of both options. It is important to not get too caught up in the different activities that could happen, and which of those you should or shouldn’t hire or outsource too. You could have some expertise in a particular area, such as accounting, for example. But if you take on a lot of other roles, being the accountant as well might be too much. So even if you have a team of people with experience in something in particular, you might still choose to outsource.
Look at your business and the people in it specifically. Look at the needs and then decide what areas will be a benefit to you if you outsource, or which really do need to have an in-house team member. Assess the tasks, weigh up the costs, and your options, and then go from there.
