Three focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. In today’s digital world, most businesses and organizations have an information technology (IT) component. As such, large amounts of critical data must be properly stored. Not doing so can have several negative consequences. The following contributed post is entitled, Storage Options – Is There a Best Option?
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When it comes to looking after your business, there is a lot of information passing through. Some you will need to keep, others you won’t, and there will be plenty of projects and other files that you will need to hold on to until the end of your contract. When it comes to storage, you’ll need to spend some time thinking about what you need, and then you will know your best option.
Before you settle on the best storage for your needs, you will have to assess your business. Here are a few questions to get you started:
● How old is the data you want to store?
● Is it all related to your business?
● How much of it is doubled up?
● Where do you need to access the data from?
● Who needs access?
● How fast do you need access?
Once you understand your data, and what will make a difference to you, you will begin to see what kind of storage is your best option. In most cases, it will be a combination of solutions.
Options
Once you have answered those questions, you can move on to researching or refreshing knowledge on different options.
External hard drives
This is one of the most cost-effective ways to store a large amount of data that you need to have on hand most of the time. They simply plug into your computer and are ideal for travel. But you have to remember that you can lose an HDD, and it can get damaged by being dropped, wet, and can be susceptible to corruption.
Thumb Drives
If you are on the go a lot, then a small thumb drive is going to be ideal. They are small enough to put in your pocket, or more preferably, on a keychain somewhere safe. They don’t hold much, so you will need to be very selective. You can only share the thumb with people you are physical with.
Cloud
Online storage is what people should be looking at. Cloud computing is one of the best solutions for most businesses. It allows you to share huge files with clients all over the world. And, multiple people can work on a project at the same time, and the information will be available immediately. This also means that you won’t need to travel with your own computer, you can access what you need from any system with internet access. It is typically well encrypted, and you can’t lose it, drop it, or otherwise damage it.
NAS
Network-attached storage is super-fast, reliable, and gives you access to data in an IP networking environment. They are suitable for small businesses that need a large amount of cheap storage for multiple users – but only within their own network. They are easy to manage and an excellent option for centrally managed storage.
Before you implement any data storage, you should talk to an IT advisor or do a lot of research so you can get the best for your business. Don’t wait until you need mass storage to have things in place, plan ahead.
Three of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. In today’s digital world, significant amounts of business are done online and thus having a website which will attract attention is key. The following contributed post is entitled, Tips To Bring More Attention To Your Website.
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To compete with other businesses in today’s world, it can often be very difficult. This is because there’s a lot more competition out there simply due to the internet. Anyone can create a business, and for some, you don’t even need to have any funding to start off with.
If you’re not entirely happy with the host you have chosen for your current website, then it’s never too late to transfer your domain to another platform. Ultimately, you need to feel completely comfortable and confident when making edits to your business website. Whether you choose Wix or Squarespace, you should always opt in for a trial run so you know how it would work for you. As soon as you make sure that the platform has a blogging platform, a shopping option and smooth automations you will have made the right choice for your business.
Create A Web Page Design That Fits Your Brand
When it comes to your website, it’s important that your website reflects your branding. As a business, having branding is important because it helps your customers recognize your business. If they see the same logo and colors from what you have in terms of social media to the website, you’ve got brand consistency that’s going to help you become more successful in more ways than one. Looking at your web page design now, is it a little too basic? Perhaps you got a web design template that other people online also have. You want to spend some money on getting a good web design, so seek out a good web designer and make it a collaborative process to come up with something that’s unique. It should be tailored to your business and really help show it off in a way that you’d like it to be.
Produce More Content On A Daily Basis
More content for your website is going to mean more traffic over time. You want to be consistent in when you’re posting on your website, and every website should have a blog. As a business, you will likely have topics that you could cover in relation to the business, and providing high-quality content can help your website become a great source of information and knowledge for those who are your customers or who are within the same industry as you. When it comes to the amount of content that you should be making, at least once every couple of days is a great start. Ideally, having someone in the role of a content writer can be beneficial so that you can post at least once a day.
Invest In Some Training
We’ve always got the ability to improve, and when it comes to training and building up skills, there’s a lot you can do when it comes to knowing how to improve a website. SEO is a big contributor to your website, and if you know how to do this, then you can really help develop the site into something more popular and traffic-driven. With sites like Loud Programmer, you can get great training that helps provide you with the tools in order to really build on what you have already. If you’re willing to invest in some training, it’ll definitely end up paying you back further down the line, and it’s one thing that is worth doing, especially if you have very little awareness of how to run a website.
Try Out Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is where you create content for other websites. When guest blogging, you want to ensure that the websites you are providing content for, have a similar audience to yours. You also want to get a link back to your own website so that people are clicking through and landing on your webpage. With blogging on other sites, it can be a little time-consuming, particularly if you are the only one doing it or you’ve got a limited amount of staff. Therefore, take care when it comes to picking the sites that you guest blog on. You want them to be effective for your own site, and that will only happen if you’ve done your research.
Promote Your Site Everywhere
Every opportunity is a chance for self-promotion, and when it comes to running a website and business, you can’t be shy or embarrassed about it. Use every networking session and event in general to promote your site. Don’t forget about advertising, and how beneficial it can be to do it online. Online advertising is a lot more affordable than traditional advertising and with traditional formats, you’re limited to how far it can reach. With online advertising, you have the ability to reach a global scale, and that can be pretty incredible to have as a business. So take advantage of every opportunity that’s out there in order to make your website known.
Building a strong website takes time, so be willing to put in the man-hours and financial investment needed to bring attention to your website. With these tips, you’ll definitely see some progress, and it’s essential that your business continues to be prominent online.
Three of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Health/Wellness. Pretty much everyone needs dental care, but will patients trust your dental practice and services. Just like medicine, there have been instances of dental malpractice and fatal accidents. What are some keys to patients trusting you? The following contributed post is entitled, Becoming a Dental Practice That People Trust.
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Unfortunately, dentists are a group of people that many of us struggle to trust. It’s not that we don’t like them as people. Or that we don’t understand the importance of their work. But, most of us experience some form of dental phobia at some point in our lives. This can range from mild worry to debilitating anxiety around an appointment, and often how we feel about the treatment gets confused with how we feel about the dental practice itself.
If you own or run, your own dental practice, this can be a problem. You want your patients to trust you and even like you. You certainly don’t want them to be scared of you. So, here are some of the things that you can do to become a practice that people can trust.
Patients won’t trust you if you make mistakes with things like booking or billing — partner with an IT provider at https://www.pact-one.com/ to become more efficient. Getting someone to run your IT systems can help you to take more bookings, and manage them more efficiently. This can be great for your relationships with your patients.
Employ the Right Staff
Every member of your team has an important role to play when it comes to building trust with patients. The person that answers the phones should be friendly, polite and knowledgeable. The people on the front desk should be welcoming and respectful. Dental staff need to be patient, helpful and great at their jobs. Take your time with recruitment, trying to find people that are happy to go the extra mile to make people feel safe.
Build an Online Presence
You might think that online interaction is only important for online business and influencers. But this isn’t true. We spend so much of our time online, and we expect all of the companies and services that we use to be online. Patients might Google your practice for more information. So, think about what they might find. Social media channels are a great way to share information, communicate, and build relationships, and an efficient website is professional and can help you to make a great first impression. Find more tips on social media at https://bennisinc.com/7-ways-to-make-your-company-social-media-more-engaging/.
Get to Know Patients
Think about your own experience with other services and businesses. Isn’t it nice when you walk in to be greeted by someone that remembers you? Dentist appointments make people uncomfortable, and this kind of recognition can reduce anxiety and make your patients feel calmer. You might not see them that often, but try your best to get to know them, enjoy small talk and ask them about their days. Taking a personal interest can increase trust tremendously.
Create a Friendly and Informative Waiting Room
It’s not just the people that you employ and your relationships with patients that contributes towards their trust. Your surgery itself also plays its part. Your treatment rooms should be clean, bright and welcoming. Your waiting room should also be bright and clean. Add some toys for younger patients, magazines and wifi access, as well as informative (but not scary) flyers and posters. Try to make people feel more comfortable while they wait.
“The coaches at some of the other Yale Cup schools thought I had an unfair competitive advantage because of the intramural program I started at Hutch-Tech!”
The first principle of my blog is “Creating Ecosystems of Success”. I originally published this series on the Examiner back in 2014 and have subsequently began adding to it. As a teen I dreamt of being a basketball player just like a lot of kids – a dream for which one must have lots of ability, drive, and luck to achieve. My experience turned out to be quite the adventure, and I didn’t formally play basketball beyond high school. The lessons I learned there however, not all of them happy and pleasant, helped me as I progressed into adulthood and into my Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) career. As mentioned, when I began reposting this series, I’ve started working on an ambitious writing project chronicling my early basketball journey in Western New York.
If I’m able to get my project published, one of the things that will be special about it is that it’s a story involving real people. The project has required me to do multiple interviews. It has been both an interesting and fun experience. As noted by well-established authors like John U. Bacon, who has written numerous books on Michigan Football, some people are open to being interviewed and being characters in book projects, while others are reluctant. Some agree and then drop out of contact, while others are difficult to contact. As a writer I now understand why some names must be changed in the final story.
I consider my breakthrough interview to be that of Jason Rowe, which led to interviews with others, and I want to thank everyone who participated; some of whom I’ve never met personally. My interview with Jason was followed by an interview with Coach Pat Monti and then his star guards, Carlos Bradberry and Tim Winn. It’s been a fun ride with at least one more big interview on the way, so stay tuned.
One of the key figures in my story is Dr. Kenneth Leon Jones, who was the Head Coach of the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team during my freshman, sophomore and junior years. Before he passed away at the end of 2018, Coach Jones told me that he was okay with being a character in my story. In my piece about his basketball camp, I discussed Coach Jones, what I learned from him and what he meant to me.
That was just my perspective though and I discovered many other points of view on Coach Jones in my research. I actually started learning of other peoples’ views of Coach Jones in my junior season where I hit some personal adversities. My struggles, in part, contributed to our team’s struggling and spiraling out of control that season. During my personal storm one classmate sought me out one day and told me that he disliked Coach Jones because he had ‘cut’ his brother years earlier. It was then that I realized that there were many backstories to Coach’s tenure at Hutch-Tech in addition to the successes he experienced my freshman year.
“Most of the time, when somebody is giving you orders and instructions, if you’re not emotionally ready – if you’ve got your mind on the wrong part, you’re not going to try as hard. You’re not going to be into it. You’re not going to absorb as much,” said a player I’ll call “Curtis” about Coach Jones in my interview with him. Curtis was the ‘engine’ that powered Coach Jones’ 1990-91 city and sectional championship team. He said a lot of powerful things during our interview, but this quote very much applies to the relationship between coaches and players, much which I experienced myself, or witnessed with teammates.
One of the cool things about working on a project where you’re interviewing multiple people is that you get to hear multiple points of view. Amazingly, my interviews for The Engineers revealed that Coach Jones was multiple things to multiple people. While there was a group of us who held him in high reverence, appreciated his teachings and the mentoring he gave us, he had several detractors as well. Again, he was multiple things to multiple people. His detractors fell into three groups, some of which might surprise you.
The first group consisted of some of the other coaches in our league called the “Yale Cup”, which was the league for all the Buffalo Public Schools. For those readers unfamiliar with the Yale Cup in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it consisted of fourteen schools. Three schools that no longer exist today are: Buffalo Traditional, Kensington and Seneca Vocational High School.
The Yale Cup was a poorly funded league which lacked a Junior Varsity (JV) program at all its schools to properly prepare its players for Varsity competition. Coach Jones and the Buffalo News called this a “feeder system”. The result was a 14-team league where all of the teams were run differently, and where all the coaches had varying levels of experience and interest. This led to drastically different levels of coaching and attention to detail. Some of the Varsity coaches (Coach Jones included), ran an informal JV program for no extra pay simply because there was a need for it.
We also played in outdated and antiquated facilities. Many of the gyms in the Yale Cup league looked like antiquated factory storage rooms with peeling paint and old industrial smells. Most of our gyms had solid white backboards without ‘break away’ rims. Only a few of the courts, like those at Grover Cleveland and McKinley for example, had ‘regulation-size’ courts with the proper dimensions. Our old little gym at Hutch-Tech was more of a small box than anything. Someone I interviewed recently jokingly said that Performing Arts’ gym resembled a bit of a bowling alley.
“The coaches at the other schools thought I had an unfair competitive advantage because of the intramural program I started at Hutch-Tech,” Coach Jones said during one of our interviews. He shared a lot of things with me that I didn’t know as a teen and probably wouldn’t have understood. There were so many layers – so many things happening at once surrounding the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team in plain sight and behind the scenes. The same is true for Coach Jones’ two immediate successors who I’ll keep anonymous at this time.
One of the hallmarks of Coach Jones’ tenure at Hutch-Tech was his intramural program. The program was for all the boys in the school so that everyone could get taste of competition and where a champion was crowned. More specifically, it allowed Coach Jones to scout the talent in each class. It wasn’t something he was doing for extra pay, but instead it was something for the students and for the school.
“Some of Jones’ players played angry,” a former player also from Coach Jones’ city and sectional championship team who I’ll call “Pep”, said jokingly. My interview with Pep might be my favorite of all of the interviews I’ve done simply because I could hear that he was having so much fun talking about his playing days. In any case, Coach Jones’ second group of detractors were surprisingly on some of his rosters.
Before getting to Hutch-Tech, the program looked like a utopia from the outside. My research though revealed that there were several conflicts and perpetually hurt feelings involving some of Coach Jones’ players. In some instances, there were personality conflicts. In other instances, there were players who felt they had to prove themselves repeatedly and in general felt unappreciated. Some players felt that they didn’t play enough, and others didn’t play at all though they were given roster spots.
The third group of detractors were outside of the team, but in the student body. The individual who stands out the most for this group is the classmate described above, but there were others. The reality in life is that there are winners and losers, and there usually isn’t enough of everything to go around. This particularly applies to a basketball team where a coach can realistically keep up to 18 players, while only being able to play 8-10 regularly.
In short, not every kid at my school who wanted a roster spot got one, and there are any number of reasons for that. I may write another teaser-piece just on the criteria Coach Jones presented on his ‘invite list’. That’s right, during his tenure, you couldn’t just come out for the basketball team, you had to be invited. This cut a lot of kids out of the picture from the start even before having a chance to show him they could dribble the ball, make baskets, play defense or even run one of his offenses.
Why does this all matter? Like the entire story, it was a sample of what was to come throughout the rest of my life in college and then in the adult world. For some of us who earned roster spots and submitted to his coaching, Coach was father figure, a mentor and a leader. Others on his teams felt like his whipping boys and even underappreciated. Other students didn’t feel like they were given a fair chance to play. Some didn’t like his fundamentals-based way of teaching the game. Some of the other coaches in our Yale Cup league thought he was cheating.
This is why interscholastic sports are good teachers going forward in life. Two of the things you learn about in addition to your sport, are people and leadership – neither of which are easy aspects to manage. As a leader, whether it’s a coach, a college professor, a clergyman or a supervisor, not everyone sees you the same way. Depending on our backgrounds, our values, our individual natures, and where our minds are in seasons of our lives, our experiences with that person will vary, and in many instances, vary greatly. It’s also true that because we may see a given person differently, our truths may be different.
Whether it was the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team, my research lab in graduate school, or now within the government agency I work in everyday, there were always individuals charged with leading larger groups or teams. Some people within those teams possess different levels and proficiencies at their crafts. All possess different levels of emotional intelligence. Some are better communicators than others, and some are just better team players than others.
“If I could go back, I would be just as demanding, but more understanding,” Coach Jones said to me several times during our talks. He knew that he drove his players hard and demanded a lot from us. He also concluded that he could’ve been a little more understanding of each player and what they were going through as each of us came from different homes and had different life struggles in our teens.
“If you look at that team that almost made it to Glens Falls, Coach Jones let that team do a lot, but that was all earned. He said, ‘Hey, I’ll let you shoot a three-pointer or a long jump shot outside the offense because I know that we’re playing good enough defense that we’re going to get a possession back,” said a former teammate named “Chris” who played under Coach Jones for four years. Chris was a captain on our team in my sophomore year and a true leader. Some of Coach Jones’ critics thought he was too restrictive and controlling of his teams, particularly on offense.
“When I went to college, I played Division III at the Coast Guard Academy. I didn’t play Varsity, but instead played on the equivalent of our JV squad. We played against a bunch of junior colleges and prep schools. I’ll say that I was able to shoot the ball a lot more,” Chris said. “I look back though, and I think if we were able to play defense like we did in high school, we would’ve been able to keep up with a bunch of those teams. So, shooting the ball wasn’t always the best policy.”
I’ll probably write another teaser-piece just talking about the program Coach Jones created at Hutch-Tech, but for now I’ll just say that if done right, while it can be rewarding, coaching isn’t easy. You must not only have to know your sport and its evolving nuances, but you must also assemble a team of players, develop them and get them to buy into a common goal. That isn’t easy as coaches must also play psychologist, in addition to a quasi-parent in some instances, especially for kids who don’t have fathers or who come from tumultuous homes.
This piece isn’t unique to Coach Jones. He was my coach. If you read my interview with Jason Rowe, Jason stated that while his Coach, Joe Cardinal, was highly scrutinized, his players loved him. Ironically, even though Coach Cardinal was highly criticized, his Bulls coincidentally made deep runs in the post-season play most years. The same is true for Coach Pat Monti who led the LaSalle basketball dynasty. During his 10-year run of dominance leading the LaSalle Explorers, there were numerous critiques about him and his program from the outside. Talking to him and his players on the inside was completely different though.
The first picture used for this post is the schedule for the 1989-90 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Pepsi-Cola of Western New York used to create cardboard schedules for the area high school teams in addition to hosting the Al Pastor Memorial Basketball Tournament for a select number of schools. It was Coach Jones’ second season at Hutch-Tech. I was an eighth grader looking to go into high school and was learning about Coach and his teams through my brother Amahl who was a sophomore that year and his Hutch-Tech yearbooks.
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The first principle of my blog is Creating Ecosystems of Success and a key focus is Health/Wellness. No matter what your purpose or mission is in life, one of the most key components in your life will be your health and fitness. If you’re healthy, you can accomplish most things. The following contributed post is entitled, 10 Simple Ways to Improve Your Health and Fitness.
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When it comes to improving our health and fitness levels, we usually think that we have to do things that are beyond boring: it’s all about eating salads, and spending your evenings in the gym, or whatever. In fact, this is not true. We can push ourselves to an improved state just by making subtle changes to our lifestyle. Below, we outline some of the most influential changes that you can make. Adopt them all (or as many as you can), and you’ll find that you’re on the path towards living a healthier, fitter life.
Before you can figure out how you’re going to reach the top of the mountain, you need to figure out where you are. In health terms, this means taking a look at your lifestyle and figuring out your positive and negative health points. We’re pretty busy these days, and that means that we rarely get time to sit down and review our lifestyles. It is worthwhile, however. You might find that you’re making a few fundamental errors which, if amended, would lead to much improved fitness levels. So ask yourself: are you living a healthy or unhealthy lifestyle?
Get Walking
It’s not something that is often discussed, but the way we live is a bit unusual. At least in terms of how all the other humans on earth have lived, that is. There has never been a point in human history when people have sat down as much as they do now. Some people spend the vast majority of their day off their feet. They’re in the car, or sitting behind a desk, or watching television on the couch. Make no mistake: this type of sedentary life will have a hugely detrimental impact on your health in the long run. Fortunately, it’s one of those things that can be remedied relatively easily. Get moving! You can incorporate more activity by making subtle changes to your life. For example, could you cycle to work, or park further away from the office so that you can walk a little? Can you take the stairs rather than the elevator? These things might seem inconsequential, but all tallied up, they can make a big difference.
Working Up a Sweat
Of course, while building more activity into your lifestyle will be a good start, it might not dramatically improve your health and fitness levels. It’ll just put you on the right path. There is no substitute for working up a sweat — it will do wonders for your physical and mental health. And the beautiful part of this stage is that there are various ways that you can go about it. You can work out in the gym if you’re drawn that way, but you can also look at running, cycling, playing team sports, hiking in the outdoors. Whatever you’ll find the most enjoyable, essentially (this will ensure that you stick to your activity).
How to Eat Well
What we feed into our body is super important when it comes to our health and fitness. It is the foundation for our health, the building blocks. You can’t (or shouldn’t) expect to reach your peak state if you’re forever eating unhealthy foods, no matter how much exercise you’re doing. People tend to think that eating healthy meals is a time-consuming or laborious task. Not so! Indeed, there are plenty of easy to prepare, twenty minute meals that’ll put you on the path towards healthy eating. At a minimum, you should avoid those obviously unhealthy foods. That fast food burger might task good, but it’s a disaster for your body.
Cutting Down on Vices
We all like to have fun, but sometimes, the ways in which we have fun can have a negative impact on our health. Take, for example, how we socialize. We can end up drinking too many alcoholic drinks and smoking too many cigarettes. While these things are sometimes presented as normal, the truth is that they can both have a hugely negative impact on our health. So it’s worthwhile looking at cutting down, or stopping them altogether. Easier said than done, right? There are things you can do to make it easier. If you want to stop smoking, take a look at mtbakervapor.com, and transition to vaping instead. To moderate your alcohol intake, you can look at social activities that don’t involve alcohol. If you do have to spend time in a bar, then consider alternating your drinks from alcoholic to non-alcoholic options. You’ll barely notice that anything’s different at the time, but will feel the effect when it comes to your bank balance and how good you feel the next morning.
Into the Outdoors
We tend to think of ourselves as somehow apart from nature. It’s something that happens away from us, in other places. We’re civilized! As much as we want to deny the animal side of our existence, the fact is that it’s there, and always will be. We’ve come to understand in recent decades just how important it is to have nature time in our lives. Studies have shown that it can have a significant impact on our physical and mental health. If you can’t recall the last time you were surrounded by nothing but the great outdoors, look at making it part of your lifestyle. No matter where you live, there will surely be a beautiful spot near you that you can visit.
For too long, we’ve thought of our health only in terms of the physical. Our body is what’s important. You can see the thinking behind this idea, but there’s little wonder that it has been shown to be too limiting. There’s been an explosion in mental health conditions in recent years, and indeed, the problem is only projected to get worse. As such, it’s important that we’re taking the time to ensure we’re in a good mental space. You can do this by limiting the amount of stress in your life, and taking breaks when you feel overwhelmed. Meditation can also do wonders for your mental wellness, too.
Sleeping Well
It’s much harder to be at our healthy best if we’re tired. It might not feel like it, but you’ll be less likely to work out and prepare a healthy meal if you haven’t slept well. Long-term sleeping problems have also been associated with more serious health problems too. So if you’re not sleeping all that well, look at making some changes to your routine. If you improve your pre-sleeping routine to include less screen time and more relaxing activities such as reading and meditating, you’ll find that it’s much easier to reach the land of Nod.
Trips to the Doctor
It’s worth remembering that while you can influence your health in many ways, there are some areas in which you’ll need help. Take what’s happening under the hood, for instance. If you have an illness or genetic condition, then it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to manage your health and fitness all on your own. Take the time to find a doctor who knows what they’re talking about and that you trust, and work with them to find lifestyle adjustments that’ll push you in the right direction.
Setting Goals
Finally, look at setting goals for your health and fitness. It’s all too easy to get blown off course when life gets busy. Having a target will help to keep you on the right path, and will also cultivate discipline over time.
Three of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. In today’s digital age, one of the keys to successfully running your business is your website. Your website is not static and can be gradually improved and tweaked. The following contributed post is entitled, Impactful Improvements For Your Website.
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Is your website getting the impact you need? Perhaps it’s time to reassess and make some changes. Your website is an important tool for your business – it’s your storefront after all.
So what can you do to make these improvements? Take a look at the following suggestions to breathe life into your website and help you build up those visitor numbers.
Web design trends are constantly evolving, and it’s important to stay up to date with them to keep your website relevant and attractive to visitors. It’s important that you don’t clutter your website too much, as this can be off-putting and risks giving too much information at once. Explore other websites relevant to your industry and beyond to see what you’re up against and to give you some inspiration for change.
Improve your copy
While a website can look great, the content on the page needs to do your business justice. Analyze the copy on your existing website? Is it clever, snappy and to the point? It needs to be. You need to be able to hold a reader’s attention, and an essay won’t achieve that. Focus on making your point as clear as possible and refresh your copy regularly to help it retain its impact.
If copy isn’t your strong suit, consider hiring a copywriter who can turn your website copy around and write something that appeals to your chosen audience.
Focus on improving your search rankings
Your search engine rankings are extremely important for your website – it should be your mission to make it to the top! Some of the ways you can do this include improving your SEO to help make your website easily searchable, and making sure you use relevant keywords to drive people to your website. You could also use Serp Empire to help improve your click-through rate (CTR). With improved search engine rankings, you’ll be able to attract more visitors to your website and hopefully boost your business too.
Put more effort into your promotion
How much are you promoting your website currently? Do you have a strategy in place? Whether you have one or not, it could be time to start afresh. Take advantage of all of the easy ways to promote your website, and see which ones have the biggest impact for your business. You could also consider some paid-for promotion if you want to target specific audience segments.
Having a blog can be another effective way of promoting your website, as it increases the amount of content you have to promote. Learn what it takes to write a good blog post to help you generate some worthwhile content for your website.
Improving your website should be an ongoing part of your business’ strategy, as should regular monitoring of your stats. By keeping up to date with current trends and making sure you’re ahead of the game and not behind it, you’ll have a fantastic web presence that will continue to deliver for your business.
The first principle of my blog is Creating Ecosystems of Success. Three key focuses Business/Entrepreneurship, Career Discussions and Professional Development and Skills. No matter what kind of organization or business you’re in, respecting your employees is critical. Your employees are doing the work on the ground level and your operations can falter if they aren’t giving it their all. The following contributed post is entitled, Why You Should Always Respect Your Employees.
Being respectful of your employees is vital if you are to maintain a cohesive team that buys into your business vision in order to help your startup thrive. Without a team with high morale, you may walk into the office every morning to view a sea of yawning faces and twiddling thumbs. You need to ensure that your staff are happy, positive and that there is a purposeful buzz in the office. As an employer, it is up to you to facilitate this. Mutual respect between boss and employee is crucial. Take a look at how you can foster a productive working relationship with your employees.
Training
It’s important that you invest in your team. By putting up some money and helping them improve their professional skill set, you are showing them how much you value them. Conduct professional development meetings with each staff member and construct a career plan. This may mean that they eventually leave your company to move to pastures new. This is natural. However, while they are your employee you can ensure that they are skilled up and apply this knowledge to your company. This means that you have the best staff working for you. Being valued means that your staff will feel more committed to your business vision because they will care more about your venture.
Environment
As a boss, you need to create a great environment in which to work. You may find that your newly leased office is a little drab, the beige carpet tiles are uninspiring and the walls are scuffed. In this sort of environment, your employees will lack the motivation to work. Whip out the white paint, get some local artwork on the walls, and add a splash of greenery to your workplace. This brings the outside in and can lift the mood of your team. Get rid of the old school desktop booths and swap these for collaborative meeting pods. Banish the tower computers, and allow your team to enjoy the luxury of neoprene sleeves for a swanky new set of high powered laptops. Giving your staff the equipment and tools to be productive as well as the environment in which to thrive will benefit the reputation of your business.
Communicate
Don’t be one of those elusive employers who is never seen in the office. Get out on the metaphorical shop floor and converse with your staff. Have a weekly briefing every Monday to discuss goals for the week and to allow your team to air their views. Ask their opinions on issues and act on great ideas. Send out a Friday email every week to celebrate successes and to namecheck those individuals who have gone the extra mile. This positive praise shows your team that you value them. Use a reward system of extra days off and meals out to incentivize your team.
Making the transition from employee to employer is tough. However, by following this guide, you can ensure that you get the most out of your team by fostering an environment of mutual respect. If you do ever experience any problems associated with any of your employees, remember there is help out there. Professionals like The Law Office of David H. Rosenberg can offer advice on further actions!
Two focuses of my blog are General Education and Career Discussions. While many sectors are facing the prospect of automation, one career that will probably never go away is that of the Plumber. Likewise there will always be a need for plumbers. The are multiple career options for individuals who hold this unique and valuable skill set. The following contributed post is entitled, Six Career Paths For Plumbers.
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Plumbing can be a very rewarding career for those looking for a career in a skilled trade, with good salaries on offer for skilled plumbers and a real chance to set up in business for yourself. Many of us just think of plumbing as just doing repairs to home plumbing, but there are actually some varied career paths in the industry, from pipefitting to management.
This path is what most people think of when you mention a plumber. Your training will prepare you to work as a plumbing technician, an apprentice or a licensed plumber, serving a wide variety of clients in commercial, residential and residential properties.
You’ll need to know how to install and maintain different types of water systems and have a knowledge of repairs and installation of sinks, showers and other water using appliances. You’ll diagnose plumbing issues and advise your customers on how best to proceed. You’ll need to source the correct tools and parts from somewhere like plumbersstock.com. Work in this path can be very varied, making it a great starting point for new plumbers hoping to learn about a variety of work.
Pipefitter
You could take a more specialised path in plumbing and become a pipefitter. You’ll need a background in plumbing safety and installation in order to install and maintain piping in industrial and power plants. You’ll be monitoring power generation and heating and cooling systems, as well as system installations for automated controls for these systems.
Steamfitters
If you’re interested in steamfitting, your training will be very similar to the training done by pipefitters, except you’ll need to take some more specialist training to become certified as a steamfitter. Once qualified, you’ll be working on the installation of pipes for the transportation of high-pressure gas.
Pipelayers
If you train as a pipefitter but find you want more of a challenge, than you can take further training to lay pipes, meaning you can be in charge of major pipe works. Your job will involve digging trenches for piping, and then laying the pipes. These pipes may be used to carry drainage, gas, water or sewer systems.
Gas Service Technician
A qualified gas technician is responsible safely delivering has through a site. Home or business owners can bring in a gas technician to install, replace or repair faulty gas equipment, like gas boilers.
You’ll also search for gas leaks, and perform safety tests on displays and other controls.
Project Managers
After a few years in the industry, you could consider becoming a project manager, which put you in a supervisory position over a group of employees within the company you work for. As well as plumbing skills, you’ll need to learn good management skills to run your team.
You’ll be dealing with the day to day undertakings of your team of employees, making sure they’re where they are supposed to be and producing work of an acceptable quality. You can expect higher pay in this position as well as more responsibility.
Three of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. With so much business being conducted online today, it’s critical for business owners to have some understanding of “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO) to maximize their marketing and visibility. The following contributed post is entitled, How Businesses Continually Fail In Their SEO Strategy.
SEO is the lynchpin by which every important content strategy is developed in 2019, and you can be sure that while seismic shifts in this marketing pattern may occur over the next ten years, its relevance will rarely fall short. That being said, while SEO is a common practice, it can also be ineffective if not practised correctly. While the stakes may not be as high as an advertising campaign causing deep offense and becoming a nightmare for your PR department, there are measures you could take to help you move forward.
However, like any fine-tuned practice, it’s very possible to get SEO more than wrong. This is why even if using the best service such as those provided by Gotch SEO, it’s still important to note what separates good SEO from bad SEO, and what you should be expecting from the use of an expert service.
Thankfully, while there’s a reason specialized services exist to fill this function (and many practitioners of firms such as this can make it look easy), SEO is not deep and intense rocket science. With the following advice, we’ll help you avoid common pitfalls:
Poor Content
Many SEO strategies are delivered through infographics, blogger outreach services, and content creation. Many SEO firms will ally themselves with worthwhile blogs that are independently maintained, allowing for your search terms to be wrapped in worthwhile content that both confidently describes and refers back to your services within a wider context. However, if the content is poorly written, incorrectly backlinked, or over-present within a certain blog, Google algorithms can often penalize said strategy for that, leaving a negative taste in any worthwhile SEO strategy output.
Missed Linking
Missed linking can also be important to consider. If a piece of content fails to link back to a worthwhile landing page, you may lose the potential lead there. If there are too many links to other services or competitive services, you may also lose out. Negative SEO practice and linking approaches can often be found via businesses that continually try to appease their own SEO approach without taking part in the diligent research, and this can lead to somewhat difficult results. Additionally, allowing your linked anchor text to fit within the flow of the context you order is important for writers who will attend to each piece.
Oversaturation
Once a company learns that they can achieve the best SEO practice and potentially deliver a subtle, more relevant, often quite seamless marketing strategy to their potential new customers at a fraction of the cost of bold and extensive campaigns, they are liable to try and use multiple services, continually, in order to saturate content houses with their name. But it’s important not to do this. Using one service, to the best of your ability, you may find that SEO is best when being applied to a real end, such as a promotion, or a new deal, or in order to get your name out there in the first place.
With this advice, you’re sure to continually refine your SEO strategy, and to avoid the common pitfalls that may occur.
Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. A key aspect of your business is its marketing. Sometimes its wise and advantageous to host marketing events. No matter what you’re showing at your marketing event, you want it to be as successful as possible. The following contributed post is entitled, Creating The Perfect Marketing Event.
When it comes to driving your business, one way in which you can do this is by hosting an event that shows your potential customers, business partners, and suppliers who you are and what you are really all about.
A great event can leave everyone who attends in a state of amazement about your business and they may well be excited about everything that you have to offer. They will be looking towards the future and waiting to see what you do next. It is a great way of creating a real buzz around what you do, and what you could do in the future with their support.
Business events can be a great opportunity to unveil something exciting that you might have been working on. Make sure that if you are doing this you providing plenty of anticipation for this part of the event, and building it up in the minds of the attendees.
Budget Effectively
Events can be costly to run and the costings may vary depending on the number of people that you are planning on inviting. First up you will need a suitable venue that is easy to get to, is the right size, and has the right facilities. Make sure that you visit before booking.
You may want to hire caterers for the event, as well as a crew of experienced technicians for operating any sound, lighting, or video equipment. Shop around for quotations on all of these services, but be sure to check on what exactly is on offer.
Events may throw up surprises that you have not budgeted for. Problems that occur as you prepare for the big day may end up throwing you considerably over your budget. A vendor may fall through, and a last minute replacement may mean paying more. Prepare yourself for the fact that things may go wrong and allow a little bit extra spare in your budget for an emergency.
Source Everything That You Need Early
Start buying everything that you need as far in advance as possible. For outdoor events you may need generators, for such important aspects of your event planning, allow lots of time to source everything. Rushing around at the last minute may lead to mistakes being made and everyone involved being stressed and on edge about the event.
Market The Event Well
Although your event is designed to market your business, you will need to make sure that you market your event well. Give your attendees plenty of chance to plan to come. You can send out postal invites as this puts something physical in their hands. You may also want to send emails and take to social media to drum up interest in the event. Try to give some kind of indication of what the event is about and what may be expected, but if you are unveiling a new product or service, be sure and keep the main surprise for the actual event.
Getting people to RSVP is a great idea as it will give you an indication of how many people may actually end up coming, and it also means that your guests will need to demonstrate their commitment to coming ahead of time. You could follow up any invitations which have not had responses with a phone call.
Speeches
Your event needs a core message and you should include interesting and captivating speeches that help you to get this across. Be sure to utilize your most charismatic speaker and try and include relevant video or visual aids to help put the point over. Don’t get bogged down in figures, instead make sure your speeches centre on ideas and concepts.
Management Is Key To Success
The key to a successful event is having the right people in the right places. Delegate areas of responsibility to the best placed team members. You will need someone to liaise with caterers and any waiting staff that you have brought in. Someone will need to take control of the entertainment aspect and ensure that all speeches, presentations, and entertainment are running to a tight program.
You will need some of your best communicators out and about helping your guests and mingling with them. They will be in a great position to get feedback on how the event is going from the perspective of the attendees, and they can also do their best to help deliver the overall message that you would like your guests to take from the event.
