Attracting High - End Clients By Applying Promotion Frameworks

Many of my friends who have a business ask me different questions about how to promote their business and what is the fastest way to find new customers and attracting high - end clients?  In this post I am going to explain the most important secret to attracting high - end clients. This could be the most important article you’ll read in your business (sure, everyone says that), but from my perspective I strongly say the logic says 1 plus 1 equal 2 and in my math I would add when you master the art of attracting high - end clients, you’ll transform your whole business.

Everyone wants to attract more clients. But I think it’s even more important to set your sights on attracting more high - end clients. What do you think?
I have sketch out a new framework about the high - end clients. And I define high - end clients in the following three ways: 

1- They are “ideal clients.” That is, clients you can really make a difference with and whom you love to work with.
2- They are “long - term clients.” These are clients with whom you can offer programs and services for a year or more.
3- They are “high - paying clients.” They understand the value you offer and are willing to pay you more than average clients will.

Today, there are many forms of promotional media. Some marketers also refer to them as "touch points," since they are every place where people encounter your brand. I'll describe a one of most important technique (which I know best) that helps many businesses to boost revenue in a positive direction. Keep in mind, what works for one industry or brand may not work for other industries and brands. This is simply to provide you with an idea of the options; it's imperative that you adapt the medium to what works best for your brand, your stakeholders, and your goals.

An advertisement would be effective only if the media audience accepts that message and is motivated to take the requisite action. The mission of an advertisement is to attract a reader, so that he/she will look at the advertisement and start to read it; which will then interest him, so that he/she will continue to read it; then to persuade him/her, so that when he/she has read it he will believe it. If an advertisement contains these three qualities of success, it is a successful advertisement. 

AIDA Model

AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire, and action. It is an acronym used in marketing and advertising, which helps marketing managers develop effective communication strategies and communicate with customers in a way that better responds to their needs and desires. AIDA describes a common list of events that occur when a consumer views an advertisement. Each letter in the acronym stands for the following:

The "A" represents attention or awareness, and the ability to attract the attention of the consumers. Without attention, I can hardly persuade them of anything. Your marketing messages, materials, marketing strategies and sales processes need to communicate the message that you offer higher - end services. Perception is essential. Every impression you make should communicate: “I offer high quality, pay attention to details, follow - up professionally and produce great results.”

For instance, When I write blog posts, I like to split the title into two parts: what I’m talking about (the feature), and the result of it (the benefit),  just look at my last few blog post titles here:

- Build Your Income By Creating Your Own Online Business
- Balanced Scorecard Your Tool to Translate Business Performance
- Putting Information Technology on Track and Why it Matters for Marketing!

The "I" is interest and points to the ability to raise the interest of consumers by focusing on and demonstrating advantages and benefits (instead of focusing on features, as in traditional advertising). Once I have their attention, I will sustain that attention by getting the other person interested!

You can bolster interest with offers and compelling reasons why you’re better than your competitor, and how you can solve customers’ problems. Features and benefits weigh heavily in this level, and social media can help you kick their interest into high gear.

For instance, you’ve got my attention, but I’m not ready to buy your product yet. And even if I was, I need to know you can actually UNDERSTAND and SOLVE my problem… which is why you need to tell me what problem I’m having and how can you really help me solve it.

The "D" represents desire. The advertisement convinces consumers that they want and desire the product or service because it will satisfy their needs. I believe once they are interested in my business and what I offer.

In the “interest” stage you’ve already done the clever storytelling… now you need to tell me what it is you want me to buy:

Social media can help bolster desire through communication and engagement, but to fully satisfy someone’s desire to buy, you need to have a site that is streamlined and optimized. Take the time to go through your site and optimize the presentation and the shopping cart experience. Testimonials gathered from linkable social profiles are a great asset. Take the customer from interest to desire with a clean, easy to navigate, info rich, and functional site.

What’s the exact name of your product and what’s in it?
What’s in each module, why is each module important and why is it given in the order you show it?
What bonuses are you giving me?

The "A" is action, which leads consumers toward taking action by purchasing the product or service. I would add, this is the magic stage when they take action on their desires and actually do their purchase and buy my products or services.

In small-business marketing, AIDA helps owners communicate more effectively with their customers. I would to say, the AIDA is like a tool we can use it to convince others not only in business or promote the product, I believe it's door key which persuade others to achieve the desired goal.

In this regard, AIDA has become a sales-driven tool that is strategized to lead the potential buyer towards an end suggested by the advertiser.

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Start Your Business And Stand Out In The Market!

If you're thinking about starting or creating a business, you (hopefully) have an idea that will fill a void in the current marketplace, and when you plan to start this business you should ask yourself “What is it the business that would make customers buy from me instead of my competitors?"

Growing your business without understanding your competitors is risky, in simple terms; the competitors can be identified as those companies or business that offers similar products or services to the same customers at similar prices. These can be either direct or indirect competitors. 

On the other hand, knowing and understanding customer needs is at the center of every successful business, whether it sells directly to individuals or other businesses. Once you have this knowledge, you can use it to persuade potential and existing customers that buying from you is in their best interests. As we know customers now have a wide range of information and experience at their disposal and have the means to research which product is good or bad and might be provide the best value for their needs and wants.

The more you know about your customers, the more effective your sales and marketing efforts will be. It's well worth making the effort to find out Ten things we should know about our customers

Who they are
If you sell directly to individuals, find out your customers' gender, age, marital status and occupation. If you sell to other businesses, find out what size and kind of business they are. For example, are they a small private company or a big multinational?

What they do
If you sell directly to individuals, it's worth knowing their occupations and interests. If you sell to other businesses, it helps to have an understanding of what their business is trying to achieve.

Why they buy
If you know why customers buy a product or service, it's easier to match their needs to the benefits your business can offer.

When they buy
If you approach a customer just at the time they want to buy, you will massively increase your chances of success.

How they buy
For example, some people prefer to buy from a website, while others prefer a face-to-face meeting.

How much money they have
You'll be more successful if you can match what you're offering to what you know your customer can afford.

What makes them feel good about buying
If you know what makes them tick, you can serve them in the way they prefer.
What they expect of you

For example, if your customers expect reliable delivery and you don't disappoint them, you stand to gain repeat business.

What they think about you
If your customers enjoy dealing with you, they're likely to buy more. And you can only tackle problems that customers have if you know what they are.

What they think about your competitors
If you know how your customers view your competition, you stand a much better chance of staying ahead of your rivals.

From my perspective, I find it is difficult for small-business owners to clearly define what makes their businesses different and even more difficult to communicate this to potential customers. Businesses that are able to differentiate themselves from the competition have a much better chance of success than businesses that bring nothing special to the market.

If you want to improve your chances of having a successful and growing business, spend time identifying what makes your business special. Determine what you need to do to make your business stand out among your competition in the minds of your customers.

For example, some businesses stand out by bringing innovative solutions to their customers. These businesses spend a great amount of time researching the wants and needs of their target markets and developing new technology and products.

Using marketing mix model (product, price, promotion) have helped the business to differentiate effectively in the marketplace and your business is being something remarkable. That's how it will get noticed, get publicity, get word of mouth, get new customers and create loyal fans.  I would say being different is desirable. It's a good thing. Not only do you want to be different in order to stand out from your competitors, you want to be radically different. You want to be the "only."

For instance, such businesses are known for solving problems and improving the quality of life for their customers. Samsung is a good example to introduce in this post, it is a company that regularly brings different technologies to the market and has developed a loyal following of enthusiastic customers, who many times can't wait to get their hands on the latest Samsung products because of the product itself, price and promotions they offer. Am I right?

I would like to give another example about the marketing mix model that adopted by a well-known company in the world that deliver their products or services to customers economically, quickly and conveniently. Their efficient operations produce consistent products at reasonable prices. Businesses such as McDonald's have mastered this concept and serve millions of customers each day, customers who return because they know what to expect and how it will be delivered.

Other think we should keep on mind to differentiate from competitors is Reputation. Your reputation is what other people think about you. It may be based on a number of factors: the quality of your products or service, how you treat others (including business partners, workers, and the environment), and most importantly, your values as an organization and how you express them. While you can shape your voice or design, your reputation ultimately resides in the minds of other people. 

They make the final decision whether they admire you, fear you, respect you or love you. Microsoft, the U.N., Calgary City, Real Madrid, the Catholic Church, and other institutions can do many things to shape how they are perceived, but they can't completely control that impression.

One's reputation also differs in the minds of different people: your mother probably does not think of you the same way your boss might. 

It's also important to remember that your reputation is affected by who you associate with. For example, tobacco companies might be highly profitable, but they do not attract many partners. Other companies try to associate their brands with certain geographical locations (consider Swiss chocolate, German engineering, or Hollywood movies). And yet others try to associate with charities and causes to improve their reputations. Consider the reputation of this school: how would you define it?

When defining the reputation of a company, it's important to research what other people think about it, NOT what the company says about itself.

Know what makes your business special and make sure your customers know it, too.

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Your Strategy to Sell Your Image Through Content Marketing

Everyone is talking about how content is so important (which is true) but no one is really talk about WHY content is king and WHY content is critically important. The buzz words these days are content marketing. But what exactly does it mean and how can a business implement its use to bring value to their customers?  Basically, content marketing is publishing information through various media outlets that will educate your customers.

Some of the biggest companies in the world today didn’t exist just 10 years ago. Companies like YouTube, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to name a few. And the one thing that all of these huge companies have in common is their product: information. Welcome to the Information Age. (Also referred to as the Digital age) 10 years ago, if you wanted to do research on any given topic, you would find yourself traveling to a library. Not today. Today we have an entire world of information at our fingertips

Nowadays, words have shifted from being on books, magazines and billboards to living on computers, smartphones, laptops, televisions and tablets. First of all, great content is something that can be easily read by a person browsing your website. But that’s not where it ends. In fact, that’s where it starts! 

The benefit of publishing good content is that your targeted audience will come to rely on you as an information resource for their decision making.  It is important to understand that content marketing is more than just information about your products or services. It includes relevant and useful information that will be used to develop opinions about your business and help build a relationship with your customers. 

Great content serves a very important purpose: it informs the reader about the topic of the page. When great content is smartly developed and used strategically, it easily accomplishes the following tasks:
1- Helps people understand the topic
2- Demonstrates your unique expertise or angle on the subject
3- Makes people want to come back and read it again
4- Makes people want to link to it so other people can access it from their website, blog, social network feed, etc.

5- Let people buy something on the site
6- Let people download a document, a file, or an app
 

Great content is what the Web was originally designed to facilitate. Write what you know, make it compelling, and people (and search engines) will respond accordingly. It may take time, of course, but even viral content starts with an initial post. For instance, Expact Women website did not reach hundred thousands of people by accident. Its founder was smart, or more importantly, had smart strategies.  When I was doing my research on some articles in expatwomen, I found out that the blog wrote one article last month that generated more links and shares than 46 of their posts from 2013 combined.  This post is about effective blogging, and going beyond the the strategy that built a big community of audience.

Think about how often you search for information before making a purchasing decision. Your customers do the same, so it is important to position yourself to be a credible resource for them.

 
But How Do You Create Great Content? 

Great content is, well, great! Of course, that can also be a relative thing. It’s like the old story of being in the woods with a bunch of your coworkers when you accidentally encounter an ill-tempered bear. When the chase begins, you personally don’t need to outrun the bear (good luck with trying that). You only need to outrun the other people you’re with.  Sure, that’s a grizzly (pun intended) tale with a morally ambiguous message, but that’s why I made the other people your coworkers. Business is business, after all!

I’m sure you’re thinking “sounds like a great idea, but how do you go about publishing relevant content?” As usual, it takes some planning and the first thing you need to do is develop your content marketing strategy.  There are four main areas to consider: audience, media, timing and topic. 

Audience
Who is your intended audience? This relates back to who your target customer is.  You need to understand your customers, what their needs are and purchasing patterns are. I tell my clients that you need to know your customers like you know your mother. What do they like and dislike? Who do they go to for an opinion prior to making a purchasing decision? Where are they located? What is their age, income and education level?  Once you understand your target customer, it is easier to determine what media to select, when you should publish content and what topics would be of benefit to your customers.

 
Media
Where does your target customer go for information? Would they read a newspaper, look for online reviews, articles, videos or blogs? Do they reach out to their friends and families for recommendations? Would they like to get their information in an online newsletter?  If you are not sure, ask them when you see them or send out a small survey. Or just research the various social media resources and see who’s using them. By “Googling” the various types of social media for statistics on who is using them you can determine the best media to use for your target customer.

 
Timing
How often should you publish? The medium you’re using will dictate how often you need to publish your content.  Twitter and Facebook could be several times a day, blogs at least weekly, LinkedIn can be every couple of weeks, and online newsletters can be monthly or quarterly.  Realistically, think about how often you can develop content and publish it. This is a big task and often it needs to be delegated or shared among several people. Starting a weekly blog may seem like a good idea at first, but remember there are 365 days in a year. 

Topic
Most important, where are you going to find relevant content? After publishing for a while you can run out of ideas to write about.  Places to look for content are trending topics, newspapers, blogs or your customers’ tweets and posts. What are they talking about and interested in? This is where you can find topics for content that will be of interest to your target audience.  Remember, developing and implementing a content marketing strategy is a lot of work and requires planning, but the rewards can be tremendous.

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Balanced Scorecard Your Tool to Translate Business Performance

In most big or small organizations whether they are profit or no profit sector, managers are implementing different strategies to measure the organization performance. For example, executives may introduce new strategies and innovative operating processes intended to achieve breakthrough performance, then continue to use the same short-term financial indicators they have used for decades, measures like return-on-investment, sales growth, and operating income. With all these calculations and doing their own maths, we can see these managers fail not only to introduce new measures to monitor new goals and processes but also to question whether or not their old measures are relevant to the new initiatives. 

Also most organizations dutifully complete strategic planning on a regular basis. However, there are several studies suggest that fewer than 10% are successful in implementing the strategies created. Based on that in 1992 Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton came up with new effective measurement tool that is used extensively in business and industry, government, and nonprofit organizations worldwide to align business activities to the vision and strategy of the organization, improve internal and external communications, and monitor organization performance against strategic goals.

“You can have the best strategy. You can even frame it and put it up on the wall, but if you’re not executing … it’s just artwork," management expert Tom Peters says. 

The scorecard allows managers to look at their companies and approach links strategy to measurement by asking firms to consider their vision, critical success factors for accomplishing it, and subsequent performance metrics. Here's an example of how the Balanced Scorecard adapted in E- Business or Marketing these perspectives 

1. Learning and growth perspective: innovation, employee training and corporate cultural attitudes related to both individual and business improvement. Key question: How can we continue to improve and create value?

2. Business process perspective: internal business processes or operational priorities. For instance, key applications for digital strategies include the development of collaboration tools, document management, content management, online project management. These applications are more successful when accessed through the Intranet, and perceived by the employee to be part of the Intranet, rather than a standalone application. 

3. Customer perspective: customer focus and customer satisfaction. Key questions: How do our customers see us? What can we do to increase our brand awareness? In Digital Marketing for example using the customer perspective to develop digital strategies should be the most lucrative aspect of the digital strategy. The customer perspective elements of the Digital Strategy include providing information through the website, sales enablers including eCommerce applications, customer self-service where customers can manage their own portfolios through extranets, building communities of value where customers can network and engage with each other, crowd-sourcing initiatives so that the customer can help the organization design products, using social media such as blogs to educate the customer, social tools to create and retain relationships and a host more applications. I would say, satisfied customers drive business success – and business success enables investment to satisfy customers!

4. Financial perspective: financial-related data, such as risk assessment and cost-benefit data. The Financial perspective is satisfied when we are able to capture financial information to report on the period. In general key questions: What revenue and profit do we want to achieve? What costs do we have to cut? For instance in Digital Marketing, we determine which numbers we will be interested in seeing at the end of the financial period and how we will quantify the success of the implementation and applications. 

Scorecard Benefits 

1- Obtain timely information to update its strategy. 

2- Balance long-term and short-term measures and evaluate every part of the firm and how each contributes toward accomplishing selected goals. 

3- It helps firms leverage their relationships with partners and supply chain members. 

4- Go beyond financial metrics in measuring many different aspects that lead to effective and efficient performance. 

5- Creates a long-term perspective for company sustainability Forces companies to decide what is important and translate those decisions into measurable outcomes that all employees can understand. 

6- A great communication tool because employees can use the scorecard as a guide to coordinate their efforts. 

7- Support employee evaluation in that individual performance can be tied to successful outcomes on the metrics. 

8- A way to measure intangible as well as tangible assets. 

To sum up, I would say “All organizations are perfectly designed to get the results they are now getting. If we want different results, we must change the way we do things.” .. Tom Northup

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Go To Expert Level in Your Field

Many people would like to know how they can be an expert in their business, job or industry and their life as well. In business for instance, some would argue that you can only earn your expert status from your customers and peers, never by simply saying that you are one. From my perspective I would say it didn’t happen overnight. It’s the culmination of years of effort, but well worth the investment of time and resources, and we should spend years developing the knowledge that made our company or business success. This in turn, will maximize the return on your knowledge by leveraging it gain authority and build up a celebrity status in your marketplace.

Being recognized as an expert in your field can bring many opportunities to edge out your competitors and grow your business. Once you have devoted yourself to becoming an expert, you will need to take the appropriate steps and suggestions to build your reputation as an expert and burnish your business. Below are five simple suggestions for you to do just that.

1. Become an advocate and educator for your customers.
Part of having authority status is being both an educator and an advocate for your clients. As an educator, you work hard at communicating with your customers on a regular basis. For example, lawyer expert David Cohen has a site for Canadian Immigration Consultant who posts various information and forums for his clients and people.

In addition, he facilitates application process that helps his customers learn more about match Canadian Immigration needs. He even offers free consultations resources. All these elements and many more, are examples of how he educates his clients.

2. Micro-specialize.
Instead of trying to please everyone, focus your efforts on a small amount of possible clients. This approach will help understand the niche better and be able to cater your marketing better. Furthermore, focusing on a specialist area will give you less competition, and a chance to really shine by utilizing your sector specific knowledge. Think about which area or specialist subject is likely to grow in relevance for your clients and customers over the coming five years? I would say you’ll perfect the art of appealing to and pleasing that smaller scope of customers. 

An example of micro-specialization in the event management field could include companies or people who only choose to only work with Pre – Event Planning companies to stage public and private exhibitions.

3. Write articles for news sites and profession publications.
Make a concerted effort to write articles pertaining to your area of expertise. Send them in to newspapers and trade journals along with other professional publications. 

If you can manage to do this, you will have content to back up your authority status in your field. Don’t simply write a few articles here and there, but instead commit to regular content creation for a variety of outlets, as it helps build up your personal brand faster.

4. Start speaking.
Speaking in public is scary for many people. However, giving speeches or participating in seminars or panels is a great way to present yourself as an authority in your field. 

One way to obtain a few speaking gigs is to align yourself with other successful speakers. If given the opportunity to speak alongside someone who is already well known, you will have a good-sized audience, and you can offer a different perspective on whatever the topic. Hone your speaking skills, study voice projection and observe other engaging speakers, ensuring you will be ready to give an interesting, stimulating speech an opportunity comes along.

5- Write a book
Nearly every “expert” has authored a book. With self-publishing resources today, publishing a book is easy and affordable. Wondering how to write all that content? Repurpose your blog posts. Compile your blogs and before you know it, you’ll have enough material to fill the pages of a book.  Remember, as the founder and owner of your small business — you are the business. Building your celebrity status is a great way to help your business soar to new heights.

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Your Company Is Socially Engaged, But Do Your Employees Even Know?

Another year, another grim report on employee engagement.  Gallup’s 2013 “State of the Global Workplace Report” reveals that only 13% of employees are engaged at work.    

That abysmal number is undoubtedly related to the fact that, according to a different study, only 42% of employees know their organization’s vision, mission, and values.  That same report found that management transparency is the top factor when determining employee happiness.  Amongst other business “fails” resulting from this sort of a wide engagement gap, unengaged employees do not create engaged customers. As your company’s best brand ambassadors, your employees need to feel continually connected to the best vision of what your business can be in order to convey those principles to the world at large.  The ideals that you pursue with your corporate philanthropy are an important part of this ongoing conversation with your employees.

So how are you conducting this conversation?  And are your employees even listening?

If you’re like many companies, your corporate communications focuses on your community far more than your employees.  And when you do talk to your employees, you’re relying more on email and company intranets than the social media platforms where your employees are actually “living.”  

A recent report by LinkedIn and Altimeter Group found that a majority of engaged employees  - 54% - read content by their company through social media.  The study, which focused on the behaviors of companies that were found to the the best at engaging their employees, concluded that the top performing companies build relationships with their employees through social media and leverage their core values to empower their employees to be brand ambassadors.  “It all begins with authentic, meaningful engagement and content,” the report noted.

Other highlights of the report reveal: 

• Employees are far more engaged and optimistic at top socially engaged companies: 52% versus 41%.
• 40% of engaged employees cite their company’s social media communication as the source for keeping informed on important news
• 38% of engaged employees are more likely to share relevant company content with coworkers and customers when the company shares content in social media.
• 20% of employees are more likely to feel inspired based on how companies use social media to engage with them.  
• Socially engaged employees are more likely to feel proud about the leadership of their company.  
• Socially engaged employees are not just connected to those in their own department, they also expand their networks to include other employees, customers, and prospects.
• A full 59% of engaged employees use social media to build relationships within the company

Further, social media engagement contributes to a competitive advantage, with the most engaged companies prevailing in the never-ending battle to recruit and retain top talent.

It’s clear that social media is critical to creating and increasing employee engagement.  What’s equally clear is that a company’s philanthropic work can play a starring role in its conversations with employees on social media. 

A company’s corporate social responsibility activities should be at the forefront of its employee relationships and the dialogue that keeps those relationships energized.  Whether social media is leveraged to discuss the causes that are important to the company’s leaders and employees; share employee stories about volunteering and giving; congratulate winners of a company’s crowdfunding events; promote upcoming community events; address the ways in which the company’s people have made a difference in the causes they care about - and chart the ongoing goals they’re setting for themselves; philanthropy can be a connector, uniter and pillar of engagement.  But only if your employees understand and participate in your CSR efforts.  

Empowering and inspiring your employees isn’t optional anymore, so make sure you’re communicating in ways that are being heard by your most important demographic

Source: Ryan Scott CEO, Causecast ..

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Will Social Media Ever Rule Your Business Growth?

I believe when you went through my previous articles you found a lot of topics about social media and content marketing that we are using it as privately, and most of our business. However, there is a huge difference between these two.

If you use social media for business, you would benefit from goals, focus and consistency. It requires a thorough understanding of how social media work (and I would like to stress the word social here) and how to optimize your efforts on the various platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

You need to learn how to plan your activities and how to link them to your business goals. Besides that, you might need to learn new skills like writing inspiring blogs and catchy updates.

Learn more get more?

Last week I was lucky to attend Digital Marketing Meetup| Writing for Social Media. This meeting or session was all about tips and tricks about Digital Marketing and how you can change your business in effective way, but you will need to understand how your mind works in a change process.

Learning new social media skills and creating the habit of doing regular updates, interacting with people online and writing blog posts, all have the characteristics of a change process: it can be unsettling, time-consuming and often we give up at the first sign of a setback. At least that’s what I have experienced since I decided to make social media my core business.

The mashable.com now became the famous technology and social media online blog founded by Pete Cashmore in 2005.  The blog taught me some valuable lessons about change. Once you apply these lessons to your activities on social media, you might be better able to see the bigger picture of the changes you go through. It will help you in the process of incorporating social media in your day-to-day business activities.

10 ways to make social media an effective business habit.

1) Follow the bright spots. You might have people in your environment who have been using social media for business for a longer time than yourself. Ask what works for them, what they do and how they do it. How often do they post? What do they discuss in their blogs? How do they stay focussed? You can also look for the bright spots in yourself. What has worked for you on social media so far? How can you repeat your successes?

2) Shrink the change. Once you decide to share your knowledge and expertise in blogs and updates, you might get overwhelmed by all the choices you have to make. Is it better to write a blog? Will video be more effective? On which platforms do you need to post and how to vary your updates and tweets?

Set yourself small goals and develop a step-by-step plan. Instead of starting with two blogs a week, start with one blog every two weeks for the first half year and limit your time on social media to 15 or 30 minutes per day. This will enable you to take social media one step at a time and keep the overview you need.

3) Be proud and celebrate your accomplishments. It is easy to get distracted on social media. You will come across people in your field of business who are ahead of you, which can be really demotivating sometimes. To keep the spirit high you can better look at what you have already accomplished. Maybe you have written a few blogs since you started, and you might have created your first newsletter. Well done! Be proud, celebrate your achievements and then move on.

4) Set specific dates and times for your activities. A consistent presence is important on social media. It is better to publish a blog every two weeks, than four blogs in one week followed by four weeks of silence. Being consistent on social media is what most business people struggle with. Before the week starts, block time in your agenda to write your blog and to do your updates. Be as specific as possible, e.g. I will write my block this Wednesday after lunch time. Being specific will increase your chances of making things happen.

5) Use checklists. Checklists give peace of mind and keep you focused. Create a checklist for the promotion of your training programmers and events. And even if you start blogging, it helps to use a checklist to ensure you don’t overlook important aspects of the content, lay out and promotion of your blog.

6) Find a buddy. It helps to have a friend, colleague or business partner who is going through the same process and who you can share experiences with. This will keep you motivated and you can encourage each other when you lack motivation or don’t see where you are heading to.

7) Give yourself clear directions. This will help you to stay motivated. How many new followers would you like to get this month on Twitter? How many new LinkedIn contacts would you like to give a call this week? How often will you write a blog?

8) Change your mindset. I sometimes come across people who say that social media is not ‘their thing’. What happens if you would say to yourself: ‘as a professional business owner I embrace social media as it enables me to get in touch with relevant people. Via social media I can share my passion and expertise with my audience.’ Which type do you want to be? Who would you like to identify with?

9) Find the feeling. Social media is about connections and interactions. Posting updates without interaction might easily make you feel disconnected. Chat with people via Twitter. Engage in a discussion on LinkedIn. Find the human touch.

10) Accept your learning curve. As mentioned before, learning how to apply social media is all about change. Each change has a learning curve. It is tempting to expect direct results from your efforts on social media, as it is such a direct form of communication. Some people easily lose interest once the magic is not happening. I completely understand. However, give yourself time and accept that mistakes and frustrations are part of the process.

How easy is it to for you to incorporate social media in your business? What do you struggle with?

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Build Your Income By Creating Your Own Online Business

Today, I would like to discuss the success and fail of small business.  Approximately 65% of small businesses fail within the first year. I would ask how many of the people you know who have started a business has truly succeeded? How many of them put on a happy face yet are still at every networking meeting looking for business?

After the crisis in 2008, I spent two years thinking about the business I need to start with as self-employee to support my income. That time my starting point was to create a business plan and find out what is the sector is not substantially affected by financial crisis. And I found the answer!

The plan was to create an online business and build a hub that can deliver a greatest benefit and do have something of value to share with the world, something that can generate income for me for the rest of my life! I learned to trust myself to work hard, to stay focused under pressure, and to even enjoy the process. I have read multiple of researches and public articles about online services, and I found consumers spent £30.2bn on online goods and services in 2007-2012, according to IMRG, the industry body for global e-retailing. Over the past 10 years, the growth of the internet has resulted in the high-profile successes of many internet-related businesses. After all these researches and articles about online business I found the real success stories come from those who find a way to generate just a few thousand dollars per month, enough to cover their expenses.

I would say having the right technology in place can help online business to grow and help any small business do what they do best – but even better and with more profit – and free up time to focus on growth. In the same time if plan to start the online business, we should know our target market, know our competition, attract funding and finding a niche. 

Your Website

I decided to create an online platform UAEMD.NET which provides an online directory of all United Arab Emirates (UAE) physicians, practices, hospitals, clinics, medical suppliers and insurance companies. The Find Physician search functionality allows visitors to search by any health services, specialty or expertise. 

Websites will set you back varying amounts. "The cost is relative” and try to keep the site clean and simple: people will buy from you if they trust the site and can find what they want.  "Make sure you update your website's content constantly, as innovation, imagination and invention are essential if you are going to succeed in the longer term,"

Building Traffic
Running an online business is deceptively simple. Look at my web site UAE Medical Directory, for example. The structure isn’t very complicated. It’s mostly just content and some ads. But it consistently generates a nice five-figure monthly income. Anyone can do it, right?

The key factor in building a successful online business is traffic. If you can’t build sufficient traffic, you won’t be able to generate much, if any, income. And unfortunately most people are really bad at building traffic. They apply completely inept strategies that don’t work, and they usually give up within a few months after starting.

Building traffic is not remotely easy for most people. This problem isn’t unique to the web though. You see it in every field. Some authors sell millions of books, while the average book doesn’t even sell 5,000 copies. Lots of people can write a book, but relatively few know how to sell a book. Lots of people can create a web site or blog these days, but few know how to attract large amounts of traffic

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If you can successfully build lots of traffic, it’s fairly easy to generate income from it. You also have time to figure it out. If you can grow your traffic, you can maintain your traffic, and that gives you time to figure out how to monetize the traffic.

Customer Transactions
Make it fast and easy for customers to navigate or looking for a service, as a site with a difficult sales process is likely to lose customers. Websites should be easy to navigate so users don't get frustrated and leave without making a purchase. Security should also be a priority, and potential customers should be assured their details will be kept safe.  You should talk to your customers as often as possible and help them to get to know you and build confidence in you and the services you provide. Ask them what they want from you and react to what they tell you.

Start Small and Have Patience
Don't give up your day job too soon, as it will take time for your internet venture to grow – and in the meantime there may not be much incoming revenue. I have spent more than 3 years to find key drivers of traffic growth. You'll need lots of energy, enthusiasm, determination and passion; but you also need to be realistic. "Success on the web is rare," warns Cohen. "While many businesses are launched, few make a profit, and most will never see a return on investment. That said, while starting up an internet business can be one of the toughest things you ever do, it can also be the most rewarding."

Conclusion
Running an online business can be a wonderful growth experience, and the income and freedom it can provide is certainly nice too. People really shouldn’t be deprived of this opportunity for technical reasons. The self-publishing power of blogging technology has gotten us partway there, but it’s only one piece to the puzzle. I encourage you to take a good look at my website www.uaemd.net!, and then you can sketch out the picture about how to create an idea about your online business and putting online business success within reach of most people.  

I would sum up, if you want to set up an internet business, you have to convince all the people around you it's a good idea. Put in your own time and energy, but other people's money – and take as much advice from other people as you can.

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Build a Good Business Reputation Through Go Green Strategy

A growing small and big business needs a reputation, it is like a plant needs water. Evolution in technology and understanding has facilitated the transformation for more cost-effective for businesses to “go green.” Yes, going green does protect the environment, but it can be good for your company as well. You’ll gain customers, which customers? The customers who support and appreciate companies that respect the environment

From adding recycling bins to your office, to reducing your carbon footprint, there are many simple ways you and your business can reduce their environmental impact and can actually help your company’s reputation. In my previous articles I have mentioned that taking steps to green your business will not only help the environment or getting high reputation; in many cases it reduces your costs over time while attracting customers and employees who support environmentally friendly businesses.

Nowadays, business and academic interest toward green product development is rapidly growing. Green product development is receiving increasing attention as means to improve companies’ performance (Chung and Tsai, 2007). In fact, it may be a significant source of competitive advantage when it allows for either product differentiation (Orsato, 2006) or low cost manufacturing.

It cannot be done without clear vision and studied plan, organizations’ leaders are responsible to deliver plans and results to meet the enterprise’s sustainability goals. Therefore, going green will help your company to gain respect in your community. Simply put, it shows you and your organization are care. Individuals and businesses want to do business with companies that aren’t just in it for themselves. By going green, you’re showing others that you’re interested in the world and the planet we live on.

I would say, creating green processes to the workplace make a healthy environment for employees. Also, it reduces the majority of the unnecessary waste. On the other hand, getting employee input can be one of the most effective ways of finding innovative solutions to reducing costs and becoming more eco-friendly. 

As I am interesting in IT industry and digital field, I will input my example about go-green from IT aspect. Green computing strategies challenge the common misperceptions that green computing will cost more; however, these strategies actually improve an organization's bottom line rather than shrink it when adopted. By integrating green computing strategies, organizations have a clear path to create savings that will improve IT, free up capital for other investments, generate goodwill with their constituency groups-all the while exemplifying good stewardship of the economy and environment. 

Now is the time to make a positive impact on your community, on the environment and on your profit margins by implementing go green strategy, less wasteful green solutions in your business, these strategies should be viewed as part of a broader initiative to reduce the cost of doing business.  I would therefore say, green IT takes advantage of cutting-edge solutions that keep you connected and improve reliability, while reducing energy consumption.
 

For instance, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is also something to be skeptical of when it comes to green IT. So moving 50 desktops from 250-watt computers to a single 2,000-watt computer might seem like a 10,000-watt energy savings, unless of course you’re going to keep those desktop computers to use as VDI endpoints. If you are, then you’re actually adding another 10,000 watts of energy consumption and working toward the opposite of green IT.

In American University of Sharjah (AUS) we have adopted Citrix (A new approach to desktop deployment) in all AUS colleges and schools which is also VDI technology to improve business continuity and data security, reduce university power consumption; the result then AUS can be greener. 

In AUS IT data-center, we have created new virtual machines. The plan is to select machines that provide the most computing power for the least amount of energy consumption. The strategy is to ensure that every watt is being used to full advantage by moving older, lower-efficiency servers into virtual machines running on newer, higher-efficiency ones.

Going green is important for the future of the economy and our civilization. Companies going green can provide necessary leadership in the green movement, work wonders for the environment, significantly improve their bottom lines and show they are excellent corporate citizens

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