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7 Marketing Tips For Start-up Businesses

Posted: 04 Oct 2012 01:54 AM PDT

It's a competitive market out there and fledgling entrepreneurs need to utilise proven effective marketing tips and techniques to get their products and services noticed. Fortunately, there is a formidable range of marketing tools available to help you make an impact and get your start-up in the minds and on the tongues of potential clients and customers. Here is a helpful collection to drive your business to success.

7 Marketing Tips

#1. Harness The Power Of Blogging

You can create a high quality blog that addresses business-related issues for no cost at all that will establish your authority, engage followers, entice potential customers to your website and increase commerce. Free platforms like Tumblr, WordPress and Blogger are a great start, but if you can develop a blog on your own domain, you're more likely to build brand recognition for your own site. You can even mix up tips and advice with product ads as news features using dynamic images and wise words. Time to get those fingertips tapping.

#2. Accept Site Hospitality

An increasing number of business-related sites and blogs have laid out the welcome mat for guest authors willing to submit quality articles and content. You should submit well-written content with a bio and links to your social media profiles, blog and website to build links, boost traffic and attract and engage new followers and potential clients. To make your off-page SEO strategy extra sharp conduct rank and readership research to choose the sites most beneficial for your business.

#3. Want Results? Get Social and Bookmark

Using social networking sites like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter to build contacts and links will enhance the effectiveness of your off-page search engine optimisation strategy. Share regular updates and links to your articles and posts and prominently display your company logo and website URL on your profiles. Popular social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Delicious and Technorati should also be put to good use as invaluable tools for driving traffic to your content.

#4. Voice Your Opinion

Engaging in online discussions will help you engage potential clients, so embrace it as essential off page SEO practice. Leave useful comments on business-specific blogs and forums to convey your corporate ethos and direct readers to your website by including a URL. Remember, comment is free, so use it.

#5. Get Creative When Promoting

You don't need David Fincher to create an advertising video that hits home with viewers. YouTube is more than an addictive distraction in the office. You can create a humorous video that simultaneously generates guffaws while promoting your company and engaging potential customers. Sell construction safety equipment? Film a talking head with the bruised and bandaged "Unluckiest Builder in the World" who states he wouldn't be alive without your protective wear.

#6. Make Sure Your Logo Isn't a No Go

It is possible to create an arresting logo that perfectly communicates your corporate identity cost effectively. Search crowd sourcing platforms where talented graphic designers are poised with pen and imagination to interpret your ideas and corporate ethos into dazzling designs that catch the eye and get people interested and talking.

#7. What Are You Waiting For?

Adopting these proven marketing tips and techniques will cost effectively strengthen the presence of your start-up business in the market. We're facing tough challenges, but significant gains can be achieved simply by investing a little time and effort. Start now by sharing this article and your comments below!

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Images: "Online Marketing Diagram / Shutterstock.com

The post 7 Marketing Tips For Start-up Businesses appeared first on Tweak Your Biz.

How To Boost Employee Engagement In 30 Days

Posted: 03 Oct 2012 08:29 AM PDT

The bad news is that, globally, only 11% of employees are actively engaged (Gallup, 2012). That means just better than one in 10 employees exerts discretionary effort to "wow" customers, generate innovative ideas, accelerate a change, and/or go the extra mile to help out a member of their team.

The good news is that there are simple strategies that have been proven to boost employee engagement. Sadly, most leaders don't know what to do to boost engagement. That's where you come in, you masterful engagement guru, you! Tell them about the 30-day engagement booster challenge.

30-day Engagement Booster Challenge:

Share the 7 strategies in this post with leaders and teams who measure employee engagement, and who you suspect may not be maximizing their investment in engagement;
Commit to using at least one of the seven strategies below per day for 30 days;
On day 31, have the leaders pull out their most recent engagement scores and share them with their team. And, this is the cool part, ask the team, "If we were to take this survey today, how would our results compare (i.e., higher, lower, or about the same)?"
Report back with comments to share your success stories or challenges along the way.

The 7 Strategies to Boost Employee Engagement

These strategies are backed by trustworthy research and they really do work. Empower those leading people in your organization (or those you serve) with these simple strategies, hold them accountable for using at least one per day for 30 days, and share your results with me.

#1. Do Something With Your Survey Data.

There is nothing more condescending than asking employees for their opinion and then doing nothing in response. My clients often ask me why their response rates to engagement surveys are low. My first question for them is, "What improvements did you make to the organization based on the results from the last survey?" If they can't answer that, then I know we have a larger problem than response rates on our hands.

Share the data. Explain what the data mean. Have someone facilitate a focus group for you around the data. Conduct interviews with employees to get at the root cause of problematic items. Connect organizational actions to survey results. Create a network of engagement ambassadors to help inquire about and boost engagement. Communicate. Communicate. Communicate.

#2. Create a Feedback Friendly Culture

Manager feedback and peer feedback are powerful drivers of engagement. An engaged, trusting, high performing team provides each of its members with positive and constructive feedback on a continuous basis. If it feels weird to give feedback, then you're not giving it often enough.

Offer informal feedback to your team as a whole. Start by "catching" employees doing something well. Set the tone for a feedback friendly culture by asking your team to provide you with feedback about a specific question that you have or a behavior that you would be willing to change. One of the most powerful questions you can ask an employee is, "What do you think?" and then act on it.

#3. Offer Recognition and Appreciation

Employees like to receive recognition in different ways. Ask your employees how they like to be recognized for a job well done: verbally, in writing, publicly, or privately? Find out what recognition looks like on an individual- and team-basis and then start recognizing those continuous improvements that the LEAN and Six Sigma people keep encouraging.

#4. Engage in Extra-Ordinary Communication

Sadly, effective interpersonal communication is becoming the exception rather than the norm in organizations. Try engaging in some extra-ordinary communication with your team. Share something about yourself that employees may not know, but would like to. Create space for people to get to know one another on a personal level. What are their likes and hobbies? What do people do on the weekends and holidays? What's the most exotic place a member of the team has travelled to? What's the weirdest thing people have eaten? If your employees could have dinner with any celebrity, dead or alive, who would it be and why? Making time for the personal stuff pays big dividends in the trust and engagement department.

#5. Build Trust

Trust = Consistency + Competence + Sincerity. Be consistent. Be competent. Be sincere. People will go the extra mile if they trust you.

#6. Involve Employees in Decisions

Some people will be more likely to support decisions that they have input into. Some people will only support decisions that they have input into. Consult your team about a decision that has the potential to impact their work or their customers. Be clear about what you're doing and set expectations around how you intend to use their input. Thank people for their input and follow up once a decision has been made (see number 5).

#7. Remove Barriers

Engaging leaders hire the right people, remove barriers to their success, and then get out of the way. Ask your employees what opportunities or barriers exist that, if removed, would help them be even more effective in their role. Then do whatever you can to attempt to remove those barriers or capitalize on those opportunities. Be transparent about what you can and cannot change. Help employees help themselves. There's nothing more disengaging than knowing that there's a problem and having a manager who doesn't give a rip. Removing barriers and connecting that to engagement is a real booster.

So, those are seven, low-cost, high value strategies for boosting employee engagement. There is good science behind these simple strategies, and I want to hear about success stories from the 30 day challenge! While engagement isn't a magic bullet for organizational success, it can be a powerful lever if treated with discipline, rigor, and respect.

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Images: "Collage of successful business team. Partnership concept / Shutterstock.com

The post How To Boost Employee Engagement In 30 Days appeared first on Tweak Your Biz.

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joi, 4 octombrie 2012