Posts

Top Tasks For Entrepreneurs To Outsource

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Outsource|Top Tasks For Entrepreneurs To OutsourceIf you’re an entrepreneur or the owner of a small business, then you already know how very valuable your time is. One simple way to deal with not having enough time is to outsource some of your everyday tasks so you can concentrate on the mort important parts of running your business. Do what do you best, and outsource the rest.

A common question that small business owners ask themselves is what kind of tasks they ought to be outsourcing? It can be tough to trust someone else in the early days of your business, but these tasks are some of the best ones to outsource.

Bookkeeping And Tax Returns

Business owners small a lot of time performing basic bookkeeping tasks and lodging tax returns. You could spend your time looking for articles to help you, like ‘14 Foolproof Bookkeeping Tips’ or you could outsource. One of the best jobs to outsource is bookkeeping, as it’s so time-consuming. You can save hours a week if you use an outsourced bookkeeping service, and feel confident that all your finances are being looked after by a skilled, trained professional.

Social Media

Social media is a useful resource for businesses. It’s a useful way to engage with your customers, offer customer support, and promote your products. Unfortunately, running a good social media campaign is time-consuming.

This is why a lot of businesses outsource social media management. It’s easy to find a skilled social media professional who can run your campaign and make it a success. They understand the best platforms to use and the best ways to engage with users.

Website Content Creation

There are lots of good reasons to outsource your content creation for your website. Your site needs to be full of high-quality content that is useful to your readers and helps to sell your services or products. Your content should also be structured in a way that works well for search engine optimization and tells sales prospects that your company is reliable and professional.

Writing content that manages this is not a simple task. You can pass the task onto a virtual content manager who has the knowledge needed to write content that is effective and exciting and leads to sales.

Another reason to outsource content creations is that it is a task that takes a lot of time for most entrepreneurs. Unless you’re skilled with content, it’s better to assign content creation tasks to a professional. You can also outsource data entry work, to ensure that your website is kept up-to-date, accurate, and full of useful content.

Business Research

If you want to outsource some of your everyday tasks effectively, look for the repetitive business tasks that take up your time, but could be performed remotely. Business research definitely meets that criteria.

You could hire a virtual research assistant who will study the internet to find the information that you need. You can save a lot of time and get back to working on growing your business.

The Dos And Don’ts Of Creating Effective Business Videos

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Business Video|The Dos And Don'ts Of Creating Effective Business VideosCreating valuable and interesting videos is one of the smartest things you can do if you want to get incredible results for your business. Your audience are more likely to watch a video, and far more likely to be entertained by it than by a blog post. A video can get across information in a much shorter amount of time, too, meaning you can spread your message easily and effectively.

If you’re thinking of creating effective videos for your business, read on for some dos and don’ts that will help you.

Do Offer Something Of Value

Don’t just make videos for the sake of making videos. You should offer something of value to the people who will be watching. Could you create a how-to tutorial, or give tips of some kind? Sharing your expertise will go a long way to ensuring people watch your content again and again.

Don’t Make It Boring

Although you’re providing value and trying to help your audience, there’s still no reason that your videos should be boring. Try to make them entertaining. Speak in an engaging way. Use a fun background and demonstrations. Do a little more than sit there and talk in a monotone voice.

Do Edit It Carefully

You will likely need to edit your video when you’re done to ensure it is as streamlined as possible. You may need to edit out moments where you take a long pause or lose your train of thought, for example. It also looks more professional if you don’t see you messing with the camera before/after the video.

Don’t Forget To Show Off Your Brand

Make sure you consider your brand throughout the video, and how you can use this as an opportunity to show people what your brand is all about. What is your brand voice and personality and how can you incorporate this? Think about it carefully and ensure you are consistent across all of your videos.

Do Know Who Your Target Audience Is?

You should know your target audience like the back of your hand. People who watch pharmaceutical videos are likely going to be very different to those who watch home DIY tutorials. They are two very different audiences and should be catered to accordingly. Make sure you create a few personas so you can work out how you’re going to entertain and engage the people watching.

Don’t Post The Same Thing On Every Single Platform

Posting the same thing on every platform can be a mistake. You’ll usually post a very different video on YouTube compared to TikTok for example, although both could be beneficial to your business. Make sure you know the differences between each platform.

Do Pay Attention To Your Video Analytics

Looking at your analytics will give you an idea of what is working for you and what you can perhaps improve on. Looking at these closely will help you to make better content in the future!

How will you make effective business videos? Leave a comment below!

The Ridiculously Simple Ways You Can Get People To Read More Of Your Content

Content creation is an effective yet epic task. It takes up hours of your time and is a massive drain on your marketing resources. Because of this, you want to make sure that it’s useful. But how?

It turns out that creating compelling content that people actually want to read is more complicated than many company owners imagine. If you’re like most professionals, you’re focused on what you know – the nuts and bolts of your business. Your bread and butter, if you will. Content marketing is usually little more than an afterthought.

Get it wrong, and you can waste a tremendous amount of time and money. Get it right, and you can dominate.

The trick to successfully getting people to read more of your content is understanding how people consume material on the web. Most of the people on your site probably aren’t reading every single word that you type. Typically, they’re scanning pages, looking for information they need, and then moving on. Bearing this in mind, therefore, is essential when creating content. Your content needs to have pertinent details highlighted or under particular headings so that people can visually scan your document and pick out the information they need.

That’s just one example. There are many more. Take a look at these ridiculously simple ways to get people reading more of your content and get them closer to conversion.

Start By Using Bullet Points

Using bullet points is a compelling way of engaging your users while at the same time giving them a break from a block of text.

  • Bullet points look different from regular prose
  • Bullet points break up the text
  • Bullet points provide white space
  • Bullet points succinctly collect information
  • Bullet points help readers to memorize your content
  • Bullet points organize all of the most critical information in your post

Enrich Your Text

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article | The Ridiculously Simple Ways You Can Get People To Read More Of Your Content | Content Creation | Entrepreneurship
Photo courtesy of Diggity Marketing

The art of lead magnet creation involves doing much more than writing, say, 1,500 words. It’s also about including a catchy title, moving images, calls-to-action, landing pages, branded document designs and much much more. Creating a visually compelling document is an ideal way to encourage people to investigate more of what you have to say. People want to read articles that tell them about the pictures they’re looking at, for example.

Place Helpful Links Whenever Possible

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article | The Ridiculously Simple Ways You Can Get People To Read More Of Your Content | StrategyDriven | Content Creation | Entrepreneurship

If you’re writing a blog about a particular food ingredient, it helps to insert a couple of links to recipes that use it. Likewise, if you’re writing an article about personal finance, it might be helpful to give users a link to an investment calculator so they can see how much their portfolio will be worth in ten years.

Placing helpful links is helpful to users and helpful to you too. People will want to come back.

Double Check Your Formatting

Once you’ve written your article using the advice above, double check it to see whether the format actually communicates your core message. Put yourself in the shoes of your reader and ask whether they can glean the information they need.

Whatever You Do, Don’t Leave These Things Out Of Your Digital Marketing Plan!

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Digital Marketing|Whatever You Do, Don’t Leave These Things Out Of Your Digital Marketing Plan! If your goal is to get your brand noticed online, then you will absolutely need an effective digital marketing plan. Of course, with marketing being part art, and part science, there is a substantial margin for error when it comes to writing and executing such a plan. In fact, it’s all too easy to leave out certain aspects that could have a significant effect on your success. Luckily, some of the most important ones have been highlighted below. Read on for more.

An end goal

One thing that it is crucial that you don’t leave out of your digital marketing strategy is an end goal for every campaign that you run. After all, a campaign without a specific purpose is unlikely to be as focused or as productive as it could be, and as they aren’t cheap to run its good to get this sorted out beforehand.

Analytics are a crucial element of goal monitoring.

In fact, by taking a less nebulous approach to the end result of your digital marketing campaign, you can much better track and measure the effect they are having. Of course, to do this effectively you, or the people you partner with will need to be adept at using analytics to measure the success of each campaign, and, as is becoming increasingly popular the success of altering even a single variable.

Mobile optimization

Another aspect of digital marketing strategy that you cannot leave out if you want success is the optimization of your website and apps for mobile use.

This reason for this is because over 75% of internet use is now on a mobile platform. What that means is if you don’t optimize for mobile you aren’t providing the best user experience for your up to ¾ of your customers! Something likely to reduce engagement as well as trust and positive regard for your brand.

SEO provision

You may not be an expert in it yourself, but if you are involved in running a business, it’s likely that you already know that SEO and its paid counterpart PPC are crucial things to include in your digital marketing strategy.

In fact, SEM, the term for both paid and unpaid search engine marketing, is so important because if you get it right, it will be your company that gets pulled up in the searches first.
In fact, in terms of SEO or organic rankings, it is vital that this happens because a large percentage of lead conversions happen when a click-through occurs from the first page of search results.

What that means is that if you can get your business’s link to appear on the first page of Google via the SEO method, you will have a much better chance or not only building your brand but getting good quality, convertible leads as well.

Of course, just like any other task that needs to be completed in your business, the best person for the job of SEO will be a specialist. To that end, finding an SEO agency to help you is usually a much better choice than going with someone with limited trading and experience. After all, reading a few posts on the internet won’t be enough to ensure your digital marketing strategy is effective as possible.

Engaging content

Lastly, the true cornerstone of your digital marketing strategy needs to be the content that you create. The reason being that content which offers real value to your potential customer is the currency you will use not only to convince them to listen to your message but to transcend the speaker-listener dynamic that is so prevalent in traditional forms of marketing.

In fact, by creating engaging content, you aren’t just offering an item of value to potential customers, but an opportunity to be involved in a conversation and a community as well. Both things that are greatly valued by people and can help boost your brand’s image.

Of course, by offering your potential customers this chance you can then use it to strengthen your brand’s loyalty, as well as perpetuate a genuine engagement that will keep your company name and digital marketing output relevant in their eyes. Something that, in turn, will ensure a maximum rate of success for your digital marketing strategy.

Summary

Don’t forget to have an end goal to your digital marketing strategy, and to use analytics to check that what you are doing is facilitating this. Additionally, you need to include provision for SEO and mobile optimization. Lastly, engaging content can help you not just spread your message but involve potential customers in a community around your brand as well. Something that when used in conjunction with the other tactics mentioned in this post can make your digital marketing strategy as effective as possible.