Category: Grow a Home Business

    Why and How to Create an App for Your Business

    If you are looking to get more out of your smartphone as a business owner or entrepreneur, then you might start looking for apps that can do particular jobs for you on the Android Google Play Store or on the iTunes App Store.

    But what if you don’t find what you’re looking for?

    One solution is to build your own app. And as it happens, this decision can benefit you in more ways than one and might just be easier than you expect.

    Top Reasons to Build Your Own App

    The first reason you might want to build your own app is to extend the functionality of your phone. If your business has specific requirements, then by adding a custom built piece of software to your smartphone or the smartphones of your staff, you’ll that way be able to work wherever you are. This will increase your speed and flexibility several fold and it can even prevent errors if it means that your team can update information ‘in the field’ rather than waiting to log it on their return. Bear in mind that apps on a mobile device will also work on tablets, which allows for ‘upright computing’.
    At the same time, this kind of functionality is something that will always impress potential clients and customers. It makes your business look more cutting edge and that’s something that you shouldn’t underestimate.
    Meanwhile, you can also consider building apps for your partners, clients and customers. If you run a takeaway restaurant this might mean letting your customers order food through their device, or if you provide a service then the app could help to improve the quality of that experience. Again, this can impress your customers no end but it also helps them to use your company more quickly and easily thus encouraging increased sales.

    How to Build an App
    So how do you go about building an app?
    Essentially there are two options which are to either outsource the process to a third party, or to do it yourself. Each has their strengths and weaknesses of course.
    If you are going to outsource app development then you should look for a company that specializes in this and that has experience. Ask to see previous samples of their work and do be willing to pay a little extra for quality (some cheap developers on sites like Elance will cut corners).

    If you build it yourself, continue adding a new department to your team, or see if there are easier methods you can use. For instance if you’re making an Android app then using ‘Basic4Android’ may well save you time.

    Categories: mobile Tags: Tags:

    What to Do After Your Live Stream Broadcasts

    To say that live stream broadcasting has taken off is probably the understatement of the year. It has opened up a whole new avenue for businesses to connect with their customers. While a live stream broadcast is great while it is occurring, you also want to take into account what can be done with the broadcasts after they are complete.

    At the time of this writing,
    Giving away free information has always been a great way to attract customers into your sales funnel. People still do it because it works. What is important when giving away information is to make sure is over-the-top quality. Otherwise, people are not going to read it and let it collect digital dust. Live stream broadcasts by contrast, present a higher level of interactivity than a standard PDF report. Of course, it needs to be said that if your broadcast is boring or does not offer high quality information, you will lessen the chance of achieving your intended results of getting eyes and ears on your broadcast. You message will be lost.

    An effective idea on what to use your broadcasts for, is to set up a membership for the broadcasts. You can choose to charge members, or you can keep the membership free and monetize in other ways, like affiliate marketing or advertising. The broadcasts can be the foundation of the membership but you are certainly free to add more to it. In fact, you could set up a hybrid membership that allows free members to view the broadcasts but the premium members will get extra content.

    Another possibility is to set up a YouTube channel where you will add each broadcast after they are complete. Then, it’s simply a matter of getting people to your broadcasts and asking them to subscribe to your channel. Again, it all has to do with quality so if you keep your broadcasts at high quality, people will gladly subscribe.

    A third possibility is to network with other broadcasters and put together a mashup of related broadcasts. This can be done via some kind of Joint Venture (JV) relationship. This can then be sold as a larger package and all the JV partners will send traffic to this mega-product.
    You could also offer an affiliate program where the affiliates keep a high percentage of the profits. In return, you get to keep the customers that they send you, on your list.

    These are several ways that you can reuse the broadcasts that you create. The one thing you should not do is let your broadcasts sit idle. Always find methods to put them to use so that they can keep working for you.

    Categories: broadcasting Tags: Tags:

    What is WooCommerce?

    If you have set up a website using WordPress and you are planning on selling something on your page, chances are that you have heard of the plugin WooCommerce. This plugin was designed to be used by online merchants, shops and stores who have a website powered by WordPress.

    History of WooCommerce

    WooCommerce was launched in September of 2011 and since its launch has quickly become one of the most popular ecommerce plugins available. The main reason that this plugin is so popular is because it is extremely easy to install and begin using. It is probably the easiest shop plugin to get started with on WordPress.

    The plugin was developed by Jay Koster and Mike Jolley, who were developers working at Jigowatt who were hired by WordPress to develop a plugin that would make it easier to develop ecommerce sites.

    By August of 2014 almost 18% of the ecommerce sites online used WooCommerce. This number grew to over 30% in 2015.

    Using WooCommerce

    WooCommerce is free to use and allows you to easily sell anything on your website. It integrates easily with WordPress, making it a great choice for your online retail store. WooCommerce provides a solution for both developers and store owners to maintain complete control over their website transactions.

    Using the plugin allows you to sell any type of goods both digital and physical. You can easily offer different varieties of your products, create multiple configurations, and provide instant downloads to your consumers. It is even possible to sell affiliate goods from other online marketplaces with WooCommerce.

    Premium Extensions

    While the basic version of WooCommerce is free to use and offers a lot of flexibility, there are also premium extensions available that will allow you to do even more. Some of the premium extensions will allow you to provide memberships, create recurring subscriptions, and offer bookings. It is also possible to offer member discounts for digital downloads using WooCommerce.

    Overall, if you are looking for an all-around solution for your ecommerce store, WooCommerce is a great option. This plugin provides an easy to use solution that will integrate seamlessly with your WordPress account. It will provide you with complete control of your store, including taxes and customer accounts as well as keeping track of your inventory. You can change the design, your extensions, and your settings as needed, making everything completely under your control.

    Categories: ecommerce Tags: Tags:

    Three Common Content Marketing Challenges You Should Overcome

    No present day business can survive without investing enough attention to digital marketing. The success of digital marketing hinges on quality content and effective content marketing. Although most business owners understand this universal truth, not all manage to set in place a truly efficient content marketing strategy. The challenges that arise are key reasons for the failure.

    Challenge 1: Creating shareable content that is also entertaining and engaging

    Content marketing works best when you get your audience involved in distributing the message by sharing your content with their circle. To ensure that your content is shared, it is important that it is interesting, informative and entertaining to your readers. Creating content that satisfies these aspects is a challenge that may seem difficult to overcome. What you need to do is identify what your target audience is interested in, at present, by keeping track of their purchase behavior, their social media conversations and their feedback to you. Identify the topics that seem to be in trend and create content around them to garner maximum attention and maximum shares.

    Challenge 2: Making content visible

    Millions of new articles and blogs arrive on the internet every week and yours is just one of them. Making your content visible in the crowd is a challenge indeed, but one that you can easily address with efficient search engine optimization. Research the keywords that your audience appears to be using most of the time and utilize them in your content to the right degree. Make sure that keyword usage is not taking priority over content quality and you are on track to get your page ranked high in Google search results.

    Challenge 3: Writing effective content that results in conversions

    The objective of content marketing is to enhance your overall sales efforts. It means your content should directly influence your readers to take another step into your sales funnel. In the best case scenario, your readers should immediately head to your site and make a purchase as soon as they read your content. To achieve it, your content has to fulfill two criteria: one, it needs to highlight a need that your reader has, two, it should convey why your product is the right answer to the need. The content has to give a clear message that prompts your readers to view your product favorably or make up their mind about buying your product immediately.

    Content marketing success hinges on how well you can overcome these challenges and consistently deliver content that entertains and informs your audience.

    Categories: Content Tags: Tags:

    When NOT to Use Marketing Automation

    When NOT to Use Marketing Automation

    Marketing automation is wonderful and can really make a difference for your use of time in building your business. Not everything needs to be drip fed, though. Sometimes it is better to do things yourself or have a virtual assistant do them.

    No matter how sophisticated a Word Press plug in, or a piece of software is, it is still basically a computer program. There will be bugs, there will be updates, there will be times when customers want to talk to a human to address their issues.

    Have you ever had a problem with a company such as your internet provider or cell phone provider and when you called them, you got an automated customer service system? How frustrated did you get when you were trying to get your question answered, or trying to reach a human because you knew your problem did not fit their four selection choices? Often because they are rather large business with little or no competition in the area, they can do that to their customers. You might not want to do that though because there is probably far more competition for your customers.

    So customer service is a major area where you would not want to have a lot of marketing automation. Basic issues can be addressed by tools such as emailing a new password when someone clicks the forgot password button. If a person needs more than can be handled simply, you need to have a way for them to connect with a person. It can be you, or someone you hire to help you, but that person needs to be able to listen to the customer and figure out how to solve the problem, no matter how odd the problem is.

    Another area where you will want to have at least some human presence is in your social media. If you just rely on marketing automation to handle your social media, you will short change yourself and your customers. In some cases, you may end up getting banned from groups if you only use drip fed posts. The line between automation and spamming can be quite thin.

    An additional area where automation does not work well is in producing content. Once the content is created, you can use the tools to get the content out there, but the actual making of it needs a personal touch. Many people have tried to make software that writes well, and failed at it. Creativity is not hardwired into computers the way it is in human beings. So if you want something written, or a video made, or graphics designed, you need to do it yourself or outsource to a person, not try to use automation tools to create the content.

    Categories: Marketing Tags: Tags:

    Tools You Need to Create Your Social Videos

    Tools You Need to Create Your Social Videos

    In the old days, making a video required a massive budget. You had to have a studio with lighting, sound equipment, video editing tools, a fancy video camera, and usually actors. Thanks to technological advances, you can now make high quality videos with a much smaller budget. You can even just use your smart phone with a few other tools and then upload to your favorite social media sites and you are on your way.

    Of course, if you want to make more complex videos, you may need a few more tools than just your cell phone. Here are some tools you might want to use:

    A camera.

    There are several options to use for a camera. You can use a simple smart phone. You could use what is called a flip cam, which is usually fairly inexpensive. You can buy a fairly good quality flip cam for around $100. You could use a web cam. This is probably the lowest priced option. You will probably want to buy an external one, if you plan on using a web cam frequently for videos, instead of using the one built into your computer. You can also use a camcorder or a digital camera that allows you to do short videos. Whichever choice you make, be sure it can record in HD format.

    Lighting.

    Pay attention to lighting and background. You can spend a little or a lot in this area. Some people buy fancy lighting sets and even use green screen technology to do their videos. However if your lighting is good, and your background is not super busy, you can make good quality short videos without spending a fortune.

    A microphone.

    Here you have a wide variety of choices. Keep in mind these videos are short and rarely more than a minute long. You may not have a great deal of talking, so you probably will not need a special microphone. A lot of people find, even for a full webinar, that the basic headsets that you can buy for under 50 dollars work really well. If you are using your smart phone for the video, you may find the built in microphone is sufficient. If you are doing an animated video or whiteboard video, you may not have voice at all. With many live action videos of this length, your actions may be far more important than your voice.

    Video editor.

    You will want to do at least some video editing, even if it is just to make it shorter. There are a number of options here; you can start at the free end of the scale with software such as Windows Movie Maker or Cam Studio, or you can go to the top of the line and get Camtasia, one of the more expensive options. In some cases the app you are using like Vine has a simple video editor included.

    Categories: video Tags: Tags:

    What Should You Broadcast on Your Live Streams?

    Live video streaming is not a completely new concept. It’s just that it really took hold in the marketplace in 2015. Twitter saw the value in this and bought Periscope before it even released its product. For most people, where this concept is new to them, feel confused as to what to broadcast. This article will give some ideas as to what you can use for your material to broadcast.

    Repurposed Content
    If you have been doing online marketing for a long period of time, there is a pretty good chance you already have a blog or website and have been actively filling it with content. If so, you can use the content from your website as material for your broadcasts. In fact, you can set up a weekly broadcast and discuss one post each week. The key to doing this correctly is to make sure you are consistent with your broadcasts. Do them the same day and same time every week. Make sure to have a question and answer period at the end as this is how to get people coming back. One way to entice them to join the broadcasts is to offer to give something away but only to those who attend the broadcast. The freebie will be announced at the end. It’s a good idea to make the freebies valuable so they will want to get one each week. A list of great tips is one idea on what to give away.

    Content from Private Label Rights (PLR)
    PLR has gotten a bad reputation and for good reason. For a while, most of it was low quality and has flooded the internet. But that is all changing. There are providers of PLR who are committed to producing quality information and products. The landscape is changing which is great for people who need to consume content. Broadcasts are a great way for this to happen.
    Keep in mind that if you use PLR you should change it up to make it your own. This will help you stand out as an authority which builds the trust needed for your audience to keep coming back.

    Tutorials
    People love to learn new skills. By using broadcasts to teach them something new is going to bring them back over and over again. This is a great method for engaging your audience with valuable information.

    The topics that you can broadcast about are only limited by your imagination. This is definitely one of those situations where you want to think outside the box to come up with ideas that others are not.

    Categories: broadcasting Tags: Tags:

    Points To Remember When Authoring Self-help Books

    When you have succeeded in overcoming a big challenge in life or you have dealt with a difficult situation or event that crushes most people, it is natural that you would want to share your experience so that others can benefit from it. Writing a self- help book is a great idea in such situations. However, it is not easy to write one that is commercially successful as well as truly beneficial to your audience. These are some points you should keep in mind to make your self- help book useful and informative to others who find themselves in your situation.

    Is the topic relevant, current and really useful?

    The first thing to do is to review your topic and take a call on whether or not it is useful for others. Some situations that you have experienced and overcome may be common to many people across the world, but others arise only because of a unique combination of circumstances that may not be duplicated in anyone else’s life. A self-help book is a success when it talks about a problem that affects many people, and there is no evident, tried and tested way to deal with it. Another thing to keep in mind is to research if the subject has already been extensively covered by many other authors. If so, your audience may be highly restricted.

    Retain focus on your core topic

    Finding your focus and then staying focused as you progress through the book is a huge challenge when it comes to writing self-help books. These are typically based on your personal experiences and it often becomes a drawback because you tend to meander into experiences that do not have direct bearing on the topic of the book. A good way to overcome the problem is to start the project by making a clear, well-defined outline for your book with chapter headings and a short summary of each chapter’s contents. Get someone to give you an objective assessment of the outline before you finalize it.

    Build trust

    Credibility and trust are keystones to success when you are authoring self-help books. Your audience should feel confident about placing trust on you and there are several ways in which you can do it. One, you can highlight your credentials that show why you are an expert on the topic. Two, you can share your life story to show how you have experienced the same problem and worked your own way out of it. Sharing anecdotes, stories from your life as examples works well to enhance your credibility as an author who knows what he/she is talking about.

    Categories: Book Publishing Tags: Tags:

    What is the Best Smartphone for Business?

    If you’re an avid businessman or woman and you need a new smartphone, or if you’re tasked with selecting a ‘company phone’ for your staff, then you might find yourself having something of an impossible task trying to choose which device will best suit your needs. These days there are hundreds of phone models on the market at any one time and all of them have impressive features that might make them seem like good candidates.
    Which phone then, if any, has the edge over the competition for a business setting?

    The Operating System
    While there are numerous different operating systems you can get for smartphones including Linux  the only two you really need to consider are iOS and Android. There was a time when many people were interested in Blackberry phones for business but unfortunately there just isn’t the app support necessary on this platform and the hardware leaves a lot to be desired.
    iOS and Android run the most impressive range of business applications and they are found on the most top-end hardware. So which one has the edge? Well, if you are a design business using Macs and you don’t need any proprietary software then you could probably choose either  with iOS having slightly smoother function all round. For many businesses though, the greater amount of flexibility that Android offers means that it will have the edge. Android lets you drag and drop files over USB for instance and it lets you create your own applications more easily.

    The Specs
    In terms of specs, you don’t need quite the same workhorse that you do for your main PC. That said, you do want something that will be capable of some basic multitasking and that will be able to run the best apps.

    Here the most important consideration might be the RAM. 2GB is the highest for most phones (with only very few going up to 3GB) so this should cater to most of your needs.
    What’s most important though is the screen size. If you’re going to work well on a mobile device you need to make sure that you can see a lot of the screen so that you can fit lots on all at once. The iPhone 6 Plus is famous for its large screen, while the Galaxy Note 4 and Nexus have a smaller screen.

    Categories: Mobile, Run a Home Business Tags: Tags:

    3 Simple Mistakes to Avoid in Setting Up Your Marketing Automation

    Marketing automation can really help streamline your business and help you grow. It is important though, that you understand how best to use these tools so you do not make mistakes. Remember that these tools are only there to make things easier for you, not to replace the human touch.

    First and foremost, you need to make sure you keep adding fresh content that is specifically geared to your customers. For example, if you are selling to men who love dogs and want to learn how to train them better, you probably would not want content that has to do with how to help women lose weight.

    Watch out for more subtle differences as well. You can generalize to some extent, but you do not want your customers to feel like you are just throwing content at them to see what sticks. Make sure your content is not only changing, but relevant to your specific customer base. A lot of times you have more than one group of customers, though, so segmenting your list is crucial to helping you target them better with your automation. You want them to feel like even though it is automated, that you care about them and their interests.

    Do not use marketing automation when you should be connecting with your customers manually. For example, many tools work with drip feeding content and posts to various forms of social media. You can use these tools to make sure your social media stays active, by tweeting, sharing, posting, when you are not able to because you are asleep, or working on other projects.

    Make sure, though, that you also post manually so people can hear what you have to say. If you are a member of a group on sites like Facebook, use good social manners. A few automated posts now and again that are very relevant to the group may be alright as long as you clear it first, but if you drip feed a lot of posts, many unrelated, the group may ban you.

    Set it and forget it can lead you into issues. You do need to monitor your marketing automation and test it and tweak it. Make sure you are offering targeted information that helps your customers as well as sales pitches. Check on things like how much interaction you are getting with social media posts and blog posts. Analyze your stats on emails to make sure you are really maximizing your benefits from using automated tools to grow your business.

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