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“If you’re not confused, you’re not paying attention.”
― Tom Peters, Thriving on Chaos
In a world where everything is digitally connected, and which is witnessing changes at an unprecedented pace, the pressure to deliver results is greater than ever before. We live and work in a complex ecosystem in which businesses have no alternative but to adapt and excel in the digital world if they want to remain competitive. [Read more…] about How to Reduce Complexity and Boost Your Digital Success
Labor laws exist to protect employees and prevent businesses from taking advantage of their labor. Certain Federal laws exist to keep the public safe from false claims and scams. State and local laws exist to keep communities in order. Your business might break the law at some point, even unknowingly. You need to be prepared.
The law is complex and intricate with details nearly impossible for all business owners to memorize. No matter how much time you spend learning and memorizing statutes, your best effort may not be enough to keep you out of trouble. Mistakes happen, and sometimes they cost more than money.
Your business is always at risk of being targeted with complaints by workers and customers. Unless an injury is involved, customer complaints are generally easier to handle than complaints filed by employees. Businesses have difficulty keeping up with new labor laws, and end up unintentionally violating those laws. Employees are quick to file complaints the day the law goes into effect, often without attempting to have a conversation with their employer.
For example, in 2015, the city of Seattle, WA passed a law requiring employers to offer paid sick leave to employees and increased the minimum wage. Other worker protections were passed, too. The number of complaints soared after these laws were passed.
The Office of Labor Standards has been working hard to investigate each claim, but due to the rising number of claims, it’s taking much longer than it used to. For instance, in 2015, the average claim was investigated in 127 days. In 2017, after more laws were passed, it took an average of 334 days.
Be aware that you could be investigated without any warning.
If a crime has been committed, even if the victim doesn’t want to press charges, the state can still choose to pursue charges.
For example, in 2015, a 16-year-old boy jumped on the hood of his friend’s Jeep to make her laugh. The car was still moving, and the boy fell, hit his head, and was partially run over. He suffered severe head injuries and two punctured lungs. He was on life support for a day before his parents decided to pull the plug. His parents didn’t want to press charges against the driver, but the authorities did.
You don’t need to keep a lawyer in your back pocket, but you should be ready to call one on a moment’s notice. If you don’t have a lawyer, find local attorneys who practice specific areas of law that might affect your business. Make a list of contacts organized by what they practice and make that list accessible. Don’t wait until something happens. If you are in an emotionally charged situation in the future, you won’t be able to think as clearly and rationally as you can when you’re in a neutral state of mind.
Most cases settle out of court because the parties involved want the quickest resolution. During settlement discussions, lawyers from both sides get together to come to an agreement for fair compensation. This is true across a variety of cases including labor law violations, personal injury claims, and class action lawsuits. You’ll be asked to accept or reject a settlement offer. Don’t be too picky, though. If you hold out for more than what’s fair, the case could go to trial and become more complicated.
Some claimants will attempt a settlement negotiation with your insurance company first. Legal experts will tell you that insurers often deny liability in personal injury cases and refuse to settle. Insurance companies are for-profit corporations and are protecting their profits. A claimant is more likely to be picky with settlements offered by an insurance company when they know they can hire a lawyer and possibly get more compensation.
A settlement doesn’t let you off the hook financially, but it significantly mitigates the risk of a higher judgment. Judges sometimes impose hefty fines and penalties on businesses to teach them a lesson if what they’ve done is out of line.
Don’t be consumed with winning. Be happy if your case settles out of court. Trials are expensive and time-consuming, and can damage your reputation even when you win.
No one can deny the importance of social media in today’s business marketplace. However, just because this is a known factor in success, it doesn’t mean that everyone knows how to use it properly, and it doesn’t mean that after you do learn how to use it properly, you can stay in that position without being extremely flexible when it comes to new techniques and processes.
A few tips that you can follow to make sure that you are business stays within current social media parameters of success include making sure that you understand that size matters, consistency is key, shortening your feedback cycles is important, narrowing your focus almost always helps, and remaining flexible with the times is also going to give you a competitive advantage. [Read more…] about Tips For Choosing Your Social Media Marketing Goals
One technique for marketing yourself, your company, or your brand, is to turn the tables and specifically make some of your content about the person seeking help, information, or answers. In other words, instead of saying ‘here, I’m selling this thing’, you adjust the framework to say, ‘here, these are ways that I can help you’. The information provided will essentially communicate the core message the same, but the packaging will be structured in a way that people can come to their own conclusions about your services based on their needs, rather than matching it the other way around.
You can look at four examples of this specifically, including your ability to market yourself in terms of help for medical problems, education, social issues, or private issues. Regardless of your industry or what you’re selling, there are almost always ways to incorporate these ideas into some of your content. [Read more…] about Incorporating Help Services Into Your Marketing Plan
Nowadays, more and more entrepreneurs are setting up their online stores. This is because of the growing number of people who are getting online. As a result, more and more people are making most of their purchases through online stores. This phenomenon is what attracts many entrepreneurs and digital marketers to enter the world of e-commerce.
Venturing in e-commerce business is daunting. Although the growth potential is high, the responsibility is big. A new e-commerce store is not enough to generate revenue. Just because a site is up and running doesn’t mean its traffic is guaranteed. It entails improvement and promotion. The challenge is to keep up with competition as there are many e-commerce stores you can find online these days. [Read more…] about 5 Ways to Increase the Revenue Potential of Your New Ecommerce Store
Running a business blog means offering advice specifically for entrepreneurs. It means staying consistent and posting only relevant content to your niche. By consistently posting interesting and useful information with references to the facts, your blog will stand out as much more than mere speculation.
Maintaining a tone of authenticity is important. If you aren’t the world’s most experienced business person, then by all means just say it. Explain why you are credible enough to be dishing out useful information to fellow entrepreneurs in the most honest possible way. Perhaps you haven’t been in the industry for 25+ years, but the immense amount of success you’ve had in a very short period of time gives you 100% credit. [Read more…] about Content Tips For Your Business Blog
There are many reasons why people may start a real estate blog. Real estate agents do it to market themselves and their clients. Landlords blog because it’s a great way to market their rental properties and bring the community closer together. Investors and experts blog because it’s a great way to generate passive income while sharing insights on a topic they’re passionate about.
Whatever your motivation, blogging can be lucrative for both income and marketing. Blogging has proven itself to be an excellent way to generate leads and increase traffic on websites, and since 92 percent of consumers interested in real estate turn to blogs and other online content for information, it’s an excellent way to attract the right attention. [Read more…] about 5 Tips for Writing a Successful Real Estate Blog
If somebody thinks being a realtor is just about selling houses and property, they’re wrong. Realtors might as well be celebrities. Well, at least the most successful ones practically are. In all honesty, actually selling the house is the easy part of the job. What comes as a challenge is often developing the people skills, having a knack for bringing out the positive in everything, knowing the market and trends, and building up your celebrity status in your general area so that people come to you whenever they seek to buy something.
If you’re unsure what you can be doing to build up your visibility in the real estate market so that people will actually come to you when they want to buy real estate, consider starting up a blog. Sounds random, right? Well, here are 3 ways a blog can help your real estate career:
It Draws Traffic To Your Site
No matter what business you’re in, marketing is a huge factor in how well you do. The world has gone mostly online in business, so even if you’re selling real estate, you have to be working your angles online. A blog gives you a huge advantage. What you can be doing is writing about everything you’re doing.
Give advice, talk about different houses you’ve seen and things you’ve experienced…talk about anything and everything to build up your name. Always link your blog back to your site, it’s even more helpful if your blog is directly on your website. The more traffic you draw in, the more likely you’ll be in to land a new client.
You Can Profile Your Properties
When people look for houses, their realtor is responsible for coming up with properties. If you’re working with other clients and you just happen to be selling their house as well, if you use your blog to write about the property and what’s great about it, and you post pictures to the blog, you’re going to have a great tool to show your properties to potential buyers. A blog isn’t just about writing about how you feel about things, it’s an underutilized tool for business growth.
You Build A Name For Yourself
As was stated before, a realtor needs to be a celebrity of sorts in their hometown. When you build up a name for yourself and people know who you are, you’ll start to get more properties and selling properties will be easier for you. The more local properties you get, the bigger your name grows and people out of state might hear about you and seek to use you as their realtor. You might find you get into international territory, and that’s cool because there’s good money in land.
People often wonder how bloggers get their hands on all of the products they review, and whether or not they’re paid to use and review those products. Some bloggers may very well spend their own money on buying the products, but successful bloggers are able to get products sent to them for free by companies wanting the publicity. If you’re a blogger wanting to know how to get your hands on free products or product samples, here are a few easy steps.
Make it worth their time
No one will give you anything for free if it’s not worth their time. You can make giving you free products worth it by making sure the companies see you’re dedicated, have great content, and have likeminded followers.
Many bloggers use sites to gain followers that are fellow bloggers – and will follow you if you follow them – but these aren’t what the companies will be interested in. Make sure that your followers are readers who are genuinely interested in your niche and are consistent in visiting your blog.
Know your worth
Companies will want to know why they should send you free items, and what the return on investment will be for them. Make sure that you understand what they’re asking, and have the information on hand when you speak with the companies that will give you products to review.
You should be familiar with your click through rate, your number of followers, and how you’ve grown since you started the blog. Also, know your number of pageviews and the time you’re willing to invest in your blog. Without knowing this information, the companies won’t be able to determine if it’s worth it to send you the products for free.
Make sure the products fit your blog
Ensure that the products you’re asking to have sent for review are things that fit into your blog, and fit with your previous blog content. If you’re currently a food blogger and are wanting the latest eye shadow palette sent to you for review, the companies won’t feel that your accumulated audience would be interested in makeup, and will be less likely to send you products.
Establishing a blog that writes about certain products may mean that you pay for some products yourself to gain a following and loyal audience. This tactic may be spendy but it’s a great way to show companies that you’re serious about wanting to review products for your blog and share them with the world.
While it may seem appealing to receive free loot, the work that goes into blogging prior to being sent items to review may make you reconsider. Getting sent products isn’t for the beginning blogger or the blogger who isn’t willing to put in quite a bit of time and effort.
Having a creative career of any kind isn’t always easy. There is a reason that people call those with creative jobs “starving artists.” While you can make a living as a landscape painter or an article writer, it usually takes some time to get to that point. You have many trials and errors you’ll need to go through, and probably a lot or Ramen noodles.
As a blogger, there are ways to make money, it just depends on how much money and effort you want to put into your blog, as well as who you plan to write for. You may find yourself needing alternate work or even applying for a payday loan to get by in the beginning, but once your blog is monetized, you might get lucky and have a good income to live off.
You don’t even have to have your own blog to make a living as a blogger. As a freelancer, you can get paid to write for other blogs – as a steady writer or just someone who writes guest posts.
Use Ads
Most people who write on their own blogs, that they started from scratch, will use things like AdSense as their way to make money off their blog. Pay per clicks ads can bring in money, but unless your blog is bringing in thousands of unique visitors a month who are all clicking the click bait, you probably won’t make enough to live off.
You could sell traditional ads on your blog as well. You might simply have a company or advertiser submit a design, or if you are design savvy you may do it for them. It’s kind of like ad space in a newspaper or magazine.
Do Reviews
Some businesses will pay reviewers to write reviews of their products. At the least, you can often get free products to review that you get to keep. With the rules of the internet, and to always be transparent, you want to make sure you are honest that you were compensated for an unbiased review of said product.
Write Guest Posts
Even if you do have your own blog, whether it’s making you money or not, you should consider looking into other blogs that pay writers to do guest posts for them. They are out there. You will run into some that will want you to pay them to post your stuff in your search, but simply keep looking.
Become A Freelancer
If you don’t have your own blog, but you love to write, you may want to do some researching on blogging positions. You may find a gig that gives you steady work and allows you to write for many blogs on many topics. It’s a great way to do what you love, but not have to come up with ideas all on your own all the time, or need to stick with a specific subject matter.