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It’s Time to Get Competitive! Facebook Contests May Lead to More Customers

As a business owner, you may be updating your Facebook, Twitter, and even LinkedIn pages on a daily basis. However, there comes a point where the addition of fans and followers begins to slow down and eventually may come to a halt.

How can you jump start a following? All it may take is a little creativity, innovation, and motivation. Are you leveraging contests to gain more leads and customers? You should be!

It's Time to Get Competitive! Facebook Contests May Lead to More Customers

According to a study by  AllFacebook, 30% of people have participated in contests or promotion via Facebook. The best news about this is that this number continues to grow.…

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Top Tracking Tools to Monitor Your Online Marketing Efforts

Putting up an online store can be one of the best business decisions made in this digital age, considering the ever-increasing number of people willing to buy products and services over the Internet. However, having an e-commerce website isn’t enough, as it doesn’t guarantee an increase in sales without the proper marketing strategy in place to drive more people to the site.

Top Tracking Tools to Monitor Your Online Marketing Efforts

To build a winning strategy, a business needs to have a good foundation based on hard numbers about their target audience’s engagement with them. This is why tracking online traffic is necessary. Thankfully, there are a couple of great tools that can be utilized to do just that and more.…

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Why Guest Posting Is The Best Way To Link Build And How It Can Be Achieved

We are all very familiar with guest posting, it’s a method we use to build natural links to our websites. This method is currently the most popular and viable way to attain healthy links to your site.

One primary reason for guest posting being so effective is that it gives you the ability to post content written by you on a high quality blog chosen by you. This niche blog sends all the right signals to Google and in turn carries a link directly to your site which will give your website much higher quality links.

Why Guest Posting Is The Best Way To Link Build And How It Can Be Achieved

However, guest posting is not as simple as it sounds.…

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It’s Who You Know: Are You An Efficient Networker?

It's Who You Know: Are You An Efficient Networker?

Networking is easy. Just get out there and meet some people! Yeah right.

Networking is an essential part of business whether you’re looking for a job or just trying to beef up your contacts list and unfortunately, many people are doing it wrong. If you’re not networking efficiently you’re simply wasting your time and spinning your wheels.

Here are a few tips for ensuring you’re getting the most out of your networking efforts.

Do you have an objective? – The number one networking mistake is to go into it without an objective. Are you looking for a job? Do you need more business contacts?…

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6 Ways To Save Money When Setting Up An Office

6 Ways To Save Money When Setting Up An Office

It’s one thing to have a company that has been around for a number of years and is able to afford great big offices. For newer entrepreneurs, however, it’s not as simple as just setting up any office they want and worrying about the costs later. Everything needs to be budgeted out so the company doesn’t lose too much money before it starts to pull in revenue.

These 6 tips will help you to save money right away:

  • Don’t get a full-sized office unless you definitely need it – A startup can always opt for incubator spaces, office rentals rather than sign a full-sized office.
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What Is Great Customer Service and How Can It Help Your Small Business?

What Is Great Customer Service and How Can It Help Your Small Business?

By definition, customer service is what you offer an individual before, during and after a transaction. While this concept seems simple enough, truly exceptional customer service is getting harder to find. Why? Perhaps it’s because stellar customer service is an experience that not only gets customers from point A to point B, but enhances the overall level of customer satisfaction – an idea that can seem mind-boggling to some.

If you ask any virtual receptionist, however, she’ll tell you that offering quality customer service is no harder or more time-consuming than what you already do. The difference is that the personal connection you make with prospective customers adds value to your brand.…

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3 Reasons Automated Hiring Will Rock Your World – And Your Bottom Line

A lot is at stake when small businesses make new hires. The costs associated with assessing candidates, onboarding, and training a new employee have a noteworthy bottom line impact, which is why it’s so crucial to hire the right person – the first time.

3 Reasons Automated Hiring Will Rock Your World - and Your Bottom Line

Automated pre-hire assessments have made the hiring process less complicated and more efficient for both human resources and applicants. By leveraging structured, job-relevant questionnaires, hiring managers drastically increase the likelihood of finding a top performer the first time.

In doing so, firms are able to make better use of their resources and minimize risk associated with making a bad hire.…

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How SMBs Can Profile Their Typical Customer

How SMBs Can Profile Their Typical Customer

Many marketing plans fail because they try to attract everyone and don’t focus on anyone. These faulty plans result in companies selling products that customers don’t want. Thing is, most customers aren’t even at the center of the feedback loop. Even worse, most customers will tell you what they want, if you would just ask.

Making the sketch

Start by surveying your existing client base (no matter how small) to understand future buyers better. Contrary to popular belief, this doesn’t have to be a costly process. There are free tools such as Google Docs and MailChimp that let you create a survey and distribute it easily and affordably.…

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Saving Money – and Space – with Smarter Storage

Saving Money - and Space - with Smarter Storage

Space is vital when growing a small business – too little room can suffocate growth, while too much space can put major financial pressures on a young business. Keeping overheads down, while maintaining the flexibility to expand your company is paramount, but what are the options and how do we put them into practise?

Rent out unused office space

In the current economic climate, shared offices are becoming much more popular. To take advantage of the ‘rent a desk’ movement, look at unused or poorly used space in your business premises and remove the extra furniture, re-structure, and lease out the space to a small company or freelancer to keep your overheads down (this is an especially good solution if your business goes through a short-term downsize).…

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How Small Businesses Should Make The Most Of Their Social Media Presence

There is no doubt that social media is an integral part of online marketing for small businesses. Unfortunately the social media landscape is very fragmented and it is difficult to know what conversations to join and more importantly how to explore these opportunities in the best way. There are many opportunities for small businesses to really get the best out of their social media campaigns simply by looking how the big brands use social media.

How Small Businesses Should Make The Most Of Their Social Media Presence

Find The Most Suitable Social Media Platforms

It can be quite easy to set up social media profiles on many different platforms. The problem is that each account needs a lot of time and effort to be really successful.…

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