Working from Home

When it comes to cementing your brand, your work might speak for itself, but it helps if you speak for it, too. Well-written content gives you the chance to share the method to your madness, to spread some insights, and demonstrate your expertise. However, writing effective, easy-to-read content isn’t as simple as it might first appear, especially if you have plenty of writing to do. For that reason, here are a few tools that can help make it all the easier to get creative and efficient.

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A second pair of eyes

Even if you reread and reread your own content, it’s easy to miss mistakes, especially those that tend to slip past autocorrect functions built into your word processors. Reading aloud is a good tip for testing the “readability” of your pieces but having a second pair of eyes is even better. That’s where proofreading apps like Hemingway and Grammarly can be most effective. Not only can you spot errors and mistakes, but they can point out bits that are functionally correct, but don’t read too well.

Your work zone

The majority of your work is likely to be done in a text editor. However, it can be hard to find those with all of the features that you like. It’s worth taking a look at what is the best text editor for Mac to see which ones have the features to meet your needs. Editors come with all sorts of bell and whistles, including direct integration with content systems like WordPress, a distraction-blocking Zen mode, the ability to leave notes on the text that don’t interfere with the word count, and more. It’s all about choosing which features are a priority for you.

The right snaps

Your content isn’t all about the actual written content, either. Good imagery is essential for making it stand out amongst your blog or the rest of your articles. Furthermore, snaps can be used to illustrate your points and provide context that the text itself goes to expand on. Good sources of stock images are invaluable tools. You will want to have more than a couple at your disposal so you’re not always reusing the same snaps, as well.

A place for your notes

A good text editor will have note functionality that allows you to make observations and keep track of resources you can use for a specific piece of content. However, note-making apps give you a separate place to independently track the different ideas and resources that you use most frequently when writing content in general. These apps make it a lot easier to jot down ideas even when they’re not relevant to the particular piece of content you’re writing right now and to separate notes into different pages and categories that make it all the easier to stop clutter from slowing down your productivity.

Of course, all the tools in the world won’t help unless you have content that’s worth reading. Make sure that you’re always thinking about the value that readers can take from your content, not just what you want to write.

This post is sponsored by Diamond Bloggers. All opinions are my own.

Feeling like you’re treading water with your small at-home business and not making progress towards your goals? Or are you having trouble choosing business goals to propel your business ahead in the remaining quarters of this year? If you do, you’re not alone. As all business owners are looking for ways to be more successful. But how do you get there? So if you want your small business to be more profitable than ever before, here are three suggestions on how to make it happen.

Focus on Customer Service

According to a 2017 survey conducted by American Express, 78% of consumers have canceled or declined an intended purchase due to poor customer service. Other studies have shown that it takes nearly ten positive customer experiences to make up for one negative one.

Given that loyal customers are much easier to sell to, its paramount to make good customer service your greatest priority. Do this by examining your current customer service and make the changes that need to be made to ensure that your small business is providing service superior to that of your competitors, whether it be investing in staff training, revamping your return policy, or basic improvements such as responding promptly to voice mail or email from customers. Whether you operate your business in a small community or from home, word of mouth traffic will always be more important for your business. Most consumers turn to the net to search for reviews of businesses before deciding where to shop, so building a good reputation is vital to the success of your business.

And how do you get positive word of mouth? By providing good, professional service, and gaining publicity by giving back to your community by supporting and sponsoring local organizations, houses of worship, and charities.

Build Your Online Presence

One of the best ways to build an at-home business is through gaining an online presence. Particularly in the pursuit of creating a professional looking blog, business website and dedicated, curated social media presence. Methods that can be quickly and easily help to generate traffic and income to your small business need. Which is particularly important as it’s estimated that more than 73% of consumers research purchases online before buying in a store.

Keep in mind that your website should describe who you are, what you do, and how to contact you will suffice for many small businesses. At a minimum, your site should contain your logo, business name,  a detailed summary of what your intended products and services will be, contact information, mission statement, and depending on your target market, a curated view and links to access your social media accounts online.

Software

If you do nothing else this year for your at-home business, you need to make sure that your online presence, including your business software, is mobile friendly and is proactively helping to generate traffic to your business endeavors online. For the right customer success software lets you achieve customer success by helping users develop an immediate understanding of and connection with your product from the start. We help you do that in a data-driven, scalable and customizable way. There’s a whole range of software strategies you could be using to reach your target market with great effect, from text message advertising and mobile display ads through having an app designed for your own business. Chose options best suited for your business at home.

If there’s one thing I want you to take away from this article, it’s this; success is not a given. If you want your small business to be more successful this year, you need to make the necessary changes to bring that about. That work may be as simple as investing in a new tool or as difficult as changing your thinking about some of your business processes. But you haven’t brought your business this far to just let it stagnate, have you? Here’s to your best year ever! And remember; building a successful business is a marathon, not a sprint! What will you be trying from this post at home this season? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

As a small business owner, we know that in order to succeed, yourself and your team must be equipped with not just a dream needs the technology to make those dreams a reality. Because in a results-driven economy, one of the biggest challenges small business owners face is how to do all that needs to be done when there are never enough hours in the day. And why opting to use the best software for your blog and small business a paramount in today’s business world.

Sometimes it can seem that the most difficult part of running a small business is selecting the proper software to take care of the more tedious details for you. Sure, your predecessors just sharpened pencils when it came time to take care of the books, but this isn’t conducive to today’s business climate anymore. These days, there are many products available to streamline the process for you, like making money.

Deciding which is the best product for you is a matter of zeroing in on your business’s unique needs and perhaps identifying what business-related tasks you have zero tolerance for. Then you can select software to lighten your load. Want some help? Read on to see which programs are best suited to your needs. So if you are deciding which software might be the best fit for your business this season, here are four applications that serve to help automate business processes, save time, increase productivity and stay focused on the most valuable activities.

Trello

Ideal for small organizations, Trello is an organizational app that works as a team task-board. Users tasks and assign steps to individual team members to complete said tasks. Trello promotes productivity by small business maintain real-time visualization of what’s been finished already, and what new deadlines are approaching. Moreover, most of Trello’s best features are free to use. Find out more about this program here.

HootSuite

This app allows small businesses to schedule social media posts on popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and the like. With HootSuite, you can listen to social media and get involved in emerging conversations in your niche, helping to grow your followers and position you as an authority. HootSuite saves you time by letting you schedule posts in advance, so you’re not constantly having to push your brand on social media. For work smarter, not harder method of scheduling social media, starting at only $19.00/month, check out this service here.

Mail Chimp

As you gain customers, you’ll need a way to stay in touch with them. As one of your growing businesses’ greatest resources, a working means of communicating news about your company and the latest deals and offers. Such as a scheduled newsletter. Which is were Mail Chimp can help. This service lets you organize and store your own mailing lists and provides you with templates that you can use to quickly create e-mail newsletters for your customers. Mail Chimp is the best way to keep track of, and communicate with, the people who matter: your customers! Check them out here.

An MDM vendor

In order to take your blog and mall business to the next level this season, you should invest in the services of an MDM vendor. Experts in unlocking analytical insights on strengths and cautions for all 14 MDM vendors. With a focus on sales momentum, market understanding, and product vision as well as pricing and deployment options. Steps that help take your business from niche to experienced this season and increase your profit margins for the foreseeable future. Vendors such as gartner mdm.

Friends, I hope you’ll take advantage of this list of software applications that can help you accomplish more with your small business. Let us know how these applications are working for you in the comment below!

Everybody knows that you need to increase traffic to your blog if you’re going to make any money out of it. But it’s not just about the number of hits you get, if you really want to be successful, you need regular readers that keep coming back time and time again. That’s a lot harder to achieve than people realize because there is a lot of competition out there. You need to make sure that you’re creating engaging content for your readers but that’s just the start. There are a lot of other things that readers want out of a blog. If you’re going to get people to become long-term readers, you need to get these things right.

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Dialogue

If people like your posts then they might comment on them. This is great news for you because engaging your readers is a good way of getting them to come back. But your readers want to open a dialogue with you and if you don’t respond to that, they’re probably not going to visit your blog again. That’s why it’s important that you’re answering any comments within a day or two at the most. You should always make sure that you’re friendly and polite with people and you offer them good advice. You can also use this as a good opportunity to direct them toward more posts that you’ve published on a similar topic. Opening a dialogue with your readers and building a connection is one of the best ways to keep people coming back time and time again.

Personality

This is a big one. It’s important that you create informative posts but if that’s all you offer, people are going to get a bit bored of your blog. It also doesn’t separate you from all of the other blogs that are writing about similar topics. The thing that really creates loyalty amongst your readership is your personality. That’s why it’s important that you let your personality shine through in your posts and don’t hold back. As well as writing posts about your chosen topic, write about your life in general as well. Even if you don’t think it’s that exciting, people will like to hear about it.

Good Quality Pictures

The content of the posts themselves is important but people respond to visual stimulus a lot more than they do written content. That’s why it’s so important that you use good quality photos on all of your posts. When people are scrolling through your site or looking at your social media feed, it’s the photos that will catch their eye first. Always make sure you’re using photos on all of your posts and ensure the quality is good. It’s worth investing a bit of money in a decent camera so you’re not just taking pictures on your phone for the blog.

Security

Security is something that bloggers often forget about but it’s important because you hold a lot of information about your readers. You might have their names and emails on an email list and if you’re selling products through the blog, you might even have their credit card details. That’s why it’s so important that you protect yourself online and you give readers a safe way to log in to your site. Jumio provides a safe customer experience by using a facial recognition service. It’s far safer than using a standard password and makes them feel safer about using your blog. You also need to get a good firewall and keep it updated to protect yourself from any hacking attacks. If readers don’t feel like their information is being protected properly, they’re not going to keep visiting your site.

Usability

How many times have you been on a website that takes ages to load? How many times did you stick around and wait for it to work? Probably never, and most people would do the same. If your blog is frustrating to use then people aren’t going to keep using it. Slow loading times are the biggest problem and there are a couple of different reasons for it. Often, it’s just because you’ve got too much going on. If you’ve got a page packed full of pictures and videos with loads of stuff down the sidebar, it’ll take ages to load. Less is more here, just stick to the essentials and make sure that the page loads quickly. Sometimes, the template that you pick for your blog can load slowly so if you’re having problems, that’s the first thing to change. Always make sure that you’ve got a clear menu bar as well so people can easily find what they need.

Great content is at the heart of a successful blog but it’s not the only thing you need. You’ve got to get all of these other elements right as well.

Being successful in blogging is all about exuding confidence, even if you don’t feel like you know what you are sometimes doing. In fact, it’s often a case of faking it until you make it. Although, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some useful approaches that you can take that will boost your blogging confidence and results, something that you can read more about in my post below.

Get good at talking to people.

One thing that can boost your blogging confidence is getting good at talking to people. Ok, so your blog may not require you to speak to anyone face to face, although if you get super successful, it’s likely this will happen at least some of the time. However, being confident in the way that you talk to people also can affect your interactions online and how you relate with your readers.

To that end, finding a language course that deals with conversational English, something that you can source online can be useful. Although, observing how other bloggers in your network manage this side of things can help too.

Get good at writing.

Next, a fantastic way of getting more confidence in your blogging is to hone your writing skills. Now, most of us can write fundamentally, but when it comes to structure, tense, and tone things can get a bit tricky.

Lucky, there is a wealth of information and tools out there that can help you improve the way that you write. Just bear in mind that sometimes it will take a little effort and commitment until you see a measurable difference.

Find some amazing images.

Also, it can help you to boost your blog confidence if you focus on the visual side of your site as well. In particular, ensuring that the images you use are on brand is something that can make your blog seem very professional and turn it into something to be proud of.

Of course, you can take your own pictures for your blog, something you can find out more about here. Alternatively, there are many free stock image sites that you can use to sources your photos. However, you do need to be sure that you understand the licensing agreements and whether you have to reference the images or not before you display them.

Create a stunning theme.

Lastly, and also on the visual side of things, something that can help you to be confident in your blog is to invest in a customized theme. In fact, doing so has many advantages including helping to create your brand, as well as providing a more aesthetically pleasing experience for your readers.

Now, if you are tech minded and have a little programming or graphic design experience you may want to have a go at doing this yourself.

However, if you want fast results without having to study how to code, it can be more helpful to outsource this task to someone that has proven expertise. After all, part of being confident in blogging is knowing when to delegate tasks and ask for help so you can keep getting better and better.