Category: Marketing blog

Marketing blog

Working From Home? Top Tips For Productive Success

Many people who work in a digital format will work from home. You may have started your own business from home while working and it has turned into a new career for you. Perhaps you write a blog that has ten off, manage social media accounts or freelance for things like content writing, website development or virtual assistant duties.

Some people may assume that working from home is the perfect scenario. You could be around for your family, work in your pyjamas all day, do household chores throughout the day, and even take breaks or relax whenever you want. The reality of the situation is quite different.

Working from home can be a very grey area at times. You may find it hard to concentrate because the washing machine has buzzed to advise it has finished its cycle. You can feel less productive in yourself because you haven’t yet got dressed or ready for the day because your working day merges into your personal time, and vice versa.

Before your day is up you could be tasked to make the evening meal, get the children ready or home from school or run errands. But, the truth is it can be the real dream working situation if you get things right. I thought I would share with you some of the top tips to help you gain reproductive success when you work from home.

Think about the location you work or what room

Working from home often means you work mobile. That might mean from a laptop or phone that you can take anywhere with you, but the location you choose to work in is vital for your productiveness and concentration. Pick a room in your home that has the least amount going on.

A kitchen, for example, may house a washing machine, pots from the night before, and be full of reminders of the household things you have to do. A living room may have the T.V that could potentially be a distraction. If you can, have a dedicated home office, of office space in your home where it would feel like you are heading to work. The difference it can make is mind blowing when it comes to the psychology of it.

Sitting at a desk or in a room with no distractions other than work-related things is a great way to focus your mind on the activity at hand. It could also help to differentiate between your work and home life as you could potentially close the door on work once you are done. One of the biggest concerns people have when working from home is feeling like they are never off the clock, this could help solve that issue.

Do you have everything you need to work effectively?

The next thing to consider would be whether you have everything you need to function for work at home. That might be the right computer or laptop with big enough storage to hold the programs you need to work. You may find that you need some sort of printer for paperwork or a scanner for signed contracts, for example.

The issue is that cost could have a lot to do with how and what you buy for your working environment, so it is always worth looking at other options. There can be other hidden costs to mobile working, including the expense of printer ink for the home office.

In this regard, refurbished hp printer ink cartridges could help to make the home office more cost effective. These things can often be found online, which could help you to monitor your home office expenses. If you can, it may be a good idea to invest in a desk, a decent office chair, and also stationery and items to help you keep up with the work you need to do.

Think about how you decorate your working space

It is important to feel inspired when it comes to working from home, and sitting with a laptop on your knee in a room of your home just won’t cut it, especially if you have a creative career. Decorating your home office or working area is a great way to add some inspiration. You could put some inspirational quotes on the wall, decorate in neutral colours, and add some personality. We don’t get this opportunity if we are employed by someone else, so make your home office the place of working dreams for you.

Time management will be the key to productiveness

You will never realise how much time management is important to your day until you work from home. Let’s be honest, it is important anyway when it comes to trying to ensure that you handle and complete tasks.

Whether you are a house person or someone employed in an office, but time management could really help when you work from home. The issue you have is that your two lives are merged into the same surroundings, so often you can feel like you are always working or on call for the next job.

Your home still needs to be a place you can relax in. Time blocking your day will help you to remain productive with your work tasks, while still maintaining your home. Writing lists is always a great way to keep on top of the tasks you have to get done.

Use digital tools to help you work smarter

Finally, look into tools that can help you manage your working life more easily. Many home-based roles will require you to be active on things like social media or blogs, and scheduling tools can help to make that work more seamlessly.

For example, scheduling updates in one go, so that even when you are off the clock, your work is still being done and your business and services are still being promoted. Thinking of marketing strategies to help you time manage yourself more efficiently can help.

I hope the tips help you to be more productive when working from home.

 

Marketing blog

3 Simple & Effective Instagram Tips To Accelerate Small…

Instagram has been my biggest headache.

Whilst managing so many different social media accounts, the last thing I want to do in the evening is to sit down on the sofa with a cup of tea and log into Instagram for another hour to increase my own engagement, followers and likes. 

Let ALONE manage all the unfollowers that day!

I find it a tedious process for a small business so I have 3 tips below that are guaranteed to increase your growth, engagement, followers AND the development of partnerships with other brands.

Turbogram

If like most founders, you have time constraints AND a tight budget then Turbogram is for you. Yes, it is a follower and engagement bot, but unless – as a busy founder -you have at least an hour every evening to spend liking hundreds of photos in your niche and commenting on them, then this could be PERFECT for you. 

First of all I have to say I am stunned with the amount of apps out there charging extortionate amounts of money to auto like, follow and comment on photos. Some are charging up to £90 a month! It seems Apps are really taking advantage of the downfall of instagress.

Turbogram is based in Ireland and charges just £10 a month. You can pick hashtags to target your niche and follow them and you can also create your own comments to send to this specified niche. Did I mention it also auto follows and unfollows? I have tested out AND paid for multiple autobots and so far, this really has been hard to beat.

Followers Assistant

I have tested multiple free apps to manage my followers but the vast majority flood you with ad pop ups and a minimum amount to unfollow. 

Followers assistant will quickly scan through your instagram and you can unfollow in bulk by a click of a button rather than manually pushing unfollow on each one. You have a limit per hour of 200 unfollows. Anymore than this and Instagram will start getting suspicious. 

This App is great if like me, you feel uncomfortable following and unfollowing people once they have followed you. Yes, it is the fastest way to grow your account and even the biggest bloggers do it, but I also see it as a bit of a douche move and it will get you blocked by other users in the future or even worse, called out over it!

If you would like to connect with each other on instagram, Here is my account : ) 

Business Development 

I think Instagram direct messaging is a brilliant way to build on connections. Obviously the bigger the brand the more likely they are to be flooded with messages but as a digital marketing specialist, I have managed to connect multiple clients to new distributors, connect to magazines for PR and also send out products to influencers thus skipping on paying their agents a small fortune by complimentary gifts that they are later seen wearing.

If you are looking for PR, then I would suggest googling to start with magazines in your local area and messaging them directly on Instagram.

You can often skip the advertising fees if you offer to write up your own interview. For example, we targeted female founder magazines and websites through Instagram and then offered to create an interview about our busy mum of 2 and female founder and how she started her own business.

As the idea for the interview fitted into their niche, it was publishes and alongside links to her products on her website. It increased sales AND traffic.

If you would like more information on how to manage your social media account and branding with packages starting from as little as £175 a month, click here.

 

 

 

Marketing blog

Tips for Better SEO Success

Successful SEO practices can be hard to pin down because things changes so quickly that what worked last month might be redundant now. However,  it is vital that you make a real effort to implement good SEO practices if you want your website to be easily found with prominent search engines like Google and Bing.

To ensure that your website isn’t left to languish, here are some tips that should help you achieve better SEO success right now:

Use a Better CMS

If you switch to a better content management system like Umbraco, which has built in SEO features, you will always know whether the content you’re producing is optimized for success or not.If you have little experience building an umbraco website, there are professionals who can help you with this. It’s worth it to ensure that you’re using today’s best practices on your site

Optimize for Rich Answers

Right now, optimizing for rich answers is something that a lot of SEO experts are focusing on because they tend to rank in organic search results already and Google has made it clear that they intend to favor content that provides rich answers and very clear information to its users, making it likely that rich answers will do even better in Google’s rankings in the future.

Boost User Engagement

User engagement is not only important for converting visitors into buyers, but it can make a real difference to your search engine rank too. The more time people spend on your website reading and commenting, the more favorable you will be seen by search engines, so use tools like CrazyEgg to see which of your links are the most popular and create more of them, encourage comments by running giveaways, and ensure that your website is setup to encourage people to keep clicking your content. It will make a difference!

Make Mobile App Optimization a priority

If you haven’t already, you should ensure that your website is easy to navigate on mobile devices. More and more people are accessing the internet on phones and tablets,and you will turn them off and be penalized by the search engines if your website isn’t optimized for them.

Once you’ve done that, think about creating your own app to make it even easier for your readers to visit your site. There is lots of evidence to suggest Google looks more kindly on sites who also have apps in their store, so it should see you in a much better position in the future.

Speed Up Your Site

With internet speeds getting faster and faster, the internet using public’s tolerance for slow websites is getting lower and lower and search engines will penalize your site if it takes a long time to load. That means it’s time to get rid of those pointless plugins, use lighter CSS and HTML and perhaps even think about using AMp to store caches of your website’s content in the cloud.

Getting to the first page of Google isn’t easy,but if you implement all of the above, you’ll be one step closer,and at the very least, you should see an increase in your traffic over the coming months. So, what are you waiting for?