5 Things Your Startup Business Must Have

If you’re starting up a business, in order for it to not fail you need to make sure that you’re correctly prepared! There’s no point starting up a business without having the correct preparation and tools at your disposal, else your company will collapse and waste your hard earned cash and time! Everyone wants to avoid this, so here are 4 things that you can do to help minimise the risk of your startup business going bust!

Hire The Right Team

An integral part of any business is the team that you have to run it. Running a business requires many different skills, you need HR managers, logistical experts, marketing experts, the list goes on! You need to make sure that you can really nail this from the start so your company hits the ground running. You can hire the right people from websites such as Upwork, they allow you to browse a range of freelance workers with varying degrees of skill and how much they are asking to be paid. This lets you choose the perfect person to work with you, giving your startup business the best possible chance to succeed. The reason why it’s so important to get this perfect at the start is that most startup companies fall at this first hurdle. Having the incorrect team could spell disaster for your business in a matter of weeks if your team isn’t up to scratch, so make sure that it is!

Use IT Support Companies

Almost all modern business use IT to make their lives easier. This refers to anything to do with computers, whether it be using a server to store data,  or a computer to talk to customers via social media, it’s a very good idea to get an IT support package. Companies such as Netstar offer a wide range of IT support packages, they differ from just having backup copies of all your files in case your servers run into catastrophic problems, to having a fully supported software package complete with data protection, custom softwares and employee management systems. Depending on what your business is aimed at dealing with, it is heavily recommended to get some form of IT support for two things; firstly, it keeps all of your much-needed data stored and safe, and secondly it takes away the hassle of trying to keep on top of the IT side of running a business yourself. Managing all your IT services can be like a second job and adds a huge amount of unwanted complexity to your already stressful enough running of a startup company, so removing this factor and leaving it in the hands of a capable company is always a plus!

Get The Right Office Space

Not all startup businesses require offices, it depends on what your business’s function is however the majority of startup businesses will need office space. This can be a very tricky thing to get sorted purely because everyone’s needs are different. If you will only have a small workforce, then you need to find an office that is small enough to house all of your employees in, if it’s too big you will end up overspending on renting out office space that you just don’t need! If you need a large workforce, you need to make sure that your office space is large enough to accommodate everyone, otherwise you will run into issues and either have to make redundancies or rent out a new property. This is why it’s good to go to websites like Instaoffices  that allow you to search all of the registered office spaces available, with their listed prices, so you can browse and pick the perfect one for you.

Have The Right Funding And Clearcut Budget

Money makes a business successful, and the lack of it makes it unsuccessful. Startup businesses tend to lose money for the first few years of their existence, simply because they need the time to start paying for themselves. Start up costs can be very high, so it’s important to have a good source of reliable money for this. Often, full-time jobs do not cover the amount of money needed to get a business off the ground. This is why it’s often beneficial to get business loans from banking societies such as santander to help you with the money. Having a very clear budget goes hand in hand with this. If your budget is not clear and you do not stick to it, you’ll very quickly find yourself wasting a lot of money on things you don’t need. It’s imperative that you keep money waste to an absolute minimum because in the early days you need as much money as you can get!

Social Media Marketing

One of the ways to really make your company stand out in this modern age is to have a page or account on social media’s such as Facebook. Social media is an incredibly popular way to appeal to the younger generation, they use it quite often and will much prefer to message your company’s page than to ring you up! It’s important to have a razor sharp response team for this, first impressions are everything and if you reply with a fast, informative answer the potential customer will be much more tempted to use your services! If you’re looking for some more social media related tips for your business, read this article to satisfy your needs!

As you can see, all of these individual recommendations are very effective at maximising the chances of success for you startup business, but they all work so much better in unison! A good budget and a healthy amount of money, combined with the right team and the right office space with a lightning fast social media team will ensure that your startup company has the best start that it can, nursing it into hopefully becoming one of the big hitters of your chosen industry! If you look after your business properly, who knows what you can achieve with it?

Secrets of a Business Blogger: Building and Maintaining The…

Making your voice heard these days is more complicated than it used to be. Where age and experience used to be the backbone of a trusted business, people are looking for something quite different these days; ability to express unique ideas, as well as generously sharing stories of failure and success. Rather than the wise and steady voice of experience, they want to hear about a startup that’s still young and vibrant but made it to the top nonetheless.

People want to see themselves in your business and want your blog to speak directly to them. It sounds easy enough, but everyone is doing it these days. They blog on the side, as a hobby; they blog for free and for the pure fun of it.

So how is one to stand out in the crowd when everyone has already arrived at the party and networked for hours? Use this detailed guide to fight your way to the top, past all those beauty bloggers, teen vloggers, and stay-at-home-dads who’ll tell you how to decorate your man cave.

The Beginning: Purpose and Buyer Persona

You have something that all of those hobby bloggers are only able to identify and define vaguely: a purpose to your blog. It should exist to deliver useful content to your audience and act as your company’s voice – and you can use a lot of the work you did when getting your business up and going to make your blog work.

Think about what the purpose of your company is. To keep it entertaining, we’ll provide you with a mock-scenario and say that you’re running a milkshake shop that specializes in organic and healthy shakes. The basic purpose of this sweet company is to help their customers to a few moments of delight, brighten up their day or evening with homemade treats, and make sure they feel good about themselves afterward.

It has a higher purpose too – or a vision, so to speak, namely to make people happy and to put a smile on their faces. It sounds like a dream job to me. Consider who might share your passion for this purpose, and you’ve already brought a bit of clarity to the purpose of your business blog.

Next question; who do you think is the ideal customer in this scenario? Make a clear and detailed description of the perfect buyer, imagine her everyday life and the problems she might run into. How can your milkshake shop help her with these problems, and when would she need your advice the most? Say that your typical guest in the milkshake shop is a thirty-five-year-old mom with her children, and she’s likely to pop in around 1 PM after taking her kids to the park.

It’s a good idea to reach out to people who fit your imaginative buyer persona to get some hands-on suggestions on topics they’d enjoy reading about. We’re talking customer behavior and you’re going to indulge in a lot of research to get it right; remember that the more preparation you’re willing to put into your blog, the more useful it will be for your audience.

Customer research doesn’t have to be expensive either – social media is a great place to start, and you can reach out to people directly.

Building the Blog: Competition and SEO

After establishing the purpose of your new blog, researching your potential audience, and developing a detailed buyer persona, you can lift your gaze up from your own business and look to the side; who else is doing this? Create a list of between five and ten of your strongest competitors in the milkshake blogging industry, and spend some time on reading these. You’d want to deliver even better content than they’re currently creating, and the only way to do this is to know them through and through.

If your competitors are covering topics that your audience will love, you have to make sure that they have a reason for visiting your blog too. A post that reviews the newest blenders of 2017 will be useful for any milkshake lover; cover these topics as well and make them better than your competitor’s.

When you’ve spent time on creating a lifelike buyer persona and read enough milkshake blogs to know what you’re up against, you need to get your head around relevant keywords. What would your thirty-five-year-old mother of two be searching for in order to find you online?

You need a list of five to ten keywords of the most obvious ones to include in your blog posts. For our imaginative shake bar, we would use milkshakes, healthy shakes, organic, chocolate, strawberry, smoothies, as well as the area we’ve established our bar in.

The search engines want to make it easy for every searcher out there and attempts to rank the website according to relevance – which is exactly where these keywords come in. If your competitor’s sites are ranking much higher than yours when you search for the keywords that are relevant to what you do, you’ll need to write better content and promote it as much as you can.

If content writing isn’t for you, after all, consider outsourcing it to someone who can write catchy content for you, and reach out to a marketing company that specializes in your field; whether it’s beauty or milkshakes. Have a look at med spa marketing for beauty professionals or this link to guide you through the jungle of offers.

Keep in mind that this guide is to make it easier for you to launch a blog and get it up on its feet. The marketing you do in this stage is basic; with time, you might notice how time-consuming it actually is to maintain a decent business blog.

Blog it and Share it!

The only way to share your brilliant blog posts is to share it on platforms that are relevant to your audience. Wherever they are, they’re certainly on Facebook, so it’s a good idea to start here. You can be creative in this step and have a bit of fun; a scrapbook mindset to the posts you’ve written in the past is a good idea for promotion on social media.

Using key quotes or interesting topics from these posts, combine them with pictures and post them across the platforms. People like to scroll through content fast when they’re checking up on their account, so images and short quotes are always a good idea.

Remember to use these platforms for networking as well. Join different groups where your potential audience might be hanging out and discreetly promote your blog in these groups; if you have spent enough time on researching customer behavior and building a buyer persona, a potential audience should be easy to locate.

The more your blog can be mentioned across the web, the better your chances are of increasing the traffic to your useful blog posts. Make a list of influencers that you’d love to see mentioning your blog; by making use of Twitter, you can retweet these and hope to be retweeted or followed in return.

As you’re still a young business blogger, it’s smart to try to hang with the big boys on the playground as they’re communicating with a much larger network than you are. Imagine its potential when someone with an ocean of followers retweets you, when your milkshake post on the best farmer’s market for organic strawberries is able to get an amount of likes on its own.

It’s too good to miss out on, so don’t be afraid to suck up a bit – it’s for your company, after all.

Maintenance: Feed the Beast

Now that you’ve made your voice heard and developed a handful of loyal readers, you have to keep feeding the beast. Otherwise, it will seek food from other sources, meaning your competitors. A common advice is to keep posting every day, and this may work well for some – but times change and search engines especially, so less is starting to become more in the blogging world.

Search engines want to see unique and specific content, not generalized 1-2-3s; quality wins over quantity every time. Spend some time on this interesting read to gain a bit more posting knowledge.

When you don’t have to come up with something every day, you can spend more time on researching topics and creating something of quality – rather than a miserable and half-made blog post just to get something out there. It’s a refreshing and reassuring thought to any new or existing blogger out there.

An excellent business blog is able to get you the promotion you deserve, connect with new customers, maintain a relationship with loyal ones, and stay ahead of the competition – all at the same time. Keep in mind what we talked about earlier; that if writing and content creating isn’t for you, don’t think twice about outsourcing it. Little can do as much for your marketing needs as a well-maintained blog can, and it’s important to understand just how much it can help when you invest a bit of time and effort into it.

Superheroes Every Company Needs

Everyone has their own personal hero. You know the kind of person I’m talking about – those role models that we always look up to. Usually, they are close friends or family, but sometimes people look to celebrities for a bit of inspiration. There are even people who look up to fictional superheroes!

As well as heroes in your personal life, you also need some in your professional one too! Especially if you are an entrepreneur and need to rely on others for the success of your business. These are employees who you can rely on to go above and beyond the call of duty to ensure that your business always comes out on top, no matter how much of a hard time it is having.

So, ready to hire some true superheroes to your team? Here are the roles that need filling with superstars!

Legal Expert

Even if you know that your business is running above board, you still need to get a legal expert on board. During the first year or so, while your company still has limited funds, you might want to outsource all the legal tasks in your company. There are lots of freelance lawyers and law companies who will be able to take all of this on for you, such as www.grantlawllc.com. However, once your business becomes a lot more established and is starting to turn over a nice little profit, it is worth hiring your very own legal expert to come and work in your office alongside the rest of your team. This way, you have a dedicated lawyer who can look over all your contracts and important documents for you. Plus, they will be able to give the company any legal advice whenever you need it. Even though this will mean you are paying another full-time salary, you will still find that it is really worth it in the long run.

Finance Manager

Once you start making a steady profit, you need someone who can expertly manage all your funds. And there is no better person for that than someone who has heaps of experience in finance. When you hire a finance manager for your firm, you should look for someone who has at least five-years experience of working in a managerial position in a financial department at another company. That way, they will have plenty of experience in all the various financial problems and issues that face most companies. So, if anything were to happen with your business finances, this manager will be able to step in and clear things up straight away. When you have an excellent finance manager at the helm of all your company’s cash, you will find that you can have peace of mind when it comes to all your company capital!

Accounting Professional

Your finance manager will be in charge of managing all your company’s cash and will be in charge of setting up budgets for each department. However, you also need someone who works closely with each individual invoice that comes in and out. For this kind of work, you need an accounting ace who has a keen eye for detail and knows everything about various accounting and tax laws. Your employees in the accounting department will have to organise all of your accounts so that they are ready to send to the tax man. Employing an accounting expert will help your company keep its accounts in fantastic order, which can greatly help to keep the taxman very happy indeed!

Sales Guru

There is not much point hiring some superheroes in your accounting and finance departments if you aren’t making any money! And the only way you will make plenty of money for your business to be in continual profit is to get an excellent sales team on board who can help find new leads and turn them into a loyal customer base. And this great sales team needs a fantastic sales guru leading them onto even more success. So, what do you need to look for in a sales expert? Well, for one, they need plenty of experience. Ideally, you need to hire someone who has plenty of experience in sales under their belt. When you are interviewing for this position, you should make sure that you ask them about their past track records in sales and the targets they hit for their previous company. That should give you a good indicator of what they are capable of. But as well as top sales skills, they will also need to be effective leaders. Because of this, you should think about hiring someone who has past managerial experience. However, that isn’t completely necessary. Leadership is something that people learn on the job so all competent employees will be able to pick this up as they go along. To speed up their learning curve, you might want to organize some leadership training. It’s a good idea to invite all of your managers to this training. Even if they have plenty of experience in leadership, it’s always worth them brushing up on their skills and knowledge!

Marketing Whizz

It’s important that your company’s marketing strategies and campaigns continually hit the point so that they reach as many potential new customers and clients as possible. You need an employee who is a whizz at marketing to carry this out! Just like with the legal side of your business, you might prefer to outsource your marketing for the first year or so of your company. To find out the kinds of marketing you can outsource, you can take a look and get started at www.tributarygroup.com to see what is available. However, after a year or so, you should start to think about bringing all of your marketing in-house. There are many benefits of having an in house marketing team led by a marketing guru, but one of the main ones is that they will understand your whole company and its culture so will be able to create marketing campaigns that fit your image. Once you have a dedicated marketing guru in your team, you will also find that they can track each and every marketing campaign a lot more effectively than contractor marketers. So you will find that you end up with a lot more in-depth analysis of each and every campaign, which can go a long way in helping you improve all future marketing strategies.

HR Hero

So, how do you know that your company is employing all of the best possible people to fit these superhero roles? It’s simple really – you just need to make sure you hire your very own HR hero! This should be someone who has an unbeatable track record in recruiting and knows how to hunt out the best new recruits currently in the job market. They will be able to sort out the wheat from the chaff when it comes to looking through CV after CV, and will know all the killer questions to ask during a job interview. Your HR hero will also know how to write a job advert that attracts all the right kinds of people. But there is more to HR than just recruiting new employees, of course. Your HR hero will be responsible for creating a great office culture in your business. If any employees are having a hard time or need some personal help, your HR team’s door should always be open to them.

Coding Champion

The future of all business is tech, whether you are working in the health industry or involved in the automobile trade. So, you need to have a cracking team of IT workers on board. Not only that, though, but you need to ensure that someone in this team is a whizz with coding. Coding is becoming increasingly important, no matter what type of sector you are in. You need this skill to build websites from scratch (which works out a lot cheaper than paying someone to do it for you). And once you have a coding wizard in your team, you will find that you can now start to build your own platforms and software. And that will certainly cut down a lot of your costs!

Graphic Design Champion

You need to make sure that your business’s brand and website design looks very attractive to potential new customers and clients. And there is no better way to do this than by hiring a champion in graphic design. They will be able to tackle all design jobs that need doing. Sure, you could outsource all of this, but that will end up being rather costly. It is much cheaper to get a dedicated member of staff to take care of all of your design needs in-house. That way, you get a quick turnaround at no extra cost to the company!

So, there are a few different superheroes you need to welcome to your company’s team. When they’re all pulling out their super powers, your company will certainly feel the difference!