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Blogging Tips from Corporate Business Solutions

Corporate Business Solutions helps business owners implement marketing techniques that are critical in growing their business, and can help with the popular tactic of blogging. Blogging is a long-term, on-going marketing strategy that supplements and grounds other marketing campaigns over the life of a small business. It takes time to develop a reputation as an authority in your area of expertise and even longer to develop the loyal following that triggers purchasing. Visualize the arena in which you would like to establish your small business as a market leader and trusted authority; then brainstorm a variety of topics that would showcase that expertise.

These blogging tips can help small business owners improve their blogs:

  1.  Skip the sales approach – The surest way to develop trust and long-term loyalty is a selfless and generous approach that shows authentic interest and consideration for the needs of the reader. Focus on blog topics that help your audience in some specific, actionable way. Blogging is not an opportunity to sell yourself or make constant pitches to your customer base to drive sales. Blogging serves as a way to develop a personality and conversation with your market that allows them to explore their relationship with you without the pressure of purchasing.
  • Listen – Take time to consider what your audience is talking about in the social media arena. Aim to identify their needs because you want to help them, not because you want to sell to them.
  • Offer a useful solution – Once you have identified what your readers are asking for, develop a response that answers their question or solves their problems. Generously share tips and tricks, suggestions or experiences solely for the purpose of providing help.

2. Quality is key – Your small business blog is not an area in your marketing strategy where you can skimp. In a world where content is virtually endless, readers demand captivating, high quality content that consistently respects their expectation for purposeful writing.

  • High quality images – Many bloggers make the mistake of treating blog images as placeholders instead of storytellers. In the sea of available content, readers are visually drawn to the most captivating images. Use high resolution, appropriately composed images that highlight your writing and work collaboratively to deliver relevant information to your audience.
  • Proof –Be sure to implement editing and review processes and outsource writing if it is not a best fit within your team. Poor grammar and sentence structure can frustrate readers and send the wrong message about your attention to detail.
  • Useful topics – Regularly check your editorial calendar to be sure your topics are truly useful and relevant.

3. Engage your readers – Every blog post should have a very specific “call to action” for your reader. If your blog post is properly meeting a need to a question your audience is asking, the call to action should provide specific steps to achieving that resolution on their own. 

  • Submissions – Ask your audience to engage by submitting a story or image that relates to your blog post. Ask them a specific question that you’d like them to answer in the comments or take a poll. Bring them into the conversation.
  • How to’s – Readers are instantly drawn to a step-by-step guide to answering their question. Use images and numbered steps to clearly demonstrate how they can apply this newly learned skill with relative ease.
  • Resource links – Include related links that propel readers to similar content on your blog. Encourage them to read more than just one post by planting seeds to other resources on your website.

To learn more and / or to schedule your complimentary appointment with the experts at Corporate Business Solutions, call us at 877-357-9366.

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Common Business Mistakes to Avoid

At Corporate Business Solutions, we are committed to bringing the positive change that your business needs to have sustainable growth and profits.  This often means building relationships with customers, adding technological avenues and getting products quickly to market. Ultimately, we are committed to being the most impactful partner you will ever have.

Since small business owners often wear so many hats, mistakes can arise. However, mistakes in managing and operating a business can threaten the organization’s long-term viability. Consequently, it’s important to identify the organizational priorities never to overlook or neglect.

  1. Unclear Purpose– Every organization must articulate why it exists and what it’s striving to achieve. Owners must focus time and attention on developing a mission and vision.
  2. No Plan – Developing a strategy and having a plan to achieve objectives are critical to any organization’s success. Large or small, every business needs a plan.
  3. No Written Goals – The business must develop goals by writing them down and assigning accountability to someone for achieving them. Each goal should have an identified employee who is responsible for achieving it within a defined timeline.
  4. No Budget – It’s not uncommon for businesses to operate without a budget. However, this is a mistake. To ensure profitability, the owner must budget annually to continuously fund business strategies and goals while controlling costs.
  5. No Employee Accountability– Organizations that fail to hold employees accountable for job responsibilities and goal achievement are guilty of mismanaging resources. Employees who are paid wages or a salary without fulfilling job responsibilities are providing lesser value to the business.
  6. Not Anticipating Market Changes– The market changes quickly in every industry making it important to keep an eye on shifting trends in areas such as technology or customer requirements. Along with tracking changes, the owner has to include the responsibility of day -to-day operational tasks.
  7. Not Understanding Customers– Small businesses need to take the time to learn how customers use their products and services and to create systems and processes to meet those needs. It’s important to learn about the customer experience, which can be accomplished by simply asking them.
  8. Lack of Communication Successful organizations create structured processes to manage how information is shared with both employees and customers. Organizational transparency creates a business environment that employees enjoy and customers are drawn to.
  9. Not Always Looking for Ways to Improve– Continuous improvement are how businesses develop and enhance products and services by constantly looking for ways to improve how and what they do.
  10. Not Celebrating Successes – The burden of the daily grind keeps businesses from taking the time to stop and acknowledge how far they’ve come. Celebrating success along the way helps build strong teams and strengthen employee engagement.

To learn more and / or to schedule your complimentary appointment with the experts at Corporate Business Solutions, call us at 877-357-9366.

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Improving Productivity in the Small Business Workplace

The business professionals at Corporate Business Solutions help business leaders improve productivity in their workplace. Our experts recognize that productivity is a huge factor for business growth and expansion. In fact, between employee attrition and lost productivity, companies lose $350 billion every year. Facing that kind of loss, it’s no surprise that all-size companies look for ways to mitigate employee flight and increase worker efficiency.

Many business owners trust us to be their partners in improving productivity. Our business consultants solve the most intricate and unique challenges you are experiencing in the evolving marketplace.  While there are best practices that are applicable to all organizations, we understand that no two businesses are identical.

If you are a business owner or leader concerned on productivity, here is some data you may be interested in:

  • Worker Reliability: Employee attrition is costly; only 50 percent of hourly workers stay on the job for one year or longer.
  • Telecommuting Employees: Work-at-home employees stay at on the job 20 percent longer than employees with the shortest amount of time at a job. However, those work-at-home employees produce 1.6 percent less than their office-bound colleagues.
  • Rule Breakers: Do you prefer to hire employees who toe the line? The data says that employees who identify as rule-followers actually break the rules 67 percent more often than those who don’t make that claim.
  • Better Browsers: Workers who use Chrome or Firefox—instead of Internet Explorer—stay at their jobs longer, miss 15 percent fewer work days, and deliver higher customer satisfaction.
  • Social Employees Do It Better: Job performance is higher among employees who use three to four social networks compared to those who are less involved with social networks.

To learn more and / or to schedule your complimentary appointment with the experts at Corporate Business Solutions, call us at 877-357-9366.

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Tips for Hiring New Team Members

Corporate Business Solutions was formed by a group of business professionals who collectively have provided business analytical and consulting services to thousands of clients and have been involved in building some of the fastest growing analytical, management consulting and strategic tax planning firms for the owners of small and mid-size companies in business today.

We assist entrepreneurs in all aspects of their business, including hiring new employees.  If you are a business owner beginning your own hiring process, we have tips for you from our professionals:

  1. Focus on the candidate’s potential. Nothing is more important in a new hire than personality. While having the right skill set may seem essential, the fact is, skills can be acquired, but personalities cannot.
  2. Check social media profiles. Most employers do a background check, including a quick Google search on the candidate’s name, to see what is shown online. Today, we suggest looking at social media profiles to evaluate their online presence even further.
  3. Ask the right questions. In advance, determine questions that will help you decipher a candidate’s drive and ambition. This will help you understand how the person works, and whether or not your prospective employee will grow with your business.
  4. Let candidates ask questions. To help gauge whether your prospective candidate has the right personality for your particular job, it’s important to help that person understand the company’s work environment. Allowing prospective employees to interview you for a change will give you a chance to see what’s important to them.
  5. Don’t judge a book by its cover. It’s easy to write off candidates based on their appearance, but it’s more important that you consider how well they can do the job and if they’re a good fit in other ways. When interviewing, it is important to think outside the box. Candidates who fall outside the lines of your requirements may still be the perfect fit for your business.

To learn more and / or to schedule your complimentary appointment with the experts at Corporate Business Solutions, call us at 877-357-9366.