How To Use Twitter To Get New Clients

by Leave a Comment

The hardest part of any freelancing business is getting more clients. You have a skill and expertise, unfortunately you don’t have enough people to show it to though, and you’re not having the kind of growth you want.

We get it.

When freelancers think of obtaining new clients on social media their minds often drift towards LinkedIn and Facebook. Twitter is a highly underutilized platform for obtaining high-quality clients for your freelancing business, which is being over looked by most freelancers right now.

[Read more…]

Why You Need Influencers for Your Brand In 2019

by Leave a Comment

What Is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is the strategic process of researching, identifying and engaging with highly influential individuals on social media platforms who create high-impact content about your brand’s products or services. Influencers are trusted figures within their niche community that retain a loyal and engaged following on their social media channels. When they endorse and post content about a product or service, they are seen to possess knowledge and experience about what they are advertising to their followers.

[Read more…]

How to Start a Podcast for a Blog

by

Starting to create and publish a podcast on your blog can be a great way to acquire more exposure for your brand and generate traffic from iTunes and other platforms. However although podcasts are relatively easy to record, there are steps that you need to take before you get to that.

[Read more…]

Does Your SME Have A Disaster Recovery Plan?

by

You may think preparing a disaster recovery plan is the preserve of larger corporations, but any size or type of business benefits from having one. If the worst happens and your business is struck by a severe weather incident causing damage, disruption – or a major systems failure occurs – a means of recovering as soon as possible could be a life saver.

The objective of a disaster recovery plan

The point of a disaster recovery plan is to enable an ordered recovery from disaster with all supporting information to hand – for example special passwords or contact details of specific people who can help such as IT professionals.

Even detailed information such as where ‘emergency’ supplies of stationery and business paperwork such as accounting tax forms can be found or sourced easily in the event of, say, a fire or flood destroying supplies kept on the premises.

Flooding and fire can strike totally unexpectedly; if your business is based in a part of the US where hurricanes are likely the risk is greater still.

What should your recovery plan include?

As much detail as possible written down in terms of how you’ll get your business up and running as soon as possible if disaster strikes.

  • Who should you tell if disaster strikes? Any particular suppliers? Perhaps some or all of your customers?
  • Insurance policies – are the policy numbers and contact details easily accessible so you can contact your insurers quickly?
  • What alternative location is available if you have to stop working out of your present one?
  • What are your data backup arrangements?
  • What are the contact details of key people you’d need to call in? For example, an IT professional or emergency electricians and plumbers
  • What roles will members of your staff perform in the event of a disaster striking?
  • Do you have an up to date list of business equipment (with photos ideally) to provide insurance companies with?

Protect data

Most businesses rely to a greater or lesser extent on their data from a basic email list to fully integrated accounting, stock control and scheduling.

Any sort of data loss caused by a disaster whether natural or something like a cyber attack could prove hugely disruptive. Therefore, a disaster recovery plan should include detailed provision for data protection.

Back up everything

You’ll know that backing up data is important, but don’t forget tech such as smartphones – many people have very important information on these, so back them up too.

Back up to a storage system separately to your business computers and keep a copy away from your physical location.

The cloud is a very good way to store data remotely in a cost-effective way. Many people use cloud-based services already such as Google Drive and Dropbox; these may suffice for certain lower level storage or back up requirements, but for meatier needs a specialist cloud storage provider would be required.

Automatic backups can be set up; in the event of disaster, your data can soon be restored so helping get your business back on its feet quickly.

Minimizing effects of a disaster

While you may not be able to prevent a natural disaster, you can at least prepare for those you know you may be at risk from.

It could be as simple as having protective covers to hand to put over computers and other office machinery, and maybe moving equipment into a less vulnerable space if there’s a hurricane warning or similar.

If you do find yourself taking these protective measures, then date stamped photographs showing equipment protected like this will help if and when making insurance claims.

Review your plan

Along with creating a disaster recovery plan if you haven’t already, it’s important to review and update it as and when required. Over time your business is likely to change; equipment is replaced and you may find your current back up and data storage requires an upgrade.

15 Mindset Hacks to Avoid Blogging Failure

by

You are worried, aren’t you? Worried that you’re wasting your time, worried that your blog won’t take off. Even though you studied and worked hard, you are not seeing the results you were hoping for.

The worst part? You have no clue why this is happening. After all, you did many of the things that experts were preaching. What’s the matter then?

Let me tell you a secret…

[Read more…]

4 Simple Techniques To Bring Your Dead Blog Back To Life

by

If there was a graveyard for dead blogs, it would be overcrowded by now. But the good thing about a dead blog is, you don’t have to cry over it because it can bring itself back to life. Like Jesus Christ. Or zombies. With your help, naturally.

However, reviving an abandoned blog shouldn’t be an end in itself. It’s simply a means to your goals. You want to attract traffic and gain followers. You want to be known as an authority and an influencer in your niche. You have SEO goals. Ultimately, you want to help or entertain people and make money from your blog.

But, first things first. Resurrect your blog. Give it a makeover. Use effective methods that will make it stand out among the multitude of blogs crowding cyberspace. It’s a tough task to accomplish. But with perseverance, determination, creativity and inspiration, you can probably get there. On this premise, what you’ll be doing, aside from regular posting, is to make changes to your usual posts. Spice up a run-of-the-mill blog with new styles you haven’t done before.

Here are 4 techniques for bringing your blog back from the dead

1. Diversify

Does your blog post format stick to a pattern? There are numerous styles you can use to engage your readers and make them enthusiastic enough to come back. How-to’s, list posts, checklists and opinion posts are some of the most popular among readers. But they’re not the only ones. Do your research for types of blog posts so you can have a variety to choose from.

Then schedule activities and contents for certain days to make it easier for you. Having an assigned theme for a specific day is one less burden since you already know what type of blog post you’ll do.

2. Use a video post.

Shake up your blog and do something besides the standard written article. Use a video post instead. The preference for visual content has increased tremendously and it makes sense to use a compelling video for your blog. A video post can be a stand-alone or you can use videos from YouTube to complement your blog post.

Tutorials are great as stand-alone videos and are very popular, such as software tutorials, online training and hair and makeup how-to’s. If your video on a social media channel is of a different format than what you’re planning to use in your blog post, you can prepare such files for media player easily without taking up a lot of your time.

3 Tips for posting a video on your blog:

Don’t forget to add the word “VIDEO” before the title to alert the readers to it.

Add a short introductory text above the video and a short summary below.

Make sure the video width fits into the content column without sacrificing resolution.

Take note that using other people’s videos from YouTube is only legal if you embed it on your site. Otherwise, you might be violating copyrights laws.

3. Use seasons and occasions for your posts.

The holidays and Halloween are not the only post-worthy topics for a blog. But include them anyway since they are the most popular. You can’t run out of topics on both, whatever niche your blog is in. Blogs on personal finance, lifestyle, parenting, food, health and wellness, beauty and fashion will benefit from seasonal posts.

The four seasons in a year are a treasure trove for subject matters for blog posts. So are the Fourth of July, Veterans’ Day, World Cup and awards shows. Besides tips and how-to’s, you can inject humorous seasonal posts like “most embarrassing” “best,” “worst,” “funniest,” etc. Load them with striking images and quotes for maximum visual aesthetics.

4. Create social media profiles.

These days, no blog is worth its salt if it doesn’t have a social media profile. Aside from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest (the top sites that send the most traffic to blogs,) there are many more social networking sites being created. With billions of people worldwide who use social media daily, it’s plain stupidity not to get on board. But it’s not practical to be on all of them since you’ll lose an active interaction if you have to keep up with too many social sites.

Share the blog contents that will touch the hearts and minds of the masses that flock to Facebook et. al. and attract new followers. Social media is the easiest and fastest way to promote your blog and increase your audience. Engage with your readers for a personalized connection.

Automation tools facilitate the process of sharing content from your blog to social media, saving you a lot of time which is better spent building your social communities. If your blog in in WordPress, some programs include services like stats and the share button.

There will be moments when you’ll find that blogging isn’t all fun and it’s probably why you left your blog to die in the first place. But, in spite of its demands on you, keeping a blog has tremendous benefits. All you need is a shot in the arm and a bit of change to re-energize you.