Author: Pamela Swift

Categories
Teamwork & Leadership

5 Warning Signs You Should Hire a Business Mentor

The importance of mentorship is slowly gaining recognition in the world of leadership, but it is still something of a foreign concept to many business leaders. While mentorship programs have their place among employees, a mentor for a leader is a novel concept.

When people think of business mentors, they often think of a relationship they cultivate with a superior rather than a person they hire. If you are at the top of the food chain in your own company, however, you might need to hire a mentor – someone who will help you through tough situations and be a second opinion when it comes to making the tough choices. Here are 5 warning signs you should hire a business mentor.

1. When You Start To Feel It’s You Against The World

Like the old saying goes, it’s lonely at the top and the higher you climb, the lonelier it gets. While you may have started a business with a partner or partnered up along the way, but over the long haul people’s commitment level can vary.

When you start to feel as if you are all alone trying to put out fires and forge new paths, it might be time to hire a mentor. A mentor is not a business coach – they are someone who has walked in your shoes and has already navigated the terrain you are navigating. They are not another partner but they can be an invaluable sounding board.

2. When It Becomes Hard To Get An Unbiased Opinion

As much as everyone wants to deny that they have either biases or prejudices, the truth is, we all have them. In fact, if there is any type of intelligence that should be naturally unbiased, it would be artificial intelligence. But even artificial intelligence has to be programmed, and it turns out even programmers have biases they are unconsciously passing on to their programs. Getting a truly unbiased opinion may be impossible, but there are certain factors that make people more or less biased. The less of a stake someone has in your ultimate decision, the less biased their opinion is likely to be.

Your partners and subordinates all have a fairly large stake in your decisions, which makes it nearly impossible to get an unbiased opinion from them. They will most likely either tell you what they think you want to hear or whatever benefits them the most. Theoretically, a mentor should have nothing to gain or benefit from you moving in one direction or the other, so they can offer you the most unbiased feedback.

3. When Your Company Culture Takes A Wrong Turn

The key importance of a good company culture is that cultures are self-perpetuating. When you have a company culture that is based on encouraging each other rather than tearing each other down, your culture itself provides the impetus to make it through rough patches. If your company culture is based on learning to take harsh criticism, then it can make already difficult situations even worse. A good mentor is someone who has themselves built both good and bad company cultures. They have most likely had many painful experiences with having to suffer through a difficult culture they created. That gave them the wisdom and experience necessary to create a good company culture. Ultimately, by hiring a mentor you are paying to enjoy the wisdom gained by someone else’s failures. This can help shorten your own and make them less painful.

4. When You Need To Navigate Rough Waters

In a digital world, all businesses are susceptible to being rocked by scandal at any time. In some cases, otherwise reputable companies can be unknowingly or unwittingly participating in fraud or other types of criminal activity or even be harboring criminals within their walls. The larger a business is, the less likely one person is to know what everyone else is doing. Sometimes, it may be the business owner or CEO themselves that is unaware of what one of their partners or subordinates may be doing. When scandal hits, a good mentor can help you navigate rough waters and hopefully help you land back on solid ground.

5. When You Need To Press Forward Into Uncharted Territory

A mentor is (or at least should be) essentially a guide that can help you find your own best path. A good mentor will not (and in fact cannot) tell you what path is right for you, but they can give you some insight into several paths available. What was right for them in a specific instance might not be right for you, but a good mentor has most likely been down many paths and can help you find the one right for you, even if it wasn’t the right one for them. While they can’t tell you which one is right for you, they can tell you something about the potential pitfalls of several courses of action and some benefits to be gained from each one.

When choosing a mentor, it is important to ensure you are getting a guide that is more concerned with your growth than their own agenda or ego. A bad mentor can steer you from a bad situation into an even worse one. The best course of action when choosing a mentor is to cultivate a relationship long before you genuinely need one. You don’t want to rely on someone in the middle of a crisis only to find out they are not reliable. Better to test them out in calm waters than wait to see what they are made of in the middle of a storm.

 

Jen McKenzie is an independent business consultant from New York. She writes extensively on business, education and human resource topics. When Jennifer is not at her desk working, you can usually find her hiking or taking a road trip with her two dogs. You can reach Jennifer @jenmcknzie

Categories
Entrepreneurs

Tools for Being a Successful Entrepreneur

Setting up your business for victory is an important part of becoming a successful entrepreneur. Your business model could be flawless and your clients or customers banging down your door, but they may get cold feet if they believe you are disorganized and unreliable. There are a number of ways to stave off these suspicions by getting your ducks in a row from the very beginning. A few things to begin thinking about early are:

  • How will you communicate with any future employees or potential clients?
  • What will you be using to enhance your company’s brand in the age of social media?
  • Where will you track ongoing projects and break down tasks?
  • How will you manage all of the necessary documents to go hand in hand with running a business?

Communication

Depending on your tech savviness, you may already know that there are communities out there for people like you to join. Even if your company is just you, Slack is a great place to converse with similar minded people in pre-existing groups that could be spread out all over the world. Another way to up your communication game is to start thinking about security. Your information, as well as your clients and customers, could be communicated via the phone and it may be cheaper than relying on your personal cell phone to get some outside help. 8×8’s VoIP service provides many different calling abilities (long distance, international, etc…) with security you can trust.

Branding

Creating a voice for a company sometimes falls by the wayside. In this day and age, getting your company’s name and brand out there as early as possible is an important aspect of building a business. Websites like 99 designs help businesses get started with their branding by learning about what you’ll be doing and who your client or customer base will be and beginning the design process. It’s important to find a company that works with you and doesn’t just produce run of the mill graphics or websites. In the process of building a brand, some folks can find themselves in a bit of trouble for using images from the internet. It’s important to find images that aren’t copyrighted so a stock photo site is a good website to have bookmarked. While there are many such sites, Pixabay has a wide array of free photos with some paid suggestions as well.

Project Planning

A large part of building a business will be laying out what tasks need to be accomplished, who has ownership of those tasks, and what their priority is when stacked against other tasks. Using something other than a written to-do list can be beneficial, especially when it comes to long-term planning and deciding priority. There are a number of such programs that are available, one of the easiest and most simple to use being Trello. With very minimal set up, all the foreseeable projects can be mapped out. Also, while being easy to get started with, Trello has some more robust features that can allow for more in-depth project management.

Document Management

Every business, from the smallest Mom-and-Pop craft store to a big box provider, has documents that need to be maintained, and at times collaborated on. Document management systems play an important role not only in maintaining proper documents, but also in office security. Without a system in place, sensitive information could be at risk. Applications like Google Docs or DropBox allow the kind of flexibility in managing a wealth of different kinds of documents (word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets, presentations, etc), while keeping them backed up and secure in the cloud.

Deciding what tools to use for a business can be a daunting task, but it’s key to remember that nothing is set in stone. Even if you’ve been using the same platform for 10 years, it can be a great boost for your business to explore other options that may meet your needs even better than your current suite of tools. That being said, finding “the best new thing” can be distracting and sometimes unnecessary, but weighing the benefits and risks can help make any decision more clear.

Categories
Sales & Marketing

Rehab Centers and Social Media Marketing

The addiction rehab industry is quite competitive.  There are many rehab centers and millions of addicts.  Many people may not realize that they have options when it comes to addiction treatment care.  If you are in the treatment industry and are not satisfied with your client totals, you should know that social media may help. 

You may need to drive more traffic to your addiction rehab website.  If you are unsatisfied with your profits or the amount of clients you are treating, consider learning more about social media marketing today.  You may learn marketing strategies to help you connect with the needs and emotions of potential clients. 

SEO and Your Social Media Marketing

One of the best things you can do for your addiction treatment website is to improve your SEO (search engine optimization).  When participating in any type of online marketing, SEO is a big deal.  It should be one of your main priorities when creating content for your website. 

Search engines may lead people to useful, quality information.  If you want your website to appear at the top of a search engine’s list of search results, SEO may help.  Some SEO tips include the following: 

  • Creating valuable, quality content – If you want your website to be noticed and want more people to click on your links, you must provide content that contains valuable information.
  • Choosing the right keywords – Search engines analyze keywords in websites. If you want to bring more people to your website, use keywords that rank high on search engines.
  • Using backlinks – Backlinks, or links to other pages, can let users see more pages on your site and may help build the number of views on your website.

If you are not currently following these three strategies, now is the time to start doing so, especially if you want to increase the number of visitors to your website. 

Using Social Media Sites for Addiction Rehab Centers

Social media sites are some of the best ways to advertise and market your company.  This is because billions of people from all around the world use social media sites.  Many of these social media users could be looking for a rehab center. 

Some ways to leverage social media sites include using hashtags, website links, images, posts and more.  You want to attract people to your rehab center.

 

There are many social media platforms to use, including Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and more.  While using these platforms, you can create and release ads to target certain geographic and demographic locations.  If you want to target certain ranges of potential clients, using social media may be a way to do so. 

Using Pinterest to Market Your Rehab Center

Pinterest is a social media platform you can use to market your addiction rehab center.  By using pins to help potential clients see great things about your company, you can reach them on an emotional and logical level. There are many ways you can reach potential clients through your Pinterest pins.

 

On Pinterest, you can add pins to inspirational quotations, photographs of alcoholic-free beverages, images of sober people and sober fun, and so much more.  Pinterest gives people a visual way to depict addiction rehab and sober lifestyles.

Using Facebook to Market Your Rehab Center

Facebook is another social media platform you can use to market your rehab business.  Billions of people use the platform worldwide, so using it may help reach many people. 

On Facebook, you can increase your brand awareness and interact with your target clients.  You can create polls, posts, events, and groups for your rehab center.  You can share blogs from your addiction rehab center’s website.  By sharing unique, helpful, and engaging posts, you can improve the visibility of your addiction rehab center.  You can reply to comments and build quality, trusting relationships with your target clients.

Using Twitter to Market Your Rehab Center

Twitter is another great option if you want to market your addiction rehab center.  This platform allows you to reach out to and make connections with target clients.  Twitter is well-known for utilizing hashtags and you can utilize these as well.  If you want to target specific demographics, hashtags may help you do that.

You can share content via Twitter.  While the platform limits each post to a certain number of characters, you can link back to your blog or provide other quality information for your target clients.  Images can be shared on Twitter as well.  You can use images to show your facility to your target clients.  You can introduce staff members and display pictures of your rehab center.  Twitter also permits people to utilize PPC (pay-per-click) advertisements for further promotion. 

Creating Valuable, Quality Content Continuously

As previously mentioned, the content you create is a big deal.  When it comes to marketing your addiction rehab center and distinguishing it from others, the quality of the content you create is important.  There are many content strategies you can use.  One thing to remember is that you should create quality, valuable content continuously.

Running an addiction rehab center requires considerable time and effort.  If you hire a quality content marketing team and quality content writers, you may maintain a continuous production of content.  By doing this, you are more likely to establish your rehab center as one of the best.  You may be able to show potential clients why your addiction rehab center is the place for them.

Every time you create a blog for your site, you add to your list of indexed pages.  The more pages you have, the more leads you may be able to generate to your website.  Some potential topics for your site that may help generate leads include the following: 

  • Talking to addicts’ loved ones about their struggles
  • Speaking about patterns of addiction and substance abuse
  • Discussing therapy options and treatment programs
  • Explaining emerging research in the addiction field
  • Writing about recovery tools to help people get and stay sober

This is a short list of topics you can use on your addiction rehab center website.  It may give you a good idea of where to begin.  By creating unique, quality, and regular content for your website, you may build your credibility and visibility online.

Creating content that is optimized, information, unique, and thorough, along with including relevant keywords, may help you increase your search rankings.  Content that is higher in quality is read more often.  The more often readers engage with your content, the more traffic you bring to your addiction rehab center website.  In addition, the more traffic you experience, the more likely it is that other people will include your links in their websites.

Sharing Your Content

When you share your content with various social media platforms, you can increase exposure for your company.  You can drive more traffic to your addiction rehab center website.  If your content is interesting or helpful, people are much more likely to share it.  With billions of users on social media sites, this is the type of content you want to have. 

Continuing to create useful and beneficial content may help build the credibility of your site and your company.  You improve your website’s placement on search engines, so more online users can find you.

Even if people are not initially clicking on your website, they may see your company appear at the top of search engine result pages (SERPs).  This visible placement is more likely to increase your brand awareness. 

Seeing your website shared on Facebook and other social media sites will increase your brand awareness as well.  You want people to be able to recognize your rehab center when they hear its name.  If you have a well-known name, more people may be more likely to attend your addiction rehab center.

Content is a great branding tool.  You can create content to talk about your company in length.  You can discuss your treatments in depth.  Through your blog, you can highlight specific services.  The content you create gives your visitors information about your brand.  They learn that they can trust your company. 

Consider including calls-to-action on each piece of content you create.  If you have attention-grabbing calls-to-action, more people may be more willing to explore your services.

Do you need to market your addiction rehab center?  If so, consider utilizing social media marketing and content services today. 

About the Author: 

Charles Watson is an alcohol rehab specialist, currently writing for Sunshine Behavioral Health.  When not helping others, you can find him reading updated material from his favorite author Tim Ferriss.  He can be reached directly on Twitter at @charleswatson00.

Categories
Entrepreneurship

The Challenges of Becoming a Millennial Entrepreneur

Millennials face a huge number of challenges in their lives. Rising rent and home costs are preventing millennials from becoming homeowner; the Gig Economy, while flexible, provides no benefits for a large portion of working millennials; and seemingly endless debt from college loans is constantly looming. Despite all of this, millennials are one of the most entrepreneurial generations that the world has ever seen, even though they face many challenges in that regard as well.

Education Can Make a Difference

While many millennials are starting to reconsider the importance of a college degree due to the debt involved in obtaining one, having a degree actually gives young entrepreneurs a huge leg up in the business world. Though the degree itself is useful, another invaluable aspect of attending college for entrepreneurs is the networking that you can do while attending college or university. The old adage, “it’s who you know” is still relevant and applicable today, and the connections you make during college can help to make entering the business world a much easier prospect.

 

One of the most obvious degree paths for the aspiring entrepreneur is to go for a Masters of Business Administration. An MBA helps with an entrepreneurial career by teaching financial literacy, how to operate efficiently, and gives young entrepreneurs the interpersonal skills they will need when they are the boss of a team of employees. College is a great opportunity for a millennial to develop the necessary business skills to become successful, and though the debt might pile up, if a millennial goes in with a driven purpose they will most likely be able to pay the loans off when their business becomes successful.

 

Becoming a successful young entrepreneur isn’t the easiest thing in the world. Many of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, like Richard Branson and Michael Dell, were initially met with skepticism when they were first presenting their ideas. While young millennials will run into their fair share of hardships on the path to success, having an appropriate college degree under their belt allows them to be taken just a bit more seriously when they are first starting out.

Maintaining Values and Passion

Millennials tend to eschew the traditional method of climbing the corporate ladder to success. Instead, millennials are an entrepreneurial generation that values independence, flexibility, and to work for or run a company that they are passionate about. While their parent’s generation was perfectly content working the same 9-to-5 job day in and day out until they received their gold watch at retirement, millennials are disillusioned with that process and desire to work towards a goal that makes a larger impact in the world.

 

Businesses that give back to their communities are especially attractive to millennials, so when they are starting up their own businesses, they tend to take corporate social responsibility seriously. However, fledgling companies generally don’t have the capital or manpower to make huge differences, and this can lead to burnout for a lot of young entrepreneurs. Keeping the passion alive for the causes they believe in can be difficult when they are faced with all of the challenges posed by starting up their own company.

 

One of the reasons millennials are so into starting up businesses of their own is that many companies fail to properly manage the millennial workspace. Millennials want empathy and open communication where they work, and far too often businesses are already too set in their ways to accomodate for a new style of management. Because of this, many millennials find themselves bouncing around from job to job, or becoming entrepreneurs themselves in the hopes of creating a business that they would like to work at.

Mountains of Debt

Probably the biggest reason that millennials have a difficult time becoming entrepreneurs is also the most obvious: A severe lack of personal savings due to debt acquired while obtaining their degree, coupled with low wages and steadily rising housing costs keeps many millennials living from paycheck to paycheck. Many don’t expect that they’ll ever be able to retire, let alone raise enough capital to start up their own business.

 

The rise of the gig economy has definitely provided millennials with the ability to set their own schedules and not be tied down anywhere. However, there can be downsides. Gig workers do not qualify for benefits from employers, so they are paying for all of their insurance and medical costs. Additionally, the gig economy doesn’t provide the financial stability required to start up a business, as gig workers only get work as it comes and things can dry up quickly.

 

Despite the huge amounts of debt many millennials are burdened with, it hasn’t stopped them from exercising their entrepreneurial spirit. They seem to find a way to get the funding and time to develop businesses that they are passionate about that also fill a need in the market. Even though the deck is stacked against them, millennials make the best out of a bad situation and try their best to come out ahead.

 

At the end of the day, millennials, Gen X, baby boomers and Gen Y are all after the same thing. No matter their age or standing, people crave success and want to make it happen, whatever it takes. Unfortunately, millennials have had it a bit harder than the previous generations, but that isn’t holding them back.

Categories
How-To Guides

How to Make Your Business Blog the Foundation Stone of Your Enterprise

Every enterprise, every entrepreneurial venture has one foundation stone. Your business blog can be the rock that gives your operation a solid base.

If your business doesn’t have a blog yet, a quick look at the numbers will convince you to put one at the top of your to-do list. Hubspot tells us that a business blog:

  • Drives people to your website
  • Converts visitors into buyers
  • Establishes your authority
  • Drives long-term results

How Do You Build a SUCCESSFUL Blog?

A blog takes commitment to make it successful. There are no short-cuts.

Your blog posts must solve problems for your readers, or they won’t come back: There has to be something in it for them to make them love you and trust you.

The best company blogs are perceived as being run by one person, ideally, someone who is obviously important in the business such as the founder, CEO or the head of marketing. The person responsible for your blog may delegate the writing or technical sects, but his or her personality must shine through.

  1. Make a Start

Your first decision is registering a domain. Business blogs are often set up as sub-domains of your main business website, eg. Blog.yourbusiness.com. If you are just starting your business and buying a new domain then make it short, brandable (ie, not in a dictionary or Google search), easy to pronounce, a .com site, and make sure you can get social media profiles that match your domain name.

  1. Make it Personal

A successful blog gives customers a personal connection with someone who is fundamental to your business. Personality is important because people only buy from people they like and trust. The only workaround to this is to undercut your competitors on price, and you don’t want to get into a price war because there will always be someone who can undercut your prices.

It is essential that your blog has just one voice (yours) and one video personality (you). You can never delegate podcasts or video blogs, though your appointed blogger can prepare a script/questions and be behind the camera.

  1. Delegate

Your time is precious. You can be the driving force behind your business blog without spending three hours each day writing posts. Ask someone who knows your business inside out to write blog posts and to organize video posts that feature you in your founder’s role.

Expect your delegated employee blogger to spend two or three hours every day on your company blog. Your blog is too important to be shunted into “spare time during the day.”

Target People Who Fit Your Customer Profile

You know the people who need you, the ones whose values are the same as yours. Focus your blog content on those people. Concentrate on serving your target customers because you can never serve everyone except in the vaguest of ways, and not targeting is the same as shouting your wares in the middle of the street and expecting people to buy from you.

Ensure your company rationale and branding comes through in everything you write. Keep it at the front of your thinking, or it will get lost in the daily clutter of blog-related ideas.

Solve Your Customers’ Problems

People will only pay attention to your business blog if it is useful to them.

You must solve readers’ problems. You must share basic knowledge with readers so they can solve any issues they have. This establishes your expertise and authority in your area of operations. Sharing also generates gratitude in your potential customers, they feel a debt to you which makes them more likely to buy your products or services when their problems are too big to solve themselves.

In Brief

A company blog can get you higher rankings in search results and convert browsers into buyers. It will take time and a blog should be part of your long-term marketing strategy rather than a quick-fix marketing tactic.

Make your blog personal because people buy from people rather than vague business entities. Delegate an employee or hire a blogger to write most of your blog posts because your time is n’t elastic and you will be unable to find the time your blog requires. Include video and audio interviews with yourself and ensure that yours is the only face and voice on the blog. Avoiding multiple company personnel decreases confusion and increases buyer confidence.

The first step is the most important one: Register a domain, add a blog sub-domain and make a start.