How to Know If You’re Putting Money in a Bad Company

16 July 2014

Investors could be Yuppies wanting to retire early by having passive income work for them or retiring employees using their life savings to give them the benefits of a hassle-free life. Bad business ventures are sinkholes for many inexperienced investors from the two categories above, and here are ways to identify and avoid them.

1. Products and Services

Uniqueness and innovation is key in penetrating the world’s industries, and your potential investment should have them. A startup focusing on a potential niche industry is a good investment, while startups that look to make a name in an already existing and possibly saturated industry is potentially a bad investment. Watch for anything that stands out in their business as it is a sure sign they are doing something new.

2. Long Term

Some startups take advantage of trends to sell their products or services, which is bad because the end of the trend means the end for the business. Never invest in companies without a solid mission and vision, and consideration for their company’s growth once the hype about a product goes down. Ask for an elaborate meeting regarding the company’s long term plans. Avoid the company if they cannot show you anything.

3. Saturated Industry

Businesses are supposed to provide a solution to a problem in a community or an industry, and if the startup is competing with hundreds of companies doing the same type of work, then it is certainly a bad investment. However, if a startup company exists in a saturated industry and exists in another, lesser-known and potentially budding industry, then it is possibly a good investment.

The Existing Trends For Naming Businesses Today

18 June 2014

Business names make sure that your brand is associated with an identity, and the easier for customers to remember the name, the better it is for your business. Anyone about to start a business or engage in re-branding may want to consider the trends existing for business naming today.

1. Existing, Simple Words
When you name your company using real words, people can effortlessly remember the business associated with the brand. Today, Apple computers are quite the trend, but Apple is just a normal fruit name. Simple words make people want to see more depth to something that initially appears shallow, and the contrast makes it memorable.

2. Spelling
Tumblr is a well-known blog that focuses on images, but it is just a misspelling of “Tumbler”, which is typically a coffee-container. Flickr had also done the same thing to their website. The misspelling does not dumb down the audience, but instead makes the word stand out because of their counter-intuitive characteristic.

3. Catchy Acronyms
Acronyms are interesting because the letters you include as initials form words, but they have other meanings individually. However, an effective business name will include only three letters, such as IBM, BBC and CBS. Based on business performance and trends, it may appear boring if your business is attempting to do something different, and it is quite effective for formal business industries.

Employee Studies Make the Best Out of Hiring Ventures

16 May 2014

Big staff means big spending and big operations, but scratch-made small business still lack the resources needed to take on big jobs and big numbers of people. Hiring a handpicked team of professionals will help shape the companies first few projects, and studying their performance allows businesses to make better hiring ventures should they need to add more people.

1. Why Did You Hire Your First Employees?
Professionals are looking for jobs and you picked your handful of professionals for a reason. Whether or not they were your neighbours, you worked with them in a company before, or you had a great many freelance projects with them, your colleagues have qualities that help your company. Identify them by observing their performance in the first three months and asking the question above.

2. Strengths and Weaknesses of the Company
After your first six months, you will have finished at least one or two projects or deadlines from several clients. From here, you and your employees could look at your different ventures to see where certain campaigns failed and why it failed. Discussing the failure of several of your colleagues in certain aspect objectively is also a great way to know the people you need to have in your company.

3. The Employee’s View
Ask your employees where they think the company is headed. You could have someone do a survey on this to understand the employees’ motivation behind their work. It is acceptable that some will only work for food, while some will work for the betterment of the company. Their view counts because once you start hiring new people, they will also reflect the same views and balancing these people in your company is very important.

Is the Mis Sold PPI Mishap Finally Dying Down?

25 April 2014

According to the Financial Conduct Authority, complaints against banks have died down by 15% the second half of 2013. These include general insurance, which also has PPI along its lines. PPI is the UK’s biggest financial scandal, but still tons of people who have not yet received their refunds. So, is the mis sold PPI mishap really dying down now?

The FCA said that PPI complaints had fallen by 22% to 1.4 million in the first six months of 2013. In total, UK bank complaints have fallen down to 2.5 million from 2.9 million. Barclays is on top of the raspberry list with 309,000 PPI complaints, which marks a 17% decrease for the bank despite leading the list.

PPI is a policy that repays your financing in case you get sick, have an accident or get unemployed. Because of its exceptions, many have no use for their policies. Claims management companies such as www.PaymentProtectionInsuranceClaimsCo.co.uk could help you get started with your claim.

Given that PPI accounts for 56% of the complaints, why would the FSCS and the FOS say otherwise about PPI not reaching the peak of PPI complaints?

Chief Executive of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme Mark Neale said that their research shows that PPI had not yet reached its peak and it would take a few more years until the entire dilemma is sorted out. Financial Ombudsman Chief Tony Boorman also said that while the FOS saw a drop to 190,000 from 264,000 complaints in the second half of 2013, the numbers were still “depressingly high.”

Today, many consumers are troubled by an “alternative redress” that may have reduced their repayments. Consumers could re-file their PPI template letter with the FOS to get back their full compensation.

 

Personality: A Great Trade Skill

11 March 2014

In public relations, personality and charisma is the key to winning the attention of very important individuals in the trade. Personality also helps consumers become comfortable in you and the improvement of your company’s products and services. Business is not just about making money and ensuring the lifespan of your business; it is also about creating partnerships.

Brand integrity is targeted to associate your product with certain forms of symbolism. For example, when people see a combination of green and red they think of Christmas. When they see white and red, they think KFC. Yellow and red can easily indicate McDonalds. However, these only trigger certain recalls from consumers, but it does not help boost confidence in patrons.

In business, when you show honesty as a person in supporting certain ideals or projects, you represent the company’s personality. If you’re the proprietor or one of the public relations personnel, then all the things you say and enact in public with other business proprietors, public relations personnel and consumers, represents the person of your company.

Personality includes having a clear mission-vision of the company and aligning all interests brought up to your company’s objective. These objectives also show the ambition or passion of the company you represent.

Developing your company personality is an important part of marketing because if other proprietors and investors have confidence in your personality, despite the technical troubles your business might encounter in the future, they can still trust you.

High-Definition: The Future of the Internet

6 February 2014

Technologists believe that something better than fibre optic will come our way in the future. The speed of 15-30MBPS will become the budget packages enjoyed by people accessing the internet at 500KBPS. At this rate, the internet content trend of the future relies heavily on high-definition content.

Today, high-definition streaming, a 1080p video, could be enjoyed seamlessly by those enjoying 15-30MBPS speeds. However, in the future, with bigger virtual or actual data storages, web marketers will need more high-definition in videos and even audios. Better file formats may also be born because internet connection speeds will continue to improve.

Content in the early days of the internet were only texts and images. Sources were limited given that only few knew how to use the internet or create websites or web logs for themselves. Today, you could create a blog, which took more than a week to form, in just a few clicks, having you done with the task less than an hour.

In the future, whole blogs could be created from mobile devices. The focus of the internet for mobile support ensures that those enjoying high internet speeds can enjoy it anywhere. Seamless communication and access to data anywhere is the future.

With better internet speeds and data storage, everything can be of high definition. The smallest details of every website and bit of information can be highlighted with the continuous improvement of technology.

The Internet Marketing Trends for 2014

7 January 2014

A new year holds new challenges for the internet marketer and surely, search engines are not holding back on improving their search results quality for users. However, these improvements are exhausting marketing efforts, but are improving its quality indeed. Here are a few things experts expect to happen in 2014.

1. Higher Grade Content
No, it is not just about the way your writers have perfect grammar when talking to audiences; high-grade content is presenting information in a very “presentable” manner. High-definition video streaming becomes possible as internet connection technology improves and more people will demand for better videos that clearly have substance and thought.

2. Image Centricity
Infographics made it easy to understand political, budgetary, personal, household problems and other kinds of information that when read through a text-based article, will seem boring. Images also became instrumental for bloggers as they gave “rhythm” to texts posted on their articles. Experts expect image centricity to gain bigger momentum this year, so prepare your data storages.

3. Social Media Diversification
Facebook is a social network designed to connect to friends, which became instrumental for companies looking to advertise to many people. Instagram became popular because it featured beautiful photos of your products or services. Pinterest allowed people to post photos along with the location of your company. Your presence in different social media networks will help your company’s marketing efforts better this year.

The Conflict Between Grammar and Quality

20 December 2013

Copywriting is an integral part of Internet marketing because you will need people to become interested in your product. The form of words, sentences and languages you use is highly important. However, some marketers get away with a few mistakes in grammar in copywriting. While it is encourage that one writes in proper grammar, formal grammar is not always the basis for a well-written article.


1. Words and Quality
Think of copywriting as similar to doing an interior design. You could only re-arrange the details inside the room, but you could not change the shape or add space in the house. In copywriting, your ornaments and decorations are words and sentence arrangements. The quality of content is judged based on the research and other facts you have that would prove your article is well-written and well-researched

2. Grammar Technicalities
People will punish you for misusing certain punctuations and words in sentences, but seven to nine year old children won’t even bother correcting you if they understand clearly what you mean to say. Grammar technicalities are highly important, but you must also understand that the most important part of copywriting is having your target audience decipher clearly what you’re trying to say.

3. Passive and Active
For the most part, writing copy is having active roles make use of the adverbs you write in your articles. For example, “Gold was used by the locals” is a passive tone. Using it as “locals use gold to make jewellery” gives it a more active and exciting tone. You can use this to pique the interests of your readers and to make very long sentences shorter.

How to Build Effective Brand Integrity

26 November 2013

Internet marketing is more than just building a website, putting in high quality content and responding to consumer inquiries. Social media plays a great role, but you do not only have make updates that point straight to your blog posts. You’ll also need to develop good brand integrity.

The more platforms of social media your business is involved in, the better. The highest rated social media platforms will grant your business better presence in the Internet. However, a social media profile is not enough.

Have your employees register themselves as part of your company. Allow them to use the actual company social media profile in their own profile updates. In this way, when they respond to certain questions in the company profile, they could introduce themselves as an authority in the company that consumers could talk to.

This allows search engines and the social media network itself to realize that your company’s brand signal is actually true. The more people and consumers tag you in related content, the more your social media presence increases.

Registration is another thing. If your business is registered properly, post your registration number in your website or in the “about” section of your social media profile. In this way, search engines and social media could identify you as a legitimate business that is of high integrity and quality.

Maintaining Your Best Business Employees

30 October 2013

Business is a great industry because it allows you to explore and exercise your creative ideas in doing business. Business employees are the key to exploring your options and ensuring your capabilities. To ensure they stay with your business to ensure its success, you must remember the following.

1. Keep them Interested
Nobody wants a job that they are not challenged or their passion is not properly reflected. Always keep your business employees interested by appealing to their passion. For example, you can make them a nametag that is only specially made for senior business employees with their name on it. This will inspire them to do better in their work.

2. Do Not Make Them Feel Expendable
There is a difference between working with a human and a machine. A machine will not require rest but a human will. Employees are human and if the business respects their rights to take a leave or change their mind, the better they feel about working for the company. Employees who do not feel expendable will always remain, regardless of passion or skill.

3. Competitiveness
Top-performing employees will only want to stay in your company only if they feel that your company could help them hone their skills in their respective fields. Know the passion of each of your employees and create activities or shape work structures into semblances of what skills they can develop for their own professional betterment.