But what determines the success of a successful blog? It’s traffic. Now what is traffic, it’s the density of followers visiting your webpage/ blog on a daily basis. This is one of the major reasons why lead generation is one of the most essential tasks when it comes to operating a blog purely for marketing purposes.

For starters let us understand what lead and traffic generation is. Traffic refers to the number of people visiting your page daily. Lead generation is basically capturing the interest of the user into your product or service enough to make them subscribe for your blog. Leads are generated for various purposes, such as getting referral acquisitions, email lists and most importantly sales.

Lead generation on the internet, usually involves the installation of an opt-in-box, more commonly known as a form, on your website. What you do on through this is, gather customer info in exchange for a suitable incentive. By customer info, I mean the very basic submission, of details such as their name and email address. And once a visitor submits his or her info and become a subscriber, you take the relationship further by starting to build upon a relationship with them. The smart thing to do here is to place your forms appear on almost every page, the more the form appears, the more your chances of obtaining visitors details increases. Word Press provides a helpful format, because once you install the form, it automatically appears on every webpage.

Here’s a prescription of eight remarkable steps hat will help you attract more visitors and increase your online visibility.

Make Sure the Content’s Interesting

Why this is the first point, is because this is probably the most important step that would help you generate leads. If a blog has pointless, which is commonly referred to as “lame” content, or no content at all, no one would want to visit it. And once you’ve developed such an image, it’ll be hard to get rid of it.  People visit blogs for information. Or in order to read something interesting which will entertain them, or more so provide them with a good time pass. So if the content on your blog is not interesting (by which I mean totally lame and boring), your blog might end up being just another boring dry space in the internet and you can wave Good bye to the leads.

Get a Good Understanding of Your Audience

The second step is a prerequisite for the fist one. Who all are going to be reading your content? This question is very important for your understanding. Because your content should totally act in accordance with with the type of audience you’re catering to. This will help you a lot in dealing with the kind of content you are going to post or put up. By focusing on a particular area of interest you’re unintentionally developing loyal readers by letting them understand and connect with you better, since they won’t be confused of what you’re providing to them

Provide Your Audience with Freebies

Let’s just face it. We all love whatever’s free. So where there is free stuff, people will come flocking in. So give out free stuff to your audience. And this act of generosity will also attract potential audience by poking them to subscribe or create more interaction. Freebie such as eBooks and newsletters are very economical to provide, so why not start with those, the basics. Then you can even extend this act of kindness tactfully, start an article compilation with a grand reward for the winner and this will for sure lead you a good enough lead generation.

Don’t Forget To Use Social Media 

Social media is the new biggest thing in the marketing and advertising sector. This platform has defined a whole new level of awesomeness for the internet today. Everyone knows or uses at least one or two of these social media tools. Therefore making it a very successful way of capturing all those oh so valuables leads, considering the number of people using or benefiting from these tools. So be sure to include social-sharing icons on your blog, especially those of the big three: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. By doing this you’re definitely encouraging visitors to share whatever they like with their respective network, providing you with free publicity. Doesn’t get better than this!

Keep It Updated

Current and latest things are the best way to attract lead generation. People appreciate a well maintained, updated blog since it’s full of new things.

Opt-in Banner is Essential

As we’ve discussed earlier the whole point of your blog is to be able to generate leads. So in order to actually be able to do so, you must have a lead opt-in banner, more commonly referred to as a form, usually placed in the upper right or left corner of your blog, or even a pop-up serves the purpose. The opt-in box is suggested to be the first thing be the first thing that that visitor should look at when they land on your site.

Ask Around

Interaction with the audience is a must.  Do whatever it takes to successfully communicate with them. This will build the relationship of credibility, trust and respect.  Lead generation is done through search engine optimization and reputation management. Running a blog requires a lot of dedication, sense of responsibility and intense knowledge about the industry you’re a part of, in order to generate the leads you require.

Let me put it in simpler words, lead generation is all about improving communication by more frequent interaction leading to the development of interest among your audience and potential audience.

Last and Final Note to Remember

What a blog provides you with is an opportunity: It provides you with a platform to communicate with your customers in real-time, in a very convenient way. What you need to remember is that your blog is a part of your business, and all your lead-gen efforts should be aiding the business itself. Make sure your blog is like an extension of your website or stands out enough for people to draw a link with your product or service, whatever you are or may-be providing.

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Image Courtesy: Inforains.com

Some of the main problems that Facebook loyalists are facing include:

Non-user friendly

Users feel that the new interface isn’t easy to use and creates a lot of confusion among the different posts.  They are facing problems with the division of the wall and feel it’s hard to articulate the on goings and posts updates on their wall. User’s say that the new layout is very distracting, especially because of having two parts of the wall and not knowing what would be on the left side and the right side. People have also been complaining about how it’s not easy on the eye, because users are mainly trained to read from left to right, whereas the Timeline design is more of a zigzag pattern.

A lot of people appreciated and enjoyed Facebook for its simple and stream lined designs, which they have completely altered and changed into a chaotic and confusing interface, which baffles users into mixing up wall posts and not being able to read or notice all notifications.

Another user unfriendly point to questions is that if someone feel’s that Timeline is not the thing for them and they have already opted for this structural change they can’t switch back. This makes it forceful on them to use the new design, which has already started to annoy people.

Privacy issues

One of the major concerns that a majority of people are showing, is the fact that people can run through pages of their past in no time. Timeline offer’s its users to view their wall, going back to when they started using Facebook, which includes, wall posts, statuses, pictures and comments etc. from that time onwards up till now. This might be of interest to the person viewing his own wall, but user’s feel that their privacy is at stake. Some users have also reported of deleted images reappearing back on the wall, once they switch to Timeline. Constant complains are being focused in the direction that Facebook was supposed to be a communication channel where people could connect and stay in touch with friends, but has now become a Timeline of their own life, which they don’t wish to share with everyone. They also feel that this is a great risk to privacy, because there is information that they don’t want to share with friends or coworkers from work but have to now due lack of privacy control on Facebook.

Timeline started off with showing itself as a new and innovative way of keeping track of your past and current interactions, but grew to be disliked by many for its difficult interface and lack of privacy. Facebook should continue to keep Timeline for those who desire, but shall not make it mandatory.

Have a quick look at the features and look of Timeline on clicking the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzPEPfJHfKU

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Here’s a list of people who made it big before the age of 25: http://money.msn.com/investing/how-to-be-a-millionaire-by-age-25-kiplinger.aspx

When on the road to becoming a millionaire, for starters you must understand the significance and the true value of money by unfolding queries like: Why do we need money? How did the use of money come about? How does one accumulate money in the first place?

Before the invention of money, we humans indulged in what was known as the barter system, in which we traded things with each other for clothes, foods, and even other items as per the agreed exchange-rate. For example if you wanted apples and you only had oranges, you could trade your oranges with someone who had apples. Now the problem arose when the person who had oranges didn’t want any apples, therefore the exchange came at a halt and could not be carried out.

Seeing this problem and being affected by it, money was created so that we could use it to buy things. And since money is a standardized form, it can very conveniently be used to buy other items, making trade very easy.  Here’s another question, is it possible to buy a house in exchange of one or more oranges? This question’s fairly obvious and I’m sure you know the answer to it. That’s because the value of one or more oranges does not equal to the value which is worth buying a house.

Now in order to become a millionaire, you on your own need to be able to produce the value of money which worth a million! Which is why it takes a person hard work of minimum 10-20 years to be able to produce the value worth of a million dollars

Now if you’re thinking this is an article about how-to accumulate wealth from saving all life, it isn’t. This is about how to generate wealth worth a value of multi-million dollars, and not just wasting your life in the process but actually enjoying the creation process. Here are a few steps to help you get started.

Make a Decision and Stick With It

It all starts from head. You first have to decide if you want or don’t want to be one. Then you tell head that since you’re not one as yet it means you’re not wealthy enough. So then you decide that you have to work hard in order to be a self-made millionaire. What you need are basically ideas and a lot of dedication which comes through the hard work you put in – to create a web worthy enough to not get destroyed in a lifetime. So what does the first step teach you? It teaches you to make a decision by setting a target, that of a million dollars.

Change The Way You Think, Think Big

There’s plenty of money on the planet, what we lack are opportunists, number of people wanting to avail it. In order to become a millionaire from level zero, you have to end the way you think, by this I mean the typical poverty-thinking all us middle class people are used to. What’s grilled into our heads are typical lessons taught to us since when we were kids, “Don’t waste anything,” “Eat all your food; there are people starving,” “Money doesn’t grow on trees.” Etc. All these lessons have made us fear the sense of scarcity.

According to Mr. Jason Flurry, a certified financial planner and president of Legacy Partners Financial Group, Woodstock, Ga., “You can have money or you can have stuff, but seldom do you have both early in life,” What we need to understand fro this step is that money is in abundance on this planet, and if we continue are poverty struck thinking we won’t be able to avail it.

Take It Like It’s Your Responsibility

Self-made multimillionaires are not just motivated by money, but motivated by opportunities that can best facilitate their contributions. This doesn’t mean wealth isn’t important, because of course it is. But as important is the eye to be able to spot an opportunity, which would further increase your potential wealth accumulation. A multimillionaire never lowers his/her targets when conditions are/get tough. But take them as a challenge considering they know what a difference they can make at home, for their families, communities and even their country.

Learn From The Multimillionaires

Get into the habit of studying wealthy people and their stories just to see all what they went through to get to where they’re at right now. Get inspired by their lives and achievements and use that inspiration as a tool for success. Don’t listen to the people without money, who tell you, “All rich people are greedy!” and “Money has nothing to do with happiness.” Of course money has a direct link to happiness. You need to make sure you’re fully aware know what other millionaires around you doing to earn that million. So like I said, get inspired and follow their example: How did they stay motivated?  What did/does happiness mean for them? How and where do/did they invest? What do they read?

Image Courtesy: selfmademiracle.com

Work, Work and Work

Learn to value time and understand the fact that rich people buy time, whereas poor people are the ones selling it. The wealthy understand the value of time and how its way more valuable than money it self, so delegate and recruit people to do the things they themselves aren’t good at. This however does not at all mean that the rich and wealthy don’t work hard. Wealthy people have a name to success and as per Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; they’re on the last point of the pyramid where they work till the point they don’t feel like they’re winning.

Invest More Than Spending

Spend very wisely and get into the habit of investing money so that you have a secure potential. The wealthy know the U.S. tax laws are such that they favour investments over spending. You buy a house to live in, always trying to make the ends meet. Whereas a rich investor buys a house with the intention of investing into it, the moment the prices go up he sells it on profit and adds that to his wealth. So plan and get into the habit of looking ahead.

Get rich and live the American Dream!

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The Grammy team has been working together since a long time, in efforts to give high tech edge to its website and viewers, which paid off the most in the 54^th Grammy awards. The recording academy was able to bring together the social and digital media for its best interests, the results were quite obvious during the show.

The recording academy claimed that it tried to put mobile and digital media as the main giants for the promotion and involvement of the crowd, which also reflected in the layout of the show that was prepared and coordinated with keeping these new technologies in mind and perspective.

Image Courtesy:Billboard.com

The Grammy’s have previously been using the edge of the Grammy live feature, which is basically a second screen experience that keeps the audiences involved with webcast of special Grammy events, red carpets and parties, all brought together to bring fans  behind the scenes and close to all the action that they might be missing on otherwise. The Grammys award show has millions of viewers and music fans who wish to be a part of this grand show, and that is just the exact point the team has cached on. The second screen experience adds to the viewer’s interest by giving them extra gossip and tidbits, by showing them scenes from the backstage, comments and views of the crowd and on goings during the event. This keeps the audience connected and keeps entangling them into constantly being updated with the Grammy awards and the new information and happenings it brings.

In order to expand its social horizons and reach more options for the Grammy live, the team started an App, to accompany the Grammy live website, since people have started using other digital devices to stay connected, such as the Ipad.

This Ipad aap for Grammy live (Grammy Live app for iOS ) has elevated the experience and given a great edge to the social and digital marketing. More viewers got engaged with the whole event, creating a great shift from traditional screen viewer’s to now seasoned and expert social media masters.

The Recording company has been working very hard, along with its partners CBS(Grammy’s broadcasting partners) and made the app into a well-integrated and up to date app that brings together almost all the features required. The app has gotten great reviews and is full of multiple features, taking the digital interaction to a next level. It allows its user’s firstly to get access to the photos, videos and articles available at Grammy.com. It also includes a feature called the Grammy trivia, which lets users enjoy and engage in guessing and vouching for who will win the next Grammy awards.  Along with that it includes a database of previous Grammy winners, and present nominees who might stand a chance. The app is also designed to provide radio streaming of the Grammy nominees etc.

Once again the Recoding team joined TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles for its social campaign to benefit an edge from their creative and energetic ideas that will help their campaign sky rock. The campaign was themed “We Are Music”, and would be dealing with print, outdoor, digital, and mobile and television media.

The team worked around the philosophy of human emotions and tried to capture it, by bringing all feelings on the surface and getting the listener involved.

TBWA\Chiat\Day developed an outstanding website, with high tech design, using the Flash 11 Stage 3D, to give a  robust real-time 3D visualizations that are modified based on what music is playing in the background.

The “We Are Music” campaign has tangled everyone because of its exciting and new layout of being able to make your own playlists and add in your own photographs to create their own unique visualizations. All this vibrant information can then also be shared with friends, through Facebook and twitter to get feedback and invite them as well.  Since The Recording team had planned to bring forward the mobile media as well, how could they not make an App for this new innovative idea? The We Are Music iPhone app helps the new high tech generation to enjoy the same experience on their Ipad or iPhone. This is further enhanced, since the user can use their own song lists and create unique and fun experiences with it.

Other than these innovative tools the Grammys team didn’t leave behind any efforts to fully use the innovative tools of digital social media. They connected through to their masses by marketing on their Facebook page as well as Twitter. Along with this they used features like, Google +, YouTube, Tumblr and other tools like instagram; where photo contests were held for the beginning period of the campaign. All of this engagement also helped the Grammy’s team gauge what people were expecting and wanted, by evaluating their interaction and opinions on these social pages.

The Grammys team really put their best forward and promoted themselves on an outstanding stage, involving everyone, from mobile users, YouTube addicts and internet fans. By using every social media tool to their benefit and engaging the audiences, in some way or the other, the Grammy’s team was able to personalize the experience of their fans, especially through the “We Are Music” campaign, that enables them to use their music, see it through the 3D visualization, or share photos and trivia updates with their friends on Facebook. They really seeped in to the skins of music lovers and made sure no one missed out on anything.

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Humour consultant on February 1993, wrote this in HR Focus “Humour is a vital, critical element for human survival, and we often forget about it and set it aside. We are told that laughter fun and play are unadult, unintelligent and nonprofessional. Nothing could be further from the truth. One of the first indicators of the onset of most mental illnesses is a loss of the sense of joy in being alive.”

So according to Metcalf, organizations that combine work with fun have higher job satisfaction, lower levels of absenteeism, and increased productivity. Therefore, offices can either suppress or encourage ongoing innovation. Most American offices barely support the concept of having creative or unusual interior or exterior designs and focus more on designs that help them save costs as opposed to the performance enhancing aesthetics. The point isn’t to just focus on the office design, but also focus on the functioning of the design enhancing communication, where as a badly designed office can produce dysfunctional relations with in the office.

Pixar and Google offices in America have the most innovative and popular office designs. Pixar has hard to believe Disneyworld themed offices, revolving around the famous Disney-films which makes the employees feels like they’re on their childhood vacation as opposed to being at work. Another interesting thing Pixar offices have, are centralized cafeterias, restrooms, mail boxes, and meeting rooms, which have been centralized on purpose in a successful attempt to promote inter-employee communication. Google’s Googleplex is another very good example to support my case. The office is divided into themed areas ranging from Buenos Aires to Zurich, with scooters and bikes being the usual modes of transportation around the gigantic complex, which further shows off large inflatable balls, massage chairs, aquariums, video games, slides, gyms and many more facilities.

Image Courtesy: Home Designing

It’s not important to be as financially profitable as Pixar or Google, it’s important to have the motivation to convert your office into a recreational facility. Having a themed office helps you reflect your business’ individuality. Nothing can be more sad than working at a boring regular office which has gloomy gray cubicles, a dull green carpet and bland oh so common white blinds. The employee in such a boring setup fades into the dull ambiance and becomes just another sad component in the corporate machine – How discouraging for overall company’s morale.

A manager’s most vital job is to be able to select the right sort of rewards, and what follows is to be able to choose the perfect timing for those rewards. A manager’s motivation is not solely restricted to financial rewards, they also a have a long list of non financial rewards to increase the worker efficiency in the organization.  A solid reward system calls for intensive attention for its construction.

A very good example to support my case is that of Joe Reynolds, who is a young entrepreneur who took his passion ahead and turned a $5,000 investment into an entire event management company called Red Frog Events into a thriving $45 million company in just four years. The company was named the Small Business of the Year 2011 by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, won the Chicago Innovation Award and also won the Chicago Tribune Best Workplace.

His best investment is building a tree house in the middle of his office. It cost him more than $100,000, but proved to totally be worth it. He says, “As soon as we had the tree house installed, my team backed it up by filling our entire 17,000-square-foot office with other assorted camp-themed fun that includes a zipline, a rock climbing wall, and a conference table made of 50,000 Legos. There’s something surprising and fun at almost every turn.”

When asked why he spent so much on a workplace, why invest so much in a workspace? He said, “First of all, for us, it just felt right. We’re a young, creative, and fast-growing company. We pride ourselves on constant innovation. Camp Red Frog—what we call our unique office environment—fits our culture while also providing a comfortable place to call our home away from home.”

The benefits that can be concluded from this theme, or tree-house so to speak, are

Increased Levels f Happiness

Happier the employees the more productive they’ll be. And the more productive the employees are, the chances of you being successful will be more in return. So themed offices will help you raise their happiness levels. How so? By letting them take breaks at the bar, let them brainstorm in a room full of swings which get the creative juices flowin’, or let them play an arcade game. Trust me when I say this, it’s impossible to be unhappy when you’re swinging on a swing hanging on to a pretty tree.

Let Them Know You Care

When you spent/invest so much in an office design to facilitate your employees, it makes them feel that you care, and signals at how you’re investing in the long-run success of the company, which makes them respect you, and in return be as productive as possible. What you’re doing here is starting a chain of mutual respect.

Attracts Potential Employees

According to Joe, “We’ve touted our creative work environment at more than 100 job fairs at universities across the country and now receive more than 2,000 resumes from eager applicants every single month. Camp Red Frog attracts top talent.”

Gets the Creative Juices Flowin’

Such an exciting workplace helps foster creativity and innovation, and in any sort of business you can really benefit from creativity. And when you combine creative environment and creative people, the overall creativity is enhanced.

Helps Gain Attention

“The U.S. Chamber of Commerce named us the “United States Small Business of the Year” and we recently followed that up with being named the Chicago Tribune’s “Best Small Company to Work For.” Camp Red Frog helped us win these awards and get the media attention that followed.” says Joe. Whose company totally fostered with all this positive publicity attracting potential employees and customers.

So yes, tree houses at your workplace will enhance productivity since you’d be providing your employees with an entire setup to relax, get their Creative juices flowin’. But you should keep in mind that this theme can also serve as constant distraction, which might decrease efficiency levels as employees may end up spending too much time on the swings or at the bar. So keep the type of your company in mind, meaning if your company requires serious full attention then this may prove to be a bad idea. However, a little renovation at your workplace will for sure go a long way to stimulate innovation in your employees, just don’t overdo it. So I’d suggest that you be practical, but at the some time, don’t be afraid to make a few capital sacrifices in order to improve your office.

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We need to have an in-depth understanding of the fact that internet has transformed into a primary source of information-search worldwide, making it a necessity as opposed to a luxury. Long gone are the days where people turned to yellow pages or encyclopaedias for information. Where previously students, writers, or anyone interested to acquire knowledge, would turn to libraries and books will now only type in the key words into a search engine and get exactly what they are looking for within seconds. Even the benefits of exposure from travelling, which were apparently, the “road to self discovery” can now be gained through the sitting at home surfing the internet. So keeping the internet dependency in mind, companies and businesses worldwide feel that the web can bring in the right amount of traffic and clients needed to make their website successful.

However, considering there are 234 million unique WebPages available on the web, our mind comes up with a common question; what does a website need to survive or attract its customers?

1. Define Your Purpose  

   The primary reason behind your need for a website. If you’re making a website in order to sell products/services (e-Bay, Marks and Spencer etc), then you need to ensure your web design is such that makes it search engine friendly, convenient, with fast loading, and effortless navigation structures. And in case your website is supposed to serve as a presentation site, like the PR websites, then it needs to be designed in such a manner that can use flashy graphics and focus on images. Point being, the main reason behind your website, needs to be incorporated into your design.

2. Think Out of the Box
   

   Take a risk with something that hasn’t been tried out before. Allow yourself to explore what your mind tends to suppress due to the fear of not getting accepted. Get the perfect blend of social technology combined with raw creativity. Make sure you’re well researched as to what’s out there already. And then come up with something that gives you an edge of originality. Many organizational/institutional psychologists have attempted to create awareness as to how to become successfully creative, ranging from concepts of brainstorming, to just incubation, meaning temporarily letting go of ones conscience and allowing the sub conscience to take, over from which once comes up with the so called “ah ha!” idea.

3. Make it Attractive

   Color is an extremely effective way of way of attracting attention to the essentials, especially if the remaining site has a fairly limited palette. Other than that, go for vibrant and happy colors that help reinforce your positive image. But make sure to not over do it, using too much color, or too much contrast could have a negative impact and probably overpower the written content, losing its value as a whole.

4. Textciting
   

   Text is capable of serving as the crucial point of a design. You should be able to experiment with text effects and typography, and learn to be inspired by the work of other people. For example:

Image Courtesy: Vandelaydesign.com

      5.      Keep it Minimal

      6.     Keep it Updated

It’s very important to keep your design portfolio up to date. This is one way you can sustain your customers. So as you upgrade your service, launch new deals, or launch new catalogues, update your webpage accordingly. Because at the end of the day whatever’s current, keeps the customers interested. .

      7.     First Impression is the Last Impression

It’s very important to get the right design, meaning the image your website is setting. It’s a well known fact that a visitor takes not more than seven seconds after arriving on your website, to create an impression of you. It’s the design that will make it, or break it for you. So it’s very important for your Web-page design to inculcate credibility and an attractive image of what you’re selling.

     8.     Lay Out a Marketing Plan

By either investing in a smart pay-by-the-hit strategy or by hiring a proper search engine optimization company. Because getting the right design isn’t the only success factor, since your Website will deem pointless if no one knows about it. So you also need to be searched for on the web. This factor is particularly important for the sites that rely on the number of hits for success.

Be professional and descriptive at a glance. And Make sure you include proper META tags in the HTML of each page of your website. What are META tags? They are HTML codes that facilitate the search engines, like Google, Yahoo, and Msn etc to determine what keywords are related to a specific website. About 80 percent of all web site traffic originates from the eight major search engines. So it would be a smart move on your part to ensure you’ve done your research over how to optimize your webpages before designing your website. This will save you a lot of trouble that may be caused in the long run due to the negligence of this factor.

Lastly, it’s vital to choose website designers who understand your purpose and can inculcate all the above mentioned tips into your website, because this is what you need to do, to make it big!

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It is an established fact that consumers are an essential component to the success of a business organisation, but the true essence is the interaction of these consumers with the business, and in turn, the reaction of both parties, may it be production or consumption.

In today’s world, where mass production, consumerism, alienation, and researchers proving through numerous studies how the consumers are nothing but the purchasers of a product, businesses like Starbucks and Subway have used this to their advantage to create “what exactly the consumer wants” by asking the consumer variations like

• Small, medium or large?
• What vegies would YOU like in your sandwich?
• With or without cream?

All these provide the consumers a sense of authority over their buying decision. Makes them feel a part of the product itself. So the idea is to make the consumer feel a part of the business, and to require their feedback instantly.

It is obvious that if we, the business, have an official website, we are already in the process of interaction. But the question here is, are we involving our consumers well enough for us to have the power to influence their buying decisions by 40.9%. The percentage is not made up; it is in fact a recent study put up by “Oneupweb.”

Most businesses these days use their websites to indulge into what is commonly known as a one-on-one conversation. By doing so the company reaches out to the contact on a personal level, turning the contact into a customer.

For our website to be a success, we not only need the right colours, cool designs, readable font fashions/size, and attractive pictures, but we also need customers to talk on our website  in order to evolve and progress in this highly globalized super sonic world. Customers don’t want to waste time worrying about a return phone call or a mail on their address to answer their problems or questions. They want to get the answers they need as soon as possible, with absolutely minimum effort. Here are a few tips that will help you get your customers to talk.

The Two Magical Words

These two words gain attention instantly, and act as a magnet for the finger to click on it. These two words being, “CONTACT US!” Considering customers are trained to not read each and every word they find on the website, but skim and scan through it, these two words will always stand out. And as a matter of fact, the audience is trained to acknowledge such alarming words.

Image Courtesy: CEI-Europe

Contact Information

There can’t be a ‘contact us’ if there isn’t any contact information. So if you want the customers to contact you, it’s important you place your number not only on top of the webpage, but also in an HTML format, so it’s convenient for the customers to call you by just clicking on your number. Considering the widespread use of smart phones, everyone needs instant access and no time wastage.

The Simpler, The Better

By this point the customer would be comfortable enough to be willing to share his/her personal contact  information. So now your job is to make the sharing process as easy as possible for them. Which you can do so by:

1. Keeping the contact forms as simple as possible, avoiding every possible obstacle that you can. You don’t want to intimidate your customer by asking too many questions, so keep it precise, restricted to only the relevant information required. As precise as just the name, email-address and date of birth. And if you require extra information other than this, then keep it as an optional choice. So people that are hesitant can bail out.
2. Position the final action button on the lower-right position on the form. Considering the general eye movement pattern top-to-bottom and left-to-right. Make sure the button stands out, and catches consumer attention before they get confused and shut the window out of the confusion.

Leave a Fun-Filled Impact

Make your contact form colorful, fun and one of its kind. Because if it seems fun, the customers will register a positive vibe off it, and in return trust it enough to not fear sharing their information, since it’ll feel reliable.

Make it funny with a funny introduction or pictures, everyone enjoys good humour. The humor will also help give your page a personality, making it see more human and in return more trustworthy. Don’t forget to make a promise to your customers, a promise that you owe them considering they’re sharing their personal info with you. Place this promise of not sharing their personal info with any third party without their consent, right next to the final action button.

Live Chat

Your communication forum for the customers needs to be instant. Like I said earlier in this super sonic world, you don’t want to be left behind. Nowadays, everything needs to be instant for consumers to continue using it. Waiting and boring the customers leaves a bad taste in your customer’s mouth.

Provide the recent and commonly used option of LiveChat. It’s very important as an entrepreneur for you to benefit from these options.  Plus unlike a lot of commonly used services, LiveChat offers third-party incorporation modules along with a wide range of brand new, creative features.

All these tips will definitely help you get the customer talking on your website. And if this article has helped you, feel free to share your comments below.  See what I just did? Encouraged you to talk. So think smart and play smart, since you really don’t want to be a slacker in this, (for the last time) super sonic world.

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There is a wide range of success stories that you can get inspired by. Starting from someone whose life has been the most successful story of the decade, Steve Jobs down to an entrepreneur as ordinary as Mathew Osborne from Columbus OH, who found a way to make money out of dog waste.

Unlike most people who just complain about having to clean it up or stepping in it and getting their shoes dirty, he started a brand new business of removing dog waste from peoples yards. The business however proved to be an immediate success, and after several years, Mathew sold it for a quarter of a million dollars. And even after selling it, he continued to make money from his idea, this time by writing a booklet on how to start a pet waste removal business, further selling it on the Internet.

Another smart thing to do like a lot of successful business owner is to turn your hobbies interests and skills into pleasing and often profitable businesses, by observing a need in the world around you and finding a way to fill it, like Mathews did. A few guidelines or tips for how to start-up successfully.

Start a Business While You’re Already Employed

According to us, the best time to start your own business is when you’re already employed. You’ll have three big advantages that would help you smooth your business start-up and give your new business an improved chance of success while you’re already employed.

• You’ll have the initial funding from your already employed job.
• Getting the first client or customer may be easier. Since you’d have contacts from your already employed job.
• You’ll have testing time. Meaning in case the new business doesn’t work out you can resort back to your old job.

Think Out of the Box

Given the tough competition in the market out there, it’s very important that you think out of the box and brainstorm before you come up with the right concept. The key is to let your creative juices flow and observe the ongoing trends, get inspired and learn from the experience of other successful entrepreneurs. Search for substitute or commonly referred to as the ‘alternate’ ways that will aid the efficiency of your operations. Avail every new opportunity, that you personally think or feel your business can benefit from. Be open to doing things differently and be mentally prepared to look at new perspectives. Remember, do whatever helps you create value for your customers, preferably in ways that haven’t been tried out before, since that’ll also give you a marketing edge.

Image Courtesy: Monkeywong.com

Turn Your Passion into a Success Story

Whether you’re an expert at writing software or you’re brilliant at creating floral arrangements, look for ways to turn your hobby into a business. You can’t start a business by just thinking you want to start one. It requires focused thinking and effort. In short, businesses are made, they don’t just happen. You can either plan to profit by smile-generating shapes of twisted balloons, or you can plan the growth of a million dollar, multinational company. Your success, however, relies on you and what you bring to the table. So if your passion for the business is strong enough, the passion itself will act as a drive for you to be creative, knowledgeable and persistent. On the other hand, if you don’t really like or aren’t interested in what you’re doing, you will be less motivated to work for it.

Image Courtesy: 5min.com

Spin It

It’s interesting to see how most of the new products or new business ideas are spin-offs of old ones. For example Inline Skates are simply ice skates on wheels and are also known as streamlined roller-skates depending on how you view them. Another popular/successful trend is that of finding innovative ways of marketing the same old ordinary businesses in a brand new exciting way. For example florists have been around since forever, running small scale local stores, until Jim McCann of 1800flowers.com, started a retail shop in 1976, got hold of the phone number 1-800-Flowers, since it’s easy to remember and started a brand new network of florists. Jim McCann saw an opportunity to mature online, and started selling on the Internet and hence grew from there on.

Image Courtesy: 1800flowers

You might not have the contacts, finance, management capacity, or the longing to launch a brand new product like inline skates or the energy to transform your single, small-scale store location into a multimillion-dollar sales company. But the whole point is that it does not need to be that large scale, to start a business or introduce a new product you need to ponder over the ongoing trends and avail the best opportunity they may have to offer. Just like 1800flowers.com, you can spin almost any skill or ongoing industry trend into marketable new services or products.

Devise a Business Plan

A business plan is like a 24/7, readily available outline for your business that helps you manage and steer your company. This plan doesn’t only help you, but also helps potential investors, partners, lenders understand your strategy and pushing you up the success ladder. A business plan needs to always be reassessed, modified, and improved according to the ongoing trends. This business planning process, should be carried out on a regular basis, so you can keep your business running in the right direction, aiding you to focus better on your final destination. A usual business plan includes details about your product or service (depending on what you’re selling), the competition and people you’re selling to, plus a cash-flow projection. You should also come up with a catchy name, a name that’ll sell, and as you contemplate over name ideas for your company, make sure you check the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s website to ensure they’re available.

Gather the Best Support System

You need a full fledged support system while you’re starting new and of course after you’ve established your company. Support can stem from a friend or a family member that you can discuss ideas with and people who will listen sympathetically to all the latest business start up issues and will suggest ways of resolving it. It’s even better for you to find yourself a mentor or, if you succeed, try out for a business start up program such as The Self-Employment Program. When starting new, business experienced guidance is the most excellent support system of all.

Be Professional from Day 1

Everything about you and the way you work is representative of your attitude and lets people know how professional you are in running a serious business. That means getting all the accessories such as a business phone and a business email address, professional business cards, and last but definitely not the least, treating people in a professional, polite manner.

Finance Opportunities

All your effort will go to waste if there is no finance. Keeping the financial crisis and the recession in mind, we need to understand that getting loans has become very difficult, to the point where even the ones with good credit records are having issues applying for and getting loans. The conditions are very strict for the existing companies, and are worse for the new entrants, since keeping the recession in mind banks only prefer lending to companies that have profitable cash flows. So if you’re planning to enter the market now, it’s advisable for you to rely on the unconventional sources of financing, because otherwise you’re bound to be disappointed considering the strictness prevailing in the market. The top alternative approach would be saving up for the capital you’d need, or relying on friends and family for short-term backing with an added incentive, for example, agree to a percentage ownership or a certain share out of the initial profits.

Legal and Tax Issues – Get them Right

It’s way more complicated and expensive to untangle a mess once after you’ve started. Questions like:

• Does your business need to be registered?
• Will you have to charge GST or PST?
• Will you have to have Workers’ Compensation Insurance or deal with payroll taxes?
• How will the form of business you choose affect your income tax situation?

In short you need to gain knowledge of what your tax and legal responsibilities are before you start your business and operate accordingly in order to enjoy a healthy future performance.

Keep the Organization Flat

The general trend of managers-reporting-to-managers will only create Politics. So it’s extremely advisable that you keep your chain of command as flat as possible.

Image Courtesy: Small Business

Make it Fun for the Employees

Keep a constant check on the stress levels and achievements of your people and reward them. Every time MicroSolutions, recorded the highest sales month, or whenever someone would do something special or worth recognition, the owner would hand out a $100 bills to that salespeople as an in incentive. At Broadcast.com and MicroSolutions, the owners would send their employees out to a bar every now and then and buy one or ten drinks for everyone.

Image Courtesy: buildingabrandonline.com

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The consumer mind is known to be like a black box, because it’s extremely unpredictable when it comes down to making purchase decisions. Initially, I thought it was the convenience/cost factor, but then you see shops or services which are located far away, and yet you find this bunch of people travelling far away distances in order to purchase products and services from these shops. Leaving a big question mark in my head as to why someone would travel a very long distance to obtain a commodity. There’s the cost of petrol involved, the diffidence of traffic, and the wasting of one’s valuable time, etc? Come to think of it, it is not exactly a question of cost. It is possible there are other factors.

Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, devised what is famously known as the 80/20 rule; a rule that was based on his eager observations about the insignificant many and the critical few. According to Pareto 80% of the possible value of business activities tends to come from only 20% of the effort put into it. To benefit from Pareto’s rule, you need to identify your critical few customers and target your marketing directly towards their needs. According to many surveys, the cost of acquiring new customers runs 8-10 times more than the cost of sustaining existing ones. Point being, you’re bound to earn a stronger return on your marketing, leading to better sales.

Customer loyalty is crucial for the success of every business. You want to satisfy your customers so that they will remain loyal to you. In order to earn their loyalty, it’s very important for you to make them your top priority. By this I mean that you should make a conscious effort to identify the needs and wants of your customers, in order to gain their trust, respect, and loyalty by focusing on them. Fast and friendly customer service is a must to earn customer loyalty and to keep them coming back to you. If your customers don’t receive fast and friendly service from you, they’ll be disappointed and in return choose to do business with your competitors. There are three factors according to us that can help you ensure customer loyalty.

1.      Identify Your Best Customers

Identifying your best customers is as important as identifying their needs and wants. You should heavily rely on observation and analysis of their profiles, habits and preferences before you can differentiate them. All this aids you in creating a customer database that can be easily accessed and used by the staff, no matter which department they belong to. Marketing, sales, customer service, and billing, all these departments are very much integrated and can work together to sustain loyalty of existing customer.

Information that always proves beneficial to collect, with the customer’s consent of course, includes:

• Name, phone number and/or e-mail address, full address. .
• Date of birth of the customer, and/or other family members of the family, so you can send out E-cards or cards with birthday discount offers or gifts, or even the wish alone is god enough.
• Special offers, the customer availed.
• The amount of purchases – annual earning through this one person.
• Type of products purchased, and past purchasing patterns.
• Special orders and requests made by the customers.
• If some valuable feedback was provided.
• History of customer services.
• Information regarding the participation in any events or loyalty clubs.

For example, Sharon McRill the owner of The Betty Brigade, an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based design firm, claims that her company keeps track of all the important dates in their clients’ lives and sends out automatic emails to any 400 customers at any given time, whether it’s to wish them a happy birthday, congratulate them on their anniversary or even if it’s to simply thank them for their loyalty. “This keeps our company in the customers’ minds in a positive way,” she says.

2.      Monitor the Database

Once you’ve gathered the information and built a strong database, it’s very important to get into the habit of constantly updating customer information. What is more important is to be able to analyze and verify the data. Meaning, dig into it, if you see a change in the purchase pattern, ask why that is so. For example, why the customer is buying the larger pack rather than the small one? Keep adding these minute details and ensure that the customer profile is up-to-date, because it’s these little factors that make a difference. The more updated the database is, the more current and in-check you are regarding the latest trends. Like I mentioned, these one-to-one interactions help you establish and maintain a good relationship with your customers, by making them feel special and important.

According to a Minnesota based business consultant, Kevin Stirtz, (who runs a website focused on customer service) customers like being involved with the whole project, not being restricted just to the demand and sales. “One of the big issues a customer has is that there’s too much away time – too much time where the customer feels they don’t know what’s going on. Allowing customers to offer feedback on your project or product throughout the process enables you to catch and resolve problems early on.” Stirtz says. 

Image Courtesy: All Business

3.      Carry out Promotional and Public Relations Activities

It’s a ‘help me to help you’ relation that you have with your customers. So if you want your customers to do something for you, in return you have to do something for them. You need to understand one thing that active customers are happy customers, because they feel that they’re in charge and indulge in smart purchases. You should attempt to carry out promotional activities that encourage interaction between you and your company.

Strategic public relations, is another extremely effective way of sustaining customers. Hence, editorial coverage provides the company with a great deal of credibility, because people believe what they see, hear and read in the media as the truth. So good PR offers you the possibility to inform current and potential customers about your company, elaborating on what you have to offer or the latest deals/discounts you’re offering. And in return, they get attracted and interested in your product or service.

The prevalent business environment is extremely competitive and difficult, making right now the time to for you to enhance or build your customer relationships. When the relationship starts taking a toll, you’ll reap the harvest. It’s always exciting to land new customers, but like I said, now’s the time to focus on retaining the existing customers, too.

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• Weak competition
• Low cost advertising
• Retailers willing to offer discounted rates/terms
• Cheaper real estate

We gathered a few low-cost tips/guidelines to help you enter the world of entrepreneurship smoothly, because if you’re planning to launch in 2012, you will need to utilize/make-the-most out of every buck that you invest. Before your launch, it’s advisable for you to do your market research. An entrepreneur should understand that economic recovery is sluggish, financing is rigid and consumer spending is extremely timid. If you’re looking to kick-start your business today, here are a number of things that you should consider:

Image Courtesy: Fast Company

1.      The Right Concept – Think Out of the Box

The right concept is the one that best suits your personality and lifestyle, so you can connect and understand it better. It’s always advisable to step into something you’re comfortable and familiar with. Given the harsh business climate, it’s very important that you let your creative juices flow and make an effort to think out of the box. You should aim to observe the norms and get inspired by other successful entrepreneurs, and by learning from their experiences get on to the road to improvement. Additionally, you should avail every new opportunity emerging in your industry which can benefit your business, look up alternative ways that can help you improve the efficiency of your operations and be prepared to look at new perspectives and be open to doing things differently. Try your best to create value for your customers, in ways that haven’t been tried out before and find different means of earning from your business.

2.      Strategise a Business Plan

A grand business plan is one that is like a living, breathing blueprint for your business that works like a guide, which helps you navigate and manage your company while also helping potential lenders, investors, partners, and others understand your strategy and aid your chances at success. A business plan should always be revised, reviewed, and built upon. The business planning process that you carry out on a regular basis helps you keep your ship headed in the right direction, helping you focus better on your long-term destination.

Tim Berry, president and founder of Palo Alto Software, maker of Business Plan Pro software, emphasizes on the significance of the business plan by saying, “In my company, we’ve been working on the same plan for more than 20 years—we review it every month and revise it every year.  We’ve printed it out a dozen times and shined and polished it. We share it with the team constantly, but it is never done. When your business plan is finished, your company is finished.”

A typical business plan may include details about the service or product, the target consumers and competition, plus a cash-flow projection. You should also try to come up with a clever name for your business, and as you ponder over names for your company, check the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s website to ensure they aren’t taken.

Image Courtesy: Learn That

3.      Explore Finance Opportunities

Market research, the right concept and a business plan will all be deemed pointless if there is no capital. With the continual financial crisis and the economic downturn, lending has become very tight, to the point where the small business owners – even the ones with a good credit history/record are having trouble getting credit. The situation is nearly impossible for people starting new, since banks (keeping the recession in mind) only prefer lending to businesses that have experienced several years of profitability. So if you’re planning to start new, it’s advisable for you to rely on alternative sources of financing; ones that do not involve applying for a loan from traditional sources, because otherwise you’re bound to be disappointed. The best alternative approach would be saving up for the capital you’d require, or turning to family and friends for short-term interest free backing with an incentive of a decided percentage of ownership or out of the initial profits.

Try finding business angels, in the directory of the Angel Capital Association or venture capital investors through the directory of the National Venture Capital Association. MultiFunding, a loan advisory firm, provides you with the best search tool that can help you understand how friendly your bank is toward small businesses. And lastly, you can also benefit from the Investment ROI calculator to see how you may fare in the end, in case you’re considering giving up a stake in your company for cash.

4.      Work On a Marketing Plan.

In this post modern, highly globalized, digitized world, we have a wide array of marketing options to choose from, from traditional media to social networks, blogs, e-mail and pay-per-click ads. The entire trick is to determine which option will help you reap the best return on the investment you’ve sown for your particular business.

If you have questions like, what is a marketing plan and how you can work around it? You can become a member, of the Foundation for the Advancement of Marketing Excellence in Entrepreneurs and benefit from taking one of its online courses.

5.      When You Sell

Make sure you great and treat your new customers with enthusiasm, as that would help you pitch the right sort of profitable sales. Friendly treatment would help customers remember your business as a friendly positive one encouraging them to come back. And once you start selling, and have attracted enough customers, read up on various ways that will help you sustain them. Because starting a business when the economic situation is this tight is troublesome as your customers may still be reluctant when it would come down to spending as much as they used to, which makes selling difficult for you. But if you decide to launch today, make sure you commit 100% to it, and put all your heart and soul into its survival and attainment of success.

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