8 Strategies For Stronger Brand Security On Social Media Posted on May 16, 2017September 16, 2022 by Jeanna Barrett Since the onset of social media marketing more than a decade ago, sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram have been a great channel for brands to conduct real-time conversations with their customers, showcase brand personality and go viral with memorable content. While social media has numerous positive reasons for a brand to use it, social media can also quickly turn sour if not done correctly. Many brands have had social media branding fails — highjacking serious hashtags for a marketing ploy, hacking of accounts, posting controversial messages from a branded account and more. These types of #socialmediafails can really wreak havoc on a brand reputation. To ensure your brand doesn’t get caught red-handed in social media, follow these eight tips for social media brand security: 1. Save All Social URLs — Even if You’re Not Using Them If possible, make sure your brand owns all URLs and account names associated with your name. If fact, it’s a great idea to do social media profile research before choosing your business name. If you choose a business name that already has 12 different Twitter profiles with different variations of the same name, perhaps it would serve your business better to choose a more unique name. Once you know your business name, go through and sign-up for all social media sites with the same branded name and URL. Even if you’re not planning on utilizing a certain account for awhile, sign-up for it anyway and “hold” the name for your brand so someone doesn’t start a profile under your business name that could detract from your brand. 2. Conduct a Social Media Audit Use simple monitoring or social media listening tools such as SocialMention to uncover potential branding hiccups. Search for accounts that could be using your brand name and other ways your brand could be misrepresented online. It might also be a good idea to conduct a social media competitive analysis to see how your competitors are using social media — and potential branding fails you could stay away from. If you discover a fraudulent account, there are processes with most social media sites to claim an account that infringes on trademark such as Twitter’s Trademark policy. If you can’t reclaim the fraudulent account, then be sure you monitor it closely in case your customers are reaching out and interacting with the account. 3. Keep Your Passwords in One Secure Document It’s a good idea to create one document — in a secure business cloud solution such as Dropbox or Google Docs — that lists all passwords for accounts the brand owns. That way, if there’s a change in management or an internal social media role, your brand doesn’t have a bunch of accounts they can’t login to. 4. Use a Separate Social Media Monitoring Tool Just for Your Brand A lot of brands get their hands slapped online because a social media manager posted a controversial message from a branded account. It happens when juggling multiple accounts and often responding on-the-go from a mobile phone. (Such is the life of a social media manager). The safest way to avoid this is to ensure a separate, mobile-friendly social media management app is used for your brand, and your social media manager doesn’t have their personal accounts tied to this app on their desktop or on their phone. 5. Always Sign-Up for a New Social Media Account with a Generic Brand Email Do not allow your social media manager to sign up for all of your brand social media sites with their email. If they leave and the email is removed from your business, then you won’t be able to access your social media accounts. Instead, create a custom email for social media such as social@yourdomain.com or yourbrandsocial@gmail.com. 6. Create a Social Media Policy Spend some time internally talking about what social media security looks like for your brand, and loop in your infrastructure team or your legal counsel. How do online branding disasters get escalated and what is the process to fix them quickly? Do you believe your brand should stay silent online or address a branding failure directly? What is your brand policy for employees responding to customers online or sharing internal brand news? Lay all of this out within your social media policy then share the policy with all employees. 7. Ensure Marketing & Customer Service Are Aligned How your business is represented online to your customers is important to the image of your brand. A number of customers will reach out to your social media sites to ask for customer service help. To avoid a branding fail such as angry customers amplifying a problem, make sure your customer service team and social media team are closely aligned — even working within one platform together to solve social media problems. 8. Do a Gut Check with Your Social Media Management Make sure you’re always doing your due diligence as a brand to be sensitive to online topics. Don’t “highjack” a sensitive hashtag such as #blacklivesmatter to make it a marketing message for your brand. And if there’s something major happening in the news such as a terrorist attack, it’s best to err on the side of staying silent on social media that day so that an insensitive marketing message doesn’t pop into your followers’ news feed when they might be processing upsetting world news.
5 Effortless Ways to Be a More Creative Leader Posted on May 15, 2017May 15, 2017 by Jonathan Herrick Mark Zuckerberg. Elon Musk. Steve Jobs. Richard Branson. Many of the great leaders who inspire us are known for their creativity. You may be wondering how you can be a more creative leader, too. It starts with actively feeding your creative mind. Given the demands of running a business, if you don’t consciously take steps that enhance your creativity, it is hard to unlock your most innovative ideas. Here are a few places to start. 1. Embrace mindfulness. When you’re constantly racing to get things done—respond to an email, finish the bookkeeping, write a report—it’s hard for great leadership ideas to bubble to the surface. Make time every day for a mindfulness activity, whether that’s 10 minutes of meditation or deep breathing at your desk, an hour of yoga, or even a martial arts class like tai chi. It can be hard to force yourself to slow down and quiet your mind when you are always racing against the clock, but that is exactly why it’s beneficial. When you clear your mind and find focus, you’ll be surprised at how much more calmly you approach the leadership challenges in front of you and how new solutions bubble to the surface. 2. Get out of your office. You won’t be able to unleash your creativity as a leader if chain yourself to your desk. No matter how busy you are every week, set aside at least a couple of hours to meet with a client; attend a conference, a business peer group meeting or a meetup—or sit in on a talk about a topic that is totally outside of your industry but interests you nonetheless, whether that’s the history of architecture or 21st century filmmaking. You can learn a lot online, but putting yourself in an environment where there will be active discussion of ideas is likely to fuel your creativity in ways that solitary study will not. And while you’re at whatever activity you choose, turn off your digital devices, so you’re not distracted from participating in the discussion. 3. Throw out the rule book. Many great leaders are also great readers—particularly of business books–but that doesn’t mean they follow the leadership systems they read about to the letter. Creative leaders continually synthesize what they learn, adapting it to their own companies and their own unique style. Adopting a new leadership system won’t work if it seems like the creative new way you’re leading is not authentic to you. When trying a new approach to leading your team, roll it out gradually and see what works with you. 4. Keep the focus on others. We tend to think of creative leaders as being inspiring visionaries who deliver powerful speeches that get everyone fired up and ready to charge into battle. That’s one approach that works, but there are many other creative leaders who deliver results that are just as great by drawing out the talents of their team in more understated ways. Getting to know the people who work with you—whether they are independent contractors or employees—is the first step in motivating them to do great things. Taking time to talk with them every day and really listening to what they say will help you learn what they are passionate about. Once you know that, you’ll be able to look for ways for them to tap into their talents to help your company grow. When people are working on what they truly enjoy, you won’t need to deliver a keynote-level speech at your morning meeting every day to get them inspired. They’ll be excited to get to work and won’t mind it as much when they have to plow through more tedious tasks to get to the good stuff. 5. Find a great coach. We all have blind spots when it comes to analyzing our own leadership style. Often, it’s best to bring in an outside observer for a reality check, given that many employees will be afraid to be candid in a 360-degree review, even an anonymous one. To get honest feedback on how to become a more creative leader, many small business owners find that finding a coach is essential. In some cases, the coach may be a more experienced business owner who acts as an informal mentor. In other situations, they may hire a professional coach who is recommended by other owners they know. Regardless of which type of coach you choose, a coach can be a confidential sounding board as you expand your capacity as a leader, giving you a safe place to discuss any challenges you are experiencing. A good coach will help you get outside of your comfort zone, nudging you to take the steps that are needed when you falter. The possibilities for growing your business will be endless once you unleash your own creativity as a leader. Make today the day you commit to unlocking your untapped potential.
4 Leadership Development Activities Your Small Business Needs Posted on May 12, 2017May 12, 2017 by Erin Posey Big companies tend to emphasize leadership skills, and for good reason—with a large workforce, you need multiple people taking the lead on smaller projects, distilling information to higher-ups and, according to conventional business wisdom, a few executives at the hierarchical top to make the biggest decisions of all. So what about small businesses? It would be an oversight to assume small business owners don’t need to cultivate the same leadership qualities that larger ones do. If anything, it’s even more important for small businesses to fill their teams with leaders because every employee carries that much more weight, responsibility and impact on a small business’s success. So if you’re looking for ways to encourage more leadership in your small business, try these four options. Company activities may seem frivolous, but honestly, fostering leadership skills (and team-building) is a necessity for the future of your small business. Get Your Employees to Build a Tower Together Rarely do adults get to build things with good ol’ glue and paper anymore. In this simple activity, you divide your employees into groups of three or four, and provide them with a host of different building materials—anything from popsicle sticks to straws, pencils, cardboard or paper. Then ask them to build the tallest possible tower in 20 minutes. You’ll be able to see immediately who takes a leadership role and who doesn’t, and how the group dynamic works in a different situation. After 20 minutes, you can choose a winner—the ones with the tallest tower, of course—and then dissect the game in a few ways. Why did that team win? How did leadership play into it? Did other teams fail because of a lack of leadership, or did too many people try to play the position? It’s one of these easy games that showcases people’s personalities clearly and adds a bit of fun to the office because inevitably towers will crumble, and you’ll all feel like you’re in fourth grade again. But in a good way. Rotate Your Employees’ Job Positions This is a bold one, but give it a shot… though maybe not on a busy day. The idea is to let people assume the jobs of their coworkers. Simple as that. We don’t recommend doing this all at once (it’s not ideal to have a company full of people who are suddenly frustrated at their first day on the job), but you should encourage the day’s job-rotators to ask their peers for help and guidance accomplishing a few easy tasks. This accomplishes two things: one, it works wonders for creating empathy in the workplace. Offices are rarely a space where anyone understands what the heck anyone else is getting paid for, and this will unquestionably help your employees feel more connected to your business, maybe even more invested, and certainly more knowledgeable. Secondly, that empathy can draw out leadership moments among people who rarely get the opportunity. A secretary may be often called upon to do menial tasks, but he might soar given the opportunity to instruct a clueless salesperson how the filing system works. It confirms for people that they’ve come a long way, intrinsically growing a skillset no one else has and proving themselves a valuable asset—all while providing opportunities to lead others during the day and build their own confidence. Mute Your Employees, Then Tell Them to Design Shapes Here’s another classic activity: hand out some pieces of rope to groups of three or four, and tell them that they can’t say a word to anyone for the rest of the exercise. Then make them create shapes with the rope—a circle, square, star, etc. You can make the game progressively harder by having them create outlines of animals or more complex objects if you like, depending on whether you’ve got a long enough rope and the collective patience for poor art. This is another teamwork-builder that will show you exactly who emerges as a leader and how. But this also offers a nice bonus that the tower-building activity does not: it adds miscommunication as an obstacle to overcome, and you can chat afterward about how that lack of clear communication helped or hindered their project. Give Your Employees Some New Amount of Power The easiest way to build leadership in a small business is simply to give your team more authority. Put them in charge of new projects, have them brainstorm ideas they think might work and allow them to take point, accepting responsibility for the outcome—good or bad. This works in trial scenarios or with smaller initiatives, but if they go well and your employees prove themselves, then it follows that you can reward them with more ambitious projects that will ultimately help both your small business and their leadership skills. Sometimes people already have the qualities of being a great leader, and just haven’t been given the chance to showcase that. One of the best aspects of working for a small business is being able to communicate with employees and give them opportunities that more rigid top-down institutions can’t. Couple these techniques with our favorite small business blogs, and the possibilities present themselves. Take a few risks and have a little fun. You’ve got the room to do it.
How To Implement The 9-Word Email In Your Marketing Strategy Posted on May 11, 2017January 26, 2021 by Jessica Lunk There’s an old fable about a farmer who sold his land to go and search for diamonds during the diamond rush. As it turned out, the new owner of his farm ended up finding a massive diamond right there on the land the original owner abandoned. How does that relate to marketing? In two words: stale leads. Put simply, finding, engaging and nurturing new leads takes a lot of effort. Obviously, that’s how you build new business and increase your revenue stream. But sometimes the greatest value may lie in what we already have – the leads that we’ve lost or that have disengaged. All it takes to find out if they still hold potential is a simple email hack. The 9-Word Email The 9-word email was developed by Dean Jackson, a successful real estate entrepreneur and online marketer, in an effort to re-engage lost prospects. Jackson’s claim was that a subject line with just the recipient’s name and a body with a one-line (originally 9-word) question is all you need to engage. For example: That’s basically it. The entire purpose of the email is to ask a question that engages and gets a response. There’s an art to it though. If you compare the example above to alternate phrasing (let’s say “are you house shopping in Ohio?”), the difference is clear. The original version sounds less pushy, more conversational and focuses on the recipient’s already existing need. Here are some more examples: “Are you still looking at growing your blog traffic?” “Are you still looking for a new job opportunity in banking?” “Are you still interested in improving home security?” “Are you still looking to have your home painted?” “Are you still considering buying a new car?” “Have you made any progress with your kitchen renovation?” How to Create a 9-Word Email As you can see, it’s a pretty straightforward process. The formula is as follows: Subject line: –First Name– Body: Question that addresses customer pain point However, there are several rules to be mindful of. Avoid adding any unnecessary fluff. The email should include the absolute minimum word count you can manage. Remember that the email’s purpose is to re-engage, not to make an outright sale. Don’t be pushy. Make the email conversational and engaging instead of explicit and intense. Address the recipient directly. To make your outreach marketing personal and casual, use the recipient’s first name only. Obviously, to keep the email concise, address the recipient only once (in the subject line). Make it about the recipient. The key factor in whether your email will work or not is the ‘need.’ The sentence must focus on a pre-existing pain point that you can help your prospect solve. That’s it. The best part about this marketing tactic? You have nothing to lose. You should be reaching out to disengaged leads anyway so whatever response you get is a win. Also…it’s free. You don’t need to shell out big bucks for paid campaigns or a fancy HTML email designer. A simple, plain-text email is the best way to execute this strategy. If done right, the 9-word email works like magic. There are always potential customers among your stale leads. Once you gained someone’s interest, it’s easier to get it back than to build it all over again.
How To Determine If Mobile Advertising Is Right For Your Small Business Posted on May 10, 2017June 20, 2018 by Jeanna Barrett The easiest way to decide if mobile advertising is right for your business in 2017 is to let the statistics do the talking… More Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries including the U.S. and Japan. (Google, 2015) 34% of online retail purchases now happen on mobile devices. (Google, 2016) By 2019, mobile advertising will represent 72% of all U.S. digital ad spending. (Marketing Land, 2015) On mobile alone in an average week, YouTube reaches more 18+ year-olds during prime time TV hours than any cable TV network. (Google, 2016) Local searches lead 50% of mobile visitors to visit stores within one day. (Google, 2014) 78% of local-mobile searches result in offline purchases. (Search Engine Land, 2014) However… 70% of people dislike mobile ads. (HubSpot, 2016) Mobile ad blocking has increased 90% year-over-year. (HubSpot, 2016) What does this all boil down to? Well first of all, mobile is likely an easier path to reach your customer than desktop. It’s not only where customers are searching, but it’s where they’re purchasing, too. This is even more true for local businesses. While mobile search engines are where consumers are, they’re also spending a lot of time in applications and services such as YouTube. And, although mobile advertising is only expected to grow in the next couple of years, so is the dislike of consumers being disrupted by ads on their mobile phone. Already, a number of mobile ads are being blocked. Considering all of this… the pros likely outway the cons. While many consumers dislike and even block mobile ads, it could still be a good return on your investment if you’re able to reach and convert enough customers with mobile advertising. But, it’s important to dig a little deeper before adopting a mobile marketing strategy. Before You Invest in Mobile Advertising, Consider This… Determine How Much of Your Website Traffic is Mobile vs. Desktop Google Analytics easily allows you to understand where your traffic is coming from — desktop or mobile — and what mobile devices they’re using such as phone, tablet, etc. From within your Google Analytics dashboard, visit Audience and then click on Mobile. In the Overview, you’ll be able to see how much traffic is coming from mobile. There are a few things to consider. If your mobile traffic is really low, consider if your website makes sense on mobile. Is there a lengthy signup process that requires personal information and multiple steps, that is just easier for consumers to do on desktop? Then perhaps it doesn’t make sense for you to target mobile traffic. Do you have a lot of mobile traffic but a high bounce rate? This can indicate your mobile experience is lacking or you’re missing a mobile responsive design. Make sure your mobile experience is clear, quick and easy to use before you invest in mobile advertising. Understand Your Target Audience’s Mobile Use According to ReachLocal, below are some demographics of consumers using mobile phones. Are these demographics that fit into your target consumer? It’s important to have a buyer persona for your business and understand who you’re targeting online before starting any advertising strategy, including mobile advertising. You can do additional target audience research within comScore’s U.S. Mobile App Report. Smartphone users earn a median salary of $61,000 (Android) and $85,000 (iPhone). Consumers aged 25-34 are the biggest app audience, though usage is pervasive amongst most age groups. The median age of all app users is 40. If You’re Ready to Invest in Mobile Advertising, Do This… If driving mobile traffic to your website makes sense, you’ve optimized your website for mobile traffic, and you know your target audience is using their mobile phone in ways that will drive traffic to your business, then now you can focus on the following when launching your mobile advertising strategy: Create a compelling coupon or offer: The competition out there is fierce. If you can create an even better reason for your mobile advertising traffic to convert, then this will likely turn into an even higher return on your advertising investment. Sign up for services that can optimize your mobile campaigns: Want to track your campaigns across multiple networks and publishers? Want deeper mobile analytics? Want to launch mobile SMS campaigns? This list of 10 best mobile advertising tools to promote your business will help. Consider Many Different Mobile Platforms: Google AdWords is a great start for mobile advertising campaigns since Google drives 95% of all paid search ad clicks on mobile. (Business Insider, 2016). But it’s also worth trying mobile Facebook, Twitter and YouTube ads, or different strategies such as native mobile advertising, where ads are shown within relevant mobile content. If you’re ready to dive into a mobile advertising strategy for your small business in 2017, then make sure you do your due diligence in research and campaign optimization. And most importantly, find the right analytics tools to decide how this type of advertising works for your business. If you test it out and it doesn’t seem to make sense for the amount you’re spending, don’t be afraid to skip it. Just because mobile phone use increases and the statistics make it sound like it’s right for small business, doesn’t mean it’ll work for your small business and product. So, let the data do the talking.
The 9 Best Sites for Free (Or Almost Free) Stock Photos Posted on May 9, 2017July 12, 2022 by Allie Wolff By now, the value of including images in content should be clear to you. According to Jeff Bullas, articles with images get 94% more total views (which is why we include a photo with every blog post!). I think we can all agree that we’d much rather read content that’s broken up by images and relevant visuals than reading through pages and pages of block text. It’s no secret that stock photos can break the bank for a small business. But times are a changin’ and you no longer have to offer up your first born child in exchange for quality visual content. There are plenty of stock photo sites with free (or almost free content) just waiting to be featured on your blog, in your whitepapers and on your social media accounts. Just make sure you read the fine print. Copyright Laws It pays to be careful. Every image you use has a license that tells you how you may use it. Breach a picture’s license terms at your peril because you could find yourself pursued by copyright lawyers for thousands of dollars. Creative Commons Six different creative commons licenses cover commercial and non-commercial use. All require you to credit the creator of the image with a link. The CC0 license is the only Creative Commons license that waives all copyright and attribution requirements. Public Domain Use of public domain images is more complicated than most people believe, but if you are confident that an image has a CC0 license or is otherwise in the public domain, you can use it without crediting the creator. If you plan to use a picture for commercial purposes, you may still require model and property release forms to indemnify you against any expensive legal action. Royalty-Free If you buy royalty-free images, they can be used subject to their individual licenses without extra payments for each usage case. 1. Pixabay Pixabay has 900,000 images, all of which have a CC0 (public domain) license. No attribution is required, and images are all high quality. Images include stock photos as well as drawings and vector images. Commercial use on physical products or print advertisements may require property and model releases. 2. Pexels Pexels is a favorite here at Hatchbuck. The site features free pictures for pretty much anything you could possibly think of, and they add 100 new photos (or more) to the site on a daily basis. All photos on Pexels feature a CC0 license which takes the worry out of downloading and using photos from the site. What’s not to like? 3. Freepik Freepik is an indispensable resource, providing millions of royalty-free images and graphic design assets such as vectors, illustrations, mockups, and countless templates for any personal and business project. As a free user, attribution is required. However, premium users can download more assets with no attribution necessary. Freepik´s powerful search engine makes finding images, and vector designs efficient, helping deliver creative projects on time. 4. FreeFoto FreeFoto has over 100,000 images you can download free for online use. You must include an attribution link with each picture. Licenses vary, so be careful to check the details of your chosen image. You need to log in with your email address before you can download. You will need to buy a license if you intend to use an image for commercial print use. 5. Dreamstime Dreamstime has a free image category and many paid image categories. Free images fall into two types; public domain, and limited royalty-free images. Dreamstime’s limited royalty-free license allows you to make 10,000 physical products bearing that image without charge as well as unlimited online use. Dreamstime requires you to add a credit line but does not specify that a link is necessary. This credit line must be published with any photos you download, including public domain images. 6. Morguefile Morguefile has an extensive collection of 350,000 free photos. You can use any image for commercial purposes and only need to include attribution (not a link) if you use a photo without altering (or editing it) in any way. 7. iStock Istock photo is a paid subscription service, and all photos are top quality. You can download ten images per month for a few dollars each. If you don’t use your ten pictures in any month, the credits roll over, so you can download 120 images over your 12-month subscription. A Standard License covers online use and up to 50,000 print copies. You will need an Extended License if you plan to use an iStock image on physical products or print more than 50,000 copies. 8. Public Domain Pictures PublicDomainPictures has two levels of download, with standard resolution images being free and higher resolution ones costing 10¢ or less each. Free images have a CC0 public domain license, though some pictures will require property and model release forms for commercial use. 9. Free Digital Photos FreeDigitalPhotos has an extensive collection of high-quality images. Attribution of the image source is needed, but a link is not necessary. Most 400 x 400 images are free, with larger images available for a reasonable fee. Images may not be used in logos. The standard license covers many probable uses, but an extended license is required if you plan to use the image for packaging, physical products such as ties, or in marketing materials. A Warning About Image Licenses You will find images on sites such as Flickr.com that appear to be free to use, either with or without an accreditation link. Be aware that the hosting site gives no guarantee that the license is the correct one. Anyone can take an image and post it on a photo website with a different license than the original. Lawyers for the original copyright holder will chase you, the image user, for compensation for breach of their intellectual property rights. We recommend always using credible, trustworthy stock sites and keeping tabs on licenses for any photos you’re unsure about.
5 Reasons You Should Encourage Your Employees To Take Vacations Posted on May 8, 2017May 8, 2017 by Jonathan Herrick When your team is neck deep in work, the last thing on your mind as a small business owner is to encourage everyone to use up their vacation time. Every day looms as another day that you’ll have to find someone else to substitute for them or take on extra work. But that’s a short-term mindset. Employees who don’t take vacation are at high risk of burnout. And many workers do opt out. Project: Time Off, a national movement to transform American attitudes and behavior about vacation, found that in 2016, Americans took 16.2 days of the 21.9 days of vacation they were offered, on average. Project: Time Off calls this “America’s Lost Week.” Take a stand against this trend of all work and little play. Here are five reasons to encourage your employees to take a vacation. 1. It contributes to a great company culture. When you run a small business, it’s hard to compete with the big guys in winning the war for talent. One way you can gain an edge is by offering a generous vacation policy and making it possible for employees to actually use their paid time off. Many employees don’t take a vacation because of what Project: Time Off calls the “work martyr syndrome.” The top barriers include: Return to a mountain of work (37%) No one else can do the job (30%) I cannot financially afford a vacation (30%) Taking time off is harder as you grow in the company (28%) Want to show complete dedication (22%) Even if you can’t afford to give your team a raise to pay for that next getaway, you can put in place a plan for vacation coverage that removes the other barriers. Cross-train your team ahead of time so no one has to leave in fear that they will be buried with work when they return or that an untrained substitute has created a disaster for them to fix on their first day back. There’s nothing wrong with setting a deadline for employees to submit summer vacation requests to ensure that you can meet customer demand in an orderly way while they are away. 2. It keeps your team’s energy level high. No matter how young and energetic your employees, they still need time to reboot. Even if they can’t afford to head off for two weeks in Aruba, taking a break from a familiar work environment for a few days can help employees recharge and ultimately get more done and bring fresh thinking to their projects once they get back. It may even help them reach their career goals more quickly. Project: Time Off’s research, reported in Harvard Business Review, found that workers who took fewer than 10 of their vacation days annually had a 34.6% chance of receiving a raise or bonus in three years. In contrast, those who took more than 10 of their vacation days had a 65.4% chance of receiving a raise or bonus. 3. It will help employees strengthen their relationships. No one can maintain healthy relationships when focused on work 24/7. When employees take time off from work and spend time with their families and friends on a vacation, it allows them to deepen bonds that contribute to their overall happiness and reduce the stress that comes from neglecting loved ones during busy seasons at work. And when they return to work, their positive energy will be contagious. 4. It lowers balance sheet liabilities. In some companies, vacation days expire if unused. But if your company allows employees to roll over paid time off, this liability can build up on your balance sheet. American companies had a collective $272 billion vacation balance sheet liability on their books in 2016—up 21% from 2015, Project: Time Off found. The per-employee liability in 2016 averaged $2,226. 5. It may lower your healthcare costs. Taking vacations may reduce the risk of certain health issues. The Framingham Heart Study, for instance, found that men who didn’t take a vacation for several years were 30% more likely to have heart attacks than men who didn’t take time off. It also revealed that women who vacationed once every six years or less were almost eight times more likely to develop coronary heart disease or have a heart attack than women who took at least two vacations per year. If you don’t want to create an environment that wears down employees’ health, nudging them to take their vacation time can go a long way. It will help your company, too: If employees develop chronic health conditions, it can contribute to higher healthcare costs for your company. Plus, they might have to take a lot more time off to deal with their medical issues than they would on an average vacation. Encouraging employees to vacation might seem impractical at the moment, but remind yourself of the bigger picture. Over time, when you keep employees energized and engaged your business will thrive.
The Secret to Effective Online Forms Posted on May 5, 2017May 5, 2017 by Jessica Lunk “You can’t build a great building on a weak foundation. You must have a solid foundation if you’re going to have a strong superstructure.” – Gordon B. Hinckley When it comes to converting traffic to leads, there are two keys to success. First, you need to provide a strong incentive for people to sign up, such as great content and a clear value proposition. Second, you need to make it incredibly easy to do so. No matter how great your content or value proposition is, if your signup process sucks so will your results. Thus, you should think of your signup process as a foundation of your conversion funnel. And without the foundation, everything else is just a useless facade. Here’s how to build one. Make It Stand Out To collect leads, your form has to be noticed. That’s the very foundation of building forms that convert. In practice, that means you should put it in a prominent place that follows the logic of how people flow through the copy of your website. This covers the whole page. Also notice the progress bar, countdown timer and another date option. By the way, this ‘webinar’ runs every 15 minutes. Image Source: neilpatel.com Likewise, you want to have a visible CTA that stands out in terms of color, size and shape. If it’s a button, it should look like a button. Eliminate Friction Nothing kills conversions faster than annoyingly complex signup forms. The more fields you require your subscribers to fill in and the more obstacles you create, the lower the chances they’ll ever complete it. Compare this form. Seven versus 15 fields. Do you really need two email addresses and two phone numbers? The first one also offers support and account creation, all within those seven fields. Lengthy and complex signup forms just scare people away. That’s why you want to make the entire process seamless. Here are some tips. Minimize the number of fields: Only include necessary fields. If you don’t need a particular piece of information or you can get it elsewhere, don’t ask for it. Password and email fields: You can go even further. Instead of asking for a password twice, offer an option to show it. In most cases, you just need the email. You can use sales enrichment tools like DataFinder or ZoomInfo to get additional data. Use progressive signup: If you do require a lot of information, use progressive signup forms. That eliminates the risk of demotivating users to fill loads of information in. Get rid of CAPTCHA: In most cases, you don’t need it. Getting rid of a CAPTCHA can significantly boost your conversion rates. Use Auto-Complete Fields: First, make your forms compatible with autofill. That will improve conversions. Then you want to add drop-down fields for data like ‘country’ and make it seamless to pick an option. Drop downs also keep your database clean with uniform data. Simplify Further: If your customers need to pick a size of the product with multiple options, create buttons so it only takes one click. Design can solve many problems…just be creative. Offer a Helping Hand Make sure to guide your subscriber through the signup journey. Explain what’s going on, how many steps are left to take and warn them of mistakes and errors in real-time, not after they submit the form. If you want to go even further, have a live-chat widget available. If your subscribers get lost, you’re losing conversions. Don’t Forget the Microcopy Microcopy refers to any text that accompanies the signup form. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and think about their concerns. Notice the money back guarantee mark, testimonial, ‘no obligation’ and ‘no credit card’ reassurance and prominent customer logos. There are several ways to boost their conversion rates: Reassure them: People are afraid to share their private and financial data. Reassure them you’ll protect the data and won’t abuse their trust. Social proof: Trust marks, media logos, customer testimonials, if placed intelligently, will work well to alleviate any concerns or second thoughts. Urgency: You can add countdown timers or time limits on offers to motivate prospects to complete the form more quickly. Procrastination common, but it’s also a MAJOR conversion rate killer.
Is Your Agency Focusing Too Hard On Your Clients And Trivializing Your Own Initiatives? Posted on May 4, 2017December 5, 2018 by Katie Culp Commitment is good. You need to prove to clients, new and old, that you’re able and willing to take on as much as they can throw at you, and that the old adage is true: the customer is always right. Your customers have got to stay happy so you can keep paying the bills. But at what cost are you keeping your clients happy? Sometimes, agencies fall into the trap known as over-servicing—doing too much to keep clients happy. Yes, it might sound like a humblebrag, but it can get serious. Over-servicing clients could mean you’re giving away services for free that you should be charging for, which hurts your growth; or you’re staunching the development of your own brand, which hurts your growth; or you’re spending more hours and manpower than necessary to keep clients happy—which, yes, also hurts your growth. Basically, what we’re saying is your growth potential might be suffering, and we want to help. Successful small and mid-sized agencies eventually hit a point where they have to evaluate how they’ve reached where they are, and where they’re going next. If you’re in this position, you need to ask yourself some hard questions. Is your agency giving away something you could be charging for? Sometimes simple bonus services, like community engagement and pushing customer marketing, can get away from you down the road. Returning clients may start to expect great work done for free—or at least included in a low-cost package—simply because you started off throwing them in as value-added bonuses. It’s an incredibly difficult thing to ask a client to start paying for something they’ve been getting for free. But the fact is, offering these small bonuses actually devalues your work and brand identity. If what began as a modest Instagram campaign has sprouted into thousands of followers you’re now managing, the client may not realize the kind of workload involved in maintaining those numbers, and could be taking you for granted. The best way to approach the subject is to start a frank dialogue about your own agency’s investment, the ROI for the client and how much you think it’s worth. You can assign a number value to these kinds of services and add them as bonus subscriptions for the client, and let them decide whether they want to start paying for it or not. If you can sell their brand, you can sell them on the idea that what you’re doing has value. Are you taking on more new clients than you can keep up with? It’s okay to say “no” to new clients. In fact, this can be a good thing—it tells these potential clients that you’re doing something right and you’re in high demand. Small agencies tend to get in a mindset that they want to reach out and create as many new opportunities for themselves as possible. But when you do that, you’re limiting the attention you can pay to each existing client, which may damage your relationship with them down the road. You want to keep the influx of new business at a manageable level that works for your agency. This may also mean communicating to clients that you’re busy right now. To be honest, they might even appreciate the candor, because it means you’re not lying about workloads or delivering content past a deadline on a flimsy excuse. It’s not ideal, but if the answer is to bring on outside help to get workloads finished… well, read the next question. Can your agency handle your current workload? Maybe you’ve already hit the point where you’ve stopped accepting new clients and need to focus on the ones you have. But the workload you’re now faced with might be enormous. How do you get around it? If it’s not a good time to hire, consider outsourcing small jobs to freelancers you know and trust. Obviously the midst of a big project isn’t an ideal time to gamble on new talent, but it could be a great opportunity to grow a relationship to keep in mind down the road. Are your agency’s employees happy? The bottom line might be even more clear than evaluating new work against existing work. At the end of the day, if your employees aren’t happy, your business will suffer. Corners will be cut. Clients will notice. Focusing too heavily on client satisfaction can mean forgetting the core troops who got you to where you are. There are numerous ways to boost employee morale—adorable animals and snack food are two of our favourites—but the best course of action is to touch base, meet with people one-on-one, and think about where you can go from here. If you’re growing your business quickly, that’s fantastic. But don’t let that growth get ahead of you.