Friday, March 31, 2017

Why Freelancers And SMEs Should Consider A VPN

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In essence, VPNs create what is known as a virtual private network, where the end users are connected through an encrypted channel. It’s something that is popular today with both corporate and home users as brings great benefits to our interconnected world with all its challenges in terms of both privacy and security.

VPNs provide businesses and particularly freelancers a smorgasbord of unique advantages, including privacy protection, improved security, better connectivity and access to restricted sources.

Security.

This is something that remains a major challenge for the highly interconnected world today. As a freelancer you need your laptop or phone connected to the world as a part of the gig economy However, as soon as your mobile phone and your PC is connected to the internet, you are open to a wealth of malicious programs, hackers, viruses and a number of unknown threats that pop up each day. Additionally, any of the information that you send and receive can be intercepted, viewed or even altered in some way.

There are options for freelancers and small businesses in terms of local security solutions such as a firewall or antivirus, but they are not going to be enough to completely defend you alone. It is important that you have a completely separate external solution for the protection of your communication with the outside world.

This is where VPN comes in. A VPN will protect any connection that is otherwise insecure between you and any remote resource. VPNs are ideal and should be used if you are going to be on a public network or Wi-Fi. As a general rule, you should not consider any network as secure as there is always communication flowing through a variety of points (or routers), and an attacker could hypothetically compromise any of the points to get into the channel and the information flow.

If a communication channel ends up compromised and you are using a VPN alongside other means, you either will not be harmed, or the harm will only be minimal. This is because a VPN connection is encrypted and you cannot decrypt it or read it. Whenever an attacker tries to get into VPN traffic, they will only be able to see incomprehensible characters that are going from you out into the VPN server. The attacker will not be able to see whatever remote source you may be connected to, such as chats, sites, etc. Being up to date with this list of 2017 best VPN services will help you get the best VPN and value for your money.

Privacy Protection.

Reality is, privacy is a serious challenge and you can be identified easily when you are online. Anyone from an aggressive marketing companies and curious people, to government officials can easily find your name and your location and address with very little difficulty and you may not know you’ve left that information. Once you are connected online with your mobile phone or PC, you may not realise it but you leave traces and information. It’s easy for a third party to determine your internet service provider and your IP address. This will often reveal your essential personal information. In order to protect yourself from this, you cannot rely solely on internet service providers or official regulations.

To protect your privacy, you should be using VPN. With a VPN, whenever you go to websites, chat, listen to the radio and more, you will be identified with your VPN provider at their address and location. Essentially all of your personal details and your own IP address will remain hidden.

When you use a VPN for privacy protection, you will be safe from frequent abuse of your personal information. A VPN is a must for someone who wants to disclose their identity.

While there are other solutions such web proxies that will protect identity, they are simply not quite as efficient as the latest VPN technology. For example, proxies will often send out information on the original IP for a client, making them useless when it comes to privacy protection.

Restricted Resource Access.

TVs and online radios will sometimes restrict access to only the clients who are within a certain area or internet service provider. There are other times when the policies of a company will prevent the employees from connecting with anything but the generally available sites or other resources like Facebook. These restrictions will leave you with no other options but to use VPN.

VPNs also have multiple points of presence over different geographical regions. You will be identified only with your VPN provider, allowing you to circumvent any of the geographical restrictions. Because of this VPNs are very popular in countries like China where there could be heavily restricted access to resources and sites. In these countries, you can access anything online just as long as you have a VPN connection.

A VPN will also work the other way around, when it comes to access restrictions. You may want to limit the access to some private resources like file sharing only for a certain network segment. This will be important from a security standpoint as the authentication will rarely be enough to protect the security of your sensitive information.

The VPNs can be used and you can allow the VPN network the connection it needs to the private sensitive resources.

Better Connectivity.

Your internet routes may not be optimal, or the bandwidth may be limited when it comes to international online resources. This will lead to a poor web experience and slower browsing for some resources that are distant from physical location. In this case, you cannot connect to a local VPN that will further route traffic. This allows you to have bandwidth to distant destinations that are similar to bandwidth that is available between you and the local VPN server.

This better connectivity can be observed in users who have ISPs that differentiate the local and international resources. Such providers will enforce bandwidth limits on the access to international resources and you can avoid them by using only VPN.

Other Benefits.

The VPNs also have different benefits that will depend on the VPN service provider that you are using. Some of the VPN providers allow users to share easily and much quicker between themselves, perform activities and play games just as if they were within a LAN, or local area network.

Another benefit may include what is known as port forwarding. This means, if you have a resource like an IP camera, web server, etc., you wish to access remotely or share to the world, you can use the VPN for this purpose. This will be useful if you have a resource that is located inside any local network and has an IP address that is internal. In these cases, this resource can be configured so that it connects to the VPN, thus receiving an external IP where it can be accessed.

The Top Benefits.

If you find the aforementioned to be attractive, you have two choices. You can install a VPN server alone, or you can subscribe to the VPN service provider. Many of the benefits are determined by the particular VPN service provider you use.

Most VPNs are easy to set up and if any of the above rings a bell with you, then I’d suggest taking a closer look at VPNs.



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Develop A Personal Brand On LinkedIn: 7 Tips For Success

linkedin homepage stylized

Creating a strong personal brand on LinkedIn can do a lot for your work prospects and really be a strong addition. These 7 tips will help you make the most of the network:

1. Headline.

As others “get to know you” on LinkedIn, one of the first things they will look at is your headline. Therefore, it is important to showcase your best self for this reason. In addition, any keywords that you include are what will help recruiters locate you. There are a few ways to come up with a good headline.

First, talk in specific terms about yourself and what you have done in the past. There is no room for generalities; you want someone to look at title and know immediately what you have done.

Next, make sure you use good keywords. You can figure out what to include by reading through job postings related to your field. LinkedIn groups are also a good place to find the kind of keywords that can make a difference.

Never say that you don’t currently have a job in the headline. Instead, mention what you have done and what you can do.

2. Picture.

Get a good picture taken. Don’t just have your mother or your sister take it; link up with a professional so that it turns out well. Your profile has a much higher chance of being looked at if there is a photo included. Putting up a good picture is one way to make yourself stand out. The cost is minimal compared with the gains that you could reap. Here are some good tips.

3. Skills/Endorsements.

If you spend any amount of time on LinkedIn, you’ve had a popup appear that asks you about endorsing your contacts for different skills. Most people simply ignore this popup. That is because they have received endorsements from individuals that have never met them or don’t know who they are or what they really do. However, endorsements are worth a second look.

A study that took place last year indicated that users who have at least five skills listed get 31 times more messages than others! Their profiles are also looked at 17 times more than people that don’t have as many skills listed. Therefore, while you may not feel that endorsements are very beneficial, they do attract attention to your page.

It is not hard to manage your endorsements through LinkedIn. All you have to do is place your cursor on the Me icon (which is at the top of the page). Navigate to “View Profile” and then go to the “Featured Skills And Endorsements” area. You can then select individual skills and move them around, putting your best ones at the top. If you have endorsements there that you don’t want, you can block them.

4. Recommendations.

LinkedIn recommendations are powerful, because they allow you to remain modest while others talk positively about you and what you can do. Make sure you get some from your network.

If you really want your recommendations to be valuable, make sure you get one as soon as you finish a project or after you have been given an award or recognition of some sort. Don’t just email to request the recommendation; ask for it in person or pick up the phone and call the individual. This personal approach is appreciated and you can give the person you are talking to more information about the recommendation if they need it.

5. Expertise.

Use SlideShare to show off everything that you know. It is a great way to get more attention to your profile and it helps showcase who you are and what you do. This should be updated regularly as LinkedIn changes regularly as can be seen from this Infographic.

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6. Blog.

You can put up blogs on LinkedIn; these show up on your profile and they can get spread around as people comment on them and like them. Blogs are a great well to help craft your personal brand. Getting some love to your blog can be a smart move too and can get people interested in what you have to say.

7. Photos/Video.

If you want your profile to really show off your best self, you need to add in pictures and video. This is easy to do; simply navigate to the Summary, Education or Experience sections and upload what you want.

Your background banner can also have images; put in a logo or a picture that has something to do with your brand. For example, a chef may put up a picture of an event that he recently catered or a farmer may snap a shot of his crops.

Use videos to showcase your skills. For example, a short clip of you talking can indicate what a good public speaker you are. That’s more powerful than simply writing that you are a good public speaker.



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7 Entrepreneurs Who Started Successful Businesses In College

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by Nate Vickery, editor-in-chief of Bizzmarkblog.com

Living in the age of business adventurists such as Millennials comes with many benefits, the greatest one being that entrepreneurship is highly encouraged and valued from a very early age, and finding purpose in your professional ventures is rewarding in numerous ways.

Some of the names that have paved the way for such undertakings serve as the greatest inspiration for young people all over the globe who are trying to make a name for themselves in any industry. Their contribution and success still resonate within the always competitive and growing world of business, so let us introduce you to the world’s youngest and most successful entrepreneurs whose careers have already made a difference.

Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little.

These are the names of men that are responsible for changing the world of blogging by inventing WordPress. The open-source platform that allowed regular people to share and shape the information online through their writing is now the predominant tool of the entire blogosphere, accounting for almost 30% of the top 10 million websites in existence.

Matt was only nineteen and a freshman at the time, which didn’t stop them from pursuing their dream of creating a tool that will enable anyone to build and maintain a website. Their timing was perfect, as blogs were becoming an increasingly popular way of spreading information, and this trend has only grown ever since.

Seth Berkowitz.

Seth built his business on the simple human love for all things sweet as the living proof that the digital world is not the only one on the rise. In fact, he was the one who craved cookies in the wee hours of the night, but was reluctant to go out into the cold and buy them, so he came up with Insomnia cookies.

An instant success among college students, his business endeavour was unlike any other that was popular in Pennsylvania at the time, because everyone was looking for a serious banking opportunity. Starting his own cookie business is evidence of how a seemingly simple idea can make a great impact.

Jamie Beaton.

Fully comprehending the challenges and requirements of Ivy League education, this 22-year-old New Zealand business owner, a Harvard graduate himself, decided to use his expertise and knowledge to help kids define their aspirations and gain world-class education.

Crimson Education, his company that provides professional support for university admissions, tutoring and other educational services came about when Jamie realized the lack of appropriate support for future and current university students, so he decided to fill the gap. As he started with about $40 in his bank account, a moderate Facebook reach and a helpful community, he is a true example of how a brilliant idea can grow from very humble beginnings and truly make a difference in the world.

Mark Zuckerberg.

At the forefront of social media development, Mark came up with the idea of Facebook while he was still attending Harvard. His previous endeavours that turned out not to be successful, such as Synapse, Wirehog and Facemash, never stopped him from tackling new challenges, among which the famous social media platform definitely is his greatest innovation.

Leaving Harvard upon creating Facebook, he decided to develop his online career even further, which now seems like the best decision he could have made, as his estimated net worth as of this year is US $53.6 billion, which makes him the fifth richest person in the world at only 32.

Susan Gregg Koger and Eric Koger.

While they were still in high-school, these two teenagers started developing the idea that is now known as one of the greatest fashion ventures online. ModCloth and its humble beginnings were based on Susan’s desire to sell off her clothes that she could no longer wear. With the help of her husband (then boyfriend), she started an online store that made a sale on day one.

Later on, during their time in college, they invested more time in their business. This allowed them to operate in multiple locations, with approximately 450 employees working on shipping and packaging, significantly improving their business infrastructure. Preserving the vintage spirit, Susan and Eric still pride themselves on their rocky start and all the effort it took for their business to skyrocket to its current size.

Just some among many successful young people, these innovators are prime examples of bold creativity and perseverance in business. Follow their lead, use their stories as your inspiration and perhaps yours will be the next brilliant idea to take the world by storm!

 

nate-vickery

Nate Vickery is a business technology consultant mostly engaged in management and marketing for SMB and startups. Nate is also the editor-in-chief at a business oriented blog Bizzmarkblog.com.



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Thursday, March 30, 2017

Is Your WordPress Website Optimised?

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WordPress is one of the world’s greatest, if not the greatest, open-source platforms available. Powering over 26% of the world-wide web, it is the world’s most popular Content Management System with a market share of over 54%!

With its great ease comes great flexibility and plenty of opportunity to optimise your WordPress website for maximum performance.

Here are some tips to get your WordPress website optimised to the maximum!

Optimise for SPEED!

WordPress comes with tons of plugins to optimise for speed. Starting with a nicely designed WordPress theme is the first place to start as nice clean code will make it easier and quicker for your website to render.

The second area to help improve your WordPress website speed is to enable caching. Caching enables you to store files and images on your server or your visitors browser for quicker loading when they revisit your website or browse through other pages. The plugin WP-Rocket, comes highly recommended.

The third way to improve the speed of your WordPress website is to optimise your images. PNG images can be of a very high quality and a small file size. You can compress your PNG images before uploading over at www.tinypng.org or install their incredible WordPress Plugin.

Optimise for SEO!

WordPress is considered by many to be the best Content Management System that there is for SEO. WordPress is considered the best platform for SEO as straight out of the box it is SEO friendly, it comes with Permalinks, Header & Title tags and Mobile Optimisation as standard – All factors which help improve your SEO.

Considered by many to be the holy grail of SEO plugins, The Yoast SEO plugin is the #1WordPress SEO plugin on the market today.

Yoast enables you to optimise your WordPress website for SEO and write better content. Using a simple traffic light system, Yoast gives you a score for your SEO efforts and suggests ways for you to improve upon them.

Not only does it help with SEO, Yoast also helps you write incredible Meta Tags which are key to SEO as you need people to click on them inside the Search Engine Results.

Yoast helps you write better content as it also takes into account the Flesch reading score which rates how easy or difficult your content is to read, in turn improving user experience and usability and helping to improve your SEO.

Yoast will hold your hand every step of the way, you no longer need to worry if your Title Tags, Keywords and URLs are SEO friendly as Yoast gives you a checklist, a score and offers ways to maximise them.

Optimise for Security!

Being the world’s most popular open source platform, WordPress also comes with its security risks. There have been many mass hacking attempts that have spread through WordPress websites and shared servers like wildfire.

Whilst WordPress may seem vulnerable at times, it’s actually easier to protect your WordPress website than it is to hack one.

Firstly make sure you use a strong username and password for your login page, use a password generator to generate you a secure password.

Secondly, you can rename your wp-admin page using this plugin. This can help stop bots who automatically scan for the default WordPress Admin URL.

Thirdly, you can protect your WordPress Admin login page with HTACCESS and add an extra layer of password protection.

Whilst these only stop hackers getting into your website through the admin panel, skilled hackers can get in through vulnerable folders, such as your uploads folder. The best way to fully protect your website from every angle is to use the Sucuri plugin.

Sucuri lets you set alerts every time someone tries to login to your website and successfully logs in to your website or fails to login. You can block users from logging in by certain usernames and also IP addresses.

Better than that Sucuri helps you recover from a hack attack and helps you to prevent one by locking down or “hardening” your vulnerable files and folders to prevent them from being hacked.

Optimise for Users!

Optimising your WordPress design & website for users is the foundation to improving your conversions and one of the factors that can improve your SEO rankings.

A reported 38% of users will stop interacting with a website if the layout is ugly and a further 66% of people will spend up to 15 minutes reading content if the design is considered to be beautiful – According to SEO authority Neil Patel.

What’s bang on trend for 2017 is personalisation and this will only get bigger. Personalisation is much more than putting someone’s name in a bulk email blast, its giving them a tailored experience around your website and follow up marketing based on their behaviours.

This means giving returning visitors a different experience to first time viewers, it means if you run an eCommerce store and a visitor is looking at yellow trainers for men, then you’re marketing to them would be tailored showing them yellow trainers for me. If you run a website connecting buyers with hotel rooms and you have a customer looking for hotels in Birmingham, then your follow up marketing and messaging to them would be showing them hotels in Birmingham. It’s based around their behaviours and their intent.

There are some other ways to optimise usability:

Be mobile friendly – Ensure your WordPress design is mobile friendly

Optimise your forms – Don’t give users unnecessary fields to fill out, try using Contact form 7 for its ease of use and flexibility

Optimise the journey – Ask your friends, family or even go to usertesting.com, set people tasks and see how long it takes them to achieve them, use the feedback to remove steps and make a journey clearer and easier to complete.



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Arthur Salzer, Northland Wealth Management CEO, On What’s Leading Greater Interest In “Impact Investing”

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Earlier this week, when entrepreneur and philanthropist David Rockefeller – the last living grandchild of American oil tycoon John Rockefeller – passed away, there was immediate interest in who would take control of the Rockefeller fortune. The death of the steward to the multi-billion dollar empire also sparked conversations around the importance and difficulty in maintaining a wealthy family’s fortune over multiple generations.

While the Rockefeller estate, which is estimated to be valued at roughly $3.3 billion USD, is most likely safe due to the strategic investment and philanthropic endeavors of the late David Rockefeller and the surviving Rockefellers, it is startling to know that approximately 70 percent of families lose their wealth by the second generation. It is even more alarming to know that 90 percent of wealth is lost by the third generation.

“Looking at the numbers, 78 percent feel the next generation is not financially responsible enough to handle inheritance,” said Chris Heilmann, chief fiduciary executive of U.S. Trust.

These statistics reinforce a very important financial question, namely, how can the wealthy families of today ensure the fortunes they have built not only endure, but go on to continue prosperous growth?

The answer to that question could lie with the next generation of family wealth investors.

Driven largely by coming of age and adult millennials, one of the most popular trends at family offices, which are boutique-style investment and wealth management firms, has been what’s called “impact investing”. This relatively new investment and wealth continuation strategy focuses on investing in companies, organizations, and funds with the purpose of generating measurable social and environmental impact, in addition to financial returns.

Even though the concept of ethical investing may be relatively new to a lot of us, it has gained traction as one that delivers actual investment growth. In Canada alone, there is roughly $1.5-trillion in assets involved in some sort of responsible investing strategy.

“We have been seeing very significant growth in responsible investment assets over recent years, both in Canada and internationally,” said Jason Milne, chair of the Responsible Investment Association board.

In fact, over the last two years, impact investing has grown by 49 percent and currently makes up 38 percent of the Canadian investment market.

Impact investing was also a popular topic at the 2014 The Campden North American Family Office Conference. The event, which brings together family office financial advisers and wealth managers from across North America, featured a panel discussion on Families Embracing the Future. Arthur Salzer, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer of Northland Wealth Management, a Canadian investment management services firm, moderated the panel and the discussion around impact investing.

For Arthur Salzer, ethical investing offers a solution for those who want to know their investments are having a positive influence.

“Impact investing is bridging the gap between an investor’s heart and mind,” explained Salzer. “It is also offering a real resolution to generational investment issues, because it is a viable option for maintaining a family’s wealth, while also supporting communities at home and abroad.”

Panelist member, Justin Rockefeller, a fifth-generation member of the Rockefeller family, has established his own non-profit NGO called The ImPact, focusing solely on impact investing. The membership-style ImPact calls on wealthy families to make a ‘pact’ in relation to a positive social goal.

“I’m very proud of my ancestors, and the work that they did both with capitalism and philanthropy,” says Rockefeller. “And I can point to many ways they improved the lives of people they’ve known but also people they never knew. I’m proud to be a part of that legacy, and I hope, through impact investing, I hope to build on top of that legacy.”

For the Rockefellers, one of America’s wealthiest families, impact investing has been one key to ensuring their fortune lasts from generation to generation; ethical investing is also helping the next generation make their own enduring mark.



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Business Ethics And Social Responsibility

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The study of business ethics refers to the ethical dimensions of productive organizations and commercial activities, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. It applies to the production, distribution, marketing, sale and consumption of goods and services. It can include potentially controversial issues like insider trading, bribery and discrimination.

From its roots in ancient Greece to modern topics like unequal gender pay, business ethics is a large field of study. There are several journals devoted to business ethics, and it appears in mainstream philosophy and social science journals as well. However, there is a difference between business ethics and social responsibility (and corporate social responsibility).

The Daily Impact of Business Decisions.

Business decisions related to ethics impact the daily lives of professionals and consumers. Many people are employed at organizations that sell or provide goods and services. Professionals like lawyers and accountants are bound by codes of conduct from professional societies, and other professionals must practice sound business ethics in their role and with co-workers, clients and the public.

Consumers interact with the brands and people in a business, and these exchanges affect the success of the business. For example, small businesses depend on reputation and trust among people in the community. By treating employees and customers well, businesses can gain the community’s support.

Unethical business practices can have the opposite effect on customers. False or discriminatory advertising, negative treatment of employees and ignoring safety concerns in products can undermine consumer confidence. Legal action can also result.

Relating Business Ethics and Social Responsibility.

Business leaders and organizations can examine how their decisions relate to social responsibility, which is a general concept that can include social as well as cultural, economic and environmental issues. By integrating business ethics and principles of social responsibility, organizations can make a difference in the world and enhance their reputation.

Some companies have adopted the social entrepreneurship model of business that focuses on applying practical, innovative and sustainable approaches to benefit society. The shoe retailer TOMS is one of the most popular examples of the social entrepreneurship model. For every pair of shoes sold, the company provides a new pair of shoes to children in developing countries.

Another example of combining business ethics and social responsibility is by focusing on benefiting the environment. Forbes notes some of the reasons why Seventh Generation, a Burlington, Vermont-based company that produces and distributes green products, was recognized as the best company for the environment.

  • Selling products such as biodegradable, vegetable-based cleaning products, chlorine-free tampons and paper towels and natural lotion baby wipes.
  • Developing an employee bonus program that awards workers who figure out how to make the company’s goods even more sustainable.
  • Having an LEED-certified building where more than a quarter of the company’s fleet is comprised of low-emissions cars and more than a quarter of the energy burned in manufacturing its products comes from renewable energy.

Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility.

Definition and Characteristics

Corporate social responsibility is similar to ideas of social responsibility for individuals and businesses. Some sources provide similar definitions for the two terms, but corporate social responsibility is a specific business approach that began in the 1950s and 1960s, with definitions expanding in the ensuing decades.

There is no universally accepted definition of corporate social responsibility, according to the Journal of Business Ethics, but two features can be used to differentiate corporate social responsibility from other activities: 1) They partly or entirely benefit society and/or general interests; and 2) they are not obligated by law. Other aspects of corporate social responsibility can vary.

  • Domains include environmental friendliness, community support, local products promotion, fair employee treatment and more.
  • Stakeholders include employees, suppliers, customers, communities, the environment, investors and regulators.
  • Policies and activities include cause-related marketing (marketing programs that combine sales objectives and helping worthy causes), sponsorship (connecting worthy causes to a brand or organization for money) and corporate philanthropy (charitable donations).

Some organizations engage in corporate social responsibility activities for intrinsic reasons: to help out and make societal contributions. Another motive is extrinsic, which relates to a company expecting financial or other benefits for socially responsible behavior. Many studies reflect positive organizational outcomes for corporate social responsibility activities, the Journal of Business Ethics reports. Finally, a third motive for corporate social responsibility activities is meeting societal expectations and stakeholder pressure.

Interaction

According to a paper in Procedia Economics and Finance, corporate social responsibility is a subset of business ethics. This conclusion was made when viewing corporate social responsibility under the normative stakeholder theory, or a philosophy that “affirms that business corporations are ‘morally’ responsible to look after the concerns of a larger group of stake holders which could include owners, customers, vendors, employees and community rather than its stockholders.” Some sources define stakeholders as groups that the organization depends on for its existence.

In this context, corporate social responsibility becomes synonymous with the duties and relationship between the business and the environment that facilitates its existence. And thus, it is not enough to cover certain ethical practices in businesses. For instance, corporate social responsibility does not include the ethicality of how the organization pursues profits or subscribes to political associations.

Corporate social responsibility is related to business ethics, but the former is a narrow topic within the latter area. Businesses should use corporate social responsibility along with processes like corporate governance, corporate outreach and politics, business process redesign and corporate strategy to reconcile with the ethicality of doing business, according to Procedia Economics and Finance.

Applying Ethics to a Career in Business.

Business professionals should have a solid grasp of ethical practices for their careers. Grace College’s business programs are rooted in sound moral and ethical approaches to business, with a focus on Christian servant leadership.

Grace’s fully online Bachelor of Science in Business Administration focuses on the skills and tools graduates need to adapt and excel in the business world. This GOAL (Grace Opportunities for Adult Learners) program is designed for students balancing personal commitments while pursuing an education. It is priced substantially below most degree completion programs and can be completed in as little as 16 months.

Grace’s fully online Master of Business Administration provides students with a strong foundation in marketing, accounting, finance and human resources as well as coursework in entrepreneurship. This program can help graduates pursue leadership opportunities in business.



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Global Impact: Social Entrepreneurship Companies

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Blake Mycoskie visited Argentina in 2006 and saw children walking in the streets outside Buenos Aires without shoes. He was inspired to take action after learning how shoes are an effective way to combat disease. Nearly one-quarter of the world’s population has soil-transmitted infections, according to the World Health Organization, and they affect the poorest and most deprived communities.

Mycoskie founded TOMS the same year and established a “buy one, give one” model. For every pair of shoes sold, TOMS would provide a new pair of shoes to children in Argentina and other developing countries. TOMS’ dedication to giving has expanded to several items in more than 70 countries.

  • More than 60 million people have received pairs of shoes.
  • More than 400,000 people have received prescription glasses, sight-saving surgery or medical treatment to restore their sight.
  • More than 335,000 people have received a week of safe water.
  • More than 25,000 mothers have received safe birth services.

TOMS is a well-known example of social entrepreneurship companies, which have recently grown in popularity. Many business leaders are dedicated to changing the world through the idea of social entrepreneurship.

What Is Social Entrepreneurship?

“Social entrepreneurship is about applying practical, innovative and sustainable approaches to benefit society in general, with an emphasis on those who are marginalized and poor,” according to the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. Certain values and characteristics set “the social entrepreneur apart from the rest of the crowd of well-meaning people and organizations who dedicate their lives to social improvement.”

  • Achieving large-scale, systemic and sustainable social change.
  • Focusing first and foremost on the social and/or ecological value creation and trying to optimize the financial value creation.
  • Innovation through a new product, a new service or a new approach to a social problem.
  • Continuously refining and adapting approaches in response to feedback.

These standards and differences are illustrated in the way that an organization is founded. Fast Company asks six questions that entrepreneurs should answer before starting a social enterprise.

What is the problem you’re trying to solve? 

Social enterprises solve a social challenge by using the power of the market. This mission should be considered when developing a business plan, planning to raise capital and implementing a strategy. Social entrepreneurs need to know what is at the heart of what they are trying to achieve.

What is your business model?

Social enterprises have unique challenges when building a business model. One is the “serving two masters” challenge, which pits profit against purpose. Generally, investors focus on growth, profits and valuation. Social enterprises need a business model that demonstrates value while remaining true to a social mission.

How will you measure your impact?

Investors ask companies not only for their financial projections, but also for how the business model contributes to solving a social problem.

What is your plan for capital and growth?

Investors often expect a successful “exit” within five or so years. Some companies choose an IPO path, acquisition offers or a “recap” to bring in new investors to buy out earlier investors. Social entrepreneurs need to be careful about the investors they align with.

How will you tell your story?

Stories can appeal to investors and consumers. This is not an “elevator pitch,” but more of a “passion pitch.” Greyston Bakery employs people to help them out of poverty. Its slogan reads: “We don’t hire people to bake brownies. We bake brownies to hire people.”

What corporate form should you take?

The right corporate form enables the company to raise capital from the right investors and partners. Social enterprises can register as a C corporation, and other forms — B corporation, low-profit limited liability corporation or 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a for-profit subsidiary — may provide more flexibility.

Prominent Social Enterprises.

Warby Parker

Similar to TOMS, eyeglass seller Warby Parker has a “buy a pair, give a pair” model for donating glasses. The company has donated more than 2 million glasses in an effort to support the nearly 1 billion people worldwide who lack access to glasses.

d.light

Solar energy company d.light concentrates on helping the 2 billion people in the world without access to reliable electricity. It focuses on “powering a brighter future for our customers,” and d.light measures social impact in a number of ways.

  • 65 million lives empowered.
  • 17 million school-age children reached with solar lighting.
  • 127 GWH generated from a renewable energy source.
  • $5.2 billion saved in energy-related expenses.
  • 23 million tons of carbon dioxide offset.
  • 34 billion productive hours created for working and studying.

Since 2012, the company has received the highest possible score on the Global Impact Investment Rating System assessment of social and environmental impact. Before the end of 2020, d.light says that it will have helped transform the lives of 100 million people.

Greyston Bakery

Greyston Bakery impacts 2,200 Yonkers community members annually. The company began with an “open hiring” policy of employing those regardless of education, work history or past social barriers like incarceration, homelessness or drug use, but Greyston Bakery expanded its mission to help create thriving communities.

  • Built low-income apartments for the formerly homeless, which offered housing to workers and their peers.
  • Founded the Greyston Child Care Center to prevent child care from being a barrier to work.
  • Opened Issan House and the Maitri Center to provide housing and adult day health services for people living with HIV/AIDS.
  • Created the Community Gardens and Environmental Education program for awareness of health disparities for communities of color.
  • Launched WD 2.0, a comprehensive workforce development program.

Becoming an Entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurs require a wide range of skills and knowledge to lead businesses successfully. Grace College’s fully online Master of Business Administration provides students with a strong foundation in marketing, accounting, finance and human resources as well as coursework in entrepreneurship. This faith-based program can help graduates pursue leadership opportunities in business, and it takes place in a convenient online learning environment.



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3 Ways To Capitalize On Your Website Traffic

by Eugenie Delhaye, co-founder of My Little Big Web

web_development

When you receive an influx of organic traffic to your website from social media or quality backlinks, an important question tends to spring to mind: how can you capitalize on this new web traffic to create new customers?

Bringing in lots of traffic is only the beginning stage in making successful conversions. Your website could be ranked on the first page of Google and receiving multitudes of daily visitors but this traffic is worthless if they aren’t taking action once they reach your page.

Once you’ve spent a significant amount of time increasing web traffic from several different channels, it is important to understand how you can convert that traffic into valued customers.

Follow these 5 effective practices to make the most of your new visitors and begin seeing conversion results that lead to great success:

Create compelling calls to action.

One of the most crucial ways to capitalize on your web traffic is using strategically-placed and relevant calls to action. A call to action is exactly what it sounds like: inviting the user to perform an action on your website.

The actions you want the user to perform are entirely dependant on what your business offers. If you run a marketing agency, for example, your calls to action would likely include signing up for web marketing services with a clickable button.

Some things to consider when creating effective calls to action:

  • Create a sense of urgency and be specific
  • Don’t include more than one action per page
  • Position your call to action for clear visibility
  • Grab attention with color and contrast
  • Be sure to study your results in order to improve

Using clearly visible, persuasive and compelling calls to action will significantly boost your click-through rates for all the web traffic you bring to your site.

Build an email list.

Having an email subscription service on your website that sends out newsletters with updates, promotions and calls to action is an invaluable way to convert traffic into new customers. With an email subscription option, you can begin to build an email list that will lead to successful conversions.

Because of the personal nature of email, you will be able to easily target potential customers in a casual and inviting manner. Marketing to consumers via email can be more effective than social media since you don’t have to worry about algorithm changes or outside influence. You have complete control.

Even better is the fact that there is an endless amount of great content to include in your newsletters. Exceptional content engages the user and makes him far more likely to perform the actions you want him to.

Ensure a high-quality user experience.

Perhaps the most important consideration to make when trying to capitalize on website traffic is the quality of your user experience. It should go without saying that a poor user experience will make people leave your site, simple as that.

A superior user experience will grab peoples’ attention and create a desire within them to perform an action on your site. In order to achieve this, you will need a great website design and layout, as well as excellent content for the user to engage with.

Having a great web design means everything from headings to page speed must be optimized to deliver the best experience possible to the user. You should also be certain that your website is mobile-friendly, an absolute necessity considering the number of smartphones on the market.

Final thoughts.

Web traffic on its own is entirely useless if you haven’t taken the steps necessary to convert visitors into customers. This can be achieved using compelling calls to action, getting users to join your mailing list and creating a memorable user experience with a well-designed website and great content to engage your audience.

 

eugenie delhaye

Eugenie Delhaye is a web marketing expert and founding member of a Montreal-based agency called My Little Big Web. She has successfully managed over 600 marketing campaigns, written numerous articles and regularly share her expertise at SEO and marketing conferences.



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Web Weaving – Utilising Digital Marketing To Ensnare A Wider Audience

Web Design

Think of your website as a web in the middle of your sales funnel.

You want potential customers to stick to the web so they will browse and hopefully make a purchase, but first you have to lead them to your website.

As we know all too well, in today’s digital age, simply creating a website and waiting for customers to come to you isn’t going to cut it. You’re going to have draw them in. If you feel stuck, as if your current audience is too limited, it might be time to widen your digital net to draw in a bigger customer base. A good digital marketing agency will get you on the path to growth, but first take a couple of minutes to understand the digital marketing techniques that can be used to expand your audience.

Pay for it.

Before you can expect organic search results, you should start by increasing paid traffic to your site.

Pay per click (PPC) campaigns are the easiest and fastest way to get yourself ranking on Google, but they can also get pretty pricey, so you will want to back these up with organic search optimisation and paid advertising on other sites. Often the cheapest online advertising option will be to advertise on social media sites (which I will get to later in the article).

PPC campaigns are run through Google Adwords, and allows you to bid on specific keywords in order to get your site in front of people searching for those specific search terms. You only have to pay when people click on your advertisement (hence the term pay per click), but depending on how much you have to bid for certain keywords, the price will really vary. That’s why it’s helpful to have a professional to develop a strategy that fits with your budget.

Be a standout in your field.

An engaging social media presence and a good content strategy will help you open up your sales funnel and drive customers to your website. Your social media profiles and your content combine to make you a knowledge source and industry leader by giving potential customers a fun and interesting way to interact with you and get to know your brand. When a customer has your post on their social media feed right next to a post by someone they actually know, they begin to form a relationship with your brand.

The key here is to post content that your customers want to see. This can be entertaining or informative, but either way it should relate to your industry and the product or service you’re offering. Know what your audience wants to see, whether it’s a cute picture of the office dog at this morning’s meeting or a technical whitepaper (or both!).

At their fingertips.

These days, everyone has a smart phone, and, at the end of last year, mobile browsing officially surpassed desktop browsing. If it isn’t already, make your website mobile friendly! There’s no easier way to ensure you’ll passed over for the next Google search result than if your site becomes completely unreadable when pulled up on a phone.

The layout of your website isn’t the only thing you should keep in mind with mobile browsing.

The way your customers are looking for information has changed because of smartphones. Most social media sites are accessed via smartphones. Getting your Instagram ad in front of a potential customer with a Call Now button right there on the ad is going to be both cheaper and more effective than a print ad ever was.

Learning digital marketing techniques to expand your customer base can seem overwhelming, but with a little direction and planning you’ll be well on your way to weaving the perfect web.



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How To Boost Productivity with Online Forms

jotform

by Ashley Walsh, VP of Marketing for Formstack

Guess what? None of us are as productive at work as we think we are. In fact, when we think we are being the most productive by multitasking, we’re actually making it worse. A recent study showed that multitasking increases the time it takes to complete a single task by 25%. Along with other productivity drains like email and office tasks, it’s tough to actually increase efficiency and productivity.

So, how do you solve this? Consider online forms. By incorporating online forms into tasks like reimbursement requests, customer contracts, project proposals, and PTO requests, you will save everyone in the company a lot of time.

Customer contracts.

The drafting of client contracts can be a rather detail-oriented duty, which means it typically takes quite a bit of time. It’s also a fundamental part of running a business. For example, at the commercial tea company Twinings, a single customer contract used to take two full business days to process, including getting sales approvals, completing background checks, and fulfilling financial reviews. The answer to this drawn-out process for Twinings was an online form for workflow management. An online form can collect customer information and then automatically send it to the appropriate staff members within your company. For Twinings, this new online form process effectively eliminated two sets of to-do lists and multiple recurring tasks for everyone. 

Project proposals.

Fun fact: did you know that inessential meetings could cost a company up to 300,000 hours and $300 million a year? It’s true. If those numbers don’t make you want to start from scratch on a whole new process, then what will? Obviously, all your employees still need to stay up to date with client projects, in-office assignments, and other responsibilities. This is where online project management forms can help. A project management form can be the central hub where personnel can enter their ideas for review as they develop instead of setting up yet another meeting and disrupting fellow employees’ workflow.

PTO requests.

When you’re sick, the last thing you want to do is take the time to contact all kinds of management and HR personnel to get the day off. The same goes for trying to get vacation time approved. With an online process, these paid time off (PTO) requests can be streamlined for everyone’s convenience. Moving PTO requests to online forms also makes it easier for employees and management alike to keep track of hours and days left for each individual employee. By storing this information in a centralized, easy-access location, you’re saving time and effort for everyone involved, allowing each employee to focus on more pressing tasks.

Reimbursement requests.

Let’s face it: no one enjoys filling out an expense reimbursement form. However, it’s an obligation for employees in nearly every business. Setting up a reimbursement form can save hours of tedious receipt reading and data entry. Once the form is set up with all the required fields, it should only take employees a few minutes to complete it with the necessary information and deliver it to the right people in the right departments.

There are so many ways to streamline workflows with the use of online forms that will increase the effectiveness and productivity of your employees. And with people wasting 40 percent of their workday on mundane administrative tasks, restructuring any procedures that slow the flow of your organization is crucial to the success of your business.

 

Ashley Walsh 2

Ashley Walsh has worked in multiple areas of the B2B marketing sector and is currently the Director of Marketing for Formstack, an online form building solution based in Indianapolis.



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Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Do You Have What It Takes To Start A PCB Design Firm?

printed-circuit-board

PCBs, also known as printed circuit boards, are very important components that are found in various electronic devices. Medical devices, smartphones, calculators and weapons systems all contain PCBs. These designs have become integral in many industries, and this industry has shifted globally to areas such as China and India.

One segment of this market includes application and manufacturing, while the other segment focuses on innovation. These designs have also become more complicated, and the development times have decreased. This means that if you are considering starting a PCB design service, there are certain factors you will need to address if you want your business to be competitive.

What are the Challenges?

You may have the engineering and design capabilities required to operate this type of business, and you may have the best PCB layout software at your disposal, but you must be proficient in other skills in order to be successful. Negotiation, sales and marketing will be necessary to propel your business within the industry.

An inexperienced designer will likely encounter more obstacles when starting a PCB design service than a seasoned designer. With that being said, if you do not have several years of experience in designing and engineering printed circuit boards, you may want to consider partnering with another designer or company in the industry to gain some knowledge and improve your online portfolio.

Acquiring New Customers.

It will be your task to convince your potential customers why they should choose your design service instead of working with companies that are more established. This is your opportunity to place a spotlight on the services your company offers.

Many companies that use PCB design often have difficulties during the design process, and they typically incur additional costs due to delays. Explain that your service manages the entire process. This should include management from design concept to completed product. By hiring your firm, they will be able to focus on other business related tasks.

What Services Should Your PCB Design Company Offer?

In addition to design, your business should offer a range of services that include, but are not exclusive to:

  • Signal integrity
  • Studies for design efficiency
  • Training
  • Consultations
  • Data management
  • PCB assembly
  • PCB fabrication

Continuing Education.

Unless you have a degree in electronics engineering with an emphasis in PCB design, you will need to learn the entire PCB design process. You have a choice of taking offline courses, or you can study online tutorials. Textbooks, seminars, workshops and online lessons are just some of the educational resources that PCB design business owners can utilize to expand their knowledge and grow your business at the same time.

Choose Your Niche.

You may decide that you want to target designers and developers that are in low cost PCB commodities. These are developers that design printed circuit boards for inexpensive mass produced items like calculators. You may decide to enter the segment of the market that focuses on innovative designs like flexible circuits.

Designing printed circuit boards is only one part of the equation. Strong marketing and sales skills are also necessary to operate a successful PCB design service.

[Image credit: European Circuits Ltd]



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Can Document Management Restore Consumers’ Trust In Enterprises?

By Jesse Wood, CEO of eFileCabinet

papersHave you ever looked at a work project gone wrong and wondered, how did this happen, who made this change, or how did this slip through the cracks? If you’re like most knowledge workers, the answer is a resounding “yes.”

These glaring questions have become so prevalent in organizations that headlines now pose them not only to businesses under fire, but also to consumers, who today — as never before — question whether organizations can be trusted with their information.

This occurs for only two reasons, both of which are deeply rooted in a lack of checks and balances, tracking, and using one central, secure repository to store information: each a byproduct of either paper-dependent business practices or arbitrary storing and classifying of digital information: Consider the following examples:

1. Regional Radiology Center in Fort Myers.

The Regional Radiology Center in Fort Myers, Fla. suffered a compromising of paper-based information on Feb. 12 this year, forcing the center to report the incident to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, including the individuals To maintain HIPAA compliance, the center also notified patients of the incident.

Although the amount of reputational damage incurred from the incident is yet to be quantified, one thing is certain: It was preventable. if the center retained its information strictly in not just a digital format, but a secure digital format while retaining paper information only as needed, the incident wouldn’t have happened. Although most paper-based breaches and leaks occurred prior to the advent of digital technology, events like this one still occur today.

However, although un-securely digitizing information technically makes an organization paperless, it leads to an array of different issues, which also make accountability, security, and compliance harder to reify. Most digital information is breach-susceptible and predominately unstructured, making it difficult to keep information safe, findable, and leverageable for auditors’, enterprises’, and consumers’ benefit alike.

And the secret is out. Andrew McGill, recently featured in The Atlantic, built a fake web toaster just to see how long it took to get hacked: Compromised within the very hour it came into existence, McGill’s findings lent further credibility to consumer sentiment: They don’t trust businesses with their information.

2. Wells Fargo.

Also consider the recent ignominy of Wells Fargo. Like most banks, credit unions, and financial institutions, Wells Fargo had digital systems in place, as most banks do, yet circumvented legal penalties for fraudulently creating millions of unauthorized bank and credit card accounts for over 5 years. Even Wells Fargo’s auditor is under fire for failing to detect the organization’s illicit activity sooner.

Looking at the course of information “management’s” evolution over the past twenty years, companies have, in general, evolved to predominately rely on and store information digitally, yet un-securely and through paper documents, too.

These competing mediums of information storage and sharing exist in most businesses today, increasing needless file duplication, re-creation, and difficulty in file retrieval. Couple this with the fact that 90% of the world’s data was created within the last 2 years, and the result is unchecked chaos, making information and process transparency a pipe dream without the right technology in place.

This means we’ve reached a divergent road in the history of information management — one which splits inevitably at the solutions organizations use to solve the problems that paper and unchecked digitization have caused.

A document management system, for instance, is a contender for solving this issue: its audit trail features would’ve rendered any omissions on Wells Fargo’s end too egregious for auditors to miss, perhaps saving consumers from the scandal or, at the very least, revealing auditor’s culpability.

Additionally, functioning as a central repository for all workflow and document usage and editing, these systems could have traced exactly who knew what within Wells Fargo’s walls, making the e-discovery and prosecution process far simpler, and, perhaps the entire incident itself, preventable.

If Fort Myers Regional Radiology Center had digitized its patients’ documents and uploaded them to a secure document management system, it would have neither compromised patient information nor had to report the incident to the government, or those whom were affected.

Without mass adoption of document management technology across compliance-centric industries such as finance, accounting, insurance, manufacturing, healthcare, and human resources (industries vital to the lifeblood of the economy) digital data breaches and the un-secureness of paper-dependent processes will persist. Although some documents must be kept in paper format for compliance and consumer-accessibility purposes, there are very few businesses that couldn’t go 98% paperless and still be 100% compliant.

Fort Myers Regional Medical Center and Wells Fargo are only microcosms of a much larger issue: 61% of data breach reports involve paper documentation, fraud is on the rise, and the “fast food” mentality of managing digital information, which has made us too comfortable and “complacent” with our technology, continue facilitating in-transparency, breaches, and consumer fear.

Think your organization is too small to suffer a business injuring breach, fraud incident, or information compromise? Think again.

37.2% of US organizations are vulnerable to a data breach that’d require disclosure to customers, and the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), in its Report to the Nation on Occupational Fraud and Abuse, shows not only that organizations with fewer than 100 employees are most susceptible to fraudulent activity, but also that a lack of internal controls (which paper-dependent offices and unsecure digital information facilitate) comprised nearly one-third of fraud incidence this year.

The report also claims that 19.4% of internal control weaknesses are caused by a lack of management review, also conducive to fraud and information mismanagement. Again, document management’s audit logs, workflow, and role-based user permissions can resolve these issues, ensuring everything is kept in one place, the audit logs showing who’s done and viewed what, the workflow features tracing precisely where it occurs, and role-based user permissions preventing unauthorized users from viewing certain documents.

Okay, great. But what exactly is a document management system, and are there any instances of organizations using these systems successfully?

In June 2015, Forbes contributor, Tom Taulli, described eFileCabinet document management software as a technology that “manages the lifecycle of a company’s files,” and with an emphasis on security and compliance.

One year later, eFileCabinet’s document management system, and many others, have outgrown the very name of their solutions, proving they are capable of much more than mere management of documents: Reducing the probability of data breaches, tracking employee behavior, secure and simple file sharing, helping offices go paperless, mobilizing workforces, dissuading fraudulent activity, and, built in security features to simplify compliance: all of which reduce the likelihood of watchdog wrist-slapping and consumer distrust alike.

Not only do document management systems simplify auditing for regulators, they create the efficiency businesses need to increase output for customers and better tend to their needs — an imperative given the era in which we live—one in which the customer is “always right,” and demands more than ever.

Carlene Patterson, an eFileCabinet customer and owner of Ascension Financial Group in Albuquerque, NM, claims her document management system saves her “over $4,000 a year.” A contract nurse claims it’s reduced roughly 20 steps from her daily workflow, and one accountant eliminated 17 filing cabinets from his office—drastically reducing operating expenses and potentiating room to save on commercial rent costs.

In fact, these systems can improve efficiency and bottom lines to such a great extent they may also deter organizations from engaging in illicit behavior to secure “profits,” like Wells Fargo.

Would you be as tempted to fly by night if your business saved thousands annually for reducing the number of steps in its workflow, its probability of noncompliance, and the number of dollars spent to ensure customer satisfaction?

If these systems are so important to ensuring profits, consumers’ trust, employee accountability, and reducing the number of data breaches, why haven’t legislators forced organizations to use them?

As ignoble as the answer may seem, it’s because it’s not their job—at least not yet.

It’s up to organizations to use technology that makes compliance as easy as possible. Whereas regulators, in large part, merely ask for desired information outcomes, not mandated use of certain technologies to fulfill these outcomes.

For instance, financial services companies have overhauled internal processes to simplify Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, yet continue to rely on storage methods that predate many of these companies’ existences and the complexity of our time alike: physical filing cabinets.

However, this is subject to change. The persistence of large-scale paper-based data breaches and ramifications of unsecure digital information, if left unchecked, may eventually draw into question how regulators will consider compulsory use of document management technology and similar technologies across industries.

Regulators are already chiming in with their opinions on the matter. Standardization and regulatory authorities (such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) presently have material on their websites encouraging use of such systems. However, it’s up to organizations to adopt and use the technology to their benefit, and, ultimately, to the benefit of consumers.

And the ball has been in businesses’ court for too long.

Although many business owners may be able to empathize with one another’s psychological dependence on merely digitizing information and relying on paper-based filing methods, which represent years of toil, hard work, and well-intentioned attempts at organization, consumers aren’t as understanding—and await a widespread change within enterprises that can restore their trust, and hold organizations accountable for consumers’ information.

To facilitate this much-needed paradigm shift in information management, organizations must rely on new technologies to bridge corporate, consumer, and regulatory interests. Otherwise, as data and information continue to proliferate at a pace as rapid as it is unchecked, these parties’ competing interests will prove the ruin of the last and greatest of a free market’s purposes: to enrich, improve, and empower the lives of the individuals it serves.

 

Jesse Wood - eFileCabinet

Jesse Wood is the CEO of eFileCabinet, a Lehi, Utah-based document management software company. Founded in 2001, eFileCabinet, Inc. began as a cutting-edge tool to digitally store records in accounting firms. As it grew in popularity, eFileCabinet developed into a full-fledged electronic document management solution designed to help organizations automate redundant processes, ensure security, and solve common office problems.



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How To Launch A Photography Marketplace

by Petru Iacob, founder of WebsiteCountdown.com and SendTornado.com

photographer

Photography is huge business. Revenue from the sale of photography in the United States has been pegged at around $10 billion. A large chunk of these sales are for the purpose of marketing and advertising. Although companies like Shutterstock, Fotolia and Getty Images have cornered the stock photos market, the industry is still extremely open for startup businesses to grow and thrive.

If you are a photographer, or a startup entrepreneur interested in the photography space, here is a guide on how you should go about launching your own photography marketplace:

Understand the various copyrights.

There are a number of different copyrighting options available to the content creator (the photographer). For instance, the content owner may open up licensing for ‘editorial use’ but not for ‘retail’. This would mean that the photo could be used in blogs and magazines but cannot be printed on posters, mugs or other products. There are also other options like ‘public domain’, ‘royalty-free’, ‘rights-managed’ and ‘right of publicity’ that one could offer on their photos. It is necessary to make your sellers aware of these various licensing options in order to ensure that your company does not have to deal with dozens of alleged copyright violations each day.

Protecting your property.

Photos are among the most commonly stolen products on the internet. Enforcing rightful usage of your photos is not easy either given the global nature of the internet – it is not really practical for a freelance photographer to sue someone across the globe for the theft of one of their photos. It ultimately comes down to how well you can protect your property against theft. One of the best ways to do this is by watermarking all your photos. This way you can make sure that your customers will not have access to these photos until they are paid for.

It is also common for your photos to get stolen after your customers have made their purchase. Since the same photo could get licensed to multiple customers, tracking down the source of the theft can be difficult. This can however be done with the help of digital watermarking, which is a process that involves embedding a unique digital marker to each of the copies you sell. This way when a photo gets stolen, it still carries the unique marker that can be tracked down to the original licensee.

Attracting buyers and sellers.

Building a marketplace is tricky because it presents entrepreneurs with a catch-22 challenge – sellers won’t come to your platform unless it has a sizable buying population while buyers won’t come until you have a good inventory. One way to get around this is by making it absolutely attractive for sellers to come to your platform. You may do this by waiving off your commissions for a limited period or focusing on any particular niche (like nature photos, gadget photos, etc.). In the meantime, it is also a good idea to focus on organic marketing strategies like SEO and social media marketing to build an audience. Platforms like Shopify come with ready-made tools to set up your photography marketplace and this helps reduce development overhead. Once this is done, it is a matter of continually building your inventory as well as bringing new customers to your platform.

Launching a photography marketplace can be a challenging task that involves navigating around legal hurdles as well as building a seller and buyer base. But these are the kinds of challenges that make entrepreneurship so interesting and should be a big reason why you want to get into this business.

 

Petru Iacob

Petru Iacob is a Romanian entrepreneur and is the owner of WebsiteCountdown.com and email marketing tool SendTornado.com.



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Tuesday, March 28, 2017

3 Ways To Avoid Being Seen As A Fraud In Your Crowdfunding Campaigns

Crowdfunding Strategies

by Jesse Kaufman, CEO and founder of ShippingTree

Crowdfunding campaigns have gained popularity as a way to fund and earn support for a new product or project. By allowing individuals to contribute and back a project, crowdfunding has revolutionized the way many small companies finance their efforts.

Still, it’s not entirely seamless. Your company’s image depends on your ability to fulfill the promises you’ve made. Unfortunately, some campaigns run more than several months overdue on their original delivery time frame, and backers are quick to claim fraud.

The problem, however, isn’t typically mismanaging funds — it’s an issue with the supply chain process.

Too often, entrepreneurs don’t give themselves enough time to get a viable product to market. To keep their customers loyal and expand their businesses beyond crowdfunding, business leaders need to be on top of their supply chain issues.

Here three ways to manage the process and keep your backers supportive:

1. Be transparent with your backers.

Crowdfunded campaigns require a high degree of transparency. Address any concerns before they happen by keeping your audience members informed of your current production cycle stage. Update them when you enter prototyping, have a working prototype, or have made any other major status update.

Most backers lack experience with product development, manufacturing, and distribution. Allow for consumer comments on the crowdfunded platform, keep an eye on what they’re writing, and answer questions quickly. By being transparent with your audience, you build trust and prevent people from thinking you’re frivolously spending their contributions.

2. Double your forecast.

Once you’ve forecasted how long production and development will take, multiply that by two at the very least. A buffer is crucial to pad any time frame blowouts. If you are wrong and can deliver products early, you’ll look like a hero.

Zane Lamprey, the founder of Inzane Entertainment, a company that received more than $500,000 in a backed campaign, says, “Your reputation is everything.” He notes there are “no Kickstarter police making sure you’re doing what you said you were going to do, so you are on the honor code as far as fulfillment.” When it comes to your reputation, early is much better than late.

3. Avoid scope creep at all costs.

Scope creep is any extra work added on to the original plan. You can take into consideration your backers’ comments and feedback, but do your best to stay on point with what you had in mind when you launched the campaign. Resist the urge to plan second product versions or other distribution opportunities. Your goal is to get your original product out the door on time and on budget.

To avoid scope creep, it’s important to plan ahead, especially if your product involves technology. Tech limitations can force developmental delays. You also need to know exact needs upfront regarding manufacturing your product or software. Any requests for mid-cycle changes can cause delays.

There truly is no such thing as overplanning when it comes to your supply chain. Get as much of it sorted out as possible before launching your campaign. And before launching the campaign, do your research. Get referrals for — and interview — potential manufacturing and distribution partners. Establish relationships and research any issues, like tax laws, that might crop up if you’re using an overseas vendor.

Consider different scenarios, along with the possible time it will take to get your product to market. You want to hit the ground running as soon as the campaign funds, avoid any supply chain issues, and celebrate your success when your product ships to your backers.

 

Jesse Kaufman

Jesse Kaufman is CEO and founder of ShippingTree, a provider of cloud-based logistics and e-commerce fulfillment services for consumer product companies around the world.



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The First Step In Turning Your Hobby Into A Business

home office work

by Christy Wright, author of “Business Boutique: A Woman’s Guide for Making Money Doing What She Loves

From sewing baby clothes to upcycling old thrift store furniture, more and more people are turning their hobbies into side businesses. And with the ever-increasing Etsy population as well as endless free social media platforms, launching a side business is easier than ever before.

You don’t even have to be an aggressive go-getter with a start-up and investors to make money on your own terms. You can market your product from the comfort of home with nothing more than your skill and a Facebook page.

The ease of turning your hobby into a business is also why, for many people, it happens by accident. It typically starts out like this: Let’s say you post that painting you made for your sister to Facebook, and then, through all the shares and likes, you get more requests. As you begin to fulfill more and more orders, you eventually realize, Hey! I can make money at this while doing something I love to do anyway!

The natural growth most side business owners experience sweeps talented and passionate people into a form of entrepreneurship that they may not have otherwise considered.

But with the ease of getting into a side business also comes a very common challenge. Since it starts as a hobby, it’s often very tempting for people to call it a business but continue treating it like a hobby. That’s the main mistake that people with side businesses make!

So the first step to turning your hobby into a business is this: Treat it as a business. You can do this by understanding the difference between a hobby and a business. A business makes you money. A hobby costs you money.

It sounds simple but many people miss this reality. They say things like, “Oh, I don’t care about the money. I just do it because I love it!” Of course a hobby is something you should love, but you also have to realize that love isn’t enough to make a business work. You also need profits.

Now, if you want to build a line item into your budget for your hobby and continue to fund it, great! But if you want to share your gift with the world long-term, you have to make a profit in order to continue doing it. Profits are critical not only to your finances, but they also help you justify the time invested in your passion when you’re away from your family each week.

If it’s not making you money, it’s pretty tough to justify spending 10, 20, or 30 hours a week on something that has no financial return, just because you love it. Both a hobby and a business can and should be fun, but if it’s not making money it’s not a real business that can grow or last.

So if you want to turn your hobby into a business, you must treat it like a business. That comes from recognizing and accepting the reality that in order for it to work, it has to make you money. Once you understand this, you can build your business in a way that will keep costs down, increase revenue and ultimately create a profit for you. It’s those profits that enable you to continue to do what you love to do and to share that love with the marketplace.

And that is good business!

 

Christy Wright

Christy Wright is the creator of Business Boutique, a Certified Business Coach and a Ramsey Personality with a passion for equipping women with the knowledge and steps they need to successfully run and grow a business. She is the host of the Business Boutique Podcast and her new book “Business Boutique“. You can follow Wright on Twitter and Instagram @ChristyBWright and online at christywright.com or http://ift.tt/1HhVNtK.



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Monday, March 27, 2017

How To Pick The Right Startup Accelerator Program

Rocket - Start

Every year, thousands of hopeful entrepreneurs around the world pack their bags and head out to participate in an accelerator program. For the most part, most of these programs are similar. They typically invite a class of startups into a coworking space for around 3-6 months and work alongside them to accelerate startup growth. The accelerator usually provides an initial investment and the program culminates in a Demo Day, where startups pitch their company to a room full of investors.

Choosing the right program can make or break your startup. Take it from Efrem Weiss, the CEO of YouGift, whose company shut down after a horrible accelerator experience that left the business in worse shape than when they’d arrived. If chosen carefully, the rewards will be invaluable, and you’ll join the ranks of Airbnb, DropBox, and Uber.

Ask Questions.

As you evaluate accelerators around the world (don’t limit yourself to your city of residence or even your country), prepare to sort through FAQs and reach out to programs directly with a list of questions. The goal is to avoid any discrepancies in the future and ensure you’re matched with the best possible accelerator.

What kind of startups are they looking for?

Different incubators have different areas of expertise and interests. Make a list of companies that have a record with working with similar startups and list what each brings to the table. Finding out what each accelerator is looking for is simple. Many programs have detailed FAQ sections blogs. Additionally, browse through the startups from previous classes to get an idea of what they gravitate towards.

How can they help you achieve your goals?

In most cases, many programs list what they offer on their website. Beyond the money they can offer, compare their offerings to your startup needs. For example, if you have a product and plan to launch a crowdfunding campaign, some accelerators specialize in helping startups succeed on platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

What’s the atmosphere like?

As a startup trying to get off the ground, you’re not looking for Animal House-like common areas and shoddy coworking spaces. Ask questions about where you’ll be meeting on a day-to-day basis and what your living quarters will be.

What are the terms?

This includes the amount of equity you’re giving up and how much you’re receiving. It should also be clear whether the accelerator will give back that equity if the startup drops out, and if so, what are the applicable rules?

The Mentorship Program.

Standard practice for many accelerator programs is to invite a roster of mentors who can provide relevant and real-life advice. They’ve built their own businesses to success or worked for leading startups in their field. Mentors can help guide you in several ways: they’ll help you understand what angel investors are looking for, the importance of managed IT services, the best custom marketing strategies, crowdfunding advice, and much more.

Their advice is so important because they’ve dealt with these issues firsthand. And while most programs have a mentorship program, not all are run the same. Some accelerators have an inefficient mentor-to-startup ratio, while others have too many mentors to truly benefit and engage with any one of them. Keep in mind that, at the end of the day, it’s up to you to reach out to mentors and cultivate relationships beyond the program. The most successful mentor relationships are sustained because the startup founders were proactive in building them.

Look At Success Stories.

Research a few of the startups that have participated in the accelerator program and see where they are now. Check out their websites, social media, and AngelList profiles for updates on company progress. If you still want an up-close idea of how the accelerator is run, go the extra mile and reach out to some startups about their personal experience. To get a well-rounded opinion, try talking to startups who were both successful post-program and those who haven’t shown much movement. These accelerator success stories will also serve as inspiration if you’re on the fence;.



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How To Use Employee Appreciation Day To Build Culture (The Right Way)

by Jon Hainstock, co-founder of ZoomShift

Employee party

As a manager or leader, it’s easy to take your own agenda into your employee appreciation efforts and ignore what your workers want.

Certainly, you do need to be intentional about appreciating your employees. You also need to think about how you intend to achieve this end. But for appreciation and recognition to be effective, you need to make appreciation days about your employees. If it’s not about them, it’s just about you, and that’s not going to do anything for your culture. Build your team and they will support you in building your culture.

Here are several practical steps you can take to leverage your employee appreciation efforts into culture-building:

Share your philosophy and values.

Large or small, all companies have values and a guiding philosophy, though it’s entirely possible that you haven’t put it into words and documented it just yet. If this describes you, it’s something you should consider doing before your next employee appreciation event. You’ll find this to be a worthy exercise in other ways too.

Once you’re clear on your values, it makes it easier to plan how you’re going to show appreciation for your team members. You could invite a guest speaker you resonate with to share their perspective. Or, if you value creativity, you could have your workers collaborate on a vision board (have them cut out pictures to put on a whiteboard). Letting your team members in on corporate goals keeps them involved in making them a reality.

Culture is built through repetition – consistently reminding your team members what you value and stand for. But do resist the temptation to make the day all about business, because then your employees might not feel appreciated. Also, don’t compromise your values once you’ve defined them.

Encourage teamwork through games or exercises.

Relationship-building is an important part of instilling your company culture. You don’t want to get too deeply entrenched in other people’s personal lives, but if you’re so impersonal that you don’t know anyone’s name, that’s also a problem. There is a healthy balance in between.

Appreciation day is a good opportunity for your workers to bond among themselves. This encourages more teamwork and collaboration, which can give them a sense of belonging and increase fulfillment in their careers. It can also boost productivity.

Together, you could play a game that involves splitting up into teams and problem-solving or completing a fun project together. This is a simple way to unify your team.

Recognize outstanding achievements.

Recognition is simple to do, but that doesn’t mean employers and managers are necessarily in the habit of doing it. It often requires a bit of forethought, and if you don’t have any prompts or notifications to remind you, you might forget altogether. There might be a tip in that – you could set reminders for yourself in your digital calendar and be notified on your computer or smartphone.

Recognition is typically best when it’s immediate, personal, and specific. But you can also use employee appreciation days to recognize outstanding individual and team accomplishments. You can even use trophies, plaques, or gift cards to make it more concrete. This reinforces the same behavior in the future, which is one of the reasons why it’s so powerful. It also demonstrates to your employees what you value in their work.

Just remain aware of any employees you’re failing to recognize over a longer period of time. They may become resentful of those who always seem to be getting more attention and choose to move on and find new opportunities.

Final thoughts.

Show your employees you care by holding an appreciation day for them. It doesn’t have to cost a lot, nor does it require a lot of planning if you keep it simple. Your team members work hard, and they deserve to be rewarded. Make appreciation a part of your culture, and your culture will build itself. But don’t allow your employee appreciation efforts to become halfhearted or generic. Appreciation will fail if it becomes rote. Make sure you know what your employees want. Make it personal.

You need to be personally invested in your employee appreciation efforts. The greatest investment isn’t necessarily monetary – it’s the time you spend with your employees, getting to know them and recognizing them for their contributions.

 

jon hainstock

Jon Hainstock is the co-founder of ZoomShiftemployee scheduling and time clock software for independent coffee shops. You can connect with Jon on TwitterLinkedInFacebook, and Instagram.



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