Month: March 2020

6 Conversations Entrepreneurs Must Have ASAP

Have these critical conversations sooner than later to get ahead of the crisis.

Offices are closed. Production is halted. Billings for your products or services are frozen. Clients/customers have been lost, and crucial past receivables aren’t coming in.

While things will eventually turn around, no one knows when that will be the case — which makes it impossible to plan or budget strategically in order to stay afloat.

Related: This Is What the Ultimate Sales Conversation Sounds Like

Rather than be paralyzed or petrified, it’s crucial for business owners to proactively stave off disaster by quickly pursuing six categories of conversations. They may not be easy or comfortable to have, but for the sake of your organization, they must happen:

With small-business-bailout programs

Talk to your local and state elected officials and economic development representatives to learn how to get low-interest loans, grants and other resources that will help you to pay your bills. Login to every webinar and website to research the nuts and bolts of how these programs work. Apply for all financial support opportunities that are offered. Your goal is to track down and claim cash that the government is providing as soon as possible. Be relentless about finding the dollars — and there are plenty of dollars available — to help operate your business and feed your family. original article here.

How to Deal With the Economic Impact of the Coronavirus

The full economic impact is yet to be felt, so it’s more important than ever to establish a plan to deal with the economic fallout. Ben shares four simple steps to get started on your plan in the third and final video of his three-part series. Watch part one on how to boost your immune system and part two on how to manage the emotional fallout of the outbreak so you can be prepared in a variety of ways.

Are you strong enough to rise above the chaos? Take this 60-second quiz now to see how you will fare, and be sure to grab a copy of Angel’s new daily planner, The Unstoppable Journal, today. More details here.

6 Tricks You Need to Know About Zoom

Get familiar with this collaborative, remote-meeting tool.

If you have recently been directed to work from home, odds are you’re going to need to know about Zoom. Zoom is the premier application for remote work meetings and one of the best ways I’ve personally been able to keep my business running with a remote team. It is easy to use, but there are a few tricks that can make your Zoom experience seamless.

Applying the following tips can help you avoid potential disasters when organizing your first online business meeting.

More details here.

This AI-Powered Website Builder Uses a Few Simple Keywords to Build Your Entire Site

We don’t have to tell you how important it is for entrepreneurs to have a website. Especially in the current economic climate, when most people are asked to stay indoors, having a website is absolutely crucial to keeping your business relevant and profitable. But do you know how to build one?

The good news is that you don’t need to shell out thousands on a web developer, all you need is Leia AI Website Builder. More details here.

Take Advantage of Your Empty Social Calendar to Get Ahead on SEO with This Tool

Just because you had to cancel dinners with clients, conferences, and in-person meetings doesn’t mean you can’t make big strides in your business while coronaviruskeeps you homebound. Where should you start? How about organic search traffic, a crucial component to any web-based business. You can attract visitors through platforms like Facebook and Instagram, but chances are you’re paying a pretty penny to get users that may never actually become buyers. Using SEO (Search Engine Optimization), you can reach even greater numbers of people through search engines like Google, while expending considerably less money.

But if your SEO strategy is going to work, your pages need to be towards the top of search results. Roughly 50 percent of all clicks on a Google search page go to the first three listings. To get into the top three, you can hire an expensive SEO specialist, or you can use Brand Overflow. More details here.

SEO: Using Canonical Tags to Reduce Duplicate Content

Canonical tags are an essential tool to prevent duplicate content in organic search results. “Canonical” in search engine parlance means the one true page out of potentially many duplicates.

Canonical tags are single lines of code in the HTML <head> section of a web page. They are invisible to visitors but not to search bots.

Note the example below from Kohl’s, which assigns a canonical tag for a Bedding and Bath sale page. Details here.

10 Home Office Productivity Tips for Running a Successful Home-Based Business

Millions of home-based companies exist in all neighborhoods across the United States. Thanks to the internet, consumers and small businesses can easily connect from across the globe. This can all be achieved from the comfort of your house. However, this type of convenience can lead to confusion when drawing the line between your home and your office space.

And you’re not alone either. Close to 1 in 3 home-based workers feel that they have a hard time separating business and their personal lives. This list of tips and strategies will help you get the most out of your living space and while growing your home-based business. Details here.

COVID-19 Will Fuel the Next Wave of Innovation

Black swan events, such as economic recessions and pandemics, change the trajectory of governments, economies and businesses — altering the course of history. The Black Death in the 1300s broke the long-ingrained feudal system in Europe and replaced it with the more modern employment contract. A mere three centuries later, a deep economic recession — thanks to the 100-year war between England and France — kick-started a major innovation drive that radically improved agricultural productivity. 

Fast forward to more recent times, the SARS pandemic of 2002-2004 catalyzed the meteoric growth of a then-small ecommerce company called Ali Baba and helped establish it at the forefront of retail in Asia. This growth was fueled by underlying anxiety around traveling and human contact, similar to what we see today with Covid-19. The financial crises of 2008 also produced its own disruptive side effects. Airbnb and Uber shot up in popularity across the west as the subprime crises meant lower savings and income for the masses, forcing people to share assets in the form of spare rooms and car rides in order to cover for the deficit. Doubling down on this trend, videogame business models rapidly changed as well, with 2011 seeing the rise of the free-to-play business model, thanks to Nexon in Asia and King in the west. Details at https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/347669?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email

Pick a Marketing Model That Lets You Pay for Results, Not Potential

In an era of caution, companies need to invest in marketing efforts that lead to a direct payoff and don’t require more than they can afford. Over the past week, I’ve had to evaluate all the things I’m doing at Calendar to see what’s really moving the needle. It’s astonishing the things we’re spending money on that aren’t actually driving revenue to our bottom line.

As today’s environment forces drastic behavioral shifts in our daily lives, companies of all sizes and in all industries are evaluating the changes they need to make to stay nimble in our new economic reality. As businesses adapt to the stay-home economy, they’ll be focusing on which investments drive the best possible outcomes. Details at https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/347871?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email

How Much Do SEO Services Actually Cost?

The three most common types of SEO services and which one is right for your business.

Let’s face it, search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the essential driving factors behind most digital marketing initiatives these days. And all too frequently, speaking to an SEO agency, once the subject of pricing is brought up, you’ll hear, “Well…it totally depends.”

What does it depend on? Why can’t there just be a clear answer or even a ballpark figure? As frustrating as it may be, unfortunately, SEO has a huge number of variables that an agency or a consultant would have to take into account before giving you a ticket price. Details at https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/347325?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email