Business Mouth - Business Blog

There is little doubt that those businesses that update their websites with regular, unique, knowledgeable business blog content do much better in Google and other search engines than those that don’t.In a nutshell, good business blog content keep visitors on the website, and attract relevant incoming links from social media, industry websites, discussion lists and forums.Aside from search engine optimisation, there are two other important benefits of business blogging: direct sales and brand awareness.Top internet marketing expert Chris Garret reckons that business blogging is simply unbeatable when it comes to creating quality incoming links.  He says that business blog posts bring targeted, quality prospects that most often evolve into solid sales leads. This all comes from the large amount of added attention that is created by a business blog.Read the full  http://www.Newsvend.com article on the 15 reasons why every business needs a business blog here.

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How many times have I read about the stuff people wished they’d been taught at business school? Why do entrepreneurs have to go through the tough lessons themselves? I mean, sure, making mistakes and learning from them is all a rite of passage for business owners, but you get the hunch that someone at business school could have saved you just some of the bother.Here’s a few of my tips. I’m sure others have their own to add.Always know your cash position. Cash really, really is king.Automate where possible.Shit happens. But it’s never as bad as it first seems.Slow days are good. Use ‘em for thinking and brainstorming.When it comes to marketing: test, record, test, record. Rinse and repeat.Tough times won’t last, but tough guys and gals do.Never try to sell a business in a recession or when your business isn’t doing as well as it has in the past.

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Yesterday, President Obama announced a major boost for small businesses across the United States.  The US Treasury is going to buy up to $15bn of Small Business Administration (SBA) loans in a bid to increase liquidity in the business loans market and provide a massive stimulus to small enterprises. President Obama said: “Small businesses are not only job generators, but the heart of the American dream. Too many entrepreneurs can’t access the business capital they need to start or grow their businesses.” Clearly, the objective of this new policy is to change this situation immediately.  The point is that in this period of financial illiquidity, many firms  are at risk of going under not because their businesses are inherently unprofitable, or even that they are experiencing a major downturn in sales. It is because they naturally experience sales cycles and that the usual access to bank funds to shore them up during the low points has been denied to them over the past 18 months.  Let’s hope that the top-down directives of this new policy are implemented in a  fair, proper and intelligent manner.

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Sorry it’s been a while since my last post. A few personal issues cropped up and I took some time off the day-to-day activities of my businesses to sort them out and then take an extended holiday down to New Zealand.

Let me tell you, that country is wild!

The air is clean, the people are super-friendly and hospitable, and the beaches and mountains are just awesome.  A few years ago, I skied at Mount Hutt in the South Island; it was a real sunny day, and the deep blue sky met the Pacific Ocean off the East Coast. It is quite surreal snow skiing with a surf beach as a backdrop. One day after skiing the morning at Mt Hutt, we hopped in the 4wd and motored down to Longbeach, about 50km away, for an afternoon surf.  Unbelievable.

This year I called my old mate John-Michel who runs Ahipara.com, a luxury travel company, to see what fun he could rustle up, to give my head a good rush and clear out all the unnecessary flotsam and jetsam.

He suggested diving up at the Poor Knight islands, only a couple of hours drive from Auckland. Caves, pinnacles, coral and so many sharks and rays!  After a couple of days diving in glorious fall weather, followed by a few relaxing days at the Ocean’s Resort on the harbour, we sped for some seriously world class game fishing. What can I say?   

All the demons were purged and I am back in my London office fully charged and invigorated. The guys in LA and in London have been doing such a good job without me, I am going to do this more often!

The moral of this story is that too often we forget to get away from it all. The benefits of a ‘recharged you’ upon return from a vacation (preferably abroad – outside your comfort zone) far outweigh any possible advantages in staying around when clearly your body and mind need some top-class R&R.

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Many business owners are sabotaging their business without even realizing it. They are completely out of the loop when it comes to all technology aspects of their operation such as websites, computers and software. They become completely dependent on their technical people and naively believe that things are “being taken care of”.This “head in the sand” approach is very dangerous. Here are just a few scenarios of what can happen:

 Your webmaster is the only person who knows the username, password and other improtant settings for your website. If the webmaster suddenly stops responding to your phone calls or e-mails (which I’ve seen happen many times), you would have no idea how to hand off the website updates to another person.
• Your programmer no longer wishes to work with you. When you hire a replacement, it turns out that there is no documentation for the program, the code is unreadable, and it will be cheaper for you to buy a new program than salvage this “sinking ship”.
• The software that was developed for your business theoretically does all that was required, but there is one big problem: it is sitting idle because it is so confusing that nobody wants to use it.
• The web server crashes and your website files get erased. Then it turns out that nobody has a backup copy
• Your technical person realized how dependent you’ve become, and starts acting like a “primadonna”, and even blackmails you into shelling out more cash, “or else”!

So how do you protect yourself?

If you are now thinking that you need to become a computer geek yourself so you don’t have to depend on anyone else - that could not be further from the truth. If you spend all your time digging through computer books, writing code and working on the technical details, there will be no time for you to run your business.

Doing it all yourself is not the answer. Everyone should concentrate on doing what they do best. What you need to do is just take some measures to protect yourself. Just knowing and applying these few basic things that I’m about to describe will put you a giant leap ahead of most other business owners.

Here are the things you should do:

 Require documentation on all technical projects. Every technology aspect of your business should be documented in such a way that you can hand off this document to a new technical person and they’ll understand exactly how the system works and what to do with it.
• Let me warn you: you will encounter a lot of resistance from the technical people when you make them document things. However, you need to be firm and require documentation as part of the project before you release the final payment.
• When asking someone to develop a website or software, communicate exactly what you want and how you want it to work. Don’t assume that people can read your mind.Communicate all your requirements upfront. If you don’t tell programmers or designers exactly what you want, they’ll put together a project according to their own vision, which often does not correspond to yours.

  Most problems with technical projects occur because of miscommunication.

• Make sure you have copies of all files and do regular backups. Don’t put it off until tomorrow, because tomorrow might be too late. Losing data can be absolutely devastating.The easiest thing to do to protect your data is to write those files to a CD on a regular basis. Also, don’t forget to store those CDs in a secure location.
• Keep track of all technical projects and know what’s going on. Being “clueless” should not be acceptable.Many business owners have such fear of technology that they just don’t want to understand the projects and hope that others will simply take care of everything. While you don’t need to get involved in all the little technical details, you still need to understand the process and “the big picture”.

Practice these simple strategies, and you’ll find yourself having more control, more piece of mind and more money in your bank account.

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