Blog

Posted by Shawn Ryder

Generate More Leads With These Search Engine Optimization Tips

November 22, 2020Automotive Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEO

SEO involves boosting your website’s chances of being found by search engines. The more people that come to your site, the higher the likelihood that you will make money and be successful. These tips can help you learn proper SEO. Your domain name should contain a keyword related to your content. Your website should be easy for visitors to find when they do a web search. Visitors may be drawn through ads, but are also often drawn by using a keyword search for your type of product. If you want to have your site showing higher, you need to help the web spiders who determine the rankings. Spiders help people to find your website during searches, so it is important that they can understand your site. Help them out by featuring a site map. This shows what is important on your site, and it gives the spiders an idea of how you website works. Keep in mind that spiders can’t do anything with your URLs if they read like a bunch of random numbers. Certain language can confuse a search engine, which is why each URL should have a meaningful name, as well as pertinent keywords. One SEO technique to try is a blog. Link it with other related blogs and see your traffic increase. The algorithms used by search engines are particularly favorable towards blogs. Blogs are consistently updated and have structured data, both things algorithms like. If you want a high search engine ranking, backlinks are really important. Use an accurate title tag to make sure that search engines will understand your page content. Search engines only display 60 characters, so keep it short. After 60 characters, search engines also weigh terms less highly. Before beginning a website, research information about your keywords. You should determine what the most effective keywords to incorporate into your content and titles will be. Knowing how people search for your business will help you find appropriate keywords. Keeping this content highlighted helps raise your search engine rankings. Taking the time to proofread a website’s content is an important task that many webmasters fail to do. Your website needs to be clear and legible. If there are a lot of grammar mistakes, or if you spelled your keywords wrong, you can bet that a lot of search engines will not include your site. As good as your website may be, it can always be better. That means that your website is never truly complete and you should always be on the lookout for problems. Don’t ever stop striving to improve. You should have a listing with Yahoo and Google to get yourself out there. These services give you free publicity that, in turn, bring you more visitors and more visibility. Don’t turn away free publicity. Make use of the “alt” tags for image links when using SEO to boost your rankings. The purpose of these tags is to replace images, should the viewer choose not to view them. Search engines will also read these tags, and use them when determining your site’s ranking, so make sure to put in some keywords. When you make the most of SEO it will boost your business. Many business are unaware of this fact. If you want your site to automatically achieve higher search engine rankings, consider joining forces with the BBB (Better Business Bureau) and the Chamber of Commerce in your area. These organizations link to their member businesses, so you can get more local visitors. Also, if you are a part of this Better Business Bureau and have good ratings on their site, your customers will trust you even more. Use keywords in anchor text. Avoid words that are not useful in optimization. SEO specialists can assist you with knowing what anchor text should be used. Consider using the services of a company that specializes in search engine optimization. Having good SEO content is key to moving your site up in relevant search results. Today there are many companies that sell the service of search engine optimization. Depending on what they provide and various promotions available, these tools and services can represent an affordable option for many businesses. Use the language meta tag if your site is not written in English. This increases your ranking when searches look for content specific to the language in which your site’s content is written. Knowing your search standing is crucial in utilizing SEO tips. If you don’t keep track of your standings then you will not know if your efforts in SEO are paying off. You can follow your page rank with the Google toolbar or Alexa. SEO improves your ranking when your keywords are searched for. Showing up in the search engine results is going to bring you more traffic and increase revenue. Using these tips, you can use SEO on your website.

Posted by Shawn Ryder

Easy Email Marketing Ideas That Are Proven To Work

November 16, 2020Automotive Industry, Digital Marketing, Email Marketing

In order to get the most out of your email marketing campaigns, you need to know how to construct the message you are sending. If there are issues with the email content, people will not want to read it, and then it becomes a waste. Continue on to the article below for some helpful tips on how to create a winning email marketing message. Offer a coupon to customers who sign up for your marketing email list. Put a form on your website where customers can sign up and set the form to email automatically new customers a coupon when they submit the form. This encourages customers to agree to allow you to send them marketing materials so that you won’t be accused of sending out spam. If you want your email marketing messages to be successful, make sure you have permission to send them. If you do not have permission from your recipients, the potential consequences can range from being added to spam filters all the way up to getting blacklisted by Internet service providers themselves. While online promotion is essential, don’t overlook the opportunity to promote your mailing list offline. To build both new subscribers and potential clients, look for any opportunity possible to get the word out. Some great opportunities to build your business can be found at networking events, trade shows, conferences and local gatherings. Try following up an email to your customers with a notice that tells them not to procrastinate. Insert a suggestion that tells them to purchase now onto the reply. The ending could tell them not to miss this incredible opportunity by waiting. Instead, they should act now to reap the full benefits. Be persistent with your email marketing messages. It can take as many as twenty emails to one prospect before you routinely have their attention. Try telling a good story through your messages. Hook them with a few messages and let it unfold over a series. Running contests that span several weeks are good way to do this. Maximize the results of your email marketing by encouraging your readers to respond to every email. Always read and reply to these emails immediately. Building a personal relationship with each of your readers is the best way to convert them into loyal customers. This is also a good way to get more specific feedback on the success of your efforts. Let your readers choose the layout of your content. Any messages with images, graphics and JavaScript is likely to get eaten by software filters and never seen by human eyes. Send out basic text or rich text format including a link to your website, and the option of an HTML version for those that want it. In general, don’t send important email marketing messages near holiday time frames. People do not have time to check their emails as much since they are away from work and have limited access to their computers. This is not a hard rule and some holidays will require communications. These could include Black Friday emails or emails related to other specific events. Use tools to measure the success of your email marketing campaign. You should learn all you can about how many times your emails are read, if your subject lines are being read, which articles you write are being read, etc. Using information like this can help with the future success of your campaign since you will know what works and what does not. Do not restrict yourself just to email marketing. As you identify your core clientele that trusts you, see if you can get phone numbers and physical addresses. Build on your relationships by expanding your communications with your loyal core base by contacting them through these mediums as well as email. You can change the format slightly to make your emails more personal on occasions. For example, use plain text if you usually use HTML and vice versa. This can help your customers relate to you and your products. To maximize the effectiveness of your emails, send them out on Tuesday or Wednesday. Research shows that people are actually more inclined to respond positively to various forms of communication on these days, including email. Not only are they more likely to read your email, but they’re also more apt to click on buttons or links, which means that you’re more likely to see an increase in sales. Send your emails at mid-afternoon for optimal results. When following up with customers, try following up with a sale schedule. Include a link in order for them to view this schedule. The end of the email could inform them that they can get all the specifics on this sale schedule by clicking on the link that was provided to them.

Sales

Strategically plan when your emails will go out. People do not like getting emails at inconvenient times, especially if it’s something that they have to act on quickly. Be considerate by making your offers convenient and easy for people to take advantage of, and you will have more sales than you otherwise would. Get creative with your email designs to find out what works best. Send out a few emails with content and links that differ in their fonts and text color. Play around with image positioning, including buttons and logos. After you’ve sent the emails, find out which ones had the best click-thru rates. Stick with those for the time being, but change it up on occasion to see if you can find a method that works even better. More click-thru rates equate to more sales. Email is a great marketing tool, but it is not an arena where the hard sell is appreciated. Never pressure your subscribers into buying. Put sales pitches at the tail end of your emails, especially if your readers signed up with expectations of informative content. Consider email as a tool to cultivate interest, not instant sales. As you are now aware, it is very important that the content in your email marketing message be on point. If the message is unclear, you will end up with frustrated recipients who will not want to open your emails in the future. Apply the tips from this article so you can be sure you are sending out a proper email marketing communication.

Posted by Shawn Ryder

Climbing The Social Media Marketing Ladder For Greater Business Success

November 14, 2020Automotive Industry, Automotive Marketing, Digital Marketing

You might already know that social media enables you to connect with anyone in the world. But, what you may not realize is that many of the sites you already frequent can also be put to work for your company, as well. Throughout the tips below, you will learn a lot about social media, and how you can use these methods to market your business. Use Facebook to get some very low-cost marketing opportunities. Make a professional business account or create a business fan page. Take some time to look up your competitors on Facebook to see how much of a presence they have, and what they did to get that. Do not copy what they did, but use their page as an example for what is working or what is not. To help you attract more visitors, you should promote your site through niche social media sites. What’s great about niche social media sites is that they can send you a lot of targeted traffic. Even if the niche site is small, it can still send you quality visitors who are more likely to purchase something from your site because they already have an interest in your product. If you are using social media to promote your product and you have written a blog post, have it posted to your Facebook page as well. This way, everyone that is on your friends list has access to your blog post. The same holds true for other social network sites. Remember that when you are using social media to market your business, you are communicating with people, not at them. The technology that people are using now and the way social media is designed is allowing your customers to communicate easier than ever before. You have to engage in this conversation and communicate with your customers in contrast to posting ad copy with a one-sided point of view. Add relevant tags to your Youtube videos. They will be more likely to come up in searches linked to your products. You could use keyword tools to find out which keywords are popular among your target audience. Remember that your audience will be more likely to share something if they find it relevant to what they were looking for. You can have your LinkedIn updates include what you post on Twitter by adding the Twitter application to your profile. Even if Twitter posts are generally shorter than LinkedIn updates, you will be able to reach out to a larger number of people and encourage your LinkedIn friends to find you on Twitter. Following any ads on the various social media pages are intriguing, as well as photoshopped images. It is smart to use intriguing pictures, because potential buyers will be lured in by what they see in your ads. When someone is drawn to one of your ads they tend to check out your business and from there they may be interested with what you have to offer. Conduct Facebook polls. Using the the “question” feature on Facebook, you can develop a poll to ask your followers a question. It can be about their thoughts on a new product, their opinion on how you’re doing with customer service or anything else to which you’d like an answer. This keeps them engaged. When your followers feel more involved, they identify more closely with your brand or product. Do a little research about social networking. Using Facebook for professional purposes is quite different than chatting with family and friends on your social site. There are many useful Internet resources and professionals who can advise you with any difficulties you are having. Don’t just use one social media site to market your business. While Facebook is popular and effective, don’t neglect using others like twitter or MySpace. The more exposure you have, the better a chance you have at succeeding. If a person starts following your Twitter account, follow theirs in return. Most Twitter users expect this courtesy. Also, it shows that you have respect for your clients and simply aren’t looking to get their money. You can make more loyal customers if you simply follow them back and give them a short tweet. Sales Establish your goal for a social media campaign. If you do not know what you hope to achieve with your campaign, you won’t know when you have been successful. Are you looking for product awareness, concrete sales, or better customer service? When you can answer these questions, building a strategy is an easier step. Is a relationship with you and your business something your customers want? Drive sales to your site with simple advertising messages delivered via social media. Try to communicate with your customers and followers in a natural way when interacting on social media, just introduce yourself and your products to start. Follow your customers’ lead after this. A good method to use to get more subscribers to your social media profiles is to offer limited deals exclusive to your followers. This will help your followers to feel like they belong to a special club, and it will give them incentive to purchase more of your products as well. To use social media marketing successfully you must be creative. The same material, sales, offers, and content will ultimately annoy your customer base to the point that they remove you from their page. Keeping things fresh and interesting makes sure they keep coming back for more, which means more sales. To help you make the most of your social media marketing campaign, ensure your always posting fresh and exciting content. Social media users check their profiles very regularly and will have an appetite for new content if it is intriguing and relevant to them. By captivating these potential customers, you can increase your sales tremendously. Follow the advice from this article and use social media websites to boost your business. The very same social media sites that are integral to your personal life, have the potential to have just as much impact on your business. Social media can also take your business worldwide without the airfare. With the tips from the article above, you’re set to start a stellar campaign.

Posted by Shawn Ryder

Become A Better Business Leader

November 11, 2020Automotive Industry, Leadership

It’s time you transformed into a much better leader than you are now. You see, that is what all people should be thinking. There is always room for improvement, and it is about time you found out more about what it takes. Consider these helpful tips that will allow you to know more about being a good leader. Be sure to finish everything you start or you risk losing the respect of the people that work under you. Even if something seems particularly difficult, you should give it your all and see it through to the end. No one will look at you the same if you turn into a quitter. When you’re a business leader, you should be stern but understanding. Make sure that the people working for you understand what you expect out of them. If they don’t meet your expectations immediately, give them a chance to catch on. Everyone has a different learning curve, and the people that may seem slow to catch on could become your greatest workers. Adopt an eternal attitude of learning. While this article has great tips in it, there’s always something more to learn. Business changes and evolves and you need to keep up with it. Always be reading books, newspapers and blogs. If possible, attend classes and workshops. Those are chances to learn and network. To be a great leader, know what your weaknesses and strengths are. If you are showing off thinking that you can do more than you really can, you may end up failing quite a bit. Make sure to pay attention to how you can be stronger in certain areas and figure out where you’re weak too. Find out how you can write in an effective way. Leadership is more than how you present yourself in person. A large part is about how well you can communicate. If your writing is full of grammar or spelling errors, people may not take you seriously. Always proofread your work and be conscious of the way you are presenting yourself to others. Leaders musts have the ability to distinguish between ideas and reality. The two have an inverse relationship. Focus on bringing what is in your mind to the surface when it’s time to take action. Put it down on paper, then concentrate on the task at hand. Anyone in a leadership role should be concerned about trust. You must be able to trust your team, or workforce, and they must also be able to trust you. Try having a meeting periodically with a small group, where trust issues are discussed, and solved. Look for good articles on the subject of trust in the workplace, and read them with your group, giving each other feedback and suggestions. Being in a leadership position means that you hold a position of responsibility. As such it is necessary that you take responsibility for your actions and decisions. You can’t expect your employees to take responsibility for their own work if they see you attempting to evade facing the consequences of your own behavior. A good leader should be friendly and accessible to employees. You can run a successful business without using your authority to intimidate people. If your employees are afraid of you, they are unlikely to report honest mistakes making it difficult for you to manage them effectively. Be friendly but don’t try to make friends with your employees. Your role as a leader should not include treating team members, or employees, like children. You are dealing with adults who have adult lives outside of work, just like yourself. Treating them as peers whom you trust and value, is a great motivational tool that every leader should use. You probably already know that most organizations have a mission, values, and goals, but what about leaders? As you work to develop your leadership abilities, it helps to define these qualities for yourself. What do hope to accomplish in your role? What personal qualities and values will you use to make important decisions regarding your goals? Bear these in mind as you map out your career plans. A large problem for business these days is the loss of one-on-one communication. This is primarily due to the electronic age we live in. If you want to be a good leader, try foregoing the emails and text messages, and really interact one-on-one with your team. Get to know them, and let them get to know you. Real relationships still work best. If you are new to leadership, you must accept the fact that you have a lot to learn. You may be an expert in your field, but learning to lead can be daunting. Don’t be afraid to take advice from others, including your team, or workforce. Ask questions, and ask for suggestions. Most great leaders began as followers. Make a firm decision in whatever you do. If you want people to really look up to you as a leader, you’re going to have to know how to decide on things quickly and then stand behind your decisions. People don’t want to follow those who are indecisive and wishy-washy. Unless you must, don’t change your mind. Great leaders are always looking for ways to encourage creativity in their organizations. Look for new ways to challenge your employees, and encourage them to use their own strengths, individually and as a team, to make improvements to concepts and the organization as a whole. Doing this helps to foster a feeling of belonging to a team, and it will gain you respect as a leader. Always encourage employees to contribute their thoughts and ideas. If you have done a good job of hiring great people, you have a lot of talent to pull from on your team. Take advantage of this in order to improve ideas, finish challenging projects and make your team better. Trying to understand what makes a good leader can seem elusive at times because it takes practice. You know that leaders must work hard and be dedicated to serving. So, do you think you now have what it takes? Set some leadership goals for yourself so that you can make some improvements.

Posted by Shawn Ryder

What You Should Know About Becoming A Leader

November 11, 2020Automotive Industry, Leadership

Leadership can be difficult to quantify, despite the fact that most people desperately wish to understand what it takes to be a strong leader. To really get a handle on the concept, it pays to spend some time researching and studying. The guidance below is intended to help any burgeoning leader do precisely that. If you’re trying to make a decision, you should try to get input from your team. Your team may be able to help you find a great solution, or they could help you see if you’re making a bad choice. A good leader should be interested in the opinions of others. You must recognize the different talents of your team members. You should always surround yourselves with talented people who can help you meet your objectives. This also applies to contacting and hiring people for your small jobs. Never belittle your coworkers. Your subordinates will never respect you if you do not treat them with respect. Remember that you are not better than they are. Consider yourself fortunate to be a leader. Treating your coworkers as you would want to be treated will go a long way in developing a cooperative team. Good leaders should be honest people. Do what you can to tell the truth. Remain authentic. When you tell the truth, do so kindly. Be open about any mistakes that have occurred. Mistakes will happen, so you need to accept them. It is those mistakes that you can use to find a new solution. They can provide you with nearly limitless opportunities. Don’t shift the blame for mistakes to others. Subordinates, outside contractors, and plenty of other people within the organization can cause a business transaction to go wrong. If you try to shift the blame, you will lose the confidence of your customers and they won’t patronize your business any longer. Being a leader means taking action. It doesn’t matter how many good ideas you have if all they ever do is take up space in your head. Develop a plan and put your idea into action. Focus on the outcome you would like to achieve and focus your energy on making it happen. Don’t do anything dishonest or shady. It is important to keep your promises if you want to be trusted as a leader. If you claim to provide excellent service, everyone on your team has to be involved and understand the process. Learn how to laugh. Yes, you’ve got a serious job with a lot of responsibilities, but leadership isn’t born out of tension and stress. Sometimes you need to learn how to lighten the mood. Not just for yourself, but for your employees too. If you’ve hit some rough patches, it’s your responsibility as a leader to help your team get out of it. Create goals and reward those who reach your goals. Setting up goals is much more effective than creating quotas. It is also a great way to boost morale in your team. You do not have to spend a lot of money on rewards if you are creative. However, if you really want to reward your team for good work, ask for a budget for rewards. Don’t hesitate to recognize people for their accomplishments. It is easy to forget to thank people for what they do, especially in a work environment where everything is moving quickly. Make sure you look for reasons to thank people for their good work, instead of simply chiding them when they make mistakes. This will encourage loyalty, and you will find you have an easier time leading when those you lead are loyal. All leaders must be able to conduct meetings successfully. The next time you are meeting with your workforce, let them know of a few skills you are working on to help you to better facilitate meetings. Afterwards, get some feedback from a few employees, asking them how they think you did with each of your goals. You may learn some valuable information that will boost your leadership skills. Take responsibility for failures. If a customer complains about a delay, don’t shift the blame onto one of your employees. It looks unprofessional. As the boss, you shoulder all the responsibility of making sure your business is functioning as smoothly and as efficiently as it should. Any failures fall to you. Maintain your passion for your work and keep your energy soaring. When you love what you do, it shows and others will respect your leadership. Enthusiasm will build momentum for your company. Being a strong leader requires a great amount of energy. Your energy will infect your employees and keep your company moving forward. Emotional intelligence plays a large role in your success as a leader. It’s not enough to know every policy, procedure, and protocol. You also have to know people! Research in this area reveals that a leader’s mood can have a significant impact on team members’ performance. A positive, forward-thinking attitude tends to result in higher productivity and greater job satisfaction. If you are in a leadership, or management role, at work, remember that your entrance sets the tone of the day. If a grumpy boss comes in, the team will be on edge, and fearful of aggravating the boss. On the other hand, if you leave your troubles at the door, and walk in with a smile, everyone’s day, including yours, will be positive and more productive. Recognize employees who do well. Publicly recognizing team members provides a much needed boost of confidence and will also help encourage future participation and efforts. You don’t have to have a big formal award, simply acknowledging and praising your employees as part of your day can go a long way to boost morale. Most people wish to be effective leaders of others, but very few actually succeed in doing so. One of the most effective methods of acquiring true leadership acumen is to learn as much as possible about those who have gone before and the attributes they had in common. The article above can serve as an ongoing resource for anyone wishing to undertake just that sort of study.

Posted by Shawn Ryder

Do You Want To Learn About Leadership? Read These Tips

November 11, 2020Automotive Industry, Dealership Tips

In becoming a great leader, it is always important to take advice from others. Their advice can help you to learn and grow, and it will enhance the skillset that you already have, making you a more effective leader. This article contains such advice. Read it and learn what it takes to become the best. A good leader is someone who thinks about the future. You need this foresight so that you can make smart decisions now for the future. You will not always be sure of what is going to happen, but over time this will become one of your skills. Set goals for yourself and develop a plan to achieve them. Do what’s necessary to promote group unity. This means making sure that everyone knows what tasks they need to perform and what everyone else is doing. This prevents duplicate effort. Also, make sure each member of the team keeps the others up to date on progress. This makes budget and time overrun less likely. Express a vision for the company. Great leaders differentiate themselves from great managers because of vision. They see where the company needs to be 5 years, 10 years, and 20 years down the road. If you’ve got the vision, share it with your employees. Make them part of the team that’ll help get you there. Offer incentives for high-quality work. Everyone receives a salary of course, but incentives can be an extra motivation. Rewarding a hard-working employee is important. Good leaders are generous in this situation. Take care of yourself. When you’re a leader, it can be very easy for you to lose yourself. However, it’s important for you to remember that you are not going to be much use if you never sleep and never eat. Make sure that you are caring for yourself so you can best care for those you are leading. Your employees judge you on your decisions. Employees are watching you who give the most select projects to and how often. They’re also watching the type of people who you hire or even fire. If you play favorites rather than handing out rewards to the people who deserve it the most, you lose credibility and it can really hurt your business. Listening is more important than talking. Good leaders know that listening to their employees and to those around them is vitally important. Listen to what people have to say. Address both their concerns and anything positive they have to say. Find out your employees’ opinions with regard to your products and customers. You can be greatly surprised how much listening to your team can benefit you. Although it’s a good idea to incorporate innovative ideas and continue to evolve your business plan, you need to stick to your original plan. Continuing to work towards a specific goal helps build your credibility and makes others confident in your abilities. Remember that your plan can be improved upon without changing completely. Learn how to laugh. Yes, you’ve got a serious job with a lot of responsibilities, but leadership isn’t born out of tension and stress. Sometimes you need to learn how to lighten the mood. Not just for yourself, but for your employees too. If you’ve hit some rough patches, it’s your responsibility as a leader to help your team get out of it. Work on improving your decisiveness. Effective leadership means skill at making decisions. You’ve got to learn how to take risks. Making decisions confidently and taking risks when necessary will make you a respected leader. Never second-guess any decision that you make. Some decisions will fail, so learn from them. Maintain a positive attitude. As the leader, you set the tone for your business. You need to make sure that the tone you set is one of the possibilities, positivity, and patience. Always encourage those under you to think in terms of the solution and not the problem, so that they too can keep an air of positivity as they go about their work. Establish clear communication channels. Your team should always be fully informed of every aspect of the project, including any deadlines that need to be met. Having good communication with your team will help establish your credibility as a leader and gaining their support. Your team should also feel free to contact you with questions or constructive feedback. The way you use humor in the presence of others can influence their perceptions of your leadership abilities. For example, you may find that constant self-deprecation has an unfavorable effect on others’ respect for your power. Frequent use of this type of humor communicates immaturity and an inability to be serious. When called upon to lead others, think about your duties in an entrepreneurial way. Shopkeepers cannot expect to generate profits without first investing their time, energy, and insights. You cannot reasonably expect your team to perform its best without similar inputs on your part. Take pride in your team, and don’t hesitate to advertise it in the form of compliments, encouragement, and recognition for a job well done. Do a good job of organizing work, and give everyone high standards for performance. If you are chaotic and disorganized, everyone else will be as well. Your company will be more productive once you provide a clear outline of what needs to be done. If you’re trying to improve your leadership skill, you should be aware of your weaknesses and strengths. When you completely understand these traits, you can use your strengths to your advantage and begin to improve your weaknesses. This will help you with making improvements and will also help employees have a standard to follow because you set a good example. Allow your employees to work independently when appropriate. Some bosses are constantly looking over an employees shoulder and micromanaging their tasks. This is not an effective use of your time, and it does not allow your employees to gain a feeling of trust. Instead, give your employees a project and let them run with it. Check-in periodically, but do not always feel like you have to jump in at every step and contribute. You now have many of the tools in hand to become a great leader. These tips were provided by experts in the field, those who have seen success, and those who know what it takes to achieve greatness. Use them wisely, and watch yourself soar in a leadership capacity.

Posted by Shawn Ryder

The Impact of New Technologies on Incumbent Industries

October 29, 2020Business, Technology

Century-old industries are being dismantled by tech companies faster than you can say “Bob’s Your Uncle.” From precious stones to trash, entrepreneurs use technology to innovate and disrupt even the most unappealing industries. Even antiquated business models like insurance have seen tech takeovers as new companies make getting home or car insurance less daunting. Tech is a force multiplier that increases the capabilities of a few people to create new ways of thinking about old problems. Business models adapt to software as a service, 3D imagining is hasting the development of new products, and cloud computing allows simple laptops to complete massive projects. The bigger an industry or company, the more susceptible it is to being upended by new-age thinkers. Smaller companies and startups can dip and dive while larger companies are stuck in bureaucratic tape, keeping them from implementing drastic change. Large companies eventually find a way to replicate the services of young tech companies or buy out the smaller companies straight up. Startups usually end up in one of three places: going public, purchased by a larger company, or flaming out. Regardless of the outcome, the ideas generated by creative entrepreneurs are building the stepping stones to modern business.

Diamonds

The pressure is on for traditional diamond companies to keep up with a new method for creating precious stones. Instead of waiting for millennia for the perfect conditions and destroying the earth to retrieve them, Diamond Foundry creates diamonds with carbon heated inside of plasm reactors. These diamonds offer a solution that is also a limit to their company. Sustainable sourcing of beautiful diamonds is a dream come true for so many as the workers in this industry are exploited by diamond mining companies and work in terrible, inhumane conditions. The humanmade aspect of the diamonds is enough to drive away diamond enthusiasts who want to keep buying diamonds the traditional way even though the atomic makeup of Diamond Foundry’s diamonds is the same as earth-grown ones.

Garbage

Not everyone wants to make a living making extravagant things. One company sees the value in what most would deem meaningless. Garbage is something we all create but don’t have to deal with because people in trucks come by and pick it up once a week. An Atlanta based company, Rubicon Global, is turning garbage collections into a business while trying to fight off industry giants. The company pairs independent garbage collectors (you can freelance at anything) with corporate clients to help save businesses money and give independent garbage companies a chance to compete with the goliaths. As a tech company, Rubicon Global needs front-end developers to create infrastructure retailers and independent garbage collectors use to facilitate their business. Other people’s trash can be your treasure if you become a front-end developer without a degree.

Tracking Students

Keeping track of students, their progress, and their positive or negative behaviors used to require complex tracking sheets and tricky processes. ClassDojo is looking to put classroom management into one app. One of the biggest perks of ClassDojo is that it allows you to create positive incentives for your students and keep track of them easily. The best part of this app for teachers is the student companion app. Instead of getting twenty little voices asking how many class points they have, the teacher can direct them to their respective apps. This lessens the teacher’s burden and puts it on the kid to take control of their actions and control their destiny. Teachers can keep track of their younglings’ progress towards obtaining the basic skills to secure a computer science career and make more innovations to the classroom.

Student Loans

Some entrepreneurs opt to head straight for the money. SoFi is one of those companies. The financial services app offers a plethora of features to help clients get control of their financial lives. SoFi’s primary focus is on student loans. Student loans are a plague for millennials, as the cost of education rises. SoFi is upending student loans by allowing other people to offer funds instead of taking them from banks. This crowdsourcing of funds and lower interest rates is becoming a growing business. There are often hurdles and legions of red tape financial startups must jump through, but the unique nature of SoFi doesn’t fall under that jurisdiction. On its way to becoming a regular bank with checking accounts, SoFi might end up putting banking into the hands of many rather than only the institutions. Fintech companies, like SoFi, are on the lookout for software engineers and other tech professionals and often hire tech professionals who graduate from Bay Area coding bootcamps.

Posted by Shawn Ryder

Getting Started With Email Marketing: Tips For Success

October 27, 2020Automotive Marketing, Email Marketing

Email marketing has so many attractive features that make it a great way to reach customers and to bring them to your business. Email marketing can be inexpensive, lucrative and can even help the environment by saving paper. Whatever your reason for choosing email marketing, you will find useful information about it in the article below. You, or someone else, should proofread your email before you send it to customers. Ensure that it is free from typographical and grammatical errors. You should also make certain that the message flows easily. By checking these three issues are addressed, your email marketing will have a professional appearance. Even though it should be obvious, it is important enough to state over and over: Never send unsolicited emails. You should have explicit permission from everyone you send marketing emails to. This is about more than trying not to upset them; a recipient who considers your email spam can cause trouble for you with your service provider. Make sure that your email subscribers know exactly what to expect from you. An excellent way to do this is to make your first email to every new subscriber a default informational message. You should lay out what sort of content you intend to send them, and also indicate the frequency of messages they can expect from you. Do what you can to make your email go into your customers’ inboxes. You must work to get your email to pass ISPs and not get tagged as spam messages. If they get tagged as spam messages, your recipient may never see them. Check with customers to see if they are getting your emails, or if they’re no longer interested. When you are building an effective email marketing campaign, you need to have the proper sign-up forms on your company website. Make sure you have them on every page, and also make sure that they are in the proper locations on your site pages. This is key to getting the customers to sign up. Test sending your email marketing on different days of the week and at various times during the day. You’ll find that different times and dates will increase or decrease your open rates to your emails. Note the best time/day of the week mixtures and plan your most important email marketing campaigns to be released during those windows. Put real consideration into where you place links in your marketing newsletters. For example, you don’t want to send readers away from your email before you give them their call to action. You also don’t want to put your priority links at the end of an email where they may be overlooked. In all your emails, you need to use a call for action. You have to tell your customers exactly what you want them to do. Include obvious links with instructions on how your readers should proceed once they get to your site. You can use these sections in the top part and bottom part of your messages. Do not send too much information in one email. Customers will get frustrated and overwhelmed if there is an overabundance of information in a single email. Instead, put a sufficient amount of information in a series of emails and be sure that each one contains a few paragraphs. This will keep their attention. Everyone knows that email filters are getting more and more strict. Graphics and other things included in emails are blocked out, so a reader might not even see what you are trying to say. Therefore, a good piece of advice is to use plain text with a hyperlink to your site. You might need to try following up to your customers with an alert on a price increase. The email could include a link that says to act now in order to avoid this increase. The ending of the message could convince them to click on the link in order to understand all the details. Try using A/B testing for your email marketing campaign. This basically entails creating two very different versions of the same email (A and B) and sending “A” to half of a small test group and “B” to the other half. Whichever half receives the most positive response is the one that you should be using for your campaign.

Sales

To get the most of your email marketing, invest in a program that personalizes your emails with every customer’s given name instead of a generic greeting. Ensuring that every email starts with the recipient’s name is key to encouraging your customers to see your newsletters as valuable information and not just more sales spam. Email is a great marketing tool, but it is not an arena where the hard sell is appreciated. Never pressure your subscribers into buying. Put sales pitches at the tail end of your emails, especially if your readers signed up with expectations of informative content. Consider email as a tool to cultivate interest, not instant sales. People will appreciate you valuing their time and sending out interesting emails. Don’t abuse their confidence or insult their intelligence by sending them blatant sales petitions. Always add something of value like a tip regarding your service, a suggested use for your product, or a special free offer in each message you send out. To maximize the effectiveness of your emails, send them out on Tuesday or Wednesday. Research shows that people are actually more inclined to respond positively to various forms of communication on these days, including email. Not only are they more likely to read your email, but they’re also more apt to click on buttons or links, which means that you’re more likely to see an increase in sales. Send your emails at mid-afternoon for optimal results. No doubt email marketing works on so many levels. It can be one of the most cost-effective ways to reach out to the largest amount of people all over the world. Take the advice and techniques that are offered in the article above to help you design an email marketing plan that works for you and your business.

Posted by Shawn Ryder

Learn All About Leadership With These Tips.

November 11, 2020Business, Dealership Tips

Are you tired of being a worker bee? Are you forced to follow the orders of incompetent people? Did you know you can change all that? Once you learn not to be scared of being a leader, you are free to leadership positions and change the way things are done. Read on for more information. In order to be an effective leader, you must work closely with your team. Listen to them when they talk, encourage individuality and innovation, and let each member of your team enjoy their individual and group successes. Above all, don’t ask a member of your team to do anything that you would not be willing to do yourself. In order to be a great leader, you must be able to communicate your vision to your team. Explain clearly what the common goal is, and instill a vision of success in the group. Getting everyone working together on something they all believe in cements your leadership role in the group. Build trust in your ability to be a strong leader. Let your employees see you work. Don’t do everything behind closed doors so that workers have no idea what you actually do. Always be cognizant of your leadership role. Your employees will do as you do, not as you say. If you are rolling out a new business process, train your employees effectively. That new business process might look all shiny on paper, but if your subordinates receive insufficient, or worse, no training, it will inevitably cost you money down the road. There are ways to make training relatively painless, so do your research. On most days, be the first in the office and the last out. This is not just about working the most hours. It’s about giving your employees the perception of work ethic. If they see you working hard, they’ll believe in you as a leader more. And with that comes real trust and a bump in productivity. If you have an employee that goes above and beyond the call of duty, do not hesitate to give them extra praise and rewards. Even though it may seem like you are playing favorites, you are giving them what they deserve. be open with other employees about it so they are aware of what rewards come with hard work. Make sure that people know that you want the team’s success. If you’re in a position of power, some may suspect that you only want glory for yourself. That’s why it is important to do things that let others know you are on their side, and that your leadership will produce good results for everyone. Learn to listen to your team. Giving orders is just a small part of being a leader. Learning to listen is a key to being an effective leader. Listen to your team members’ suggestions or concerns. Your team is more likely to feel respected and return the favor when you listen to what they have to say. Dress the part. There’s a perception to leadership. If you look the role, people will respond to your leadership much more positively and openly. If you dress poorly, it’ll be a tougher road to climb instilling leadership. It’s possible still, but make it easier on yourself and be the best dressed person in the office. When it comes to being a leader at work, it is important that you prioritize. If you place things that are not very vital at the top of the list, you will look incompetent. Make sure that the things that need to get done are completed in a good amount of time. Your role as a leader should not include treating team members, or employees, like children. You are dealing with adults who have adult lives outside of work, just like yourself. Treating them as peers whom you trust and value, is a great motivational tool that every leader should use. Any role in leadership includes bringing in new team members, or employees. Part of this responsibility is to make new hires feel welcome, included and comfortable. Be sure to introduce newbies to the team, include them in luncheons and meetings. You could even organize a welcome committee to help acclimate new workers to the group. One question is generally asked by great business leaders. Are you content? If you are, that means you are not taking risks often enough. Feeling uncomfortable is a good thing; risk effectively, and see what happens. Get out of your rut and take a chance today. You can find helpful books at the local bookstore or library. Instead of the self-realization titles out there, head to the biography section. Look for books that are focused on specific leaders you already admire. There is much to be gained by learning from a true leader, especially from a person like Abraham Lincoln. Be passionate about work. Employees often get their enthusiasm with regard to the company and their work from their leaders. When you do this, then these positive feelings spread to your employees infecting them with your enthusiasm. It is the best way to promote team spirit and make challenging problems less stressful. Make sure you are contributing as much as you expect your employees to, more is even better. An employee who watches their boss sit around and wait for others to accomplish tasks will not have as much respect for that boss. Instead, don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty and dive right into the projects at hand. This will help you to understand your employees perspective, and it will promote a true sense of team too. Always keep your eye on the ball when it comes to recognizing the strengths of your team members. Even if you do not need that particular strength for a project right now, make a mental note so that you immediately know who to turn to for a future project or task. This helps you to feel prepared, and it also allows you to really use your team to their highest capacity. Now that you’ve come to the end of this article, you know what it takes to be a leader. Use what you’ve just learned to become the best leader you can be. Don’t worry about appearances. Others will naturally follow your lead once they realize that you know what you’re doing.

Posted by Shawn Ryder

Learn The Ins And Outs Of Search Engine Optimization

October 27, 2020Automotive Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEO

There is a key component that can be the bridge between your business and online success. While your website may be top of the line and your product, service or blog may be well worth the visit, you may get nowhere without SEO. If you do not know what SEO is or if you do understand but do not know where to start this article will help. On your website, headings are going to play a vital role in organizing information. So you need to use only a single H1 tag when you are putting your page together. You can use various subheading tags, like H2-H6, but keep things neat and clean by only using one main H1 tag. One good way to get people to see your website first on a search engine is to use keywords. The keywords should be affiliated with your website or the product that you are selling. If you use too many keywords, you will be labeled as a spammer which will hurt your traffic. To demonstrate the importance of a keyword to search engines, bold it on its first use. Search engines are able to recognize when text is bolder and rate bolder words as being more important to your page. Having a bold word will help search engines to find your keyword and to look for additional appearances of it on your page. Track where people on your site are going. When you determine where people are going, you know where you need to concentrate your efforts. If you have a restaurant, chances are people are checking out your menu. This lets you know that this is an area of your site that you need to keep fresh and updated. Do not spread yourself too thin. Use a limited amount of keywords throughout your entire website. Some search engines recommend no more than twenty. If you do more than this, you may end up not getting the searches you want, because the search engine recognizes you are overdoing it. Keep it simple! One important tip that you should remember is that you should never republish an article at different links on your site. Google ranks pages in its SERP based on quality and considers different links to articles with similar content as a low-quality link. Instead, use references to one single link. Bold your keywords to allow search engine crawlers an easier hunt. Crawlers are intelligent, but sometimes they may have difficulty recognizing what your keywords are. To alleviate this issue, highlight your keywords by putting them in bold. It will make them easier to find, take less time for the crawler, and put you higher in the rankings. Though your site might be really good, it can never be perfect. Understand this, and you will want to improve your site daily. You should always be seeking to improve visitor numbers. Try to get your page link on a .edu or .gov site for better search engine optimization. Because these sites are top-level domains and are considered to be very credible and reliable, people who see your link on a .edu or .gov will think you are legitimate and credible as well. You should make sure that the content on your site is readable rather than stuffed full of keywords. Many people do not understand how search engines work and just want to be able to get the information they need in a quick manner. If you keyword stuff your site, it could make it difficult to read and thus put a damper on the amount of traffic you get. Make sure to research your keywords before placing them into your content. Try using websites like Google’s Keyword External Tool or Word Tracker to see what keywords are “hot” when it comes to your subject matter. By strategically using and placing keywords like this, you can raise your ranking in the search engine results. To maximize your SEO potential, remember to write not only to your human audience, but also for the search engine. That means including things like keyword rich titles and description fields and headers that are formatted as h1 and h2. Also make your content interesting and interactive to promote more bookmarking of your content. Stay at the top of the search results by devoting a portion of your web space to keyword-rich content as it relates to the latest and greatest in fads, trends, and of-the-moment topics. Chase new points of interest and update them frequently to attract new users who will reward your on-trend outlook with more clicks and unique visitors. Having a blog on your company website increases its search engine ratings because it makes the website competitive outside of its product keyword areas. Your company may have very strong keywords on every page, but so do other companies that sell the same product. Adding a blog opens up a whole new world of keywords because the content is not so structured. For more technical and current insight into your competitors’ keywords and site content, visit each of your individual competitors’ pages and view the source page. The information contained in the pages’ code should help you to identify which keywords your competitors are using to bring in your target market. Whenever possible, consolidate pages that have very similar or closely corresponding text and graphics. Establish which one will be your best representation – this is the page that will show up in search results. This makes your site more efficient by reducing the amount of code that search engines must filter through to establish your site’s relevancy score. When using search engine optimization techniques, it is very important to monitor where your site falls in the search engines. There are many tools that can track your search engine ranking. When making changes to your site to optimize your search engine rankings, watch to see how they affect your ranking before making any more changes. Having your website reach its full potential is a gratifying and profitable experience. If you use the tips outlined in this article you will find that your website can receive more traffic. More traffic means more consumers. More consumers are great news for any website. In short, embrace SEO today make more money tomorrow!

Sales

Diamonds

Garbage

Tracking Students

Student Loans

Sales

Email Newsletters!