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Corporations have money, so why aren’t they hiring?

amy — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 13:31:29 +0000

Recent studies have shown that corporations are making money, so why is our unemployment rate still sitting at 10%? Business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Congress have stated that the current administration has created uncertainty in the market by passing a large number of regulations, such as the infamous health care bill. The health care bill places fines on companies with over 50 employees if they do not offer a group health care plan. An unintended consequence of this is that companies may try to trim their workforce to stay below the 50 mark.

The White House states that businesses are waiting for demand to return, but a recent survey of financial officers shows that “ . . . executives don’t expect to bring their employment back to pre-recession levels until 2012 or later — even though they’re projecting a 12 percent rise in earnings and a 9 percent boost in capital spending over the next year”.

Some economists also speculate that global competition has ramped up and corporations want to hang on to their cash while they figure out the best way to compete with companies in countries that have fewer regulations.

For more on this topic, check out this article from The Washington Post.

Are you valuable to your employer?

amy — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:06:09 +0000

Every employee must add value to their company’s bottom line. For some, it could be the ideas that you contribute, your likeability factor or your work ethic. But most likely it’s purely adding to the bottom line. This is especially true in small businesses. This blog post from Just Sell discusses questions you should ask yourself to determine your value:

Do your actions create a positive buzz about you and your work?
Landing a new account or impressing a client can get your boss and your colleagues talking. Think about your actions at your workplace. Do your colleagues talk about you in a positive light regarding your impact on the company’s success?

Do your actions make others want you to be part of their team?
Success begets success. If you are successful, others will want you to be on their team for projects, sales presentations, or customer support.

Do your actions make your employer cringe at the thought of losing you to a competitor?
Tremendous added value you create is bound to be seen by other companies. If other companies want you, this puts you in a powerful position, but you must make sure to stay humble.

Do your actions make your customers excited about referring you to their colleagues?
Did you “got to bat” for your customer on pricing or customer service? You may think customers don’t know the difference between normal and extraordinary support from their sales person or contact person, but they do.

Presenting Your Case

amy — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 15:26:21 +0000

Entrepreneurs and sales people often use slide presentations when pitching to potential customers. This blog post on slide presentations for fundraising gave great advice on these: Keep your slide presentations to six slides. People are less likely to miss out on important details. Make your most important points and be creative with your 6 slides. It is better to have 6 memorable slides in your presentation than 15 informative, but unmemorable ones. The most effective pitches are short and to the point and when you have the opportunity to give a presentation, this advice is no different.

For more advice on pitching, check out our previous posts: Elevator Pitches and Pitching to Bloggers.

Getting Referrals and Recommendations

amy — Thu, 13 May 2010 16:16:47 +0000

You know you offer a great service, but do your customers think so? Are they spreading the word about your superb customer service or your outstanding products? People are much more likely to use a service or a buy product if it is recommended by someone they trust. Also, the internet has made research much easier for consumers, so being recommended by others is more important than ever. Here are some tips on getting business through referrals:

Your Employees
If the people who work for you feel positive about your company, they will spread the word. They likely know people that require the service or product you offer and will be quick to refer their company. They also have a stake in this company and they want it to do well. You might want to offer an internal referral reward to encourage this behavior. A possible side effect of using your employees to get customers is that it could also lead to new hires.

Buzz
When your company does a great job, tell the world about it. Reward employees that were involved and create a general positive buzz around your company. Other ways to create buzz are to be present at trade shows, giving away free t-shirts or participating in community events. Anything you do that will present your company in a positive light and get people excited is good buzz!

Reward Referrals
If a customer refers another customer to you, reward that customer! It could be as simple as sending a thank you card or as big as offering a discounted service. Also, remember the Golden Rule. If customers come to you and you find that you cannot fulfill what they need, refer them to a company that can. They will reciprocate.

I highly recommend this article by John Jantsch, author of The Referral Engine.

Working from Home

amy — Fri, 07 May 2010 16:31:14 +0000

We have talked about managing workers that are not in the office, but with “virtual” offices on the rise, it’s likely that many managers are also working from home. Working from home is still new to a lot of people and while it does sound relaxing in a way, its presents a lot of new challenges. You may not realize it, but home has a lot of distractions. A dirty dish in the sink may seem like nothing when you are trying to relax after a day at the office, but it becomes an urgent matter that needs to be taken care of immediately if you are attempting work from home. Don’t let working from home affect your efficiency! Here are some tips:

Create a Workspace that Reduces Distractions
If you already have a home office, GREAT! Use it and make sure you close the door! If you don’t, set up a workspace in a quiet, tidied-up area of the house without a TV or radio. If you have a non-work cell phone, put it on silent. Also, before you go to your workspace, dress like you are going to work. Working in your pajamas seems like a comfortable idea, but it will be hard to get into the “work” mindset.

Create Schedule
Set a schedule and stick to it. Give yourself specific work hours, but also take time for breaks to make sure you can maintain your focus. I recommend going out for lunch if you are working from home. You may go stir-crazy from being in your house for too long!

Enjoy it
Enjoy all of the great things about working from home. There is no commute, you can make fresh snacks in your kitchen and you can clean dishes on your break so you won’t have to deal with them when the workday is over!

For more tips on working from home, check out this article.

Hiring Employees Using LinkedIn

amy — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 15:55:29 +0000

Previously, we had discussed using LinkedIn to network and find new jobs, clients, etc, but what about using LinkedIn to hire employees? LinkedIn boasts over 60 million professional profiles spanning 200 countries. As far professional social networking goes, it is THE place to be seen! Here are some tips on using LinkedIn as part of your hiring process:

Connections
Use your connections first. People you already know can give you honest feedback about potential employees. Look at who your connections recommend and send a status update with information about the position you are seeking to fill. Everyone out there knows someone that is looking for a job. LinkedIn also offers paid job postings.

Engage
Join LinkedIn Groups in your field and be active in them. Ask and answer questions, offer feedback and information. You will be seen as a leader in your field and the best and brightest will want to work for you. You can also create your own group if you don’t feel there is a satisfactory one already in existence.

Be Aware
There are a lot of people on LinkedIn that add anyone and everyone as a connection. If you find a potential employee and they are connected to someone you know, ask that person how they know them, when they worked with them, etc. Although you can always find out a lot about a potential employee on the internet these days, you should always check references the old fashioned way as well.

You can learn more about using LinkedIn to hire your next employee here.

Long Live To-Do Lists!

amy — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 15:07:18 +0000

A few weeks ago, we talked about Time Management tips. A favorite time management device is, of course, The To-Do List! It’s a great feeling when you create a To-Do List and you cross off a task that has been completed. There are many online To-Do lists such as Remember the Milk and Tada Lists. While I mainly use online To-Do lists through Basecamp, I also like to use post-it notes. Once I complete a task, the post-it note goes into the trash! My goal for everyday is to have my desk free of post-it notes.

I recently discovered the blog, Time Management Ninja (TMN), which prides itself on “winning the battle against wasted time, disorganization, clutter and all things evil . . .”. The blog offers many great tips on Time Management and their latest blog posts focuses on To-Do Lists. TMN describes the To-Do list as a menu that drives accountability, allows you finish tasks more quickly and visualize what needs to be done. You can read the entire article here. I also suggest that you follow TMN on Twitter.

Starbucks: A Digital Media Success

amy — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:30:55 +0000

Emily Bryson York from AdvertisingAge wrote a great article on Starbucks’ success in the Digital Media world. Not only do they use Facebook and Twitter to engage their customer base, they also created a website, MyStarbucksIdea.com, which encourages Starbucks’ customers to submit ideas for products, promotions, etc. As of today, the site has 180,000 registered users and 80,000 ideas have been submitted. 50 have been implemented. In September, the coffee giant also launched 2 iPhone applications and is testing the idea of loyalty cards that can be loaded onto customers’ cell phones.

The company relied on digital and social media promotions instead of an annual TV blitz and it worked out in their favor. Starbucks posted its first U.S. same-store sales gain in 2 years.

If your business uses digital media, this article is a must-read. You can find it here. Also, check out Starbucks’ Facebook and Twitter pages to see how the experts do it!

Twitter Tips

amy — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 19:19:45 +0000

We’ve talked about Facebook, but Twitter is also a Big Dog in the world of Social Media. Twitter is an instant messaging site that was originally meant for individuals, but businesses started honing the power of Twitter as a way to reach out to current and potential customers. Dell, Whole Foods, Southwest Airlines and Starbucks are just a few companies that are using Twitter.

If your company is thinking about using Twitter, here are some tips on how to use it:

Keep it short
Just like Facebook, a Twitter post should be short and to the point. If you are using Twitter to drive traffic to a blog, a short sentence on what the blog post is about and link is sufficient. Twitter helps you keep it short by limiting the character count to 140.

Reward your Twitter followers!
Offer Twitter only coupons or promotions. This will keep you on your customer’s radar. They will want to follow you and they will tell their friends!

Tweet the news
Is your company offering a new product? Is there something in the news about your industry? Tweet about it and encourage your followers to “Re-Tweet”, which means that they can post your Tweet to their follower’s pages.

Use the Hashtag (#)
A Hashtag is a search convention for Twitter. It’s just like using tags on a blog, except you put the “#” sign in front of it. For instance, if you are posting an industry news story that happened in Raleigh, you could tag your tweet like this: #Raleigh. Then, anyone on Twitter searching for Raleigh news and events can see your post and possibly decide to follow your company.

A combination of coupons, company news and links is the perfect combination for success if you are using Twitter. One other tip: Limit your tweets to 1 or 2 a day at the most. Nothing will cause customer’s stop following you more than page full of tweets from just your account.

For more Twitter Tips, check out http://twittertips.org/.

Back it up!

amy — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:05:24 +0000

In this day and age, we are using many outside hosting services to store documents, files, information, etc. These web-based tools are great, especially for collaboration, but what happens if the company hosting your valuable information goes under? What if something on their end causes you to lose your files? We have discovered that Backupify is an invaluable tool for this. You can use Backupify to back up your social media profiles such as Facebook and Twitter as well as web based tools like WordPress, Basecamp and Google Docs. Once you sign up, it is easy and intuitive to manage. You can set up your account to automatically update daily or weekly. The site will even send you an email once a back up has been completed.

If you aren’t already using it, now is the best time to sign up. Backupify is offering free accounts until January 31. You can read more about Backupify here.