3 Ways to Find The Right Employees for Your Small Business |  |
- 3 Ways to Find The Right Employees for Your Small Business
- Microsoft Nokia Acquisition: Good For Small Businesses
- Is Your Online Marketing Strategy Up to Date?
- Google Knocks $100 Off Nexus 4
- How to Get Followers and Sales With Your LinkedIn Company Page
| 3 Ways to Find The Right Employees for Your Small Business Posted: 04 Sep 2013 04:00 PM PDT
It appears that a majority of small business owners are having the very same issues with their employees – finding the right people to work for their companies. A recent survey showed that a whopping 60 percent of small business owners state that they have a hard time finding the right skilled workers to fill their open positions. Large corporations often have an entire department dedicated to the task of recruiting talent. So what can you, the small business owner, do? How to Find the Right Employees1. Show Them Why They Should Work for YouThe first thing that you want to do is show candidates why they should want to work for you. Chances are, hiring a quality candidate is going to require more monetary investment than you can afford. Give them non-monetary reasons why working with you is probably the best decision they can make. You have to emphasize things such as the ability to advance without having to deal with large corporate red tape and office politics. If your company has a rich social environment that is a breeding place for lots of fun, sell it. If working with your company will give candidates more exposure to their professional development, then focus your pitch on it. The bottom line: You need to be attractive to the prospects. If you’re a bootstrapper, you need to be sure that you attract them for reasons other than money. 2. Recruit the Best of the Best of the BestYes, you read that right – you need to recruit the best of the best of the best. Hiring the wrong person can drain your resources fast. What’s the worst activity small business owners after a bad hire? Firing the employee. If you make a bad hire, chances are that you will eventually need to fire this individual. Firing an employee is emotionally draining, especially when they refuse to acknowledge that they deserve to be fired. When you recruit someone, be very, very picky. Remember, you are in a relationship with your employees for quite a long time and you can't afford a bad hire. 3. Use the Right Hiring MethodsPlacing your ad on Craigslist or Monster is going to bring a surge of applications. Receiving hundreds or thousands of applications can be overwhelming and the selection process can become even more daunting and you don't want that. The best way for you is to recruit candidates using more targeted methods. Try using social media to get the attention of local job seekers. The go-to social media site for recruiting employees is LinkedIn. You can advertise on LinkedIn and laser-target candidates with certain skill sets or you can hand-pick candidates yourself. Another great option for recruiting a talented worker for key positions in your company is with a staffing agency. The great thing about using a staffing agency is that you can “try before you buy.” The agency does the recruiting. They test the candidates that sign up for their services and they do thorough background checks. Once the candidate is thoroughly vetted, the testing then verifies what area of work they will excel in. What this means for you is that you are not stuck with an employee that you are not satisfied with. TakeawayThe best hires generally use a very simple yet obvious method: Testing them with the actual work. Experience and educational background matter, but honestly they mean nothing if your prospects can't get things done your way. Be absolutely sure before you say, "You are hired." And to be absolutely sure, you need to observe how they do their work first. One last bit of advice: Trust your hunches.
Businessman Seeking Photo via Shutterstock The post 3 Ways to Find The Right Employees for Your Small Business appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Microsoft Nokia Acquisition: Good For Small Businesses Posted: 04 Sep 2013 01:30 PM PDT
Yesterday’s news that Microsoft will acquire Nokia for $7.2 billion is probably good news for both Microsoft and Nokia, and also for small businesses. Naysayers – and there are a lot of them – use words like it’s “too little too late” and that Nokia “can’t save” Microsoft. For instance, industry observer Vivek Wadhwa sees lots of problems on the horizon for Microsoft. He says the answer is for Microsoft to break itself up into nimbler pieces. Others, such as Business Insider’s Henry Blodget, see it as a “smart move” but one not likely to be successful because it’s too much of a Hail Mary pass, in his opinion. If it works, it can win the game. But chances are high it won’t work, for a variety of reasons. For example, he notes that the big party in the mobile space has been tablets, but that Nokia has a nonexistent tablet offering. Microsoft, on the other hand, has tablet offerings, but they have been high priced and slow to catch on. The Microsoft viewpoint was aptly put in an announcement sent to members of Microsoft’s Voices for Innovation community, by Jonathan Friebert, Microsoft’s public policy manager, explained:
Why A Microsoft / Nokia Combo is Good For BusinessesFor businesses that are Windows shops, having a range of Windows smartphones and tablets is an attractive thing. It provides a real alternative for businesses. Apple and Google’s Android dominate the consumer mobile devices market today. It would be a hard row to hoe, to try to gain substantial market share there. But for business users, by combining forces, Nokia and Microsoft have the potential for a stronger offering for the business market. Businesses need that. For business users, there’s real benefit to being able to use a phone and tablet that integrate seamlessly with your desktop or laptop computers. It’s efficient. It puts less burden on businesses that use Windows. There’s less of a learning curve. When a device makes it easier to conduct business, then small businesses and enterprises have a real reason to choose a Windows smartphone or a Windows tablet. That’s especially true with tablets. Right now there’s a void in the marketplace. Yes, iPads and Android tablets are fun. But for business users they have limited business value. If my own tablet is any example, it tends to get used mainly for entertainment and occasionally on business trips when I have to write something longer than an email with two or three sentences. It’s not very functional when it comes to the heavy lifting of business work I do. My little 4-year old netbook computer is unpleasant to use for entertainment purposes, but far more useful than my tablet when it comes to work, despite being old and slow. Consequently, I often carry both on business trips — one for watching movies and catching up on email and social media, and the other for real work. Some think that Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia is as much about tablets as smartphones. It gives Microsoft access to hardware technology and access to Nokia’s distribution network. To date, Microsoft has had limited success with tablets. After the market failed to receive its stripped down Windows RT tablet, Microsoft reduced the price. It’s Surface tablet with full Windows 8 was better received, but pricey and so Microsoft also dropped the price of the Surface tablet. Yes, Microsoft was slow to the tablet and smartphone party. But there really is a place for good Windows phones and good Windows tablets in the business world. Those that prefer a unified operating system across all their devices were essentially out of luck before. They were forced to pick one of the big industry leaders, Google or Apple, for the operating systems on their mobile devices instead. Now they could have more options, if the Microsoft – Nokia acquisition is successful. For the sake of business users, we hope this acquisition will lead to more mobile device choices. Images: Wikipedia The post Microsoft Nokia Acquisition: Good For Small Businesses appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Is Your Online Marketing Strategy Up to Date? Posted: 04 Sep 2013 11:00 AM PDT
The Internet is a volatile place, with new platforms launching more frequently than most of us do laundry and a constant shifting in the ways that users use the Web. Small business marketers are playing a constant game of catch-up as the online world marches steadily onward. It's a game that can be very easy to lose when you don't have a full-time marketing staff to keep tabs on things 24/7. Think your online marketing strategy might be living in the past? Not even sure what an up-to-date online marketing strategy looks like? These four signs indicate that it might be time to stir things up a bit and trade those proverbial bell bottoms for app development, Pinterest and Vine. Your Online Marketing Strategy Might Need an Update If:You're Using Somebody Else's Platform ExclusivelyNow, I'm not saying that uploading photos to Facebook is a bad thing. But using big, corporate-owned platforms and not hosting any of your own content on your own website, for example – not such a great idea. There are two big reasons for this:
Not sure how to get started? It might be time to hire a web designer to get you set up. You're Four Social Networks BehindDoes MySpace ring a bell? Xanga? LiveJournal? These early social networking sites all had their day, to be sure, but that day is long gone. In fact, many of them are totally shifting gears to appeal to different audiences, or simply aren't used or functional in any useful capacity anymore. I know it can be tough for small businesses to keep up with every single new social network, and it's not always worth it to be an early adopter when you don't know what's going to fly – but it is important to find the networks that are thriving and right for your business. You're Ignoring ROI (Return on Investment) and AnalyticsThis more technical side of online marketing can be intimidating and just a little bit bewildering. You're already running a marketing campaign – now you need to analyze it, too. True, it takes a little bit more work, but tracking data can go a long way in ensuring that the effort you put into marketing is well-placed. And the good news is, you don't need to be a math or programming whiz to measure the success of your online marketing strategy. You're Trying to Appeal to EveryoneThe days when you could churn out content and try to reach everyone with it are over. Now, market segmentation is a necessity. There's simply so much of the Web to reach that you need to strategize and produce content accordingly. Even more, you need to post that segmented content in the right places. What you post on Pinterest, for example, is going to be very different from what you post on LinkedIn. The Magic Word is StrategyThe key to online marketing success is right there in the title of this post: Strategy. The biggest sign that your online marketing strategy is outdated might be the fact that you have no strategy. If this is the case, it's time to put your nose to the grindstone, figure out your audience, create an editorial calendar and start writing content that adds up to a greater whole. And of course, don't forget to measure the results of your online marketing strategy. Up-to-Date Strategy Photo via Shutterstock The post Is Your Online Marketing Strategy Up to Date? appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Google Knocks $100 Off Nexus 4 Posted: 04 Sep 2013 08:00 AM PDT
If your business is looking for an affordable smartphone, it may soon be time to buy. Google has discounted its Google Nexus 4 Android smartphone. The price drop was announced last week on the Google Play Twitter feed.
Google is essentially taking $100 off the already inexpensive smartphone, making the 8GB model $199 and the 16GB $249. Unfortunately, the discount seems to have temporarily depleted inventory of the phone at the Google Play store. A notice Monday morning encouraged disappointed bargain shoppers to check back soon. The markdown may be a sign that a new release from Google is on the way. It may also be a response to a rumored budget iPhone from Apple that could be announced as early as next week. More About the Google Nexus 4At first glance the Google Nexus 4 is already a highly attractive phone for the money. The device has a glass front and back and 4.7-inch screen with 1280 by 768 resolution. It also features an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a 1.3 megapixel camera on the front. Downsides, according to a review by Joshua Topolsky of The Verge below, include lack of 4G LTE which makes for significantly slower data download in most cases. The lack of this feature means the phone is really not competitive with, say, the iPhone 5. (Of course, you’ll want to disregard the prices quoted for the phone in the video since they’re much lower now with the discount.) Also the glass front and back are easy to break, if you drop the phone. However, the cameras and other features seem good and the phone is also available unlocked so you can use it with almost any carrier. The post Google Knocks $100 Off Nexus 4 appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| How to Get Followers and Sales With Your LinkedIn Company Page Posted: 04 Sep 2013 05:00 AM PDT
According to Lana Khavinson of LinkedIn:
That's powerful, and a great reason to create a LinkedIn Company Page and promote it. Here are some other benefits of LinkedIn company pages:
Status UpdatesCompany Pages offer the ability to post status updates that will be read by your followers. Posting a status update at least a couple of times a week (when most folks are on LinkedIn) is a good strategy. Your company page status updates can include awards that you've won, interviews with employees, new product and service announcements, employment updates, events, tips, company information and more. You can link to your blog posts and videos as well. If you're looking for the highest engagement with followers, according to LinkedIn, the company page updates that generate the best response are:
How to Get More LinkedIn FollowersJust like other social networks, the more people that follow you, the more likely that you will receive sales inquiries and interest. One way to get more followers is to add a button to your Website, blog and other social media networks. Instructions are below: Additional ways to get company page followers include:
LinkedIn AnalyticsIt's a good idea to track the results of your efforts using LinkedIn company pages. With the July, 2013 addition of LinkedIn company page analytics, you'll now be able to:
Using the analytics available will help you determine which actions offer the best response, as well as understanding more about your follower base. As stated earlier, "50% of LinkedIn members are more likely to purchase from a company they engage with on LinkedIn." By increasing your engagement with LinkedIn company page followers, you'll increase the likelihood of purchase. Followers Photo via Shutterstock The post How to Get Followers and Sales With Your LinkedIn Company Page appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
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