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Five Resolutions to Cultivate and Grow Your Business in 2015
By Cindy Bates
The start of a New Year is likely to have many SMB owners recounting the ups and downs of the past year and looking for things they can do better in 2015. For some, that means streamlining budgets. For others, that means getting a better grasp on the elusive work/life balance. In my role, it means looking for ways to increase productivity and helping SMB owners get back a bit more of one of the world’s most precious resources – time.
As I look for ways to improve productivity this year, I’ve shared a few tried and true methods below that will help you start your year off strong.
• Start with you – Taking better care of yourself can go a long way towards helping your business thrive. It can be as simple as getting more rest. Sleep can have a major impact on your performance, with one study finding sleep to be more important than food. The latest wearable devices make it easier than ever to track your habits – when asleep or awake to keep your efforts on track. Best of all, you can share healthy habits with your employees. Scheduling daily walks or offering yoga courses onsite can reduce stress and encourage teambuilding. (more…)
How to Spy on Your Competition
By Eric Spellmann
How to Get the Most from Your Technology
By Cindy Bates
In my experience, the most successful small businesses are those that make the most out of their investment in technology.
They are the practitioners who are empowered to respond quickly and professionally to clients and the online entrepreneurs who can expand the capabilities of their websites. They’re often small companies reaching out to national and global audiences through email marketing. However they operate, those business people who best capitalize on technology consistently find a speedier and more productive route to their markets. Research from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found SMBs leveraging technology grow revenue and profitability at a much faster rate. According to BCG, if just 15 percent of low-tech SMBs and 25 percent of the mid-tech SMBs became high-tech SMBs, the result would be 2 million more jobs and an additional $357 billion into the U.S. economy. (more…)
gTLDs: What are these new domains, and why should you care?
By Isaac Irvine
If you own a business, choosing a great domain name is one of the most important steps you’ll take to build a strong online identity. A unique address that represents a website, your domain name is the part of the address that follows the “www.” in an address bar or after the @ symbol in an email address. Your domain is how people remember and revisit your site.
You’ll probably have lots of questions when you set out to choose a domain name for your online business presence. Questions like “What keywords should I use? Is this name too long? Should I pick a .com or what?” It’s a big decision.
Fortunately, the continuing rollout of hundreds of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) to the online marketplace makes it easier than ever before to pick the perfect domain name. These descriptive new domain extensions—such as .lawyer, .guru, .vegas and .dentist, just to name a few—give you a fresh opportunity to register domains that perfectly represent what you and your business are all about. (more…)