Importing and exporting are only some of the duties business owners make to gain better reputation and finances. However, some business owners wish to improve their safety by opting for financial solutions such as import finance strategies. This option offers numerous features, but there are still ways to improve such service. Below are some of the following.Know import rules and regulationsIn order to improve import finance strategies, business owners need to mindful about import rules and regulations of countries. Of course, there are cases when businesses have overseas clients. Therefore, you need to have sufficient knowledge about import rules and regulations. This is important to avoid delays. In addition, having sufficient knowledge about shipping regulations will help make ventures better and more efficient for both buyer and seller.Opt for the right payment methodThe next way business owners need to do in order to improve their import finance strategies is by opting for the right payment method. As of now, business owners can opt for numerous payment options for their import finance solutions such as bills of exchange arrangement, letter of credit and open account. These options can provide the best features that can help make transactions safer and more effective. However, you need to be aware about charges and hidden fees from such options.Be cautious in choosing the financial institution to work withAnother option that business owners can do to improve their import finance strategies is to be cautious in choosing financial institutions to work with. Of course, there are numerous financial institutions that offer such services. However, not all institutions can provide you the right service that can match your needs. So, it is best for business owners to spend time determining their service to help them assess if they can gain wonderful benefits.Find alternativesFinally, it is also best for business owners to find alternatives. Surely, import finance solutions from reliable financial institutions are very effective. Not to mention, this service can secure both buyers and sellers. But, there are still cases when issues can affect such strategy. Therefore, finding alternatives can be a good plan. For instance, you can choose to pay for your orders in advance, but make sure to pay for low value shipments only. Or perhaps, when paying a foreign supplier, you can send payments electronically. And, you can also open an account with suppliers if you are working with them for a long time.Knowing all these tips can help owners improve their ventures which can help them become better and more profitable.
How To Improve Import Finance Strategies
The Online Photography Training
Many photographers often wonder how to stay abreast on the latest photography techniques and trends. Photography is always evolving and changing as technology advances and new cameras, lenses, software, and other equipment are created. Savvy photographers should look to the internet to find the tools they need. Online photography training can be a great way for photographers to stay current on the latest equipment and techniques. There are a variety of sites designed to keep the latest news on photography just a click away. Proud Photography is one of the best online photography training resources available. Proud Photography teaches photographers the latest tricks and tips through a strong set of online courses, a forum for collaboration and resource sharing, and dependable online support to answer any of your photography questions.Proud Photography is one of the best online photography training schools because of the variety of resources available to photographers of all skill levels. The online courses feature an array of topics including a basic Photography Course, Wedding Photography Course, an HDR mini-course, and the newest course on Studio Portrait Lighting. Skilled photographers will be interested in Studio Portrait Lighting where you can learn beyond the basics of indoor portraiture lighting and advance your skills to the professional level. If you are just learning the basics of digital photography, you should consider the Proud Photography course on Photoshop. Here you will learn the essential skills on enhancing digital images and how to give images a professional finish through Photoshop.Like other online photography training courses, Proud Photography is continually updated. This ensures photographers have access to timely information on skills and equipment. A printed book could take months or years to publish, and the information could be outdated before it even goes to press. Photography training online allows for quick publication and continuous updates. Proud Photography has an active online community through the forum. Here photographers gather to share their photos and photography tips with each other. Proud Photography is more than an online training course. It provides the latest information you need to succeed in the quickly changing photography world and the online support you want in the forum and live customer support.
7 Great Reasons You Should Be Publishing On LinkedIn
LinkedIn Marketing for Small Business
LinkedIn Marketing for Small Business is becoming increasingly popular because it is a fast growing platform and the world’s largest professional network with hundreds of millions of users. Posting regular, valuable content on Linkedln helps to create trust between you and your connections and helps you to be seen as an expert in your field. Why does this matter? Well, those that are perceived as experts in their field are able to command higher rates and generate more business and wouldn’t we all like that!
7 Reasons To Publish Content On LinkedIn
It helps keep you top of mind within your LinkedIn network.
Your content provides more value to your network. For instance, posts offering free advice, tips or information on industry trends are often useful or valuable to your network.
It allows you to share your expertise, insights, technical or industry knowledge with a broader audience.
It helps to amplify your blog content to a wider audience and can help drive traffic back to your website, but be sure to use URL links within your posts to help people navigate back to your website.
It helps position you as a thought leader in your industry.
It can help build your business profile. How? Well if you’ve won an award lately, worked with a high profile client, gotten some great press, share a post about it. All these things help create ‘social proof’ or ‘evidence’ that can help you to secure future sales.
Your network can share your LinkedIn post and this opens up your content to a wider audience.
When thinking about LinkedIn Marketing and more specifically the types of posts you should write, remember to ask yourself;
What do I want to be known for?
What sorts of challenges and desires do my ideal customers have?
Then write your posts using key messages that show you understand these challenges, or desires and that you can help provide a good solution.
Following this strategy with help you to better connect with your target customers and build rapport.
LinkedIn Marketing – Build Your Network
LinkedIn has a powerful built-in search function hat you can use to help you identify new contacts. The main question you should answer is – who are the professionals and potential customers you’d like to connect to? Once you have defined your ideal connections, use the search function and LinkedIn filters to locate connections based on items such as job title, industry and location.
When you ‘connect’ with someone on LinkedIn make sure you add a note to personalise your request. It is very important to personalise your connection requests, try to use a message that shows the context and the relevance of connecting. For instance, comment on why it might be a good idea to connect, perhaps you are in complimentary industries. Maybe you found a recent post that they wrote interesting, or you might mention something that you have in common. Referring to shared contacts within your networks is also a good place to start, as we are more likely to connect with people we have common connections with.
Get started today, start posting valuable content and growing your network.
Effie Cinanni is Founder and Director of Small Chilli Marketing a Melbourne based consulting firm specialising in small business marketing and communications. She is an Associate Member of the Australian Marketing Institute and a Certified Practising Marketer (CPM) with almost 20 years of marketing experience. Effie has provided actionable advice and assistance to small businesses across Australia, helping them to create and grow profitable and meaningful businesses.
How to Do Facebook Ads Effectively
Facebook is a wonderful tool to use when marketing your business, products and/or services. They make it really easy for anyone to do it, whether a large corporation or a small home business.
You can run Facebook ads effectively by setting a goal, and then taking the steps necessary to reach that goal. Test what you are doing, and check in on how everything you’re doing is working.
Build Your Email List
Using Facebook to build your email list is very effective because they make it easy with the ability to add tabs and a call to action to get people to sign up for your list. Plus you can put up a nice banner that points people to the call to action.
Get More Page Likes
Using Facebook ads to get more likes for your business pages or to promote your communities is a great way to increase engagement. Make the ad truly relevant to your audience and you’ll get a better response.
Segment Your Audience
You have a large audience, but you also have smaller subset audiences that you can use to narrow down who you’re targeting from your audience. It makes writing copy easier if you have a small segment to think of as you develop ads.
Target Interest Groups
Facebook makes it easy to target people based on many demographics, including interest. This is wonderful way to target specific groups that will be interested in what you’re offering.
Sell Your Product Directly
Using Facebook to sell your products and or services directly is a great way to use Facebook ads. However, you want to ensure that they still sign up for your list.
Include Pictures That Are Relevant
You want pictures that draw attention to your advertisement to your audience. Know what they like and choose those pictures, because you don’t want to do anything that turns them off.
Promote Your Posts
When you write a good post and share it on your Facebook page, it’s important to promote it so that more people see it. Paying to promote posts will ensure that more people see it, and you’ll get more engagement. Be sure to ask for a call to action.
The important thing is to have a goal before you start so that you know that you’re being effective with the actions that you take. Without a goal you have no idea whether what you’re doing is successful.
Do Facebook Ads Work For Small Businesses?
Facebook ads are inexpensive, effective, and something any small business owner should consider getting involved with. The reason you should be running Facebook ads, whether they are sponsored posts or other types of ads, is that they do work. Here’s why.
People Use Facebook All Day Long
People use Facebook on PCs and on their mobile devices, and keep it with them all day long. They take Facebook with them to dinner and some people never turn it off. This is a real chance to connect with your audience that you cannot pass up.
They Are Relevant Due to Extreme Targeting
Facebook allows you to target your individual audience down to their interests and gender, and you can even provide email addresses for the exact people you want to target.
Easy to Include a Call To Action (CTA)
The tools that Facebook offers the people who want to run ads help to create compelling CTAs that your audience will be more likely to answer, whether it’s as easy as liking your page or downloading your app.
It’s Easy to Make Professional-Looking Ads
The tools that Facebook offers let you create professional Facebook ads without having the ability to make ads. They lead you through it with their system to make it simple, so you’re more likely to repeat the process.
Easy to Include Great Value
You can easily include enough information in each ad that shows the value of your offering. With just a few clicks you’ll have an awesome ad that your audience can see the value in.
They Offer Disruption with Significance
In many cases people are blind to advertisements, but on Facebook the disruption is noticeable and your audience will want to check it out. This is due to the ability to target the ads so closely to your target audience.
They Are Simple to Create
The ads are easy to create and it gets easier all the time. As Facebook makes the ads work better for business owners, and easier to do with a click of a button, they become more relevant, more valuable, and more useful to you as a business owner.
Easy to Run A/B Tests
Due to the ability to duplicate an ad and then easily edit to change one part of the ad such as the title or the image, you can run ads simultaneously. You can even target different audiences to find out which works better.
Facebook ads work for a variety of reasons. However, they will only work if you plan them out and spend the time ensuring that you run relevant ads. They must be of value to your audience, grab the attention of the viewer and include a compelling call to action.
6 Practical Steps for Using Instagram to Promote Your Coaching Business
In just 10 short years, Instagram has grown into a powerhouse marketing tool that savvy entrepreneurs are embracing. As of December, 2020…
· Instagram has over 1 billion active users—which means that your market is almost certainly using Instagram-and your competitors are, too.
· 67% of US adults use Instagram, so, while it doesn’t have the reach of Facebook (yet) it’s definitely a platform worth leveraging.
· A younger crowd-more than half of Instagram users are between 18 and 29-if that’s your market, Instagram is the place to be.
· 63% of users check their Instagram feed at least daily-that’s a lot of eyes on cell phones!
Not only that, but the platform has enjoyed double-digit annual growth, and it shows no signs of slowing down. Clearly, it’s time to embrace Instagram and the power it promises as a part of your overall marketing plan.
Instagram is like a simplified version of Facebook, with an emphasis on mobile visual sharing. As with other social networks, you interact with other users on Instagram by following them, being followed by them, commenting, liking, tagging, and private messaging. You can also save the photos you see on Instagram.
Since it’s so visually oriented, Instagram has multiple filters you can apply to enhance photos and videos. Additional photo editing options let you straighten the image, adjust brightness and warmth, and overlay color. For videos, you can disable audio, select a cover frame, and, if you use the iOS app, you can trim videos.
Unique Challenges
But Instagram presents some unique challenges, and those might have you wondering if it’s worth your time. The main ones are:
1) First, it’s completely smart phone driven. Unlike other platforms, you cannot post to Instagram from your computer. In fact, you can’t even post to it from 3rd party apps. It’s fully designed to attract cell phone users. So in markets where mobile usage is high (and let’s face it, that’s nearly everywhere), Instagram is a no-brainer.
2) It’s also image and video centric. Unlike Facebook and Twitter and even Google+, where text updates are still the norm, Instagram demands photos. Text (called “captions” on Instagram) is secondary-although, unlike some other platforms, Instagram is quite generous with their character limit. Keep in mind that even on other platforms, images typically outperform text-only updates. So, focusing on images in your marketing is probably a good thing.
Instagram for Businesses
But Instagram isn’t just about photos. Using a business profile, you can highlight your brand’s mission and goals, feature your products, capture leads, and get sales.
When you sign up for Instagram there is a personal Instagram profile option and then there’s an “Instagram for Business” option. It’s like Facebook in that, the personal profile is for personal use, and the business profile is where you can make offers. (If you already have a personal profile, you can easily switch it to a business profile, or have both.)
As an additional feature, the business profile gives you access to analytics, which means you can see stats and demographics of your followers and your likes. This helps you to understand who your target audience is and what they like. You can also pay to promote your posts, something you cannot do with a personal Instagram account. Just like with Facebook, if you want to ensure that people see your business posts you will have to pay for it.
Instagram and Facebook
You probably know that Instagram is owned by Facebook, which means you can actually link the two platforms to reach both your Facebook and your Instagram audience.
When you run an ad on Facebook, you can also run it on Instagram. Or if you post content on Instagram, you can have it automatically post on Facebook as well. This saves you time and helps keep your social media accounts congruent.
So how can you put Instagram to work in your marketing?
Here are 6 steps you can take to get started using Instagram to promote your business:
Step 1: Optimize Your Profile
As with any platform, Instagram asks you to create a personal and/or business profile. This is where new followers will find out more about you, who you serve, and what your personality is like. It’s your chance to shine… in 150 characters or less.
Step 2: Start Growing Your Community
Above all else, Instagram is a social network, and that means active participation in the community is a must. Concentrate on finding and following the right people: Influencers in your market, as well as your dream clients. Once you find these people, start conversations with them to begin building relationships.
Of course, the ultimate goal of all social media is to get your online community to subscribe to your list, so you have control over how you interact with them. After all, any of these companys could be gone tomorrow, leaving you empty-handed.
Step 3: #hashtags #matter
Perhaps more than any other social network, Instagram relies on hashtags to sort and categorize content. Users who are interested in certain topics can choose to “follow” certain hashtags, just as you might follow other users.
You can put the power of hashtags to work for you by using a careful combination of tags designed to get your content found and followed:
1) The first hashtags to include are the popular/common types. So, for example, if you’re sharing inspirational quotes that might include #inspirationalquotes, #inspiration, and #quote. This will get your content found by those who search on these broad topics. Not everyone in this group will be your ideal client, but that’s OK.
2) The second type of hashtag to use is those that are specific to your audience or niche. #Podcasting, #WAHM, #virtualassistant, #businesscoach and others like these are used less frequently, but will attract a much more targeted market.
3) Another hashtag type you’ll want to use is basically just asking for a follow. These include #follow, #followme, and #follow4follow, among others.
Step 4: Develop Your Brand
If you struggle with branding, you’re not alone. It’s one of those things that feels so murky and vague that it’s difficult to point to. Is it a logo? The colors on your website? Your tagline? It’s all of those and more.
Here’s what you need to keep in mind when you think about your brand. Done well, branding makes every post, photo upload, and social media update instantly recognizable as your own. It’s what makes you YOU—the thoughtful use of:
· Language
· Colors
· Fonts
· Attitude
· Personality
And, for photos, it means being as consistent as possible with composition, style, filters and other elements.
Step 5: Create a Content Strategy
As with other platforms, when you use Instagram for your business, you may want to create a content marketing strategy. To do that, first determine how many times per day or week you want to post. Some coaches post once a week and some post several times a day. Whatever you decide, it’s important to be consistent.
And follow this guideline for content composition: Have a third of your posts be about your branding, a third sharing content from influencers or your users, and a third actually selling your product or service:
a) Branding: To help your followers get to know you as a brand, include your values, mission, and your “why”.
b) Sharing: This includes reposting what your followers post (and of course giving them credit). Followers love when you repost their images. It makes them feel validated and appreciated by your brand. If you repost influencers’ images, that will help you to get noticed by them.
c) Selling: Sales posts should not be pushy and should reflect your brand’s personality. Use lifestyle photos of your products and/or services to show them how their lives would be improved with your product or service.
Using a content strategy along with a content calendar, can keep you organized and help you lay out your content in such a way that benefits your business, as well as your customers. A content calendar can be an Excel spreadsheet, a Google doc, or a WordPress plugin for calendars. But there are also many content calendars available online. Just pick one! Then use it to map out your content based on your marketing and content strategy.
There are also products, such as “The Ultimate Content Creation Toolkit” that can help you come up with topics for your content, create a combined marketing and content strategy, and arrange it all on a calendar for scheduling.
Step 6: Start (or join) a Conversation
All of social media is about relationships. It’s ultimately not about making sales, or getting more followers, or driving traffic. It’s about making a real connection with individual people.
All of those other things-the sales and the traffic and the followers-are the result of the connections you make. And what’s the easiest way to make a connection and build a relationship?
Join (or start) the conversation by these actions:
· Like and share content that moves you
· Give a shout-out to those who inspire you
· Follow the people who have something of value to say and share
· BE one of the people who say, do, and share valuable things
In Summary
Instagram is a social platform that you could be utilizing no matter what your product or service. It’s a simple, but powerful platform for getting engaged followers, targeted leads, and additional sales. By creating an Instagram business profile and using its many features, you will have another way to brand yourself with a whole new audience.
How Do You Build a Social Media Presence?
Growing your social media presence is important to getting your business in front of more consumers and generate more sales.
Here are 6 some simple tips you can use to turn your lonely social media accounts into popular communities bustling with activity.
Use the Correct Tools
If you want to improve your social media presence, you need to post often and at the most favorable times.
But if you’re a company owner, you probably don’t have enough time in your day to constantly be logging in to all your accounts. That’s why you need to use the correct tools.
Using proper tools will help you schedule your postings as well as ensure you’re posting often enough to improve your social media presence.
Focus on Customer Satisfaction
Like it or not, social media has become the premier platform for customer service.
Rather than giving a business a phone call or waiting hours (sometimes days) for a company to respond to an email, many customers who are having issues immediately turn to social networks to get help from brands.
Using your social platforms as a customer service podium will send more users to your social pages, and make it easier for them to solve their problems.
The good news is, you can even create a Facebook chatbot that will answer a customer’s questions when you’re not around. By doing this, your customers will also be more willing to buy from you.
Promote Your Accounts
Don’t expect your customers to know about all your social platforms and go searching for them themselves.
Start promoting your accounts to your customers and ask them to follow, like, comment and share your posts. The more people are aware of your presence on social media, the bigger your following and fan base will be.
Stay on Top of What’s Trending
One of the best ways to create a bigger presence for your business is to piggyback on popular trends. Doing this will get your profile in front of numerous users who never knew about your business before, and who also can help your posts go viral.
You can stay on top of trends just by taking a look at what’s going on.
Focus on Eye-Catching Visuals
One of the very best ways to stand out on social media while increasing your presence – is to focus on using eye-catching visuals.
For maximum benefit focus on posting images that show images of people using your products and enjoying your services.
Pursue Ongoing Engagement with Your Audience
Users won’t want to follow you on social media or interact with you if they get nothing in return.
That’s why it’s so important to actively engage with your audience. This means being committed to replying to comments that are posted on your page on a daily basis.
Improve Your Image Through Better Social Media Marketing
In years past, social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter were primarily used as outlets to share family photos or talk about your day-to-day lives. While people use these sites for those purposes, they have also become very effective marketing tools. The following article will help teach you how social media can be used to market your business.
Take time when deciding what your overall strategy will incorporate. If you do not have a clear strategy and bounce from one social site to another, you can end up wasting time and money. Use techniques that make the best use of all of your resources, and proceed with patience.
Relax, it is just an online conversation. Email used to scare the pants off of companies who did not understand the good, the bad, and the ugly of the whole thing. Now it is the go-to communication channel. Social media is the new channel, and all you need to do is sit down and talk to your customers. It is what they want and what you need.
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.
Allow customers to rate, comment and sort your items. Adding these functions to your site lets users decide the most popular content, and it gives them a voice and also makes them an active participant.
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.
To really increase your follower base on, you need to go beyond just selling products. Post links or stories from outside providers that are related to your niche or industry. Get your followers to participate in conversation by asking them questions, posting contests, or including pictures and encouraging their comments. Find ways to get your followers engaged and involved. Instead of focusing on strategic product placement, emphasize the use of your products to interact with others. Aim to create an association between your brand and your customers’ lifestyles and identities, rather than their wallets.
Do not neglect LinkedIn. LinkedIn is less popular than Facebook or Twitter, but you can find extremely influential users on this site. Add a LinkedIn ‘share’ button on your articles, and chances are that someone who shares your content on LinkedIn will cause dozens of people to share it on other websites.
It may be time to view social media marketing in a different light. It’s not just about Farmville and hashtags anymore. This is the opportunity for you to find new customers. You should have some good ideas about harnessing social media’s potential for your own use after taking a look at this article’s advice. Sign on to some of these popular websites, and get to work!
How to Make Money From Social Media
Most of the experts believe that Facebook is only for connecting with people and not for making money. But when you have built strong connection with your audience, you are going to want to utilize that connection to make some sells. Those people will be willing to buy through your links and recommendation as they believe in you.
Here are some ways you can make money on social media.
1. Promote affiliate products.
Whichever industry you are in, you can always find great related products at ClickBank and Amazon Associate. By promoting that products and making sells you can make some side income.
Most of the people will just open social media and start spamming links on Twitter, Facebook pages and groups and so on. The thing is, this trick doesn’t work at all. It is possible that you may get a few leads but in long term you are possibly going to be banned from the social media platform.
Always tell people that you are using affiliate link, in that way it will build trust and more people will consider you honest and will buy using your affiliate link.
2. Create and promote your own information products.
If you already have a blog, and you’ve demonstrated your expertise on a specific subject over a period of time, there may be an opportunity to create an eBook, audio program or video course and sell it to your audience. Social media is the perfect place to promote such a product.
If you got a blog or is an expert on something then you can write an eBook, audio program or video course on that topic and sell it to your audience. You can promote your product using social media platform.
There are lots of platforms that can help you creating your first product. You can use Sellfy, Gumroad or Amazon’s KDP.
In case of selling, quality always beats quality so make sure your product is great.
3. Promote products and services.
There are many opportunities for you to share sponsored posts that promote the products and services of other businesses. This is a very direct way of earning money from social media.
Another great and quick way to make money from social media is by promoting sponsored posts. That is one of the quickest and direct way of earning money from social media.
This method only works if you have a sizeable audience. Over promoting will cause people to unfollow you.
You need to mix thing up and need to maintain balance between useful posts and promotional content.
Faith and Politics
Often, I have heard individuals say that the most controversial topics in life involve religion and politics. What they don’t probably think about is the fact that most people have faith in something, but it might not fit into a traditional definition – God, a group, freedom, their career or even a pet.And politics is not just the formal system that we recognize through voting and governance. In fact, politics is part of absolutely everything that we do!The two, faith and politics in fact, are very much tied together. We tend to think that the political party that we support should reflect and support the faith ideas that we value. That doesn’t always happen though, especially when there is a one strong party that has enough seats that they can rule over everyone without considering the perspectives of the other parties.True democracy allows everyone to have input and considers the needs of all citizens.Our most recent elections was a surprise to many. Some people were disappointed while others were very angry with the results.We have had twelve minorities over the years in Canada at the federal level. The good news is that, in Canada, a lot of very important things occurred as a result of minority governments. The Canadian flag, health care system and Canada Pension Plan are only three in a long list of items that were passed during these times.You see, the way our system works, is that if a minority party experiences non-confidence because they make a proposal that cannot pass in the House of Commons, an election and new government has to be formed. In order to avoid this type of situation, parties need to work together and create bills that will receive enough votes to pass.So, right now in Canada, we see a country that is very divided. There are pockets of support where the constituents feel threatened that they will not be heard and that their needs will not be met.If our new government is wise, however, will recognize that all parts of Canada not only need to be considered but also that action has to be undertaken to ensure that what happens over the next few months will benefit all parts of Canada.If this doesn’t occur, and those in power do not listen or consider their options wisely, it won’t take long until non-confidence will occur, and we will be looking at yet another election!I think we can all learn from what is before us. If we are not willing to consider the needs and wants of our neighbours and work in a collaborative manner, we will soon lose respect and confidence from others.There is nothing we can do about the election results but there is plenty that we can do regarding the way that we conduct ourselves in our personal dealings!Are you a person who is willing to work with others for the benefit of everyone?Federal, provincial or personal – it’s all about faith and politics!