Today I want to look at some successful tips for anyone thinking of starting up their own business, be it your own home based business, or one involving a store or shop front. DO WHAT YOU LOVE if you are going to start a business  and you are going to *live and breathe it* and hopefully have and run it for a long time, it has to be something you love to do! Don’t open a florist if you suffer from hay-fever and don’t open a bait shop if you can’t stand the smell of fish! If you love something you have a passion for it, and sharing that passion, feeling confident, and, having co

Most people think that spam, Facebook, blogs, and other social media like Twitter killed email marketing as a means to communicate online.  However, most people are wrong.  Businesses today engage in email marketing because it gives them a return on investment hovering over $40 per $1 spent, and outperforms all direct marketing channels. In a Forbes Media survey in the February/March 2009 issues, it was reported that business owners and executives say email marketing is second overall to SEO when it comes to converting lookers into buyers. Impressive, and tells you why businesses use it—it

As social media becomes more and more accessible, astute business owners are realising the benefits of using it to market to a wider and more varied audience than ever before thought possible. This book looks at the different types of media and which are most effective for a wide a scope of businesses. Social media requires very little cost outlay and the potential rewards are huge. Knowing how to implement an effective strategy without wasting valuable time is the key to getting the best out of a social media marketing campaign. Tracing the history of social media from the past and p

1. No Ongoing Training In any business it is important that knowledge stays relevant as new innovations come along in your industry. Implementing ongoing training will teach your staff how to work with new products or build on what they already know. Updating your own and your company’s skill set will ensure that the business continues moving forward professionally. Changes in technology and the IT industry happen very quickly, so if you hope to remain at the forefront of the field you must keep up to date with new trends and developments as they emerge. Personal training in a certain area

A mind map is a diagram which is used to represent ideas, words or tasks which are linked and centred around a keyword. They arrange ones visual ideas and try to interconnect them. They help in visualising problems and making decisions to reach an innovative, effective solution. Consequently, one of the main business uses of mind maps is for brainstorming. The natural layout of Mind Maps ensures that the overall goal is kept in view all the time, and that the main objectives are always naturally being supported by the sub-branches which break things down into sub-objectives until finally yo

I am often asked how to go about doing a business valuation, so I thought today that I would outline some of the main processes that are involved in performing this task. First of all let me start by defining business valuation. In the most basic sense, a business valuation is an estimation of the market value of a firm. This does not mean that it is merely the profit margins of a business but it also takes into account future projections, other assets and general economic conditions. It is important to remember that the outcome of a business valuation is fairly hypothetical and that in rea

2010 is the year which will revolutionise the way in which technology is being incorporated into business marketing. Several of these methods I have discussed in previous blog entries such as search engine optimisation and social media but there are a few other technologies which I think are important for business marketing as well. The first is mobile marketing. With the introduction of the iPad and the wider adoption of devices like the iPhone and the Google Android phone, more people can be reached using mobile marketing solutions such as text messaging, mobile email marketing, mobile we

Everyone has at one time or another had to deal with a bad client. No matter what your business there is always those types of clients that make you want to bash your head against the desk. One solution is to try and get rid of them as clients and not take any more work in the future from them but really the best way to deal with a bad client is to take a deep breath and see what you can learn from them so that you have a strategy for the future. If you have a bad client, analyse what clues there were that it was going to go bad. See the things they do, how they approach you and the type of