Succeeding With Search: How To Optimize Your Site

Search is a key discovery channel for many website owners, so improving your visibility to potential clients is a high-priority project. That said, when every query returns tens of thousands of results, pushing your website up the ranks on Google and other search engines becomes as difficult as it is important. Fortunately, it’s not hard to develop a smart search strategy. Start with these five tips to make sure your website tops the results for all your most important keywords.

Prepare Your Website for Heavier Traffic

If your goal for improving your search rankings is related to driving more website traffic, it’s critical to be prepared for that success. Websites that can’t handle increased traffic also can’t handle new customers, and if your site goes down, you’ll miss out on the benefits of your efforts. A robust hosting platform with minimal downtime is a great start, but if you or your information team want to take a proactive approach to data and network resilience, invest in network visibility tools to help you see where new traffic is going and improve your analytics. With a better technical backbone, your website will run more smoothly and handle traffic better.

Optimize Your Site for Search

Regardless of the type of content your site features, you can optimize its structure to make it easier for clients to find you. The purpose of search algorithms is to return helpful results to their users, so readability and accessibility, for both people and assistive software like screen readers, are key considerations. You can address this by structuring long pages of text as short paragraphs with descriptive subheadings, adding alternate text to images, and using simple sentence structures. By making your content easier for people to read, you’ll make it more appealing to algorithms designed to find results that people can use.

A few structural improvements are more technically complex, but well worth the effort. If you’re maintaining your own website or you have a developer on hand, adding a robots.txt file to your site that contains your sitemap will allow search crawlers to index each of your pages, ensuring that they all show up in search. If you’ve been following best practices for months and not seeing results, not allowing crawlers to index your site with a robots.txt file could be the issue.

As search tools improve, older tips and tricks designed to outsmart the algorithm aren’t just out of date, they can actually be counterproductive. Stay away from any practices that encourage you to “game” search results, like pasting a block of keywords into your header in a color that’s the same color as the background. If it sounds suspect, that’s because it is—it doesn’t answer the query, and it doesn’t establish your site as a subject matter authority. Stick to creating quality content that your clients will want to see!

Build a Backlink Network

When a search engine is trying to decide if your site is a good source of information for its users, its algorithm considers both the content on the site itself and whether or not other sites have linked to yours. Think about this practice as a form of social proof; every time another website links to one of your blogs, videos, or products, it’s another expert vouching for your importance in the field. If you’re just starting out, how can you accumulate backlinks? Again, focus on creating relevant content and collaborating with others doing the same. Authoring guest blogs on websites like yours and writing your own long, content-rich blogs are both smart strategies. You can also encourage people to share and visit your links by promoting them on all of your social media profiles and linking back to your own site in any “about” section where you have the option. Both options create backlinks and drive traffic to your site.

Prioritize Mobile Design and Keywords

Most search queries now come from mobile devices. The trend is so pronounced that Google began switching to a mobile-first search ranking system in late 2017, which means that your site’s mobile search performance influences its standing on every device. If it wasn’t already on your radar, it’s time to give mobile search optimization your full attention. Begin by testing your site’s mobile friendliness in Google Search Console or SEMrush’s Site Audit Tool to ensure that search engines can index your mobile site as well as your desktop version and fix any issues you discover.

Responsive design also improves your search ranking because it makes your site easier to navigate on different devices. Whether they visit you on their phones, computers, or tablets, clients want a consistent experience from your brand, and they expect to be able to click links, view content, and complete purchases. Browser and device testing allow you to preview your site under different circumstances, so clients don’t notice unintentional image cropping or unreadable text before you do.

Once you’ve optimized your mobile keywords and site design, check to see how long it takes for your site to load on an average connection. Over half of visitors will abandon a website if it takes more than three seconds to load, so search results prioritize results that their users will see quickly. Common bottlenecks include uncompressed images with large file sizes and excessive page requests. Even if your site loads quickly on your connection, keep in mind that mobile data plans are usually much slower than broadband.

Keep Your Existing Content Fresh

Posting new content is important, but your search ranking is updated every time you edit your site. That means you can update existing content to increase your visibility even as you trim your content production schedule. Sprucing up popular content can also make your best-performing pages even better; revisions give you an opportunity to respond to questions and keep content relevant. Use analytics tools to focus your effort on the pages that draw in the most visitors.

It can be frustrating to spend months building a website and creating content without seeing results, but the problem could be as simple as not showing up in your clients’ search results. With these tips, you can move up in search rankings and connect with the clients you want.

Help Your Business Stand Out from the Crowd With These Tips

No one ever said running your own business was going to be an easy experience. In fact, getting your company to stand out from the competition can be a taxing experience in the age of the internet. It is easier than ever to start and run a business online, meaning there has never been more of a fight amongst companies to be noticed by consumers. While big businesses have no trouble funneling funds into marketing campaigns that get their brands widespread attention, your organization probably doesn’t have that kind of cash to burn.

There are several smart strategies you can consider to get your small business to stand out from the crowd. Look over these affordable options and give your company your best.

Focus on What You Provide

Right away, you can do a lot to stand out from your competitors by simply focusing on the product or service your company offers. A lot of businesses exist to make a fast buck, meaning there is little strategy involved and a lot of room for error. To gain ground above these quick-fix establishments, be sure that you’re proving your worth with what you provide. Why should consumers trust that you’re an expert in your industry when there are so many other options available with the click of a button?

Establishing yourself as an authority in your field with vast knowledge of your specific service is not as hard is it might seem. Generating and sharing unique content on social media channels and company blogs is a quick and inexpensive way to get started. By offering informative posts alongside your product or service offerings, customers will start to see that you understand your industry. This will translate to more organic traffic to your site and show a higher rate of conversions as time moves forward.

Develop Around Your Audience

One of the more complicated steps to start a business is figuring out your key audience. Market research is another service that tends to be too expensive for businesses just starting out. Still, you can glean some crucial info about consumers by focusing your efforts in a few strategic ways. Every product or service that exists has a built-in audience because it addresses a concern that people have. Restaurants fulfill hunger. Retail businesses sell clothing, supplies, and other essentials. While these are quite general, your business is likely to fill a more specific purpose.

Think about what your company provides and the concern it addresses. Once you’ve figured this out, take things a bit further by examining specific problems or issues within your industry. What do consumers like or dislike about your competition? By targeting problem areas that consumers dislike about your industry, you’re likely to start seeing people turn to your brand because it stands out from the crowd in a positive way. Similarly, take note of what your competitors are doing right and find ways to work these tactics into your own business plan.

Align With a Cause

These days, consumers are very selective when it comes to which businesses they decide to patronize. If you want to stand out and get some good press along the way, think about aligning your company with a particular cause. Charitable organizations and nonprofits provide necessary services to those dealing with a multitude of circumstances. By donating part of your sales to one such organization, for example, potential customers might take interest in your company simply because it is doing a good deed.

You can also make the nature of your charity work specific to your industry. Environmental causes are a top priority in recent years, especially as available resources dwindle in some parts of the world. Go green with your manufacturing processes and you can use this bit of information as part of your next promotional campaign. Eco-friendly initiatives attract sales and there are a number of great options available to get started in this area.

Market in a Niche Way

Marketing can be a wasted effort when it is done without focus. Simply putting an ad on the internet with information about your business is like tossing a message in a bottle into a raging sea. The odds of someone finding it are slim. In order to make a splash with your marketing and stand out from competitors that have bigger budgets than you, learn to sell your brand in a niche way. Essentially, this means using what you know about your target audience to create specific and effective content and advertisements.

There are plenty of companies that already do this in a widespread way. Some candy brands will market to younger audiences by using weird, wacky, or fast-paced comedy in commercials. Though it might alienate older audiences, these ads land spectacularly with key demographics. All you need to do is think about what message will hit your audience in the right way. This will take a bit of research, but it is worth the extra effort as the information you discover can deliver some impressive results. Put your best foot forward and you’ll stand out against the competition in no time.

8 Ways To Use Your CRM To Boost Your Influencer Marketing

The more customers turn to ad-blocking software, skip over ads on their DVR or simply ignore advertising messages, the greater the importance of effectively utilizing influencers becomes in marketing campaigns. Fortunately, CRM platforms are making it easier than ever to effectively identify and utilize the influencers who best fit your brand. Here are eight ways you can use your CRM platform to boost your influencer marketing.

1.Build Stronger Relationships

Rather than focusing on sales-oriented messages, you should focus on building communities based around all of the ways your products can help your target market reach their goals or add value to their lives.

Influencers play a key role in driving conversations in these communities. One of the benefits of CRM is that you can use it to identify which influencers are driving the conversations you most want to be a part of and figure out ways to influence those influencers to promote your brand and help you build stronger relationships with the members of that community.

2. Conducting Influencer Research

To effectively utilize influencers, you need to not just go after the influencers with the largest following. It is important to identify the influencers who are the best fits for your brand. You can create custom fields in your CRM to help you track the qualities you are looking for in an ideal influencer and target the influencers whose style, content and audience best fit your brand.

3. Coordinating Influencer Communication

Most companies have multiple teams working on different marketing projects. Your CRM can help you avoid having your different teams bombard the same influencers with contacts. Contacting influencers too frequently can turn them against your brand, rather than encourage them to promote your products.

An activity panel in your CRM can be used to display which team members are assigned to which influencers and record a history of their contacts with those influencers. Other features in the CRM, such as automated reminders, can help make sure your team does not miss key contacts and deadlines.

4. Scale Up Your Outreach

There will be times when you may want to send the same message to large groups of influencers, but not every single one on your e-mail list. Your CRM can help you create and track targeted groups for large-scale communication.

You can also use your CRM to track the data gathered through these outreach campaigns and effectively respond to any messages you receive in return. You can then use this data to evaluate how effective your campaign was and improve future outreach efforts.

5. Track Social Media Handles

Consumers are increasingly choosing social media over more traditional forms of communication, such as e-mail. To effectively communicate with customers and influencers on social media, you need to be able to keep track of who they are and what handles they go by on different social media platforms. Your CRM can help you keep track of this information. Additionally, your CRM can help you determine which social media platforms are performing the best for your brand.

6. Sentiment Insights

You probably do not have time to read every social media post your chosen influencers put out there. Fortunately, your CRM can do that work for you and provide you with a summary of the sentiments expressed towards your products, brand and competitors. The software can use keywords, emojis and other information to gauge whether customers and influencers are feeling positively or negatively about your brand and products.

7. Improve Your Search Engine Rankings

User-generated content accounts for about 25% of search engine results. Effectively utilizing influencers is one of the best ways to get users to generate content that will push your brand higher in the search engine rankings.

To take full advantage of this phenomenon, you need to make sure you are effectively responding to questions and engaging with customers and influencers on social media. You can use the social insights in your CRM to gain an understanding of who is having the conversations you most want to be part of and help you generate follow-up conversations that will drive interest in your brand.

8. Improve Collaboration

Your CRM has many features that can make it easier for your different marketing teams to collaborate on projects. Centralized notes, tasks and influencer information can help eliminate duplication of efforts among your teams. Shared calendars can help make sure everyone is hitting their deadlines.

Additionally, you can create customized, automated workflows to help your teams efficiently organize, prioritize and delegate tasks. Features, such as automated to-do lists, can be generated quickly and automatically assigned to the appropriate team members.

Effectively utilizing influencers can tremendously boost your marketing efforts. Your CRM platform can help you more effectively and efficiently utilize influencers to drive brand awareness, spark conversations and build communities of loyal customers.

Further read:

7 Ways to Grab Your Customers’ Attention

Marketing your business and brand can help attract and retain customers. Effective marketing strategies can change as wildly as tech can. Most companies have seemingly shifted to social media marketing, a strategy that barely existed a few years ago.

The massive amount of marketing tools available today can overwhelm small businesses. However, understanding how some of these technologies work can be worth the effort and resources they necessitate. Here is a breakdown of strategies that marketers can use to grab the attention of their target audience.

Implement Surveys

Online surveys are seemingly on an upward trend. The use of online surveys can have significant advantages over other attention-grabbing techniques. However, online surveys can demand a lot of attention, given that their role is to facilitate interaction.

They can help encourage dialogue, direction, input, and build relationships. Questionnaires and surveys can help gather insightful data that can be used for fine-tuning your marketing approach. Your business success often depends on customer satisfaction, and its challenges may not present themselves as visible to you as they can to your customers.

The internet can offer online marketers a myriad of benefits, including the ability to use online surveys to gauge customer thoughts and experiences. Concerns from a large number of survey respondents could indicate it is time to tweak your product or customer service model.

Businesses should regard constructive criticism as an opportunity to improve their marketing strategy. Online surveys can be relatively cost-effective compared to other data collection and surveying models. However, the information that online surveys can yield can be highly valuable.

Embrace Technology

Studies predict that the use of mobile devices might become increasingly prevalent down the road. Entrepreneurs can position their brands to take advantage of this forecast. Mobile technology can grant marketers direct communication with their clients. It can be an excellent way to grab the attention of your target audience. The press may only be viable for advertising for a few hours.

However, email, social media, and YouTube can be accessed anytime, anywhere. Mobile technology can also allow marketers to utilize survey technology. Most people often use their mobile devices to check their email, enabling a convenient way for mobile phone users to complete questionnaires and surveys. That may not be possible with a phone call or poll.

Fine-Tune Your Approach To Social Media

Businesses with a well-curated social media presence can enjoy massive following and lead generation. Marketers should consider investing in social media platforms that can fit their brand and allow optimum utilization. A chef or realtor, for example, can use their Instagram to flaunt their offerings.

Other brands may opt for dialogue-friendly tweets to grab the attention of their target audience. Brands can reach out to more potential clients by dedicating to the upkeep of their online presence. Like a well-maintained food joint, a fine-tuned social media presence can attract more customers than a neglected one.

Customers often respect and notice when their favorite brands put effort and time into their traditional marketing efforts. The same can apply to social media marketing.

Use Videos

Videos can be excellent in attracting potential customers. Unlike text, videos can be used to explain or demonstrate with clarity. Video marketing can sustain the attention of potential customers for long enough to prompt them to buy from you. Videos can also decrease the effort that potential customers may require to understand what a brand can offer. You can also use auto-playing videos on YouTube to entertain web visitors.

Inspire Positivity

Grabbing attention is arguably not the hardest struggle that marketers face. Retaining that attention can be a challenge. Studies claim that most consumers often struggle with short attention spans. With the latest technology, virtually every marketer can grab the attention of the target audience. However, what can separate a lead from a loyal customer can be being able to retain their attention.

Brands can achieve this by inspiring happy emotions. Consumers rarely buy products from any brand or become loyal to marketing tactics or slogans. Instead, they buy from brands that they can trust. Brands can increase the chances of their target audience sticking around for long by building their trust.

Making your brand trustworthy can help with retaining attention. Building trust can be an easy task for an ethical marketer. Just provide products or content that can solve problems facing your clients. Don’t just focus on making a profit.

Differentiate Yourself

Marketers are often known for copying what works for them. It can mean emulating marketing strategies and formulas that can increase traffic and profit. It can be a successful strategy, but it may involve a lot of copycats. Following what other companies are doing could transform your brand into a fish. The sea can be flooded with a lot of fish, so standing out could be a struggle. Customers can get tired of a brand that implements strategies that are similar to other brands. There could be a lot of competitors in your niche, but positioning yourself differently can make you stand out. Brands with a strong, unique selling proposition can paint themselves as the authority in their industry.

Prioritize Customer Satisfaction

Effective online marketing can help a brand grow its customer base and followers significantly. However, brands should be careful not to overstretch themselves to the extent of forgetting about their customer satisfaction. Nothing can spread quickly on social media than negative reviews. Brands should strive to deliver quality services and products not only to satisfy their customers but build their reputation.

Brands can grab and retain the attention of their audience by building their trust. Social media marketing can change as wildly as technology can. Understanding how the latest marketing technologies work can help a brand to attract and retain its customers.

However, brands may need to position themselves and implement surveys to reach out to their target audience. Video marketing, fine-tuning your approach to social media, and prioritizing customer satisfaction can also help with customer attraction. Inspiring positivity can also enable a brand to retain customers who often struggle with short attention spans.

3 Simple Ways To Maximize Digital Transformation Values

The digital transition concept has, over time, become a hot topic for all enterprises, no matter their size. However, the reality is that many small enterprises are yet to get where they wanted to see themselves. Technology disruption is happening at a pace that most enterprises can’t keep up with. Some organizations are looking to take their digital transition to another level, whereas others are just starting to formalize their digital transition plans. Either way, these three tips can help an enterprise make the most out of its digital transition journey.

Consolidate Your Architecture

Enterprises can modify or change their application architecture to take advantage of cloud computing, such as alternate data storage capabilities and serverless functions. Architecture consolidation is all about an enterprise achieving maximum value for its effort. It is easier for an enterprise to change or modify its architecture when it has several subsystems or when it is starting a new project. With a new subsystem, an enterprise can take advantage of the cloud without rewriting its existing systems.

Leverage Automation and DevOps

Digital transition is all about keeping up with trends. You don’t have to be too quick or slow when digitizing your enterprise. Instead, make sure you keep pace with competitors so that you are not left behind. Smart organizations are leveraging the power of automation and DevOps to provide value to their customers and increase the value and quality of their products. The market is cluttered with a lot of solutions that can help enterprises make automation part of their IT infrastructure. So, it is merely a matter of looking for an automation solution that fits your budget and needs. One reason to leverage automation and DevOps after migrating to the cloud is that cloud solutions will influence most of the tools that you will be using. However, enterprises must make sure that their tech stack plays well before migrating to the cloud. Perhaps you want to use the cloud only for existing applications. However, exploring how you can automate your processes can help maximize your digital transition impact.

Explore the Cloud 

Different people view the phrase “digital transition” differently. It can be about digitizing customer interactions or taking offline processes online. It can also mean converting physical resources and products to digital products. Others view it as simple as moving their services online. Digital transformation can mean different things to different enterprises, but the first step to digital transition is to consider how the cloud can fit into your strategy.

The cloud is revolutionizing all businesses, irrespective of their size. It is changing the way enterprises engage with their customers, design their products, and operate. Migrating to the cloud isn’t a walk in the park, so don’t despair if you are struggling to move to the cloud. An enterprise must understand where it can derive the most value from itscloud solutions. For some organizations, moving everything to the cloud doesn’t make sense. Be strategic and take time to figure out which applications and workloads should be transferred to the cloud. Most enterprises can move a large portion of their tech stack to the cloud. However, there is a need to have a clear policy so that your enterprise can stay organized and make the most out of digital transition. Weigh the cost of migrating against not migrating and determine what best suits your enterprise. When weighing the cost of not migrating to the cloud, consider the competitor’s agility to scale and change and try to quantify the market share loss.

Keeping up with digital transition trends isn’t easy. However, going digital is critical for any enterprise that doesn’t want to be left in the dust of its rivals. With these three tips, enterprises of all sizes can take advantage of the incredible values that come with digital transition. Migrating to the cloud may seem costly now, but its benefits are worthwhile. Enterprises in the digital era must look for ways to maximize the value of digital transition to stay ahead of their competitors.

5 Simple Ways to Grow Your Ecommerce Business

Running an e-commerce business is a dream come true: You’re able to work from home doing what you love, and you’re selling products online that are making you decent money. It’s amazing having your workshop out of your home — but do you want to be there forever? If you’re content to stay put and keep doing what you’re doing, then keep at it. If, however, you have dreams of scaling up and making your e-commerce business even bigger, what are some of the best tips to follow?

1. Advertise And Spread The Word

A curious thing happens when you don’t advertise your business: Nothing! How can anybody know you exist if you’re not doing anything to get noticed? Start with a bang-up marketing strategy to help more people find you. Sure, your friends and family know that you do what you do, but does anyone else? Remember the golden rule when you’re starting out in e-comm: Just because you build it, that doesn’t mean that they will come.

If you have no idea how to advertise your business, think about hiring a marketing specialist to help you. These professionals are well-versed in the ways of the hottest online marketing tactics including:

  • Webpage and logo design, especially if they are also handy with graphic design languages like CSS and HTML.
  • Social media management, including methods for finding the most-searched-for keywords and trending topics/hashtags.
  • Expertise and skill in the best uses of SEO, especially in places like your website and on your blog.

The more places that you get the word out, the busier you will become. Don’t underestimate the power of a well-built website as well as social media and tagging!

2. Make Amazing Customer Service Part Of Your Culture

Everybody knows how frustrating it can be to work with a company that doesn’t appear to know their feet from their hands. Even if you’re a one-person operation, taking care of your customers should be one of your top priorities. Remember that going above and beyond goes a lot farther with most people than being harsh and difficult. Think about things like:

Returns and exchanges. What’s your policy, and how rigidly do you follow it? Do you have a zero-tolerance policy for clients who try to exchange a product after the allotted amount of time, or do you hear everyone out and go case-by-case? 

Complaints and negative online reviews. The truth is that no matter what, there are people who refuse to accept defeat. When you work in a public-facing job you tend to come into contact with those people more often than not, so have a good strategy in how you deal with it. Do you get aggressive and snap back when someone is being difficult, or do you take a breath and work through the problem together? 

Questions and custom orders. Make sure that you are prompt and efficient if someone emails you directly; try to make it a personal goal to respond to all company emails in 24 hours or less. If someone has a question about a custom order, decide how you will handle it. Are custom orders something you do or have you never considered it before?

3. Think About How You Accept Payment

Clunky check-out processes are a pain to get through when you’re trying to order something online. Make yours as streamlined as possible for your clients. Cloud security should be important to you since security breaches are bad for business, but also because you want to protect your clients and keep their information safe. However you accept payment, it is recommended that you use a third-party system like Paypal. This way, in case there does happen to be a data breach, the information is not stored on your cloud and your hands are clean. 

Remember though: What you think is most convenient might not be everyone’s favorite. Although Paypal is one of the most common third-party sites to pay for things, think about the other popular ones that might appeal to different audiences:

  • Other transfer sites like Venmo and Zelle
  • Apple Pay/Apple Wallet
  • Debit/credit cards

4. Remember Office Needs As Well

Staying organized in your business is a phenomenal thing. It helps you to easily see what’s happening, any paperwork that needs approval or a signature and other day-to-day office functionalities. Streamline your office so that it helps you to manage everything quickly and professionally.

Invoices and bills. Sending an invoice is vital: It ensures that you will get paid by the client. Do you already have a template that you use, or do you need to custom-create one from scratch?

PR and customer relations. Even tiny businesses consisting of one person need to care about their image. How can you ensure that you are Johnny on the spot when something happens with your company? Are you on call at all times in case of an emergency and ready to jump in and help? Prove to customers that you care and want to be the one that they come to in case there’s a question or concern.

Business taxes. You already give your money to Uncle Sam at the end of the year for your home and life, but a small business carries plenty of its own taxes too. Understand what will be expected of you come April 15th, and consider hiring an accountant in case you’re worried you will miss something. Sometimes a second pair of eyes can help you out.

5. Show And Tell

You already have a website that showcases your products, but how are the pictures? Customers are looking for good-quality, detailed pictures that help them get a visual of your items and see all specs. If you have junky, pixely cell phone pictures that you snapped in bad lighting, it shows on your website and consumers will notices. Similarly, are your product descriptions well-written and informative? Will customers know what they are getting when they look at your website? 

An e-comm business runs differently from a brick-and-mortar company, but business principles are much the same between the two. Understand the best ways to grow your e-commerce business to move up and move on.

How Technology Adds Value to Your Business

If you want to run a business in this century, you have to embrace electronics and technology as it grows and becomes vital in the operations of businesses around the globe. Your business is no different. Commonly, companies are using technology to execute a good chunk of their tasks. As a result of this job automation, productivity is higher and more efficient. Unlike human beings, electronics can deliver continuous results for your business without getting tired. The question most people ask is, how should they develop their businesses using technology and electronics to be successful? Here is how: 

1. Faster and More Comprehensive Communication 

In any business, communication is vital for success. The availability of internet and devices that use it like laptops and mobile phones have brought about radical improvements in communication. As a business owner, one of your most important responsibilities is to ensure that you use the available communication resources to lead, guide, and direct those that report to you. Once that is done, things move faster. The invention of the “cloud” enables people to communicate and work on a project even if they are in different locations. As a topic for another day, working remotely has become extremely popular among many companies, and allows for a better balance between work and life at home. In the medical industry, technology has allowed surgeons to use virtual operating theaters to oversee surgical operations. As time goes by, the processing speeds of these machines will likely increase and we will see more and more jobs moving toward job automation or virtual assistance. Therefore, because of this expected rise in communication technologies, one must prepare his or her business to keep up.

Platforms such as Google Docs and Slack have allowed companies to move further into the world of remote work. These and other similar platforms are not all brand new, but have recently been integrated more fully to allow for a better balance between projects, team communication, and being there for our families. It seems that these days, the bigger the company, the more useful and integral these apps and sites are to company and personal success.

Recently, I read about Slack being used heavily in many different companies, but especially within Cole Haan. They’re developing footwear that breaks the boundaries of traditional, professional, comfortable, and modern—and needed a tool to be able to keep up with their fast-paced production. So Slack was the easy choice. For Cole Haan and many other innovative companies, the innovative and obvious choice is a platform such as Slack for convenience, speed, and reliability.

2. Improving Client Satisfaction 

A client is vital for the success of any business; therefore, it is the responsibility of the management to ensure that the valued customers are always happy and feel that they are being taken care of. Customers expect regular updates when there is a new item in or out of stock. Nobody likes to prepare to purchase a product and find out that it’s not available. For this reason, many companies have electronic inventory systems that they use to interact with clients. If you have multiple stores, you can generally use this same system to check the inventory of your various stores. The number of people gaining access to the internet is rising everyday. Being able to reach everyone at once is a challenge that most businesses find difficult and overwhelming. Therefore, you can opt to create a streaming platform to ensure that you reach the potential clients who cannot access your store. With rising demand and expectations from our customers, companies like yours and mine will only be able to fully satisfy our clients if we integrate new technology into our business. 

Aside from selling a company’s product, technology is now the largest means of communication with fans or supporters. Instagram and Facebook, for example, have taken over the world and are now the platform of choice for representing a brand. As an avid baseball fan, the best example of this is the Major League Baseball Instagram account. The constant posting and interacting with fans is what keeps people engaged and what makes a sometimes boring game so much more exciting. Responding to disgruntled fans and those who wish to purchase merchandise on their accounts has made them a prime example of how tech (and the apps available) has changed customer interaction.

3. Ability to monitor Employees and Business Productivity 

Manually monitoring business and its employees is a considerable challenge. It can be even harder if you try to do it all yourself. However, thanks to technology, managers make use of business productivity software to get updates on the progress of a project. Since this new technology adds the ability for your employees to learn new skills and perform at their highest level, your company can be more productive. The moment you encourage your employees to learn how to operate new electronic equipment, you create a culture of progress. This culture enhances learning and encourages employees to improve. These improvements, whether they be personal or work related, will always had depth and useful skills to your team. Finally, always remember to reward your staff members when they perform well on a task or bring something new to the table. You may never know how far your support can go.

4. Saving on Labor 

As technology continues to grow, some business operations will become automated. Machines can communicate with one another and execute tasks using artificial intelligence, and can do so flawlessly. As a result, a company may not need to employ more people since these machines can do a lot of the menial and time-consuming jobs. One important concept that we must remember is that it is essential to find someone skilled and knowledgeable enough to monitor the operations of the equipment. The use of more technology does not mean that management can sit idly by. Machines can break, technology can complicate itself, and will always require some sort of oversight to ensure that all is running smoothly. Since the firm saves on labor costs because of job automation, the resources that could have been used to pay the workforce can be used to improve another sector of the business. 

Many healthcare and service companies have integrated the “self-serve” method of appointment scheduling and customer contact. More and more lately, you’ll be directed to an online portal to schedule your appointment. Even better, you’re able to schedule a home repairman through an application such as Square Appointments. What’s fairly new now, I believe will become commonplace as these menial tasks are dissolved.

Because of its simplicity and reliability, these and other platforms have penetrated nearly every industry! From the development of Excel and Mircrosoft Office years ago to customer interaction platforms, technology is simplifying the way business are run. There are so many more opportunities these days to expand and better your company, just through the use of technology. We’d all be crazy to not experiment with it!

5. Connecting Teams Virtually in the Company 

No matter your location, technology enables you to connect with the employees in your organization through the employee portal. There are dozens of these platforms out there, which allow for amazing collaboration and organization on projects. Allowing employees to communicate while they undertake a project is a spectacular idea because they are then able to exchange ideas easily, coordinate plans, and correct one another if needed. Additionally, experts may also be added to the portal to assist employees in case they have a pressing issue that needs urgent attention. These management portals or platforms are widely available and can make the difference in your company, especially with multiple locations or employees working remotely.

6. Getting Rid of Redundant Tasks 

Technology adds automation to tasks that you keep spending time on to do over and over again. For most people and businesses, this repetition is meaningless. The employee isn’t challenged, and therefore won’t grow to be more productive or beneficial to the company. This is the opposite of what every manager wants. If you want to send a courtesy email to your clients, you don’t need to write the same thing to every new client. You can opt to use a service company to send an email automatically to new subscribers. In many businesses, this is the epitome of job automation. The amount of time this saves will be dramatic. If you aren’t already using an email service to take care of this redundant task, consider making this your first action item in next week’s meeting. You’ll be amazed by the time you save.

There are many examples of companies and industries that are embracing technology and seeing the results in their workplaces. I previously mentioned the healthcare industry as one that’s begun to adopt technology into the workspace, but it hasn’t always been that way. I think we can all agree that the healthcare industry has been one of the slower to trust technology with the tasks that have been completed by humans for so many years. This could be because of usability issues, or even patient confidentiality. But now, things could change. The credibility and trust that these companies have built is changing the world’s willingness to adapt. Sooner or later, technology will have a prevalence we never expected!

If you are a business owner or management in a company, technology and electronics are some things that you cannot avoid if you want to succeed. The world is moving steadily in this direction and will continue to leave companies behind if they don’t decide to embrace these advances. While there is a lot to consider when implementing new technology, the above tips clearly explain how technology can help to improve business processes. Now, it’s just a matter of figuring out what works for you!