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August 28, 2017 0 Comments

4 Top Qualities of the Best Managers

Being a good manager is more than simply showing up and giving orders.  In today’s world, it’s important to develop an array of qualities that bring out the best in your employees.

According to a study by Dale Carnegie Training, “29% of the workforce is engaged, 45% are not engaged, and 26% are actively disengaged.”  These are alarming numbers, and much of employee engagement deals directly to the employee’s immediate supervisor and manager.

Read along for some of the top attributes in being a successful manager with engaged employees.

Empathy

Empathy is fast becoming the number one trait of managers! When we express empathy, we’re relating to the feelings of others.  As a manager, being empathetic will allow you to interact on a more personal, effective level.

When your employees sense that you care about them, their current situation, their workload, and so on, they’re much more likely to come to you before things get bad.  This allows you to increase employee retention and put out those fires before they get too big.

Present

It’s a tough thing to be present in today’s technological world! As a manager, your presence is not only appreciated – it’s necessary.  When you’re present and communicative with your employees, they feel that the matter, and they’re more likely to stay in contact on a consistent basis.  When you have work from home employees, this is especially a bonus!

According to OfficeVibe.com, 69% of managers are uncomfortable communicating with employees.  When we’re uncomfortable, we tend to stop communicating and leave things in a confusing state.  Once you’re disengaged and uncommunicative, employees begin to question motives and lose morale.

Trustworthy

As a manager, your actions are always on display.  You become the example for your employees, so “Do as I say, not as I do” will not work! This does not inspire confidence in your employees.  Your actions and words must match, which is the hallmark of a trustworthy person.

When your employees trust you, it gives them the confidence that you’re capable of leading them.  Like it or not, employees want some reassurance in their work and the direction of the business.

Another way to establish trust is by being direct.  It’s important to be empathetic, as we’ve stated before, but to keep employees trusting that you’re looking out for their best interest, keep things simple.  From your requests to your meetings, keep to the point as much as possible.

Driven

It’s hard to expect your employees to work hard and feel fulfilled in their job if you don’t.  We all ebb and flow in our job satisfaction, but as a manager, you need to work to ensure that you stay positive – or make a change.

Stay driven in your business purpose and work to drive everyone else and keep morale high. If you’re miserable, how will your employees act?  Your drive will show in your daily work and communications, so do all that you can to remember why you started this business, and why you enjoy doing what you do.

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August 10, 2017 0 Comments

4 Ways to Be a Successful Leader

Leadership is a hot topic these days, and if you’re a boss or manager, it’s very important to be the best leader possible. There’s something to be said for effective leadership – it produced happier, healthier employees, keeps retention rates high, and encourages your employers to work more effectively.

Although there are so many ways in which one can be a great leader, we’ve compiled some of our best, most effective ways to do so. Read along for our tips and advice to be a successful leader!

Listen

So many of us listen with the intent to respond, instead of listening for the sake of listening. Whether receiving a complaint, listening to a client issue, or simply discussing something mundane, it’s important to be a good listener as a leader.

When your employers feel heard, they’re more likely to keep you in the loop and trust you. According to a study by IBM, “83% of employees experienced a more positive work environment when they felt there was trust in their managers/organization.” It’s clear that trust is important, and listening is one way to gain and maintain trust within your organization.

Give Feedback

Whether positive or negative, feedback is highly important! If employees have no idea if they’re working effectively or not, they can’t improve very easily. You can give negative feedback in a positive, constructive way that shows your employees where they can improve. It’s never helpful to put employees down or compare employees to each other.

On the other side, employees need encouragement when they’re producing positive work and ideas. If no feedback is ever given in this space, they start to feel underappreciated. Take note of the work quality of your employees – the good and the bad. Speak up and help your employees improve or feel encouraged.

Lead by Example

Supervisors who are never around, behave inappropriately, or ask employees to do things they will not do are not successful leaders. It’s highly important that you lead by example in attitude, work effectiveness, and leadership ability.

If you hope to encourage a workplace that works in harmony and produces great work, it has to start with you. Your employees will feel far more inspired to bring their best to work when they see their leader as a beacon of example. When you also do what you’re asking them to do, you’re also seen as more fair, trustworthy, and hardworking.

Communicate

There’s nothing worse than a boss who doesn’t communicate! The work environment truly starts to suffer, morale is lowered, and business organization starts to drop. As a leader, you’re in charge and responsible, and this begins with communication.

Keep your employees in the loop when you won’t be available, communicate all kinds of feedback, and encourage effective meetings and conversations. When issues pop up with clients or products, take the time to communicate about them as soon as possible. Keeping tabs on all items and having those conversations will keep your business moving much more smoothly.

Being a successful leader takes a lot of vigilance and effort. It’s a fulfilling job that has the opportunity to bring out the best in your employees and business. Take the time to build up your skillset as a leader, and you’ll find that you have engaged employees who truly want to do great work for your company!

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August 10, 2017 0 Comments

3 Ways to Handle a Negative Business Review

It’s something that every business owner dreads in today’s digital world – the negative review. Between SiteJabber, Facebook, Google, and similar sites, reviews are everywhere – and they’re very important. We do our best work to avoid the negative ones, but sometimes customers aren’t satisfied, whether rightfully so or not. Although negative reviews can and do often happen, the way we respond makes all the difference.

Since we can’t stop negative reviews from happening, read along for some best tips to handle them effectively.

Always Respond

It can be tough to want to respond to harsh words about your business, but it’s very necessary. Responding to the negative review shows that you care about your customer’s experience and your reputation. Future clients and customers put a lot of stock in online reviews these days, so it’s important to have a response.

It’s always better to have negative reviews with responses versus unhappy customers that appear to have been ignored.

Although responding to negative reviews is crucial, it’s also nice to respond to the positive ones! Give your raving fans some attention too, and show them that you appreciate that they took the time to give you a glowing review.

Stay Calm

When you see a negative review, you probably feel angry, hurt, or disappointed – or all three! It would be easy to respond with emotion and anger in the moment, but that won’t fix the problem or make you feel any better.

Once you spot the review, take a minute to calm down. Take a deep breath, step away if you need to, and come back when you feel that you’re able to respond calmly and rationally with facts and apologies if appropriate. Focus on the points that the unhappy customer made, instead of seeing it as a personal attack on you and your business. Express understanding and acknowledge the complaint, while taking the next steps to listen and fix it.

Correct the Issue

If your customer’s unhappiness is fixable, do your best to fix it. Sometimes, they just want to be heard and your response can do that.

Can you offer a coupon, something free or perhaps a consultation to address their concerns and try to win them back over? Offering something small can make a world of difference, especially if the offering is based on their specific concern.

In the case of most negative reviews, the customer just wants their frustrations to be heard. If you can offer something of value, do so! Remove emotion from your responses and address each review with concern, understanding, and professionalism.

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August 10, 2017 0 Comments

4 Tips for More Effective Meetings

Whether you work from home or in a traditional office, meetings are typically a part of your working life. They often get a bad rap as being ineffective, too long, and pointless, but they don’t have to be!

As a manager or supervisor of employees, you can change the outcome and effectiveness of meetings. Read along for some best tips and advice to hold meetings that are worth the time of your employees.

Determine if it’s needed

The first step to ensuring an effective meeting is to see if you even need one! Ask yourself:

 

  • Can my questions be answered easily in an email or over the phone?

  • Is this more of a question for one person versus a whole team?

  • Are the topics needing discussed going to be of benefit for the whole team?

 

You can potentially address questions or small issues via phone, email, or with one person much more effectively, versus involving your whole team’s time. This isn’t always the case, but it’s important to only hold meetings that serve a purpose.

Create a schedule

Once you’ve established that your meeting is necessary, it’s important to create (and keep to) a proposed schedule. While things can veer off course slightly, schedules will keep you on task and on time. Start with the topics to be discussed, then allocate a realistic amount of time for each topic. Be sure to leave time for further discussion and questions at the end of the meeting.

Take notes and distribute

Delegate someone on your team to take good notes, and be sure that they’re written in a way that all can understand them. Once the meeting is done, make sure that this person sends the notes to all meeting attendees. You can also start a team Google Document that keeps the notes in an easily accessible format in one place.

Keep it short

No one likes a long meeting! We’re all busy and other tasks need to get done, but sometimes a meeting is just necessary. Whether it’s to recap client notes and activity, to address a specific question or issue, or just a time to get the team together, meetings are still important. When you put more attention into determining if your meeting is necessary, putting organization and scheduling at the forefront, and making the most of the meeting time, your employees will appreciate your efforts to conserve their time.

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August 10, 2017 0 Comments

3 Top Tips to Use Pinterest for Business

According to SocialMediaToday.com, “87% of Pinners bought something because of content on Pinterest” – which means that Pinterest is still clearly a very powerful social network. You can truly make sales from this network, and it’s important that you’re using it to your advantage in business.

Not only is Pinterest a great place to find recipes and home ideas, it’s a useful place to share your business knowledge. From images of your work to blog post graphics, it’s crucial to utilize Pinterest’s visual medium to produce content for your clients and prospects.

Work on your images

Pinterest is a visual platform, so your images are crucial! Pinterest images should be a certain size to be optimal, and that size is 735 px x 1102 px. You can use a program such as Canva.com to create graphics in this size.

In addition to the correct sizing, your images should be eye-catching and optimized. You can optimize images by naming them something relevant, versus simply leaving them as is. If you’re writing and then pinning a blog post featuring homework tips, you can name it something like: “top-homework-tips-for-kids.” It’s also important to look into keywords here, as that will make your images even more likely to be found. This allows your images to be optimized and more SEO-friendly. In addition to your image file names, you’ll want to include a detailed description of the Pin.

According to CoalMarch.com, you can use keywords to create image file names by using this formula: Industry + Service Provided + Location or Feature (not both). Use Google Trends or another keyword search to find trending topics, as well as keywords that those in your industry are seeking.

Lastly, you can use free graphics programs to create a custom image. Find a stock image of your blog theme, add some text, and make it look nice! Attractive images are more likely to be pinned.

Get social

Pinterest is place where you can share, but it’s also a place to be interactive. Follow relevant Pinners, Pin others’ content your boards, and generally stay active.

The more you add content, pin others’ content, and continue to follow new users, the more your page will be viewed, and the more your Pins will be saved. Try following other Pinners every day, and see how many you get in return. If you’re putting in the effort to follow others, it will likely come back to you.

Be consistent

Consistency is very important in using Pinterest for business! Whenever you write a blog post, piece of content, or produce a product/service with quality photos – Pin them. Get into the habit of sharing your content on this platform, as it’s very visual, and visual networks are encouraging for buyers.

By spending some time optimizing your images, creating stunning graphics, naming your files, being social, and posting consistently, you can see the outstanding sales and business results of Pinterest.

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May 15, 2017 0 Comments

4 Types of Content to Post on Social Media

We all know how important it is to have an online presence – especially on social media.  It’s a place where we can share information, tell others about our businesses, and hopefully make some sales.

Unfortunately, a lot of business owners utilize their pages incorrectly, and don’t post content that intrigues the reader to build a relationship.  Today, we’re sharing tips to build your page, keep consistently posting content, and eventually – make that sale!

Value

When readers come to your page, they’re likely somewhat interested in you and/or your product or service.  They want to know that you’re an expert, and that you know what you’re talking about.  Make this easy for them!

Use your page to post thought-provoking, valuable content that answers their most burning questions.  You can post your own blogs, syndicate articles and blogs from outside sources, and do tips, advice, and Q&A posts that will share your knowledge with your readers.  While it may seem counterintuitive to give away your knowledge for free, it gives your readers some trust in you, making it easier to hire you someday.

About You

Whether it’s a behind the scenes post, news about your business, or information on your latest hire, readers like to get an inside glimpse into your business.  Social media can be fairly casual, so it’s the perfect place to go live with tips, share something personal (but relevant), and communicate with customers.

Share some personal things about yourself and your business – it doesn’t always have to be so formal!

Inspirational

We’ve all seen the inspirational quotes and graphics going around social media.  They might seem simplistic, but they’re easily shareable and provide your readers with a “feel good” message.  As we mentioned before, not all content has to be so heavy and information-filled.  It’s fun to mix in positive messages, tips on a graphic, or other fun content that will be easily shared.

When your graphics are shared, it’s more likely that more people will like your page, growing your following.  Be sure to include your website and business name on each graphic, and work to create your own content versus taking from others.  It’s fine to share directly from another page (with proper attribution, of course!), but creating your own graphics is much more powerful.

Sales

Last but not least, we come to sales.  This is because very little about your social media profiles should include sales information!  Once you’ve given lots of good content, it’s fine to ask for the sale.  You can run an interesting promo, offer a discount code to social media followers only, or something else that involves a direct ask to your products or services.

Again, this should be a small, small part of your strategy! Don’t drive away sales by constantly asking for them.  It’s important to strike a balance between value, solid information, fun information about your company, and finally – the sale.

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May 8, 2017 0 Comments

5 Tips for Hiring for the First Time

Hiring can often come with a lot of pressure – managing the job posting, interviewing, and hiring the right person can be a daunting experience.

Although many managers and employers are pros at this, what if you’re hiring for the first time?  Read along for some best practices in hiring as a novice.  With the right preparation and mindset, you can be sure that you’re on your way to hiring successful candidates. If you prefer to have someone do this for you, check out HireMyMom’s Concierge Service.

Create the right post

Creating the right job posting is key in attracting the right candidates and fully understanding what you’re seeking.  It’s important to be thorough when creating the position, including necessary skill set, education, experience level, pay, and more.  If you forget key components or realize too late that you are seeking a certain type of person, you may have to go through several rounds of the hiring process.

Save yourself some time, effort, and expense by nailing the job description from the beginning.  This also includes using the right posting sites that avoid spam.  More reputable sites help to weed out spam hirees, as well as have your post seen by serious applicants.

Be prepared

When it comes time for the interviews, be sure that you’re prepared.  This will also reduce time spent on interviews that weren’t properly organized and stalled the hiring process.  Begin by asking the right questions, which would feature a good mix of past experience, knowledge of the job position and company, and personality fit questions.

Be prepared for conversations and negotiations around pay as well, and know which response is appropriate for your company.

Make sure you’re thorough

By being prepared and organized, you’ll be well on your way to being thorough in the hiring process.  It might be helpful to start by coming up with your own screening process, and create a checklist around this.

To begin, ensure that each applicant has contributed every material that was asked for.  If they have, look at every aspect of their cover letter and resume for keywords and matching qualities and experience that fit the job position.  You might have a kind of criteria that must be met, which allows you to adhere to your posting and make smart hiring decisions.

Be a great listener

It takes more than a checklist to make smart hiring decisions – you also have to be sure that you’re hearing everything accurately.  Listen to what each applicant says – or doesn’t say.

Do they know about your company and enough about the position?  Are they a great person but not a fit?  Listen closely to ensure that you’re truly hearing what the prospect is saying correctly.  It can be easy to jive with a personality, when the skills or lacking.  On the other side, someone might be great on paper but not a personality fit to your brand.  Listen closely to what is being said!

Set expectations

Unmet expectations can be the cause of many problems, especially in hiring.  It’s best to let your potential hire what’s going on from the very beginning.  Is there a trial period for this position?  How are tasks evaluated?  Does this position require tracking time? Do you report daily?

Make sure job and communication expectations are set up early to avoid any issues. Also, be sure to let your new hire in on time frames and deadlines for starting up, since that’s typically the most frantic part of any new job.

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April 24, 2017 0 Comments

5 Tips for Better Work-Life Balance

We all hear about the elusive “work-life balance” concept.  It’s the place where our careers and personal lives become balanced.  We don’t feel overworked, we have enough time for friends and family, and so on.  While this is a great concept in theory, and one we should strive for, it can be quite difficult to make it happen.

Since reducing stress and making more time for those things that are important to you is truly crucial, read along for some of our best tips in increasing your work-life balance, and hopefully, your quality of life.

Declare your priorities

When you figure out what’s most important in your life, it becomes easier to figure out where to place your time.  If you’re working very hard to advance your career, perhaps that’s your priority for the next six months.  On the other hand, if you’ve been pulling 60 hour weeks and your priority is family time, you may have to re-evaluate a bit.  Everyone will have different priorities, and they will often change depending on the season of your life.

To start to create that feeling of satisfaction and balance in your life, start by examining priorities and place more of your time there.

Take time for yourself

It’s important to unplug when you aren’t in “work” mode! And it should be noted that work mode should not be 24/7.  This can be difficult as work from home moms, but it’s a necessity in gaining balance.

Take time for yourself: schedule something exciting, keep weekends for friends, family, errands, and fun, and generally create space for the good things in life.  Yes, work is important and a huge part of our lives, but if that’s all you do, you’ll quickly feel out of balance.  Don’t feel guilty about making yourself a priority; you’ll be a better mom, friend, and employee for it!

Manage your time

Are you spending more time than you thought on work tasks?  Keep track of your time for a while – both business and personal.  Once you see some patterns forming, create a solid schedule.  This will allow you to keep things in order and allow you to see where your free time is.  WHen you know where you’re spending too much (or not enough) time, you can readjust.

A lot of the work of establishing a solid work-life balance is in seeing where your time is going.  If you don’t keep track for a while, how will you know?  Put in some of the effort in the beginning and you can truly see where your time is being spent.

Make time for fun

For most people, a large part of work-life balance will include relaxation, family and friends.  You still have to have fun, even if your current priority is work or career advancement. It’s crucial to stay social, especially if you work from home.  Keep those social appointments and work them into your busy schedule whenever possible!

Take breaks

It’s important to stick to your guns regarding vacations, time off, and breaks.   Vacations and breaks don’t need to be elaborate, but there needs to be a definitive break from work on a consistent basis.

In our current culture, it’s easy to put these things off because so much needs to be done.  Fortunately, these things will still be there when you return! This isn’t to say that a great work ethic isn’t a wonderful thing, but too much of anything isn’t useful.

Work towards a balanced sense of work and life by following the tips above.  When you see where your time is going, focus on your priorities, and stay committed to what’s best for you, you’ll find these things are much more balanced in your life.

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April 17, 2017 0 Comments

4 Ways to Manage Home Based Employees

Working from home provides a lot of opportunity for flexibility and work-life balance, but it also presents unique challenges.  One of the main obstacles can arise in managing employees, as there’s not quite the amount of accountability that occurs in a traditional work environment.

Although management of employees can be tricky, it’s something that can be sorted out with a bit of forethought.  Read along for our best tips for successfully managing home based employees.

Management Software

There are several options out there for managing your employees and projects from a distance.  Basecamp is a very popular option, but there are others out there as well.  These programs allow users to log in remotely, complete tasks, share documents and checklists, and general stay in contact on a daily basis.  It’s easy to see what your employees are getting done, as well as seeing if they remain active on the site.

They can start as low as free and go up in price, typically depending on number of employees.

Click here to view a list of options that are comparable to Basecamp.

Timesheet

When your employees work remotely, it’s important to keep track of their time on a consistent basis.  Whether they’re project-based, hourly, or salaried, have them document their tasks in a detailed timesheet.  This doesn’t necessary need to be an ongoing practice, but it helps to establish the relationship and expectations in the beginning.

Determine how you’ll calculate time: by 10-minute intervals, 30-minute intervals, hour-long intervals, or simply project-based.  This establishes trust between you and your employees, and allows you to see how quickly they’re able to complete the work.

Additionally, some of the project management options allow you to track time and see which tasks employees are working on in real-time.   Timecamp, ClockSpot and MyHours are examples of this option, and it can be an easy way to keep track of time.

Weekly communication

Weekly calls and email communication are key to managing a remote team.  In general, having home based employees will require more communication.  Set up a time that works for everyone that includes a weekly call with the entire team.  This is a great time to review client obligations, any issues, and obstacles that might be in the way.

When you have a regular appointment for communication, you avoid issues before they get out of control.

Manage expectations

Remote employees don’t have to be a challenge to manage, as long as the correct expectations are set from the beginning.  If you’re requiring management software, take the time to explain and train any new employees in using it.  If a timesheet is required, be sure that they know what that needs to look like.

Additionally, ensure that they’re given every chance to succeed.  It can be an adjustment to work in a home based environment, and expectations do vary from traditional offices.

While you may have more flexibility in a work from home position, you may have to put some more checks in place to ensure that work is being completed effectively.  Luckily, with the advances in technology and communication, this is not only possible, but much more simple!

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March 27, 2017 0 Comments

6 Signs of a Great Website

In this day and age, everyone has an online presence.  Especially if you have a business, you know the importance of a quality website.  It’s a known fact that every business has (or should have) a website, but do you know what makes one better than another?

Although you can spend a lot of time and money on specific designs and fancy templates, it’s really crucial that you have the basics down first.  Read along for some best tips and advice to ensure your website is helping your business.

Make Your Contact Clear

Is it easy to contact you on your website?  You should feature a phone number and/or email address at the top of your page.  A “Contact Us” button is great, but people often want something even more accessible.

Ensure that this information is prominently displayed, easy to read, and accurate.  Think of it this way: if someone was ready to buy or order something from you, you would want to make it very easy for them to contact to order from you or hire you.

Professional Photos

Quality, professional photos are truly key to a solid website.  Especially when it comes to photos of you and/or your team, it’s important to make the investment in good headshots.

Additionally, utilizing professional photos gives readers and potential customers a glimpse at you.  Not only does this humanize your brand, but it allows for a brief connection before any business is done.

Let Them Get to Know You

Just as a professional photo allows us to connect visually, information and content allows this as well.  If you feel up to it, include some personal or fun information on your site.  If nothing else, share some of your story about why you are where you are, as well as the “why” of your business.

This really helps people connect beyond simply purchasing or hiring you, and these days, people want to do business with people they like and trust.  When someone feels like they know you, or can relate or appreciate something personal you said, they’re more likely to give you a call.

Include Calls to Action

It’s great to have a nice site, but if you’re not prompting visitors to do anything, you’re losing any chance to gain their contact information or work with them further.

Can you offer a free download or free one-on-one session for email addresses?  Create a sidebar prompt for this and collect those email addresses.  You could also have an information-gathering form, which typically works best for service-based businesses.  Since the person visiting your site is already likely interested in hiring you, obtaining more information about them and/or their need makes it all the easier to hire you.

Consider the Design

Beautiful design is very important.  Old, outdated websites aren’t pleasing to the eye, and it may show that you’re a bit out of touch.  We buy with our eyes, and if we don’t like what we see, it’s very easy to discard products and services as well.  Web design can be quite an investment, but there are plenty of do-it-yourself sites, or sites that offer design at a discount rate.

Although it’s tempting to try to do-it-yourself, it may create more headaches if it’s not your expertise.  It’s better to go into a web design meeting with an idea of what you want, then shop around a bit for designers who can bring it to life within your budget.

Nothing is more frustrating than a website that’s tough to navigate! This includes broken links, incomplete sentences, sites that won’t load, and so on.  Make sure that each move is intuitive, and that someone without any knowledge of your business can understand it.

Make it Mobile

Everyone is checking websites on their phones these days! If your site isn’t mobile-ready, it becomes a very frustrating experience for readers and potential customers.

There are sites out there that offer to make your website mobile, but more often than not, most templates are mobile-friendly.  This is absolutely something crucial to ask your web designer, as well as ensuring that every important feature functions well on a phone.

It’s not enough to look good on a phone – it must also function perfectly!

These are just a few basic steps to ensure that your website is beautiful and not frustrating to your visitors.  Take the time to get these things down, and then introduce more fun, fancy features that may bring that something extra to your website!

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