How to set goals for your employees that lead to success
I was talking to a young professional the other day and he mentioned that he was signing up for an online course. He explained that it was one of the goals he and his boss agreed on during their last performance review session. The course he was going to take would benefit his work to some degree, but more than that, it was an area he was interested in and the course would broaden his professional skills. I was impressed that his boss included that type of direction, investment, and encouragement in a yearly performance review. In business, whenever we describe someone as being “goal oriented” it’s a good thing, and if we allow it, that fact can do a lot to push our organizations toward greater success. We must, however, approach goal setting wisely. Goals and priorities are closely related and we all know that you can’t have more than one “first priority.” Therefore, priorities and goals should be limited in number. Generally speaking, it’s wise to start with company goals and then work your way to employee goals. Picture an inverted pyramid with a base of a few company goals, a middle layer of more team goals, and then the biggest top layer of individual employee goals. You may know the SMART guidelines for setting goals. The should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bounded. These apply to goals at all levels: company, teams, and employees. Company and team goals generally relate directly to the mission of your organization. However, some employee goals can go in different directions. Business has been stuck with the label “Yearly Performance Review” for generations and I think it’s very outdated. I suggest taking a more holistic approach to employee reviews and conducting them more frequently. Consider professional and personal growth. Find out areas of interest that are undeveloped and give employees the chance to explore them. Let your team members know that you are invested in their personal and professional growth and not merely in meeting some departmental or job-specific performance improvements. This will lead to far greater loyalty to your business and far less employee turnover. We often say that it’s much less expensive to retain a customer than acquire a new customer. The same principle applies to...
read moreThis week in small business: Become a master of DIY market research
I was really pleased to find some good guidance on market research to share with you this week. It’s a topic that doesn’t get much attention, but one that can make or break a startup or any plans for expansion. Marketing and sales Need a DIY guide to market research? In his SurveyGizmo article, Chris Watkins does a good job hitting all the bases. (A little nod to the young MLB season there!) To go a little further, check out Vikas Agrawal’s “5 market research tips every startup should know.” Jayson DeMers asks and answers the important question: When it comes to SEO, how cheap is too cheap? And if that makes you a bit concerned about your SEO, you’ll probably want to check out the three SEO tips to get your small biz noticed from John Swanciger. Anyone directly responsible for content creation (blogging) for the purpose of SEO needs to hear what Lisa Montenegro has to say about “keywords versus topics.” While Pepsi’s recent ad featuring Kendall Jenner caused a media storm, Jake Romm argues that it was actually a resounding success. Check your website against Jennifer Lobb’s list of five things it must have…unless you want to lose customers. Leadership, management, and productivity Rasha Khawaja, Toucan founder and CEO, is the woman business leader profiled in this article by Laura Emily Dunn. There’s no question about it: We’ve been in a productivity funk for several years. Philip Salter says that small business adopting technology is the key to raising productivity. And while they aren’t techy, the six productivity hacks in this article by Christine Warner are solid. Munira Rangwala offers three easy ways to help women succeed in business and we all succeed when more women succeed. Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation Not all networking strategies are good and in his Entrepreneur article, Kimanzi Constable outlines one terrible way of networking via social media for entrepreneurs. Need convincing that a strong social media presence is required for your startup? If so, this Social Media Daily article lays out the reasons. Finally, are you primed for a little inspiration and guidance? Try this piece by Brian Roberts: How I came up with a million-dollar ecommerce idea in 20...
read moreThey give you a few free square inches, here’s how to make the most of them!
Leveraging a consistent 1-percent edge to outpace the competition means taking advantage of every opportunity you have to further your small business. And in your social media accounts, this requires you to use every tool at hand and one of those tools is your cover photo or cover art. I’ve grabbed some Twitter cover art that illustrate how this space can be used to your advantage as well as a couple of things to avoid. Let’s take a tour together. As I explored Twitter accounts, I was mildly surprised to see that IBM’s Watson Analytics is among the accounts to make the best use of cover art. (By the way, although all the examples I’m going to use come from Twitter, the same principles apply across your social media accounts.) The IBM Watson Analytics cover art communicates an offer, web address, and IBM branding. Wow: A three-fer! Netflix uses its cover art to promote a recent release in its lineup of original television programming. And, if you were to watch this account over time, you would see that it changes its art very often and that brings us to one of the biggest lost opportunities that we suffer on social media: failing to keep our cover art fresh! Schedule in some mandatory updates throughout the year and stick to your schedule. We see a similar timeliness with Wendy’s cover art. When I took the screenshot, we were just going into March Madness season and Wendy’s was using the basketball tournament to promote itself. After having a lot of nice things to say about these brands so far, let’s look at Snapchat’s Twitter cover art. I understand that there is a certain degree of competition between Snapchat and Twitter, but nonetheless, Snapchat has a lot of Twitter followers. In any case, I think it could be just a bit more creative with its cover image. If it thinks its minimalist approach is good, it’s not working with me. Personal branding expert Leonard Kim makes a common error with his cover art. The profile picture covers up an important element of the cover art, in this case, a person’s face. It’s not Kim’s, but it still doesn’t feel right. Sometimes important type will get covered up by the profile picture. Avoid these mistakes. Cynthia Johnson, on the other hand, has every element in her cover art strategically placed so her profile picture does not overlap any important element. Also, note how Johnson is looking into the page. That helps lead the end into the content. I like what Canva does with its cover art. This is a site where you design your own graphics, so “creativity” is part of its brand. It’s cover art looks great and often has messages that inspire users. And, note that you don’t have to fill up every bit of the space with either imagery or type. For a legacy brand, Coca-Cola does an excellent job with its Twitter cover photo. It promotes the drink and the joy/fun that the company wants you to associate with its products. Contrast this to IBM’s Watson Analytics, where the point was to give people concrete information about the product. If you’re smart and creative, you can communicate important intangibles via your social media cover images. Now it’s time to...
read moreAre Your Small Business Goals Too Low?
National “Reach as High as You Can” Day is on April 14, and no, it’s not a day to make you feel guilty about not doing your calisthenics. For small business owners, it’s a day ask if your small business goals are what is holding you back. “How can my goals be holding me back?” you ask. When you first started your business, you likely had a very specific goal in mind. You knew what you wanted to be doing in five years, and you wrote your business plan accordingly. If you were aiming to get a loan or investors, you had to be realistic with your goals so you could convince potential backers that you could actually achieve those goals in a reasonable time. But now that you are set up and well on your way to reaching those goals – You are, right? – ask yourself this question: What if your original goals had been 10 times bigger? What would you have done to achieve those goals? What additional risks would you have taken? How more focused would you have been on moving your business forward? The curious thing about goals is that they can turn into shackles that hold us back. If we low-ball our goals, thinking we’re being sensible, we limit ourselves to what we believe is possible. Your business goals are probably too small if: You aren’t feeling challenged every day by the work you are doing. You are comfortable with your daily routine and don’t regularly consider doing anything extra to be more productive or successful. Your unmet goals aren’t scaring you a bit. (If you know beyond any doubt that you will reach your next business goals without breaking a sweat, you have a problem.) National “Reach as High as You Can” Day is an excellent annual reminder to check your goals and make sure that you are truly challenging yourself to better and more successful tomorrow. Not only does this make your long-term improvements more exciting, it also makes you more resilient in the short-term, because you realize that you have something huge that you need to achieve ASAP. Next thing you know, you’ll be banishing procrastination for good and working out brand new ways to make your business more efficient so that you can reach even higher....
read more5 ways to market your Facebook page on a shoestring
Although I’ve titled this “Five ways to market your Facebook page on a shoestring,” almost all of the tips here involve no cost. So even if you can’t afford to buy a shoestring right now, there are ways you can get more marketing power from your Facebook business or fan page. 1. Ask for fans. The various website plugins we use that give visitors the ability to navigate to our Facebook pages have made us lazy. I like them, but I think they are so common now, people have stopped noticing them. Instead of relying on these icons or badges, ask people to visit and “like” your Facebook page in your blogs and other posts and give them your link in the text. This is more direct and personal. 2. Give people a reason to visit and share your Facebook page. This is a critical point: People must be motivated to visit your page. You can do this by providing excellent content, whipping up some controversy, communicating with visitors who comment, and any other strategy you can think of. Ask yourself, “Would I come back here or recommend it to others?” 3. Promote your Facebook page through other social media channels. Almost everyone has website plugins that send out posts based on new website content; for example, when you publish a blog. Here’s a good Facebook promotion trick: Publish something on Facebook and send notifications out to your other social media accounts. Services like Buffer and Hootsuite have browser extensions or apps that will do this. 4. Get some Facebook plugins/apps to add value to your page. You’ll pay a little for these, but there are plugins that allow you to do things such as offer a free e-book sign up, conduct a giveaway, or hand out coupons. Woobox is one provider for these kinds of add-ons. 5. Take Facebook page marketing offline. One of the Facebook page promotion tricks that many small business owners miss, is to integrate it into the non-digital world. Print your Facebook URL on brochures, advertisements, letterhead, business cards, and other printed materials. (Also, add it to your email signature.) Whenever you give a presentation to a local group, spend a moment to invite your audience to visit your Facebook page. Facebook continues to be the big kid on the block when it comes to social media platforms. And, while services such as SnapChat appeal to a younger average demographic, the key word there is “average.” Overall, Facebook continues to be popular with every demographic. Sometimes it makes a lot of sense to use a shotgun...
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