When it comes to website analytics, it’s easy to get lost among the forest’s trees. You may not be sure what information matters most and what you should be looking to improve. While your site is instrumental to your business’s digital marketing strategy, a lot goes on underneath. Below we’ll explain how to master the four most critical website analytics and why they’re so important.

1. Examine Traffic Sources

In general, a lot of your website traffic will either be organic or paid. Organic means visitors find your online content by searching for it. Maybe not your exact URL, but a search engine returned your site’s content as a match for the keywords someone used. They found the preview of your content promising enough to click on it.

This traffic is organic because you didn’t pay the search engine to show the links to your site. Paid traffic is the opposite. You embed links to your site’s content in a pay-per-click ad or a boosted social media post. Targeted audiences see the ads and posts since the objective is to attract visitors who match specific profiles.

Boosting your organic traffic can help serve your growth marketing goals. Search engine optimization strategies use keywords to generate traffic and leads. Ideally, you want more of this traffic to be organic than paid. In the long run, it’s more cost-effective, and you stand a greater chance of nurturing genuinely interested prospects.

But you also want to examine the keywords you’re targeting and whether they match visitors’ search terms. A deeper dive into your traffic analytics will reveal this data. The information will show whether the keywords you’re using effectively acquire leads. Plus, it can indicate where your SEO strategies could use a facelift.

2. Identify What Visitors Do

Getting people to your site is great. But once they’re there, how do they engage with your content? Just because your traffic numbers are up doesn’t guarantee that visitors enjoy your pages. Metrics like bounce rates, page entrances, and exit percentages can tell a more insightful story.

Your bounce rate reveals what percentage of visitors came to a specific page and left without doing anything else. They didn’t go to another link on your site, including contact forms. This means they came, saw, and didn’t engage any further. Your bounce rate doesn’t tell you why they left, but it can indicate the content didn’t meet their expectations.

Page entrances tell you what pages people are coming to first. Perhaps more visitors are landing on a specific blog post versus your e-commerce store. Numbers like this show that your blog post is outperforming your store pages in terms of attracting visitors. But if your goal is to get people to your store, you might need to experiment with your blog posts. Trying different call-to-action links may help direct a percentage of traffic toward conversion.

A page’s exit percentages aren’t the same as the bounce rate. The former metric means people left your website from the page but may have spent time browsing through your site. If your visitors are leaving on a purchase or sign-up confirmation page, you’re in good shape. If they’re bailing midway through the marketing funnel, you’ll need to investigate further to determine what’s prompting their departure and make necessary changes.

3. Measure Conversions

Your website isn’t there to only look good. You want people to do something once they get there. It might be purchasing a product, signing up for your emails, or registering for your upcoming webinar. With conversions, you could have more than one objective. Plus, those goals might vary by audience.

One aim isn’t necessarily better than another. However, measuring conversion rates will reveal whether your strategies are working. Determining how you want people to engage with your content will help you shape it. Also, you’ll need to benchmark your desired conversion rate. Otherwise, you won’t know when to declare victory.

Averages can sometimes help set your own targets. For example, the average online store conversion rate is between 2.5% and 3%. However, you likely want to surpass industry averages. Your goal could be to work up to the top of the average range if your site is new. It depends on what will be feasible for your team and make the most sense for your business’s growth objectives.

4. Look at Repeat Visitors

Businesses can’t grow based on new customers alone. In fact, most of your growth will come from existing clients. With digital marketing strategies and online stores, this translates to repeat visitors to your site. Even before leads convert, more than one visit to a page can indicate strong interest.

It’s like when a prospective homebuyer comes back for a second viewing. The repeat visit indicates that the property is probably a top contender. The buyer may have additional questions, but they like what they see. Measuring unique versus repeat visits to various pages on your site shows which audiences are most likely to buy.

This data also tells you who your loyal customers are. You can use this information to retarget them for specific campaigns, such as product and service bundles. When certain pages get a lot of repeat hits, it shows you what’s relevant to your audience members. Use the insights to craft related content to boost retention, engagement, and conversion rates.

Understanding Website Analytics

Data about your website is there to guide your online marketing strategies. The insights can steer you toward opportunities and reveal wins. Analyzing traffic sources, visitors’ behaviors, conversion rates, and repeat page hits will give you a clear performance snapshot. Understanding what that snapshot says can help your business grow in the direction you desire.

The post 4 Tips to Help Master Your Website Data, and Why It Matters appeared first on SiteProNews.

Perhaps you learned how to do things many years ago, and your knowledge hasn’t caught up to current best practices. Or maybe you’ve just fallen behind on updating the blog due to all your responsibilities.

From infrequently posting to poor-quality content, here are some blogging habits to avoid. In this guide, you’ll learn some of the worst blogging habits, so you can make any necessary changes to your blogging routine.

This way, you’ll hopefully get more viewers to your blog and create more relevant content for your target audience.

Where to Learn Best Blogging Practices

Before jumping into the blogging practices to avoid, you’ll want to know the resources for best blogging practices. Luckily, many resources are out there. You can check out blogging experts such as The Blog Starter.

Then, continue to research overall best practices for content writing and SEO. It’s best to keep up to date on information on the Google algorithm and continually learn from others in the field. And, if you’re blogging for your brand but don’t have a lot of experience in online marketing, check out these basic best practices here.

Habit 1: Unoriginal or Poorly Written Content

When it comes to content marketing, you need every blog post you write to be unique. If it’s too similar to other blogs, even those on your site, the blog won’t be rated highly by the Google algorithm. Along with writing unique content, you also need to ensure that every blog post is well-written. Grammar and spelling errors look bad all around, and they won’t do your brand any favors.

Along with well-written, original content, you also need to write blog posts relevant to your audience and brand. It’s best to write on topics that your audience would be interested in and offer something of value in each post.

This will vary depending on your company and overall tone, but you should still be writing content that audiences can glean valuable information from.

Habit 2: Keyword Stuffing

Over time, best practices in content marketing have changed. While it used to be that websites tried to include a bunch of keyword phrases to trick the algorithm, everything is much more sophisticated now.

While keywords are still helpful, adding too many is awkward to read and will make your blog seem less authoritative. Instead, figure out the keyword density you feel comfortable with and shoot for that. Or, if you’re new to keywords and SEO, focus first on writing good-quality blogs with helpful information.

Habit 3: Posting Very Randomly

One of the most important rules to stick to for your business blog is posting on a consistent schedule. Now, there’s some debate as to exactly how often you should post, and there isn’t a hard and fast rule here. However, whatever schedule you decide to have, stick to it.

So, for example, if you’ve decided to post a blog once per week, make sure you aren’t missing weeks at a time. Instead, you can schedule posts ahead of time for when you’ll be busy. Lack of consistency often means the algorithm will ding your blog.

Habit 4: Using Bad or Varying Formatting

Just like with consistency in your posting schedule, you should also have overall consistency in your formatting, tone, and voice. Blogs with the same font, header styles, and image sizes will look better to readers.

Along with this, it’s crucial to stay on brand. This means you want your tone and voice to stay mostly the same from piece to piece. While this might occasionally differ a little if you have a guest blogger, you don’t want to have one post that sounds super dry and business-like and another that’s very upbeat and casual. Instead, figure out the right tone and voice for your audience and stick to that.

If you’re looking for ways to improve your blogging for your brand, ensure you aren’t following any of these bad habits. You might find making a few adjustments makes a big difference.

The post 4 Bad Blogging Habits to Stop Doing appeared first on SiteProNews.

Sometime back, technology was not considered as important. However, this did not stop tech-savvy organizations from utilizing technology to their full potential. Many businesses now realize the role of technology in contributing to business success.

When used the right way, technology provides better options for improving productivity and customer service and gives businesses a competitive advantage.

Here are eight ways technology can increase business efficiency.

1. Enhance Efficient Workforce Management

Technology allows businesses to create a workforce that is more productive, efficient, and innovative. Through technology, businesses can automate routine tasks, leaving employees more time to focus on innovative tasks.

Through the use of technology, employees can co-work from the comfort of their homes without necessarily going to the office. Businesses can now adopt workforce management software that simplifies many tasks. In addition to automating tasks, technology also assists in tracking time and monitoring progress.

With the right technology, project managers can coordinate even the most intricate projects without the need for the team to meet in person. A software development company can create workforce software that is compatible with mobile devices, meaning that your employees will be reachable irrespective of their location.

It’s great to have your workers able to assist you without them having to come down to the office. However, you should ensure that employees also connect personally, not just virtually, by having regular team-building sittings.

2. Improves Business Communication

The ability to communicate across an organization promptly is important to keep operations running smoothly. In addition, clear and frequent communication allows employees to remain productive. Supervisors can share expectations on projects, provide quick and actionable feedback, and solve problems effectively.

New modes of communication are coming up every day. Typical communication tools include messaging, video chats, and more. Technology makes communication easier, which is imperative for every business that has remote workers, encourages collaboration, or simply wants to organize its workflows.

3. Reduces Costs

One of the best ways to reduce your bloated spending is by investing in service-based technologies and software. Cloud computing technology enables a business to leverage virtual and off-site technologies for storing apps and data. By investing in technology, you can minimize the costs of hardware maintenance while improving the security of your systems.

By automating routine tasks, you will have less work. Therefore, you will only need a few employees to monitor and correct the computerized systems, reducing your labor costs significantly. Reduced labor costs translate to increased profitability of your business. A perfect example is downloading free legal forms crafted by licensed attorneys instead of hiring lawyers to do the same job.

4. Increases Business Productivity

Technology enables businesses to maintain consistent performance, even in economic hardships. For example, a company can quickly get back on its feet after a disaster or service outage with data recovery and backup services. Even in times of hardship, a business can maximize productivity and minimize expected downtime.

Technology enhances workplace productivity by streamlining time-consuming tasks. For example, using document management software replaces tasks like data entry, manual file retrieval, and filing. Businesses can optimize limited IT resources by using managed IT services. Managed IT services also eliminate the burden of routine system maintenance.

Technology allows entrepreneurs and managers to take advantage of productivity apps for a small fee. However, your business can adopt some of the free apps like Basecamp and Slack, which can be synced with desktop versions.

5. Enable Collaboration Tools

Collaboration is crucial for every business. However, employees do not have to be in adjoining rooms to achieve this. With technology, staff members in remote locations can collaborate and share details easily.

Custom cloud solutions provide robust solutions with unmatched security for sensitive data. Solutions that enable workers to communicate, plan, and implement tasks contribute to increased productivity. With enhanced collaboration, there will be less resistance when working jointly.

6. Improves Lobby Signage

Also known as reception area signs, lobby signs are an excellent way of making better use of the bare walls in the reception areas. Instead of unremarkable artwork or bare walls, you should have lobby signs to welcome customers and inform them of who you are.

Many businesses have transformed their lobby signs into digital signage. You can use digital signage to rotate different messages throughout a business day. You can have custom settings, messages, and signs. When you have the right digital signage model, you can enjoy this often underestimated method of marketing your business. When a customer passes a sign, they receive a message on their smartphone.

7. Supports Remote Working

Many office employees work remotely, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As the mobile workforce expands and in-house staff levels contract, many businesses are giving their employees the option of working off-site. Having your employees work remotely will help you save money on the overhead costs of maintaining a large workspace.

Hiring managers have an opportunity to explore the talent pool, and this increases the chances of finding well-qualified personnel even in far-off locations. However, for remote workers to be productive, they need instant access to business data, information, and other team members. This is easy to achieve with mobile-friendly technologies.

The obvious benefits of working online include flexibility and extra time for employees. Employees have the freedom to work how they want and from any location. Remote working results in more engaged employees who can do anything to enhance your business growth.

What’s more, your employees will understand that you truly care for their well-being by providing them with a work-life balance.

8. Improves Customer Services

Technology helps businesses to provide customers with quick and efficient service. You can choose from different options for communicating with your customers, including phone, chat, or email. You can run a contact center independently or as a unified system. By integrating your record management system and phone system into your CRM, you give staff access to the most current customer data.

Take Your Business to the Next Level with the Latest Technology

Adopting new technology yields instant improvements in business efficiency. From incorporating business tools for effective communication to using cloud software for easy access to files, every business can develop from technology.

The post 8 Clever Ways Technology Can Help You Increase Business Efficiency appeared first on SiteProNews.

1. Double Down on SEO

SEO is more than just a list of tasks to perform – it’s an ongoing complex marketing strategy that requires continual monitoring and adjustments to optimize results. You can’t really stop performing SEO because if you do, you’ll fall behind your competitors.

If you want your online business to thrive, you need to have an ongoing search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. SEO aims to optimize your content and website in order to make your web pages appear in search results. Ideally, you want your pages to show up on the first page, but you’ll still get some traffic if you don’t make it to the first page.

It’s important to hire a professional agency that understands your market and demographics, but when you’re a business with local patrons, you need an agency that understands the locals.

There are plenty of SEO agencies that specialize in local search, like Nuclear Networking, for example. When you need to reach local customers, a specialized local SEO team will help you get big results.

2. Connect Your Online Business to Your Physical Business

If your town has a thriving nightlife, or if your business is popular, you’ll benefit from connecting your online business to your physical business. People like to exist in both worlds, and you can give them the best of both.

One way to accomplish this is by creating a digital loyalty program that can be presented in your business. For example, if you own a bar or restaurant, print a QR code on your coasters that prompts guests to sign up for your newsletter. Once they sign up, give them a discount code they can use immediately to save money on their tab.

There are other ways to connect your online and physical business. You can offer online ordering, online reservations, and anything else that will provide value to your customers online.

3. Hire a Professional Website Developer

When you think about hiring a professional website developer, you might first be concerned about the cost. Naturally, you’ll pay more for an expert, and it’s well worth the cost.

Think of your website as a revenue-generating asset rather than an inconvenient expense. When you create it correctly from the start, it will serve you in the long run and you won’t need to rebuild it over and over again.

You’ll find an endless supply of people online claiming to be experienced developers, but many are just winging it and only know how to use drag-and-drop editors.

To find the right developer, you need to ask the right questions. For example, Moz.com published a list of 20 questions that include the following:

• What industry sites and blogs do you read regularly?
• Do you prefer to work alone or on a team?
• Can you write HTML by hand?
• Can you write table-less XHTML? Do you validate your code?
• Can I see your portfolio?
• What websites have you built in the past?

These questions are important. You want a developer who stays up-to-date with the latest trends and changes, someone who works as a team, and knows HTML inside and out. You also want someone who writes clean code and has a portfolio of websites that are still on the internet.

If a developer says all of their websites have since vanished, they either have no experience or they’ve only designed sites for friends and family who have abandoned their projects. It’s also possible that they were a developer ten years ago which means they probably aren’t on top of current coding standards.

4. Allow Your SEO Agency to Suggest Content Changes

When you hire a professional SEO agency, they’ll get you better results when they can control your content. Ideally, your content should be written by professional writers. However, if your content is decent, your SEO team may only need to make slight changes to include important keywords and phrases.

Search engines determine the relevance of pages based on keywords and phrases along with related keywords and phrases. It’s important to have a variety of phrases in your content, but it must be done naturally.

Your SEO agency might also suggest making changes like writing longer blog posts (1,000+ words), posting content at regular intervals, and spending money on a professional content writer for your most important pages.

Achieving Online Success Takes Time

Being successful online takes time. However, when you integrate your online presence with your real-world presence, you’ll get results slightly faster. While your marketing team lays the foundation for SEO and other digital marketing strategies, your customers will promote your online presence through word of mouth.

The post 4 Tips for American Businesses to Thrive Online appeared first on SiteProNews.

If you’re behind the curve and you’re interested in starting the backup process, don’t worry – it’s easier than you think. With the advent of free cloud storage and an abundance of online resources, you should have no trouble mastering the introductory steps.

Why Backups?

Why should you be backing up your information?

The unfortunate reality is that all of your work is vulnerable. Whether you have an archive of old photos and videos, important documents for your occupation, or just assets from hobbies store it on your computer, all of your information is prone to a variety of threats, including:

• Physical destruction. If you have your data stored on a physical device, and that physical device is corrupted, damaged, or destroyed, you could lose everything. Your computer could totally malfunction, resulting in a corrupted hard drive. A house fire could destroy all your local hard drives and servers. You could drop your flash drive in a pool of water. The possibilities are practically endless.
• Theft. It’s also possible that someone could steal one of your devices that has all your sensitive information. Leaving your computer unattended at a local coffee shop or being the victim of a home burglary are just two examples of how this could occur.
• Malware and cyberattacks. Even more commonly, people lose data because of malware and cyberattacks. If you’re not careful, a cybercriminal could guess your password or trick you into downloading an image attachment in one of your emails. They could also intentionally infect your computer with ransomware, preventing you from being able to access your files directly until you pay a ransom fee. All it takes is one security slipup to put you in this terrible position.

The worst-case scenario is that you don’t have any backups in place. With no backups, any of these incidents could instantly reset you to position zero, causing you to lose months’, if not years’ worth of information. But if you have backups in place, you can ultimately restore your system back to what it was before the incident occurred, effectively turning a total catastrophe into a mild inconvenience. Depending on the nature of this information, you could save a lot of money in the process as well.

Different Types of Backups

Before you start backing up your work, you should know that there are many different types of backup that you could employ, and all of them are valuable, but some are better than others.

For example, you can back up your information using physical devices. You can copy all your information onto a separate hard drive and keep it in a separate physical location, so if your primary device is ever destroyed or stolen, you can revert to the backup. However, it’s even better to rely on cloud storage, where your information will be kept secure without depending on a local physical device.

You can also backup your information manually, uploading or copying files whenever you see fit. But it’s much better to employ automatic updates. This way, you don’t have to consciously decide to make your backups; they happen automatically.

Baby Steps to Better Backup Habits

If you’ve never practiced data backups before, try using these baby steps to gradually work your way to better habits:

• Set your overarching goals. What are you hoping to achieve with your data backups? Is there something specific you want to back up or do you want general better practices on your side?
• Take advantage of free cloud storage. There are many companies that extend limited free cloud storage to all users. You should be able to find at least a few gigabytes of storage do you lies, requiring no commitment or money on your part. It’s a great place to start if you’re on a limited budget, even if you do need to upgrade at some point in the future.
• Organize your files. Before you dive too deep into the world of data backups, make sure your data is organized. This is a great chance to focus on renaming your files and restructuring your folders so that everything is much more intuitive and searchable.
• Back up your most important data. Always back up your most important data first. The rest can wait, if necessary.

With better data backup practices in place, you’ll be much better protected against a variety of threats, from renegade hackers to vicious tornadoes. The more you practice backing up your data, and the more you learn about data management best practices, the more confident you’ll be in your pursuit of higher digital security.

The post How to Start Backing Up Your Work (If You Don’t Know Where to Start) appeared first on SiteProNews.

When selling fashion online, you need to optimize your conversion rate. In this context, your conversion rate refers to the rate at which customers buy products from your website.

A proper SEO strategy can play a very significant role in improving your conversion rate. The following points will help you better understand how:

Attracting Visitors

It’s a basic point, but it’s an essential one. When your SEO strategy is strong, your pages are more likely to rank high in the results pages when users perform relevant searches. The more people see your pages and click on your links, the better the odds your conversion rate will be high.

Don’t overlook the importance of ranking high in search results. Research indicates pages that show on the second page of search results account for a mere 6% of online clicks.

Attracting the Right Visitors

This may sound similar to the point above, but to a degree, it’s a separate point.

The fact that many people visit your site doesn’t guarantee you’ll have a desirable conversion rate. There are plenty of reasons you could have a relatively low conversion rate despite your pages attracting a fairly high amount of traffic.

For instance, maybe the people who find your pages and click on them aren’t the types of people to buy your products. They click on your pages because they get the impression that they’ll find what they’re looking for on them, but when they see what you’re actually offering, they may realize they were mistaken.

A proper SEO strategy won’t merely attract visitors. It will attract visitors most likely to be interested in what you’re selling.

Reaching Online Shoppers

Did you know that mobile Internet browsing is now more popular than desktop browsing? Similarly, it’s becoming increasingly common for people to make purchases via their mobile devices.

SEO specialists account for these types of trends when developing and implementing their strategies. For example, a smart SEO professional will know it’s important to optimize a page for a mobile device by ensuring the content can easily be scanned on a small mobile screen and confirming the page functions properly on a smartphone or tablet. When your SEO strategy involves optimizing your site for mobile, naturally, you’ll be more likely to make sales to customers shopping via mobile devices.

Ensuring Functionality

That last point touched on an important detail that some overlook when developing SEO strategies. Although including the right keywords and formatting content appropriately are certainly critical elements of an SEO strategy, they’re not the only factors to consider. SEO also involves a technical side. You need to ensure your site performs reliably for your SEO strategy to deliver ideal results.

It’s easy to understand the role site performance may play in your conversion rate. A visitor is simply far less likely to make a purchase than they otherwise might be if your site is laggy or otherwise has performance issues. An SEO strategy should address this.

Focusing on User Intent

When developing an SEO strategy and researching which keywords to use in your content, it’s important to consider user intent. People use different types of keywords for different types of searches.

For example, someone typing in “red dress” may be searching for a red dress to buy, but that might not necessarily always be the case. Maybe they’re looking for images of red dresses. Maybe they’d like to buy a red dress in the future and are thus looking for ideas, but they don’t plan on making a purchase anytime soon.

On the other hand, a search for “red dress on sale” or “buy red dress” will likely be made by someone ready to make a purchase. An SEO strategy will leverage these types of keywords to ensure the guests your pages attract are prepared to buy a product.

All that said, SEO can be complex. You might not have the qualifications or time to develop and implement a strategy yourself. If not, strongly consider hiring a marketing agency to help. Experts will work with you to ensure your strategy yields optimal results. For more information on this topic, check out the article “20 Digital Marketing Tips for Fashion Businesses.”

The post How SEO Can Boost Conversions appeared first on SiteProNews.

Unlike offices in which individual team members might have business phones, at call centers and service centers legacy phone systems connected to a central hub continue to dominate, and these systems can’t be easily disseminated. Even if team members had business phones, they would still need to link to something of a switchboard, allowing team members to receive calls from the main queue. This certainly made the transition to remote work harder for departments and businesses dependent on such systems, but difficult isn’t the same as impossible.

The Value of Hosted VoIP

Faced with the task of moving large-scale telephone services to a remote platform, the options are limited, but there’s one outstanding choice that many have come to rely on, and that’s hosted VoIP services. In addition to its value in today’s remote work-centered environment, hosted VoIP services support flexible staffing and scaling needs regardless of industry or even sustained remote operations. In fact, that’s the beauty of hosted VoIP – even if call centers and similar businesses choose to shift back to fully in-person work in the coming months, it will continue working seamlessly.

As valuable as VoIP platforms are for remote work, it’s important to know that all options aren’t equal. VoIP platforms come in both hosted and on-premises varieties, but on-premises VoIP only works for on-site work. That’s because on-premises VoIP relies on in-house internet to route calls as appropriate. Hosted VoIP, on the other hand, is located off-site, which means that it can easily route calls to remote workers, whether they’re based in the same location day in and day out or traveling between locations.

Added Advantages

Under the current circumstances, it would be enough for VoIP platforms to support remote work, but that’s not the only reason for businesses to choose these systems. At this point, legacy phone systems are both cumbersome and low-tech. They offer limited functionality and are cumbersome and costly to update. 

By opting to use a VoIP platform in place of a traditional phone system, however, businesses benefit from easy system upgrades without the costs that come with updating legacy systems. VoIP systems also cut out the downtime, which can be costly to businesses and frustrating for clients, especially for 24-7 call centers.

Phone Connections for the Data Age

One of the main reasons it was relatively easy for businesses to pivot to remote operations during the pandemic is that they already rely heavily on an array of cloud-based services that can easily be accessed remotely. These tools allow customer service representatives to access critical client data, support teams collaborating on projects, organize and protect documents, and so much more. Even when staff were onsite, though, phones existed largely outside this loop. They were low-tech in a way that could be costly, in data, if not in dollars.

Unlike legacy phone systems, VoIP platforms allow for much stronger system integration. Supervisors can manage calls via browser, incoming calls are logged with CRM, and necessary customer data pulled up seamlessly for agents. This may not be a big deal in a small business with closer staff-client relationships, but for businesses with thousands of clients, this kind of technical support is indispensable. 

The Phone of the Future

Some doubt whether it’s wise for businesses to plan a full migration to VoIP post-pandemic, leaving PBX systems in the dust, but both financially and technically it’s what comes next. Add to these concerns the projected future of the workplace – split offices with some staff working remotely at all times – and VoIP platforms will remain necessary. While cost is a key concern, it’s likely to be a minor one when businesses add in the benefits of VoIP platforms, such as better data collection and system upgrades.

In a world that’s constantly rushing forward, embracing new technology and approaches to business, phones are old news, and they’re overdue for an update. With VoIP, businesses get the tools they need to thrive and phones take a big technological leap into the future. It’s about time. 

The post Hosted VoIP Offers Businesses an Operational Edge appeared first on SiteProNews.

What is Burnout?

Burnout is a word that gets casually tossed around with great frequency and flippancy, but what exactly is it?

According to wellness coach Elizabeth Scott, “Burnout is a reaction to prolonged or chronic job stress and is characterized by three main dimensions: exhaustion, cynicism (less identification with the job), and feelings of reduced professional ability. More simply put, if you feel exhausted, start to hate your job, and begin to feel less capable at work, you are showing signs of burnout.”

Job burnout is overwhelmingly common among employees, but what about business owners. Are you prone to burnout as well? The answer is a resounding yes.

Burnout doesn’t typically crop up out of nowhere and trip you up. It’s generally a slow, drawn-out process that begins with warm, smoldering coals and flourishes into a rampant wildfire. 

At first, burnout will feel like boredom and a lack of energy, but you push through. Then that boredom turns into apathy, which snowballs into carelessness and foolish mistakes. Before you know it, you dread getting up in the morning and you trade afternoon sales calls in for a round of golf. And the more burned out you become, the more guilty you feel. Stress leads to anxiety, which can eventually translate into depression.

According to Mayo Clinic, consequences of job burnout can include excessive stress, fatigue, insomnia, sadness, anger, irritability, alcohol misuse, heart disease, high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, and a suppressed immune system that makes you more susceptible to sickness and disease.

It’s not always immediately clear what the cause of burnout is. But once a person digs into the underlying factors and gets to the root of the problem, a few specific culprits 

will become obvious.

4 Ways SBOs Can Avoid Burnout

If you feel burnout creeping in – or you’re worried that it could emerge at some point – it’s important that you take proactive measures to evade this cancerous disease. Here are a few practical suggestions:

1. Take Care of Yourself

In most cases, there’s a connection between job burnout and a lack of self-care. Each issue feeds the other – often creating a vicious cycle that accelerates negative consequences.

If you aren’t caring for yourself, it’s time to make some changes. Specifically, you should:

• Make sleep a bigger priority. Not only do you need to get seven or eight hours of sleep per night, but you need to get quality REM sleep that helps your body heal and recover.

• Get at least 30 minutes of exercise per day. Preferably, this exercise should come in the middle of the day when you’re able to get the most out of the benefits.

• Improve your diet and correct any imbalances or nutritional deficiencies that you may have. If you can’t get all of the necessary vitamins and nutrients from your diet, try liquid extracts made from whole-plant herbal extracts.

When you’re in the midst of growing a business and juggling dozens of responsibilities, self-care can easily become secondary. Don’t let it. Make it a priority by setting specific and measurable goals.

2. Create Some Separation and Balance

Everyone wants to talk about work-life balance, but few understand what this actually means. Until you gain some clarity on this issue, you’ll fail to find fulfillment in either area of your life.

Work-life balance does not mean merging these two aspects of your life. In other words, it isn’t about bringing your kids to work and bringing your job home with you so that you can do both at once. In fact, the opposite is true. It’s about separating these two areas and being 100 percent present where you are.

When you’re at work, you should be focused on work. More importantly, when you’re at home, you should be focused on being a parent, spouse, friend, etc. A failure to make time for your personal life will lead to a constant state of exhaustion. 

3. Learn to Say No

Entrepreneurs are often told that they have to be ready to say yes to everything in order to grow a business. However, saying yes to things that don’t fit into your core business will actually hold you back from growing. They’ll also eat up your time and energy.

“In order to say yes to what’s truly important, you need to have a firm understanding of your core priorities, entrepreneur Nellie Akalp writes. “Well-defined near-term and long-term objectives can help you frame your daily decisions and to-do list.”

Once you know what you can say yes to, you can start saying no to opportunities, questions, and challenges that don’t fit into your master plan. You’ll feel instant relief.

4. Take it Down a Notch

Passion and risk can be good things for an entrepreneur to weave into their startups, but there’s such a thing as too much.

“Some evidence suggests that entrepreneurs are more at risk of burnout because they tend to be extremely passionate about work and more socially isolated, have limited safety nets, and operate in high uncertainty,” Harvard Business Review reports.

If you’ve been surviving on adrenaline and trying to will your business to be successful, you’re draining yourself dry. By stepping back and taking things down a notch, you can develop more sustainable workflows that pave the way for greater longevity.

Rediscover Your Energy and Excitement

Do you remember what it was like when you first started your business and you were filled with excitement, anticipation, and fulfillment? It’s time to rediscover that joy and benefit from a renewed sense of purpose.

As an added benefit, your reignited passion will trickle down and have an impact on the rest of your business. Your employees will feel more engaged, your business decisions will be backed by greater intentionality, and your customers will notice the difference. It’s a winning combination that benefits everyone.

The post Don’t Let Burnout Squash Your Business appeared first on SiteProNews.

But if you want a better chance of success in 2019, you’ll need to tear down your old strategies, examine the strategies of others, and outline key areas for improvement in the coming year. 

Why an Audit Is So Important 

Let’s take a look at why performing a strategy audit is so important: 

• Critical awareness. You may believe you perform adequately in each of several different categories, but in reality, you’re probably better than average in some areas and worse than average in others. An audit is your opportunity to think critically about your situation, and identify those areas accurately. 
• Opportunities for improvement. This is also an opportunity to find areas for potential improvement. For some businesses, that means sharpening up strategies that failed to pan out. For others, it means adopting new strategies to compensate for their underperformers. 
• Keeping up. The marketing world is always changing, with new consumer preferences, new technologies, and of course, innovative new strategies to experiment with. If you don’t take the time to evaluate your own strategies and look to the strategies of others, you could easily fall behind the curve. 

How to Analyze Your Efforts

Fortunately, the steps to a digital marketing audit are fairly straightforward: 

1. Review the efforts of top marketers. You stand to learn the most from marketers who are doing better than you are because clearly, they’ve got something figured out. Take a look at the top 10 companies in various categories, noting how each company rose to prominence, how they communicate with their customers, and what advertising channels they’ve harnessed. Chances are, you’ll see some key themes apparent throughout 2018; take note of these, and determine how your own business adopted, neglected, or passed on these. 

2. Document your top-level strategies. Record some of your top-level strategies, and analyze them. In other words, what were you specifically trying to accomplish this year? Were you trying to build awareness of the brand? Were you trying to improve how customers communicate with you? Were you trying to push a specific product? Take note of whether or not you were able to achieve these goals, and how you attempted to achieve them. 

3. Note key qualities of your best and worst performers. Make a list of all the marketing strategies you adopted over the past year, getting as specific or as broad as you feel comfortable; for example, you might lump “PPC advertising” into a single category, or list every PPC outlet you used as separate instances. Then, sort them from “best” to “worst” in terms of their overall marketing ROI. What did your top-performing channels have in common—was it an underlying message, a specific medium, or a level of investment? And what about your worst-performing channels? 

4. Identify areas of strength and weakness. From there, it should be easy to analyze a few of your business’s strengths and weaknesses. For example, you might find that you’re perfectly capable of reaching your customers, but your brand isn’t as memorable as you expected it to be. Or you might find that your messaging works well, but it never reaches your target demographics. This will help you shape next year’s strategy much more appropriately. 

5. Cut your underperformers. Sometimes, some strategies just aren’t worth saving—especially with so many other options on the table. If one of your tactics is severely underperforming, cut it from your budget in 2019. 

6. Invest more in your top performers. Use the extra money leftover from your cut strategies to put more money into the strategies that seem to be working best. Not all marketing strategies will yield an inherently bigger return simply by investing more into them, but if you’re already seeing a positive ROI, it’s an experiment worth making. 

7. Add some experimental avenues. Speaking of experiments, make it a point to add a few new experimental channels, strategies, or tactics. Learn from your contemporaries and/or try a new technology; you don’t have much to lose, and you could learn a lot from the experience. 

You can dig as deeply or as lightly into these steps as you see fit; obviously, bigger companies with more complex and far-reaching strategies will require more time and manpower to accurately assess themselves. After you’ve done one audit, and made some hard decisions for your business, it will be easier in subsequent years.

The post How to Audit Your Digital Marketing Strategy for 2019 appeared first on SiteProNews.