(Executive business coaching) 6 Tips on Using Social Media for Internet Marketing Newbies
No commentsBy Mike McCoy
With the kind of tough competition you’ll have to face as an internet marketing business person, it’s important that you are aware of all the techniques available to improve your business and increase your earnings. If you’re an internet marketing newbie, optimizing social media can help you expand your audience and build your internet home business. Social media can be an effective and inexpensive means to establish yourself as long as you know how to use it.
How social media works
Social media helps you attain greater exposure to your audience, especially those you have already targeted. Like search engines, social media can help you promote your content and gain better visibility in the internet. Furthermore, it’s not a dead end. Promoting your content to your audience using social media lets your audience pass it on to others, particularly to people who belong to their social network.
Using social media in internet marketing
When you’re using the internet for profit, it’s important that you look at tools like social media as a means, not an end. Meaning, these tools will only be as effective as your content is good. Before going ahead and using social media, there are things that should already be in place, including:
-your site (should be usable and easy to navigate)
-content (should be existing on your site and should offer quality)
-your site’s management system (should let you manage content effectively)
Once you have the basics ready, you can begin expanding your reach. Here are ways internet marketing newbies can use social media to their advantage:
Choose the right social media.
Determine the type of industry or topic you want to be involved in and design your internet marketing efforts around it. Once you know the type of topic you want to engage in, it will be a lot easier to use which social media to choose. Whether you use videos, images, audio, articles or collaborative write-ups, it will be a lot easier for you to find the right kind of platform from which to promote your work.
Create relevant content.
Quality is of course, a very important consideration but so is relevance. Your content could be well-researched and well-written but if your visitors don’t find it useful, it will only be ignored.
Create content that’s highly prized by your target audience to encourage them to return to your site, recommend it and link up to it. More importantly, create content that your visitors will find worth distributing to the members of their social network. Keep your content updated.
Content can only be relevant as long as people find it so. Otherwise, it will outlive its usefulness. Do research to find out about changes in your industry or topic. Offer fresh information to keep your visitors interested and encourage them to spread your content.
Use more than one social medium if necessary.
You don’t have to limit yourself to just one social medium; there are several you can use at one time blogging, podcasting, discussion forums, networking, bookmarking, wikis, etc. Determine which type works best for your internet business and which one you do best.
If you’re uncomfortable with a certain social medium but find that it will be beneficial for your brand of internet marketing, hire someone to do it for you. Don’t miss out on a great opportunity just because you haven’t the time or the talent for it.
Direct the traffic to your site.
Yes, you still need traffic. How else will you be able to let them know you exist? Use all the tricks of the trade search engine optimization, quality content, link baiting, etc.
Build your network.
The social media thrives on strong networks. The larger it is and the more quality members it has, the better chances you’ll get. A strong network is extremely beneficial as an internet marketing tool not only because it promotes your internet marketing business to more people, but also because it allows you to gain foothold and influence in a very dynamic market.
Build a quality network. Find out which members produce better contacts or mean more business for you. For an internet marketing newbie, this may sound a little overwhelming but once you’re used to it, you’ll realize how advantageous it can be. Besides, all internet marketers have to start somewhere. Meet people and build friendships through social media. You not only get important information and updates about your business, you also get valuable feedback, which you can use later to improve your site, product and services.
Internet Marketing Co-founder of The World Internet Summit
www.brett.com.au
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Construction Scheduling Software and Project Analysis
By Shawn Simmons
Construction Scheduling Software and Project Profit Analysis Management
Project Profit Analysis Management is a process of reviewing periodically, usually weekly, the changes in each project’s profit margin. Knowing how much and why the profit margins have changed provide management the ability to preview the financial finish line throughout the project. It gives management and the construction scheduling software they are using a “heads up” and allows more time to address problems at earlier construction stages. This process usually results in improved profits.
Common Approach
A common approach to managing projects in construction scheduling software is to set a budget for all the activities required to complete the project and then compare actual costs against budget. Many accounting systems use this approach which is frequently referred to as “Cost Accounting”.
There are major weaknesses using this approach to manage project profitability. They include the time differential between activity in the field and posting of information by accounting, running behind schedule, allowing actual costs to exceed earned value, and not identifying the reasons for missing budgets.
The time differential between field activity recorded in the construction scheduling software and posting of information can adversely affect profits. When an invoice is not posted and related to work completed & billed, project profit margins look better than they really are. Or, if cost accounting reports are reviewed weekly and payroll is bi-monthly, a portion of weekly payroll will not be posted nor reflected on the cost accounting report.
It is important to know in the construction scheduling software if the project is running behind schedule because the project completion date may not be met unless additional resources are utilized. Using additional resources often results in profit erosion as actual costs exceed budget. Alternatively, if the project completion date is allowed to extend, on-going general conditions may eat away at the profit margin.
Allowing actual costs to exceed earned value during the completion of an activity indicates the cost to complete may exceed budget. If this occurs without a change in scope (i.e. change order), the additional cost must be borne by the contractor and the profit margin is reduced accordingly.
Not identifying reasons for missing budgets, such as a bad estimate, non performance by a subcontractor, not billing the owner for a change order, or simply not billing the owner because a subcontractor’s invoice was missing at invoice time makes it more difficult to review the project at its completion and gain knowledge to improve future bids and control projects in your construction scheduling software.
The Project Profit Analysis Approach
To effectively manage profit margins, accounting information needs to be analyzed against actual field activity recorded in construction scheduling software on a timely basis. This can be accomplished by daily synchronization of relevant information between the accounting system and a central server that integrates field reporting, scheduling and project management.
For accounting and the central server to communicate timely, a “common denominator” for both is required. Frequently, the cost code is used as this “common denominator”.
The budget can be imported from accounting to the central server one time at the beginning of a project. Actual costs can be imported from accounting on demand, preferably daily.
Every day field reports should be transmitted electronically to the central server and include sub-contracting crews, work accomplished (% complete or work put in place), materials received, and self perform labor.
Gathering these sources of information into construction scheduling software is required to produce a comprehensive Project Profit Analysis Report. This report can identify by cost code the budget, approved owner change orders, approved subcontractor change orders, contracted (committed) costs, actual costs, earned value, percent complete, cost to complete, over committed, open committed and unbudgeted on-going general conditions.
This report produced weekly can track the reasons why the current profit margin of a project is different from the original budget: change orders, buyouts, cost to complete, over committed, over general conditions, and on-going general conditions due to extended project end dates.
The original profit is equal to the budgeted profit. With the project 95% complete, the change order margin shows a reduction of profits because approved subcontractor change orders exceed approved owner change orders. The profit margin is increased as buyouts were less than budget. Both cost to complete and over committed indicate additional profit erosion. Although General Conditions are currently on target, Excess General Conditions show additional profit erosion because the project will not be completed on schedule. The current expected profit margin, consequently, is about twenty thousand less than originally planned.
As with any approach, Project Profit Analysis Management is only as good as the timeliness and accuracy of the information entered. It is important that field activity and progress be entered every day and accounting remains current in the posting of accounting related activity.
With integrated field, construction scheduling software and project management information interfaced with accounting, management has the basis to make better decisions earlier throughout the life of a project.
Construction scheduling guru Shawn Simmons is with HeadsUp Construction Scheduling Software.
How To Make More Money In Your Home Business
By Ben Needles
We all can earn more money in a work from home business. Being in your own home business is one of the only ways you can set your own income, same as sales jobs. This is fantastic, and does motivate us to make more money in our own home based business. But, how do you make more money in your home business?
Almost all people will tell you the only way to make more money is by working more. So, working twice as much should earn double as much, however this is not the case. This is work men and women mentality, and not one of a smart entrepreneur. In a job working twice as long may provide double the pay, but in business this is not always the case.
We all do it however, and we may find ourselves in times of the year when we try to put in double the time, double the effort, and basically work like mad, to grow our business or complete something. This is good, and essential for success in a work from home business, however, there is better ways to work.
Stop! Work smarter not harder. This is an important point to remember. Working double the time is great, however, there is a better way, and that way is by leverage or efficiency. For example learning to type 10% faster will allow you to in ten days do as much as one day of work, and perhaps take a time out on one of the days, and improve on the next point.
Work smarter not harder. Working smarter will do you much more than simply working with time. For an example of this, think about the typing example. Learning to type faster is much more efficient then investing 10% more time into some task? After all, we only have 24 hours in a day, and only so much we can do in that span of time.
If you consider your home business, and what you do, is there anything that you can get better at? Perhaps investing a portion of your time into improving your own skills? What is the result of this? You get so much more done. You learn new techniques, and can formulate strategies for continued success.
Moving forward and growing a home business can be done in so many ways, and it would be hard to list all of them. However, many businesses have administrative tasks. Software can make such work easy, and the investment of time into that would pay dividends.
At this point you may think that the action part is less of a concern than investing in yourself and that would not be a right way to go. Yes, investing in ourselves allows us to excel at what we do, but it does not mean you will make any progress.
There are far more people who dont act, and instead focus on getting there productivity up, without having any productivity there. These people invest more time than into there TVs then they do in there business. A good structure is the age old one of 10%. Investing 10% into your knowledge of your home business and increasing your skills at what you do will see your bottom line increase, as you also increase in understanding your home business.
About the Author (text)
Network with other other entrepreneurs and increase your home business sales by visiting: http://www.businesstobusinessportal.info
Thursday, November 20th, 2008 at 7:10 pm and is filed under business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
