Author: BizSieve Team

Nightlife Do’s and Don’ts for the Travelling Businessman

Your business trip isn’t a vacation, but that doesn’t mean it has to be all work and no play. What are you going to do when your business meeting is over and your flight isn’t until the morning? Check out the nightlife, of course. But beware – you’re still on company time, so remember these do’s and don’ts.

Business Man Typing on Computer
Photo Credit: charlottepurdy

DO Go Out with the People You Know

You’re on a business trip – whether you’re attending a meeting or a conference, your primary objective is to do business. It doesn’t mean you can’t have any fun, but if you go out on the town alone, you could miss a good opportunity to continue networking or close the deal. It’s always more fun, anyway, to go out with a friend rather than try to make a new one.

DON’T Overdo It

You should enjoy your night, but you shouldn’t go crazy. You’re on a business trip, not personal, and anything you do will reflect on your company or determine your networking success. Don’t drink too much or do any other risky behavior. You might embarrass yourself, and if you get in trouble, your boss will be the one you’ll have to call to bail you out.DO Relax and Have Fun

DO Relax and Have Fun

Staying in your hotel room working is probably the worst thing you can do on your business trip. It’s a trip, after all, so get out there and have a good time. Drink a little, dance a little, and mingle. You’ve been working hard, and you deserve it.

DON’T Hook Up

It’s an unfortunate fact that sometimes businessmen cheat on their wives while they’re away. Meeting a random person in a far-away city means little likelihood of word getting back home, so it seems like a good chance. But don’t do it – you never know who that random person you meet out really is or what the ramifications could be (no pun intended).

DO Check Out the Local Scene

One of the benefits of going on business trips is that you get to visit a lot of new cities and towns across the country (or even the world, you lucky son of a gun). Don’t waste an opportunity to check out the local scene and attractions. Have dinner at the best restaurant in town; visit the hottest nightclub; find a swanky little lounge with a jazz band playing. Whatever you do, get a taste of the atmosphere – the nightlife is always unique wherever you go.

DON’T Run Up Your Company Tab

Another perk of business trips – they’re all paid for by your company. You can probably use the company credit card to take your colleagues out to dinner, for example, and you can probably get away with using it for a few drinks while you’re out on the town. But don’t spend too much – now isn’t the time to buy ten bottles of Dom in the VIP section. You may be having fun then, but when you get home, your boss will probably dispute your need for quite so much champagne.

About the Author: Jared Grant is a writer and travel agent who works with luxury Bahamas resorts. He loves to write about travel and all the various things to do while on business trips.

How to Handle Failure In Small Business

When a person starts their own small business, their biggest fear is usually that of failure. The fear of business failure isn’t totally unfounded, after all, there are a great many small businesses which fold within their first few years of starting up. By learning about the mistakes that most small businesses make, you can learn exactly how to avoid or deal with these issues before you find yourself faced with a failed business plan.

small business failure

Image by Dagny Mol / Flickr

Your Plan

Before you even start, you need to make a list of goals you’d like to achieve, as well as plans on how you’re going to achieve them. Short term goals are just as important as long term ones because it’s the short term goals that are going to get your where you need to go. If something doesn’t go according to your plans, or one of your goals starts looking like it may have to be chalked up as a failure, don’t freak out. Part of being successful is the ability to work with what you’ve got on the fly.

Money Matters

When it comes to money, it’s obviously an area that requires a lot of attention, care and planning. If money isn’t your strong suit, your first move should be to find an accountant who can help you with this aspect of owning a business. It’s important that you consider money as your first priority in business, as you’re not going to get far with a product that has limited demand or by setting your selling points too low. If you’re finding that you’re simply unable to turn a profit, you either have to change your supplies in order to lower expenses to your company or diversify and find something that will turn a profit. Small businesses often have a hard time securing loans because of their non-existent credit, which is exactly why business credit cards are becoming a popular choice for smaller businesses to establish their credit.

Assume Your Role As The Boss

Let’s face it, the guy in charge is very rarely liked by everyone. If you’re a people pleaser, you may want to reconsider your position as the head honcho. You’re going to come up against clients and employees, at least once in a while, and you’re going to have to be able to work through your differences with a clear head. In any industry, you’ll find it takes all kinds to make a business run, so be ready to handle all kinds of different personalities. Stick to your guns when you need to, bend when you can.

About the Author: This guest post is from Allison with BusinessCreditCards.com.

How to boost eCommerce sales with an editorial calendar

If you have an ecommerce website then you know that most of your traffic is going to come from two sources: paid search and SEO. The first option will obviously cost money, but the second option is more about putting in the work and optimizing your on-site content. One of the best ways to focus on SEO is to implement an editorial calendar for your blog. Learn how to get started below.

Set up the calendar

Your editorial calendar should be based on a few different areas. First off, the regular calendar is a good starting point. Look at holidays and other important dates for content ideas. Then, move on to specific times that are important for your business. If you sell seasonal items it’s obviously going to be important for you to make a big content push in the times when your customers are buying. Likewise, you need to figure out strategies for addressing the times when your sales could slow down. The goal of the calendar is to create content that will pull in customers throughout the year.

Optimize your keywords

The next step is to figure out the right keywords to use in your content. Use Google’s tool to find the best terms that have a high volume of searches. Depending on your niche, some keywords might be very competitive. You want to choose keywords that you have a chance at ranking for, so don’t focus on search volume alone. Consider how stiff the competition is and choose some of the lower volume keywords if necessary. If you do keyword research far in advance you might want to check back in before you publish to make sure everything is still relevant. A lot can change in a few months, and you don’t want to lose out on traffic because you forgot to check your work. The goal of keyword optimization is to find the keywords people are searching and picking out the ones you can rank for.

Get writing

The next step is fairly simple: Get writing! Once you’ve created the calendar and found relevant keywords the content creation is all that’s left. Don’t forget to make the content appealing so it isn’t just a wall of text. Once you’ve published some content you can see what does and doesn’t work and change your tactics accordingly. As you publish good content and it catches on in your niche, you’ll be surprised at how quickly you can start pulling in free traffic. You might even get good enough where people are asking you to post on their blogs, which means even more exposure!

These tips will help increase your ecommerce traffic by optimizing your blogging efforts.

About the Author: Carolyn is a guest author and expert on order management software that tracks Shopify inventory.

Want to start a business? First figure out what it should be

So you want to start a company? That is great! But what kind of company you would like to form? Don’t be clueless and for God’s sake do not take any decision in haste because your future financial condition will be dependent on this decision in myriads of ways. Now I am not asking here what kind of service you are supposed to offer (because you know that better than anybody else) but what legal form your company is supposed to take. This is the single most important decision that will who are eligible to invest in your company, how you are supposed to pay the taxes or how your financial condition is going to get affected by it.

business incorporation

Image by RiseAndGrind.com

Below are the three important things that you need to take care of before zero in on a decision:

Ownership: Depending on the business types, there are certain limitations on the number of people who can invest in a company. So, if you have a large plan and want to rope in foreign investment in the form of shareholders, corporate structure is the way to go. Therefore, my humble suggestion is please take this seriously and sit down with an accountant and an attorney to figure out which legal business form best suits your purpose.

Tax: The infamous three letter words that everyone hates. Honestly speaking, no one likes paying taxes and I hope you share the same feeling. So that means, you should abhor the idea of paying taxes twice. But it can happen to you if you do not take it seriously. May sound insane, but you may find yourself paying taxes once on income for business and then again for the profit distributed to you. So, figure out a solution before it is too late.

Liability: Corporation has an individual identity and that being that if the company is sued, individual shareholders will be not hold responsible. The assets of the company can be seized or freezed but the personal assets of the shareholders will not be seized. However, there are certain exceptions but rest assured, liability of personal share holder is largely limited.

So, now you are fully aware of the legal intricacies of forming a company. Let’s move on to the next big chapter that is selecting a legal business framework:

Sole Proprietorship: This is the best business model for individual who does not like the idea of being tied to a legal framework. It is super easy to form. No additional paper work needed and the best part, there is no such need to file corporate income taxes. However, on the flipside, you will not have any liability protection. This is something that you need to be careful about. If your business is sued, your personal assets can be seized and in some worse cases assets of your spouse can also be seized.

Partnership: In this business model, ownership of the company is shared with two or more people. There is no such legal intricacy involved in the process but it is advisable to draw up a partnership agreement. And to your relief, there is no such thing as double taxation. On the downside, each partner will have unlimited personal liability.

LLC (Limited Liability Company): This is the most popular legal business framework which is increasingly being adopted by business owners because of its unique flexibilities and other benefits. This business model provides personal liability of the business owners. Another unique feature of LLC is that it lets you share profits unequally and thereby rewarding those owners who are working hard to make the business a hit. However, it has its share of disadvantages too. Laws of LLC vary wide depending on the state and countries you are living. And there are certain restrictions on the number of investors one can have in a business and sometimes, foreign investment is allowed.

“S” Corporation: This is a kind of business model that provides personal liability but at the same time, it also provides pass through taxation. Since the laws of S Corporations are less complicated, it is a popular choice among lawyers and accountants. As far as its disadvantages are concerned, it does not let you distribute profit unevenly and you need to pay for the state corporate fees.

“C” Corporation: This business model proves the highest level of personal liability protection to investors and there is no such restrictions on the number of people who can invest in it. But double taxation is here and there is no way you can avoid this.

Author Bio: Michael Evans is a passionate blogger and he has written different articles on Cyprus Taxation.

How to Design Banners and Signage for Your Corporate Event

If you are hosting or attending an event then this is a great opportunity to promote your business and to increase your brand awareness in a big way. However in order to do this you need to attract people’s attention – you need them to be interested and you need them to come over to look into what you are doing or listen to your presentation.

For this reason then you will want to involve some banners and other signage and the way you design this can make a big difference to whether or not you benefit from the event. Here we will look at how to go about designing your banners so that they are effective.

Types of Banners

When you design your signage you will need a couple of different items. For one you might want some regular hanging banners, probably made from vinyl for the best durability, that you can hang over your entrance or your tradeshow display in order to draw the eye from a distance. It’s important you get this right so that people can find you and so that people know where you are. It also serves as a great way to strengthen your brand – think of it like the title on a website or a magazine.

Next you will probably also want some pop up banner stands. These banners are free standing meaning they go at ground level and the ‘pop up’ or ‘roll up’ bit refers to the fact that you can compact them down to transport them nice and easily. Finally you might also want a backdrop which you can use if you give a presentation or if you have a tradeshow display and this can provide a suitable background for the rest of what you do.

company banners

Image by Nigel Lamb / Flickr

The Design

Now you need to think the design you are going to order. Of course this is going to be printed out very largely, so you want to make sure that you have an image that is very large and very high definition that will spread out across it well.

For the vinyl banner you will probably only need to have the name of your company, though it might be wise to also use a sub heading for those who don’t know what your company does. If you have a descriptive slogan then this is ideal. Make sure that the colors you choose are high in contrast so that the writing stands out well against the background. If you are hosting the event then you can hang this anywhere and it will help to strengthen your branding.

For the free standing banner stands however you will be using a different approach. People will pass these at eye level meaning that you don’t need to draw them in from a distance, but that you do need to get them to turn their heads. A great way to get their attention is to put a person in your image and due to the nature you can make this person to scale. If they are attractive and smiling then the person will normally look.

Meanwhile you want to use this banner stand to provide some more information and maybe even to provide leaflets. The idea is that people who don’t want to talk to you about what you do can get most of the basic information quickly. At the same time though you don’t want to write paragraphs’ worth of detailed information – instead you should include just a few bullet points so that someone can quickly cast their eyes over it and know everything they need to.

About the Author: This guest post is written by event management blogger Jim Carrey. He has authored numerous guest posts on organizing events and press conferences. He recommends The Oxford Hotel as the perfect venue for your business events.