Creating a Brand-Aware Employee Culture-Six Tips

Brand-awareness among employees is essential for any company that hopes to succeed. Every employee is critical to the success of a company, and everyone needs to be on the same page when it comes to company values and goals. An employee culture that is brand-aware is going to be that much more effective at achieving success. Here are some tips.

brand awareness
Image by smi23le / Flickr

Clearly Communicate Brand Values

In order to foster brand awareness among employees, it’s important to make sure all employees understand exactly what the brand is all about. A brand’s core values must be clearly communicated to all team members. There should be literature that details the character and values of the brand, and this information should be reiterated in all of the company’s communications with employees, such as newsletters, emails, meetings, and training materials.

Reinforce the Brand

The character of a brand should be reinforced at every opportunity that presents itself, because employees will gain greater awareness of the brand through repetition and consistency. Brand symbols should appear in many places, and everything your company does and every policy that employees follow should be in line with branding efforts.

Provide Ongoing Training

Training and education can help employees become more brand-aware, and they will also become better brand advocates. If your brand’s core values include being environmentally-friendly, for example, employees should receive regular education and training on news regarding the environment, recycling policies, energy-saving tactics, and more. The more your employees know, the better, as it will help them relate to your brand more closely.

Encourage Brand Advocacy

Your employees are all brand advocates, and it’s important to encourage them to represent your brand in a positive, accurate way. There should be detailed social media policies and guidelines related to your brand, and employees should be encouraged rather than discouraged to discuss your brand online. When employees are outstanding brand advocates, their commitment should be recognized and praised, because it represents their understanding of your brand.

Hold Fun Employee Events

Fun employee events that relate to branding and the company are great for fostering a tight-knit community of workers who feel a common bond with each other and their employers. For example, parties to celebrate milestones like anniversaries or grand openings are great. Fun events encourage employees to feel a sense of pride for their company.

Examine the Competition

Employees who are brand-aware help give a company a competitive advantage over similar companies. Employees should receive training and education on the key differences that exist between their company and their competitors. An increased understanding of the uniqueness of their company will help boost their loyalty and pride in the brand they represent. A little healthy competition is always good for business, so involve your employees in the race.

A well-defined brand with employees that feel connected to it should be the goal of every company, no matter what its size. Small and large companies can benefit from boosting brand-awareness in the workplace and rewarding employees for their commitment.

Laura Kitner is a brand awareness consultant.

Duplicate Content Analyzed: What about Block Quotes?

Google has been cracking down on duplicate content rules and penalties more and more each year, so it’s important to really understand what does and does not count as duplicate content. You never quite know what Google is going to pull next, so you can never be too careful or ask questions that seem too obvious. In other words, if you’ve ever wondered about quotes and how they pertain to duplicate content, don’t hesitate to ask.

block quote

Matt Cutts Explains Quoting and Duplicate Content

Someone finally did ask Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team, this question, and he had a few different things to say and rules to explain:

    Always link back. First, you must always include a link that will send readers back to where the quote was originally published. If you do this, you’ll likely never have to worry about getting penalized. Cutts explained that they have good ways of detecting if you’re doing this without any issues.
    Keep the quotes short. Although linking back to the original source is great, that won’t be good enough if you’re quoting an entire article from a site. You want to keep your quotes short to avoid changing your sites reputation in the eyes of Google.
    Offer your own thoughts. You don’t want to have a quote, a few words, another quote from somewhere else, another few words, etc. You have to have “attribution and insight” as Cutts would say. You need to have your own opinion that is more than two or three words.

The moral of the story is that appropriate quoting is completely acceptable. Many great sites do this and Google has said it’s extremely legitimate. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the video that Cutts created in response to this exact question:

About the Author: Amanda DiSilvestro is a graduate of Illinois State University. Although she graduated with an English Education degree, she found herself working as a full-time blogger in the SEO/social media department at HigherVisibility SEO, a leading franchise SEO company.

How do courier companies deal with cold weather

Running a courier company is a lucrative business opportunity which is not without its own set of challenges.  Apart from keeping time, working like clockwork and detailed planning one of the major challenges you could be faced with is dealing with the weather.  The blazing heat in summer, rain in the monsoon and the cold in winter, each season presents its own set of challenges.

courier service
Image by flgr / Flickr

How do you deal with the challenges posed by cold weather?  Here is a list to help you and your employees cope with the vagaries of winter…

Keeping Your Vehicles in excellent condition

Your vans, cars and other vehicles help you get around and deliver the goods (literally).  You should regularly check your tyres, oil and water. This will prevent you from getting stuck with a break down in the cold.

Getting a screen wash is an essential when you work outdoors in today’s air and environment. Keep it topped up. Going without ensuring that you have a full tank of gas could be something that you would want to avoid.  A good move also is ensuring that road salt is applied to any surfaces exposed to the elements.

A smooth and trouble free commute will help you deliver the goods on time in any weather!

Stay on Call

Keep cell phone woes at bay.  Keep your cell phone fully charged, and because batteries have a life of their own and die without much warning, it is always a sensible thing to carry a second battery and your battery charger.

Ensuring Your Employees Stay Warm and Safe

A courier company is work force driven and it involves using people at all stages including delivery.  This is why your employees must remain safe and warm.  Here is a checklist you need to hand over to them and tell them to ensure that they use it:

Blankets and warm clothes:  Blanket to keep warm becomes necessary if you happen to over use your auto’s heating system.  Not only do people suffer in the cold but you will also put an enormous strain on your vehicle. Blankets and warm clothes are absolute life savers in such a situation.

In case you are trapped overnight in a snow storm or worse a sleeping bag a useful item. Keeping your body temperature high enough to stop you from freezing is important and the good thing is a sleeping bag doesn’t take much room.

Shovel: Carry a shovel just in case you get trapped in by the snow. For courier jobs that take you delivering goods in the colder zones, when snow falls while you are taking a short break or grabbing a bite you might come out to your van and find it surrounded by deep snow.  A shovel will come in handy.

Food and Supplies: Spare food and drink supplies are always to keep you warm and alert.

Cold weather is often challenging for your on-the-road staffs, but with proper precautions, you can be sure that your business is up and running, even in winter.

Is Your Business Wired Into Success?

With the New Year coming, what on your list have you checked twice to see if this year has found your small business naughty or nice?

If your customer service habits need a little improving around the edges, one of the ways to do this is by offering consumers more options to pay for their products and/or services. Quite specifically, having a wireless credit card machine gives you the opportunity to conduct more business at an efficient and quicker pace than your standard traditional landline option.

For those who may be new to such devices, they have shown to make more customers buy on impulse for starters, something that you as a small business owner can’t complain about.

wireless payment
Image by justin / Flickr

In order to find the right wireless credit card machine for your small business, consider:

How it works

With such a device, you slide the customer’s credit card through the machine, inputting the amount of the sale. The terminal hooks up with a radio tower, transmitting the credit card data and total bill. Once the processor has the details, they are passed along to the financial institution which provided the card. After the card is determined to be valid and the sought after amount for the transaction is deemed available, the amount of purchase is set aside for the business owner. At the time the settlement process is undertaken, the funds are moved from the card provider and deposited into the business owner’s checking account, typically within 48 hours from the original transaction;

Shop around

You wouldn’t buy from an office supply company without checking them out, nor would you purchase office furniture from a company without reviewing them. The same holds true with your wireless credit card machine purchase and network provider selection. Review a handful of companies to see who offers the best product and service at the best price, who is financially stable, and who has a track record that is void of large numbers of customer complaints. Also, take note that a number of merchants selling used terminals may not know the network the terminal works on;

Know the fees and terms of conditions

The last thing you want to do is sign up with a provider who will hit you with various fees, not to mention make it difficult to get out of a contract if need be. Make sure you know up front what fees are for both hardware and service, thereby avoiding shock when your first merchant statement bill arrives. It is also usually wiser to go with a shorter term agreement with the provider to test them out and see if you are happy with both the product and service;

Plan ahead

Finally, make sure you plan ahead when going for a wireless credit card machine and provider. If you do business on the road and/or at trade shows, you don’t want a nasty surprise that your wireless product is not ready to go the day you need it. In the event you operate a seasonal small business, let your provider know that your business has busy and slow periods during the year. Among other things, this helps negate the idea that a sudden amount of activity is the result of a swiped terminal.

If doing more business is one of your prime goals for 2013, adding a wireless credit card machine may be the best gift you can give yourself.

About the Author: Dave Thomas covers small business topics for various websites, including finding the right wireless credit card machine for your company.

Main Trends in Business Communication

Business communication can mean many things, but in this article, it refers to the communication between a business and its customers, whether the business is selling to the general public or business-to-business. There are various passive platforms that a business can use to communicate with their customers, such a TV adverts and leaflets, but this article considers direct contact, such as person-to-person and over the phone etc. Technology is having a large impact on business communication in the same way that it always has. Technology has always been the driving force behind change in business communication.

business communication
Image by Baltic Development Forum

The olden days

Technology was the reason why people stopped communicating via telegram and went onto the telephone. It was the reason why person-to-person communication became more prevalent as people bought vehicles. The trends will always be dictated by technology.

Person-to-person

There is no denying that traditional person-to-person communication has taken a nosedive in the west. Businesses seem to be using passive communication (advertising) more. This is partly due to the fact that there are now more places to advertise than ever. There were four TV channels and now there are four hundred. People no longer need to visit stores when they can order things to their house. This also means that complaints and other forms of communication are going to be done less via person-to-person communication.

Written literacy

For some reason we live in a time when the written word is as popular as ever, and yet so few people are any good at using it. Never has the written word been so popular, to the point where all sophisticated technology revolves around it, and yet literacy is still very low. The trend in the business world seems to have followed suit, where businesses are demonstrating lower literacy standards. Emails and text messages seem to be showing an all time poor written standard. This is probably due to the fact that these electronic messages are very cheap or free. This seemed to have made businesses less careful about what they do. For example, could you imaging a batch of leaflets being printed without being proofread? Yet email communication is rife with poor spelling, poor grammar and txt talk.

Multilingual Communication

This seems to have taken a sharp rise in prevalence. It now appears that businesses are prepared to translate their messages into another language. Ironically, this is not in order to communicate with people from other countries, but to communicate with people in their own country. For example in America a lot of communications are done in Spanish to accommodate the massive influx of Hispanic immigrants that have taken residence there.

Mobile communication

Many people will tell you that mobile communication is higher in prevalence where business communication is concerned. This is not true, because even though a lot of advertising happens online, and is aimed at mobile users, it is not actually a bigger means of communication. For example, if a company were going to call someone’s mobile phone ten years ago, that is still the way they would contact them today. Companies who give results via SMS, still do! Nothing has changed. But because mobile Internet is used more, and mobile apps are used more, people assume that this means businesses are communicating with peoples mobile devices more–but this is not the case.

Social media

This actually is one of the newer trends that has affected business communication. More businesses are using social media to communicate with clients. Some use social media that are aimed at business-to-business traders (LinkedIn) and others are using social media as an FAQ and helpline forum.

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