Apps That Help Control Small Business Finances

In this day and age, more and more people find themselves wanting to be rich; and the more their ambitions grow, the more software companies decide they want in on the action. But not everybody is cut out to be a businessman. To be a successful capitalist venturis, one must have at least some basic understanding of handling money (sadly, not all business owners have these skills). In fact, one of the main reasons businesses fail, is because they are ran by incompetent accountants, or by people who shouldn't be working with money in the first place. As luck would have it, there are a number of nifty little tools that might (not will) help you manage your money better. But whether or not your company actually profits from these is up to you.

Mint

This program has been thrown quite a lot these days. Some even go so far as to claim, that this is simply best financial software available. I don't know about the best, but the software does feature some interesting stuff. Basically you enter all your financial information; bank accounts; spendings; wages etc. When presented with enough information, the program will automatically calculate patterns and show a variety of different charts and diagrams to help you better see where your business is going. If I had to choose only one financial software to help me out, it would be this one. This way you can keep track of all your personal and corporate finances; establish budgets; manage large scale financing etc., conveniently from your home computer or phone. The app is free, although you could still purchase the paid version. More details you can find on their website.

MUST READ; 5 Best Free IPhone Apps

The 5 Best Free IPhone Apps Of 2013

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Buxfer

When time is of the essence, having a quick tool by which to categorize your bank account transactions, can sure make things easier. It is the perfect app for keeping track of your spendings and setting limits on how much money can you or an employee spend during the day. This way you will get notified about everything that goes on with your money; and the program is intuitive and easy to use, making it the perfect addition to any financier's toolbox. Saving money will never be easier using Buxfer. What is left over from the budged is automatically locked and kept nice and safe in your bank account. The user interface makes it easier figuring out which are your biggest expenses and take measures accordingly.

ALSO READ: How Your Internet Service Could Be Hurting Your Business 

inDinero

When small businesses struggle with their accounting, they turn to inDinero. This app is not only easy to use; but it features many different tools and slides to help you manage your money better. All features are conveniently displayed on a easy to follow dashboard. Paying your entire company's salaries can be done with a simple click of the mouse button; and of course all information and input is saved for later viewing in the 'history' section. Again, this program can manage almost all your personal and corporate finances. Just enter the numbers, and let inDinero do the rest. You can also enter products, customers and payment plans, and see which of your goods are selling the most. Collecting payments or saving money, this program features everything you need to be an 'always on top of things” kind of manager.


Author Bio: Rose Finchley enjoys writing about technologies and gadgets. She works as a technician currently at http://www.perfectcleaning.org.uk/house-cleaning-fulham-sw6/ and has acquire lots of experience to share with her readers.

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Top 5 Forthcoming Social Media Trends

Social media marketing is the buzzword at every corner of the world. Despite having a decade of experience with social networks, marketers still find it a tough nut to crack. While other marketers are still transforming how they use social networks to increase their brand reach and drive ROI. It is believed that the majority of the brands now understand the impact of social medic on their business while many others are still dealing with challenges that come with its reality.

As we move ahead it is important to look ahead to where social networking is directing and how it helps us to get on board. Today’s topic of discussion will revolve around the top upcoming trends of social media marketing to help your online marketing strategies grow further in the future.

Investing in social media- not for luxury but for necessity:

Investing time and resources into social media strategy is to some extent a necessity in 2013. However, the scenario from ‘should have’ to ‘must have’ will occur in 2014. Businesses are already making a move to integrate social media effort along with the marketing strategies to see its impact in terms of revenue, lead generation and referral traffic. As soon as business see its immense benefits, it is certain that an increasing number of companies will start hiring social media strategists or full-time social media managers.

Social media marketing has the adequate power to

Improve brand awareness
Enhance customer loyalty and trust
Improve word-of-mouth advertising
Company branding
Improve audience influence and reach.


Social enterprise is expected to emerge as a critical business function with more emphasis on the type outreach.

Google+ will rule in social media:

Earlier this year, it has been found that Google+ had nearly 540 million active users thereby making it number two worldwide after Facebook. Till date no one had doubt whether Google+ is really the second most popular social network. And this will continue in the next year as well. With the recent changes in its search algorithm under code called Google Hummingbird along with the evolution of the functionality of Google Hangout, Google continues to play a crucial role to push the envelope.

READ: 3 Reasons Why Social Media Marketing Is Easy and Accessible


It is gradually proving itself to be an important part of the SEO, social signal and providing more personalised search experiences especially with its Google Authorship. This is projected as one of the key components to Google search ranking algorithm by the end of 2014.

LinkedIn will become a crucial player for B2B business growth:

With its 238 million users LinkedIn is not just sitting on its heels. With its recent influencers program, this social site is not only positioned as another social network site but as one of the largest sources of curation for professionals and content creation. The users are expected to take more advantage of LinkedIn and this will prove more enormous for the B2B marketers.

The rise of micro-video:

Videos will continue to show their upward ascent in the social media marketing toolbox ladder. With the emergence of micro-video apps like Instagram’s video sharing feature and Twitter’s vine videos , video will show further movement towards real-time video sharing in the coming years. With Vine allowing 6 seconds per video and Instagram allowing 3 to 15 seconds, users are more likely to create and share videos from their Androids and tablets. Moreover, it would be quite interesting to see how content will change the playing field when it is a matter of video-based social media.

Social Signals: Maximizing Social Networks

Social Signals: Maximizing Social Networks

Snapchat marketing:

Although the term snapchat and marketing are not found together, this may change in the near future. Snapchat is the current trendy mobile application that sendsout messages (text, videos and photo) called snaps. This auto-destructs after a short period of time between 1 to 10 seconds depending on the set up of the snap. With its recent 50 million active users uploading more than 150 million photos per day this social marketing strategy are providing the brand marketers with the opportunity to ask their customers to share stories and start interacting with them. As we can see snapchat and marketing are the two words you will soon learn to combine in the year 2014.



Author Bio:
Hassem Clark is a social media freak, currently designated as a senior project leader in a digital marketing agency. He loves sharing marketing insights with people from cross-functional teams. While writing for technology blogs he often takes inspirations from Retox Digital online marketing agency.

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How to Use Social Media to Find an Online Marketing Company

Why would you use social media to find an online marketing company? Let’s face it there are other ways you could find good online marketers. However, if you want to run a marketing campaign that utilises the power of social media it seems to make perfectly good sense to use the very media through which you want to attract your customers to find the company that is going to create and manage the campaign for you.

Look at it like this: if you want to find a company that are experts in social media marketing the best place to look is on different social media platforms.If you can’t find that company using social media, it probably means they are not experts in social media marketing. If you have particular platforms that you wish to use, it’s probably a good idea to concentrate on those to find your company. It’s probably a useful exercise to put yourself in the shoes of the web marketing company and ask yourself: ‘How am I going to reach my customers?’ Use your answers to help find the experts you need. Let’s look in more detail at using two of the major social media platforms.

Facebook

The odds are fairly high that you will want to use Facebook to find your online marketing experts.However, you may wish to begin with a fairly straightforward google search. A business with a Facebook page (and this is the type of business you are looking for) will have a link from its website to its Facebook page.

Remember, when your web experts decided to have a Facebook presence there are a number of factors they would have taken into account, which you can take advantage of to assist you in your search. Any company which has a Facebook marketing strategy is going to aim for two things: first to keep in touch with their existing customers, and second, to try to attract new customers. 

ALSO READ The History Of Twitter

As you probably do not have the specific name of a business in mind, you can take advantage of the fact that the experts you are looking for will be keeping in touch with their existing clients. Start off by going to friends in your network who you think might have, in the past, used the services of online marketing agencies. There’s a good chance they may have ‘liked’ the page of a business that is worth looking at.

It’s often the case that businesses that operate in the same industry will connect with each other. There is nothing stopping you subscribing or liking the pages of one business that will help lead you to another.

Your web marketing pros may well be advertising on Facebook. When putting their advertisements together they will have chosen their target market according to factors like age, gender, interests, location and so on. With this in mind, ensure your profile reflects accurately what your business does and your experts may well come to you. Your experts are targeting their ideal customer; make sure that you are the ideal customer you want to be.

Twitter

The idea behind Twitter is a very simple one and it can help you track down the experts you need for your marketing campaign. Companies will tweet about themselves or their activities. Followers may retweet these or post their own tweets about those they follow. The more followers a company gets the more customers it is likely to get. 

READ: Essential Tips on How to Integrate Social Media into Marketing Campaigns

Essential Tips On How To Integrate Social Media Into Marketing Campaigns - See more at: http://www.moniways.com/search/label/Blogging%20and%20Website%20tips#sthash.EMEacvLk.dpuf

Using that simple idea you might just post your own tweet asking if anyone knows a good marketing firm they could recommend. The more followers you have the wider the audience this will reach, including potential marketing experts.

Essential Tips On How To Integrate Social Media Into Marketing Campaigns - See more at: http://www.moniways.com/search/label/Blogging%20and%20Website%20tips#sthash.ZWMMf7lj.dpuf

Essential Tips On How To Integrate Social Media Into Marketing Campaigns - See more at: http://www.moniways.com/search/label/Blogging%20and%20Website%20tips#sthash.ZWMMf7lj.dpuf

Essential Tips On How To Integrate Social Media Into Marketing Campaigns - See more at: http://www.moniways.com/search/label/Blogging%20and%20Website%20tips#sthash.ZWMMf7lj.dpuf

Essential Tips On How To Integrate Social Media Into Marketing Campaigns - See more at: http://www.moniways.com/search/label/Blogging%20and%20Website%20tips#sthash.ZWMMf7lj.dpuf

Essential Tips On How To Integrate Social Media Into Marketing Campaigns - See more at: http://www.moniways.com/search/label/Blogging%20and%20Website%20tips#sthash.ZWMMf7lj.dpuf

Bear in mind as well that a number of Twitter users will be doing something similar; that is they’ll be asking for or making recommendations about different businesses.  Therefore, try using the Advanced Search facility which allows you to narrow down a search to a specific locality. An example is afforded by the aromatherapist who was looking for a web designer in Scottsdale, Arizona. She did a search for web designers in Scottsdale and came across a follower recommending a web designer just ten miles from where her business was based.

Another useful search tool for finding businesses on Twitter is Twellow. Simply type in your search term and a location and you’ll be rewarded with a number of businesses, their Twitter handles and URLs.

It makes sense to use social media to find an online marketing company to design and manage your online marketing campaign.

Author Bio:

The article was written by John, who researched and written this article with the help of  Rank Local experts in local SEO marketing services.

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7 Habits Every Entrepreneur Needs to Inculcate to Be a Successful Leader

Who can be a successful entrepreneur? A great leader, of course!

And how do you distinguish a great leader? For long, a great leader was defined as someone assertive and aggressive, someone driven by results, inclined to command and insistent on hierarchical organizational models.

But it’s high time the ‘alphas’ give over their positions as the top entrepreneurs to the ‘betas’. Now, who are the ‘betas’? Well, they are the ones who believe more on collaboration and communication to create a communitarian organization.

READ HR Analysis For Small Business

What is the reason behind the popularity of the communitarian approach? The culture change brought on by the Internet is really the reason behind this change in perspective. With it, collaboration and communication have reached new heights.

When The 'Big Boys' Invest You Know It's Good Business - See more at: http://www.moniways.com/search/label/Business#sthash.SX0WzAVu.dpuf

When The 'Big Boys' Invest You Know It's Good Business - See more at: http://www.moniways.com/search/label/Business#sthash.SX0WzAVu.dpuf

When The 'Big Boys' Invest You Know It's Good Business - See more at: http://www.moniways.com/search/label/Business#sthash.SX0WzAVu.dpuf

Let’s take a look at the habits that the future entrepreneurs need to inculcate.

Focus On Collaboration 

Gone are the days when inspiring fear and imposing authority got the job done. While it can work for a brief period, it won’t sustain for long. Command and control is a thing of the past. You need to focus on inspiring and influencing instead.

ALSO READ 5 Tips To Diversifying Your Investment

 Today’s world is more about collaboration between every member in an organization. A horizontal setup where each member feels like a part of the whole has a better chance of success than a hierarchical setup where no one is feels connected.

Give Everyone The Opportunity To Make A Difference

Another key to success in the modern world of business is communication. A modern entrepreneur needs to encourage the employees to provide their inputs and contributions to every aspect of business.

Once you boost the employees to come up with their findings and communicate them to others, you will soon perceive that each one of them becomes capable of playing to their strengths. And when this is done, it becomes easier to stay at the top of the competition.

Learn To Manage Egos

As a leader, it is your responsibility to prevent ego clashes. How do you do it? The simplest way to carry out ego management is to reward collaborative behavior of the team.

But keep in mind, total democracy may not work in an organization, especially at times of crisis. At such times, you need to take up the reins instead. But be aware of your biases to make sure your plan works for the present as well as the future.

Build A Community

With a shared culture, everyone in the organization will have the same values, will work with the same passion and will move towards the same goals. This will make it easier to create a successful business.

To do this, you have to empower your employees with the knowledge and skills and encourage them to be the best in whatever they do. You need to be the influencer who motivates, not the authoritarian who dictates.

Be Prepared For Changes

A negative aspect of a hierarchical structure is that it isn’t easy to be flexible. With a horizontal organizational model, you can alter a position or redefine a role as per the frequent changes in market conditions or user requirements.

Again, you need to be confident to make a change. But don’t become insensitive to the consequences. If you have to make a decision that isn’t ideal for an employee, make sure you do it with a sensitive approach.

Give Everyone The Means And Methods To Succeed

A business can only succeed if each element is in its place and everyone gives it their best. And this will be possible only if you give your team members what they need to succeed.

Be it arranging for the best training or providing them with the best technology, it is your responsibility to ensure that your employees get the tools for success. Pay attention to their needs. And soon you will perceive the results.

Focus On Diversity To Create A Unified Whole

Instead of training an army, try to assemble an orchestra. Make sure each of your team members shares the same values, philosophies and principles to create a harmonious whole from the diverse components.

Don’t waste your time looking for the ideal employees. Instead, recruit on the basis of experience and potential. And give the existing employees the tools they need to give the business their best. The better they perform, the more successful your business is.

Today’s leaders are markedly different from their predecessors; and that isn’t bad.

With the continued focus on communities, online and offline, the business environment has changed too. A new age successful entrepreneur is not someone who prompts fear in employees, but one who inspires them to better themselves.

And with the change in attitude, it is no wonder that small businesses under the leadership of the ‘betas’ have more chances of success. Leadership today is all about how well you collaborate, curate and communicate with your team members.

Author Bio
Michael Evans is a blogger and he is associated with the leading UK based supplier of plastic kerb ramps - Speed-Ramps.com. Click here to visit the plastic kerb ramps landing page.

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SEO Ranking Factors You Must Know

Search engine machines' algorithms, and Google algorithm in particular, use several hundreds of ranking factors that determine the assessment of every website. This way they influence on the ranking it gets during a certain search.

The bad news is that even in the Internet and technology era you can't actually find an absolutely exhaustive and detailed list of all the factors that are taken into account when it comes to your website's ranking.

Here we offer you a list with some of the main SEO ranking factors, which are considered most important for your successful SEO ranking strategy. Of course, you should bear in mind the fact that some of these factors are confirmed to be existing, others are pretty controversial and third are quite speculative, actually. In addition, search engine machines are constantly making updates to these factors, which means that some of them drop out and others are added.

MUST READ: Google Auto-complete And What It Means For Your SEO 

· Age of the domain you are using

The age of your website's domain is considered one of the most important SEO ranking factors. The older the domain is, the greater advantage you will have compared to your competitors.


· The presence of your keyword in the domain name of your website

This factor was once one of SEO factors that influenced the website's ranking the most, but it is now quite controversial considering the EMD update and branding. This also applies to the presence of your keyword in a subdomain of your website and to the exact match domains (EMDs).


· Deadline for your domain registration

When your domain is registered for more than a year or a couple of years, most search engine machines and Google in particular consider that as a proof serious enough in order to make your website more authoritative.

ALSO READ: How can bad SEO affect your business?


· The history of your website

You should always have in mind that the “cleaner” history of your website, which means lack of any penalties, is always an advantage.


· The presence of your keyword in the title tag of your website

The title of your website has an extreme importance, because it shows the purpose of the website itself. In addition, a better position of your keyword in the title tag means a better position of your website in search engines.


· The presence of your keyword in the meta description, the H1 tags and the content

Your keyword should be present in the meta description of every web page you upload. This has always been an important element of the SEO ranking factors and is still one of the main ones that play a crucial part of your website's ranking. On the other hand, the H1 tag shows the essence of your web page content to both the search engine machines and your customers, which makes the presence of your keyword there a necessity. When it comes to the presence of your keyword in your website's content, no one can't deny how powerful this factor is. Of course, you should be careful with the keyword density and use compared to the entire body of your content in order to avoid any unwanted effects.


· Content length

The longer the text of a web page is, the more powerful this factor becomes to Google.


· The speed of your website

The speed of your website is an SEO ranking factor that Google is trying to implement for a while. Many website owners don't seem to care about the speed of their website, but you must be aware of the fact that when it comes to certain websites' optimization, speed is an important element of your overall strategy in order to get a better ranking.


· External links

It has been a couple of years from the moment when it was revealed that external links that lead to authoritative websites or blogs on the Internet are one of the most positive SEO ranking factors.


Author Bio: Rose Finchley knows a lot about SEO and its methods. She works as a web designer at http://www.shinylondon.co.uk/house-cleaners-lee-se12/.

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How To Get Quality Backlinks In Three Simple Steps

We like that, don't we? Finding solutions to problems in three, five, seven simple steps is all people today care about. Lose weight following four simple rules. Become smarter by reading five simple things. Get quality backlinks in three simple steps. We're always looking for the shortcuts. That's what got us in this mess in the first place.

Back in the day (and by back in the day I mean many people are still doing it even through Penguin updates) people used to rely heavily on link-building tools for automatic use. Just type in the keywords and the program will make you thousands of links in the blink of an eye. Of course, Google weren't thrilled, which is why they unleashed Penguin to hunt those low-quality links down and judge them on site (pun intended; the way I've written sight was intended, too, you nitpicker) in Judge Dreddesque manner. Many webmasters had face the consequences of their actions (or inactions, depending on how you look at it) as Penguin was capturing and executing their sites wherever the y were, erasing them from search results and, hence, from the face of the earth. Some were lucky – they got just minor penalties, and by that I mean they were sent in the leper colony of 50, or even 100+ pages, where they were never to be seen by human eyes; where they were left to die for the transgressions of their creators.

MUST READ: How to Make Money out of SEO


This brings us to present day. The hunt is still on and if you want a top place in Google's results, you have to work for it. There are (or at least should be) no shortcuts. You will be able to do it in three steps, and it will be simple, but it won't be easy.

RECOMMENDED: 5 Basic Tips to Improve WordPress for SEO


Stop Trying to Game the System 

Forget about link spamming programs and all the “get rich quick scams” that are running through your head. SEO is hard work. If you rely on Black Hat, Google is going to burn you, as they've showed it time and time again. Don't try to make links for the bots, but for the people. Think like a human being and think about what would be relevant to you and in what way a certain link would help you. The first step to success is to change your mindset completely. Stop looking at links as something necessary that will on some way help you improve your rating, and start seeing them as something that will actually help people in some way.


Find Good Websites to Link You

High quality backlinks can't just come from any site. It has to be a relative authority and it has to be relevant to your field in some way, shape or form. SEOProfiler is a perfect tool for the job here. It can help you analyze and find potential sites that would give you backlinks and that are in some way relevant to your field. You can even check what your competitors are using and how they're doing. It's a pretty good tool. You can even search by keywords. This will help you locate potential partners. Now, the last step is the hardest...

ALSO READ: Google Auto-complete And What It Means For Your SEO


Giving Them a Reason to Link to You

Finding potential partners is useless if you can't give them a reason to link to you. The first prerequisite to success is actually having a good, well-thought of and interesting website offering relevant and high-quality content. If you don't have that, no amount of links will help you. If you do, you will get them even if you don't ask for them.

Let's say you have a good website and you've found a potential partner and you want them to link to you. How do you do it? Well, it's simple – you message the webmaster with a proposition. You can offer content in the form of guest posts, show them that your site offers something others don't – anything to get them to reply and link to you. If you make friends in the industry, even better. Once some of them start linking to you, others will, too. But like I said, it's hard work and you need to keep the quality up. Are you up for the challenge?

Author Bio:
Rose Finchley is a tech geek. She works in the web department of http://www.cleantoperfection.co.uk/deep-cleaning-sw16-streatham/ and likes to share her knowledge at topics like SEO.

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