Career coaching is a big deal in today’s world.
As companies keep trying to build a workforce that adapts to the dynamic nature of the global workforce, employees also seek fulfilled careers.
But the path to personal fulfillment and advancement could be fraught with uncertainties.
These uncertainties can only be alleviated through career advisory.
When it comes to maintaining upholstered office furniture such as chairs and couches, many business owners will assume all that means is doing some basic chair and couch cleaning to prolong their life.
Important as that is, there is much more that can be done to prolong the life of office furniture, and the best of it is, none of it is especially difficult or expensive.
So, if you want your office chairs and couches to last as long as possible, read on to discover our ten tips to achieve this.
Starting a new business isn’t a walk in the park. You may be confused about how to start and what to put in place. So, if you are pondering on starting a commercial cleaning business, you are in the right place.
Commercial cleaners are currently in high demand. If you know your onions as a professional cleaner, you can run a booming business that will be the envy of the industry. What do you need to know before you start your business?
Keep reading for better knowledge on how to start a cleaning business in 2024.
Before you take any further action, we need you to think this through. The cleaning business is quite attractive, considering it has been in high demand since 2020. The industry is expected to grow immensely in the next few years, so it’s pretty much guaranteed to earn you a decent income.
But is it right for you? Not everyone can run a successful commercial cleaners business. Here are some skills that might make this a perfect fit for you:
Nothing should go unnoticed—even if the client misses the detail, you should be thorough enough not to miss it. This means you need to always be on point.
If you do any kind of research towards finding a web hosting service for your website, one of the first things you will realise is that there are dozens of web hosting companies. Whilst having a choice is better than having none at all, it is not without its problems. The major problem is paring down the multiple options and choosing a single web hosting service that is going to be reliable.
Some might ask what difference it makes when choosing a web hosting company and our answer to that would be that it makes a huge defence. Unreliable web hosting not only compromises your website’s performance, but it can also seriously damage your ranking on Google too. In case you need more convincing here are 10 benefits of choosing a tried and trusted web host, rather than one at random.
Multiple Hosting Plan Options: The better a web host is the more likely it is that they will offer a range of hosting plans and options rather than just one or two. This means you will have access to advanced hosting plans that include cloud hosting or a dedicated server, for example.
Faster Website Load Times: Fast load times are essential for enhancing the experience of those who visit your website, and it is also a factor in them not clicking away immediately. Load time also impacts rankings on Google as they penalise websites that load slowly.
Less Downtime: There is little point in having an awesome website if someone tries to visit it and gets an error message because the site is down. Reliable web hosts have the absolute minimum of downtime with uptime percentages around 99.99%.
Unlimited Bandwidth: With unlimited bandwidth, you will have no concerns about your website going offline should you have a spike in traffic which often happens when a business runs a promotion, or its Google rankings increase significantly.
If you are a business owner considering an office relocation, you might think that you have a head start because you have also moved house recently. Your thought process could be that because you planned your house move successfully, that moving your business is going to be every bit as straightforward.
The fact is it could be, and if you did all the right things relating to your house move, such as planning everything thoroughly, hiring professional removalists, using proper packaging materials, and so on, your office move should go well. However, you also need to appreciate that there are significant differences between moving your family’s belongings to a new home and moving your business to a new location. Here are some examples.
The Amount Of Additional Planning Required Is Significant
Whilst not meaning to downplay the importance of planning a house move properly, it stands to reason that the amount of planning required for a business to move is going to be higher. It also needs to start much sooner, often 6 months in advance, and the logistics of uprooting an entire business and moving it to new premises means several people will be involved in those plans.
You Will Need Removalists Who Are Specialists In Office Moves
Some removalists specialise in house moves, and they are essential to a successful residential move. However, when it comes to moving a business from one location to another, and the complexities that come with that, it is essential that the removalists you hire for a business relocation are experts. They will have experience in lifting heavy items, computer equipment and office furniture, plus know exactly what packing materials to use.
One of the less pleasant issues that your family lawyers business may encounter is a client who has not paid their due fees and is showing little sign that they are willing to do so. There can be many reasons why this might occur, with one of the most common being a client not being happy with the outcome of their case and blaming their family lawyer for that.
What then transpires is that the client quite wrongly thinks that because the outcome was not to their liking they should not pay their family lawyers. Unless the case was taken up by the family lawyers on a ‘no win no fee’ basis then despite the client being unhappy, you and I know that the fees are payable.
Should you ever be in a situation where a client refuses to pay what is owed to you, then it might be worth you seeking the advice of someone else in the legal profession, and that is a commercial lawyer. This has two main benefits with the first being that a commercial lawyer is going to know more and have more experience of dealing with non-payments and legal processes for them than yourself.
For those dentists who own the dental practice you work in, one of the main decisions that you would have to make at some point was which premises you were going to set up that business in. In the time since, your business may have changed in several ways, and that can then lead to another question as to whether your current premises are congruent with where your business is at.
We appreciate that moving premises is a significant step, and will undoubtedly cause some level of upheaval. However, for all the short-term downsides of moving, multiple positives can be realised, some quickly, and some in time. Below we have outlined five positive reasons for moving your dental practice to new premises.
It Can Reduce Outgoings And Thus Increase Profits
It is not the case that to increase profits you must always increase revenue. Profits can also be increased by reducing costs, and often one of the ways to do so is moving to a new location. Dentists can find themselves in premises where the rent and ancillary costs are extremely higher and continue to increase. If a landlord is not willing to reduce rent then it can often be the most sensible step to move to other premises where rent and cost are much lower.
There is an often-used question, “What’s in a name?” and if you were to ask commercial lawyers, they would tell you that when it comes to business, there is a lot in a business name. If you consider the most iconic brands in the world, it is their name that people are attracted to long before they think about the product.
At a lower level, and for businesses within Australia, knowing how you choose your name and the legalities that follow are essential. The last thing you want is to pick a name and then start trading, including having all your promotional material paid for and a sign company installing your logo out the front, only to receive notice that you are using the registered name of another business.
Business Name Criteria
You can avoid all the angst that would result by following the simple steps to have a business name you can call your own. For a start, registering a business name is not always necessary, as if specific criteria exist; it is not required. Those criteria are:
An office relocation is a huge event for everyone concerned including the business owner, management, all the other employees, and we dare even say your office removalist will be keen to ensure they do their jobs correctly too. Office relocation also comes with a fair amount of stress and the potential for that stress to be magnified increases should the relocation end up being a shambles. However, it need not be that way.
Whilst not be an everyday occurrence and thus something that most business owners have little experience of, there are ways an office relocation can be made easier. It will take some effort but there is no reason that your office relocation cannot be a success, especially if you follow the 5 steps we have outlined below.
#1 – Commit From The Start That You Will Only Use Established, Professional Office Removalists
From the moment you have decided what new premises you are moving to, it is essential that you pledge to yourself that you will not entrust your office relocation to amateurs. Instead, you should start looking for office removalists who have a proven track record. Their advice, their experience, and their ability to make your office relocation as smooth an operation as possible will make the difference between you having a stress-free move and one that ages you 20 years.
Within the realms of employee welfare, many employers use terms like ‘drug detox’ and ‘drug rehab’, and often use them interchangeably to refer to, what they believe is, the same thing. The key point we will make within this article is that detox and rehab within the sphere of drug use and recovery from drug addiction are two entirely different processes and that employers and business owners need to know the differences between them.
Drug Detox Explained
Detox, which is short for detoxification, is the process by which someone seeks to rid their body of all traces of any drugs and their inherent toxins from the body. Detox is usually seen as the first step towards recovery from drug use and addiction, and the basis for starting that road to recovery.
In the most severe cases, where the person is heavily addicted to specific drugs, such as ice addiction, they may require prescribed medication to help minimize the inevitable symptoms of withdrawal as they detox. In the less serious cases, an individual might only require information on what steps to take during detox, and support from drug counsellors or therapy groups.
If you are a business owner it is certain that contracts play a big role in many areas of your business, Some will be simple, and others more complex requiring input and advice from your business lawyers. As for what the contracts relate to, this can vary significantly and impact just about every aspect of the operation of your business..
There are contracts for purchasing supplies, materials, and stock, contracts to supply clients, contracts relating to your premises, and contracts that may be for the purchase or the hiring of machinery and equipment. Beyond these, there is a type of contract which is one of the most important that any business owner will have within their company and that is the employment contract of each of their employees.
An employment contract has two core reasons to exist and that is the protection of the employee and the protection of the employer. It is often thought that an employment contract’s sole purpose is to protect a worker’s rights and to ensure that they were not having to work under unacceptable, and even unlawful working terms. While it does fulfils that purpose, it is just as crucial in the protection of the employer too.
Assuming you are following the established and sensible advice that you should not design and build your website yourself, you should now be considering which skills, talents and services a web design company like Web Design Perth should be able to offer you.
Before you choose any of them here are some of the core factors you should take into consideration.
#1 Programming and Functionality
No matter how stunning the graphics might be across your site, they are worthless if the website doesn’t function properly. Nothing will have visitors to your site leaving quicker than pages, links and other functions that do not work. It is not only frustrating for visitors but the impression it gives them of you and your business is entirely negative. Ensure any web designer you are considering can show you evidence that their programming skills are at a sufficient level for the needs of your website’s operation.
#2 Copywriting
If your web design company has copywriters that can work on the copy within your site it can be a huge bonus. So many businesses lose out because they fail to see the benefits of well-written copy on all their site’s pages. Good copy will keep visitors on your site for longer, and will certainly be more effective in getting them to take action such as subscribing to your email list or making a purchase.
Being able to carry out SEO research is vital if you are trying to rank your own website higher, or are an SEO expert working on behalf of clients according to SEO experts. Having as much relevant information as possible will allow you to make more accurate assessments of the actions you need to take, especially in relation to keywords, authority backlinks and the competition. Here are five of the most popular SEO tools in use today.
#1 SEMrush: SEMrush is one of the most popular tools in the search engine optimisation arena, and most SEO experts have it as part of their research toolbox. It provides in-depth information and data on several parameters which include keywords research, organic rankings, video advertising, backlinks and paid advertising such as PPC and PPV.
SEMrush’s research results can be presented in many ways, including data tables, reports and graphs which are particularly useful when you need to present your findings to colleagues or clients.
The modern world of marketing revolves around digital marketing and its many advertising opportunities. Although things like social media marketing and pay per click advertising work extremely well and can drive visitors directly to your website, content marketing is also something that you should seriously consider using.
What is content marketing?
Basically, content marketing involves creation and distribution of high quality content on the internet. The idea is to create valuable content which people will read and share on social media. This helps your name get out there, and is especially valuable if you own a website or online store which is based on a high traffic volume.
It is important to note that content used for content marketing must be things which people want to look at or read. This differs from most advertising methods in that people are engaging with your content voluntarily, rather than having ads forced on them. Think about what you are including in your content, how you are creating it, and how you are going to disperse it.
If you own or manage a WordPress website then security should be one of your main priorities. It’s extremely important to make sure that your site remains secure. Otherwise, you could become a target for hackers, losing important data and information.
Unfortunately, a lot of WordPress beginners ignore website security, instead choosing to focus on their content and on building a community. This is a bad idea, and creating a strong WordPress security presence doesn’t actually have to be that hard.
To help you get started, I’ve put together a short list of my top five WordPress security tips, including:
Unfortunately, one of the worst things that can happen is for your admin password to be hacked, giving the hackers complete access to your website and its files. Changing your password regularly will reduce the risk of this happening, and I’d recommend using random alphanumeric passwords that are impossible to guess.
Another great way to secure your WordPress website is to use a high-quality security plugin. The WordPress plugin library contains hundreds of choices, and I’d recommend using one with a lot of reviews and a good reputation.
The best WordPress security plugins come with things like malware detection and removal, daily file backups, brute force protection, and firewalls. Carefully consider your site’s needs and make sure that you choose a plugin that’s going to work for you.
If you know anything about web development and website creation you will know that WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system. Currently, over 33% of the world’s websites are built on WordPress, and this number is only increasing.
But, like me, you might have wondered exactly what it is that makes WordPress so special. Is it really the best content management system available, or does it just have a good name?
Well, I’ve done my research, exploring this question to bring you the top reasons why WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system. These include:
It’s Open Source
The fact that WordPress is fully open source and free to use is a huge plus in the eyes of many web developers. Being open source means that users have complete access to their site’s code files, which in turn provides complete design flexibility and great customizability.
It’s Beginner-Friendly
As far as content management systems go, WordPress is actually quite beginner-friendly, accomodating for a good team building activity for you and your website partner. It’s designed so that people can build websites with little to no coding experience, which means that you can effectively build a site without any special skills whatsoever.
In saying this, WordPress is harder to use than website builders like Wix or Weebly, but the flexibility and versatility that it provides make it a great choice.
Over the past few years artificial intelligence technology has been improving rapidly. Now, it has got to a point where AI can be used by the average person for everyday tasks. As scary as this is, it’s important to take advantage of the great opportunities presented by AI, otherwise you might find yourself falling behind your competitors.
With this in mind, I decided to have a close look at a few ways you can use AI to improve your WordPress website. I considered things like design, the user experience, and streamlining business processes, and came up with the following:
Consider Integrating Chatbots
One of the biggest things to come out of the recent AI boom is chatbots. Although they haven’t quite reached a point where they can replace humans completely, modern chatbots offer an effective way to communicate with website visitors.
There are a few reasons why you might decide to include a chatbot as part of your WordPress website. On the one hand, they can effectively eliminate the need for human support staff. However, they aren’t advanced enough yet to recognise human emotions and their features tend to be somewhat limited.
Use AI Search Assistants
If you’re thinking about building a large website that people are likely to search for things on, then you should seriously consider using an AI search assistant. Recently, AI powered voice search has begun to increase in popularity, growing to become a serious competitor for traditional text-based searches.
I’d recommend getting ahead of the pack and integrating voice-search technology with your website now. AI voice search will almost certainly become a key web development feature in the future, so you may as well start getting used to it sooner rather than later.
If you want to build a strong online presence then the first thing you need to do is build yourself a website. Unfortunately, web design and web development can be difficult if you have no skills to speak of, which means that it can be hard to decide on the best way to build your website.
With this in mind I’ve explored some of the best website building platforms available, with a focus on complete beginners and those with little to no website building experience.
Some of the best ways to build a website include:
Using A Website Builder
In recent years website builders have become increasingly popular. Platforms like Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace have improved their services and come to offer some of the most beginner friendly website building solutions available.
Basically, a website builder is an all-included platform which allows you to create a fully hosted website. The builder itself usually takes care of all the technical details, allowing you to focus on your site’s design and content.
However, it’s worth noting that website builders can be a little on the expensive side. Even the most basic builder subscription usually costs at least $10 per month, which can be too much for those who just want to build a blog or simple business site.
People across the world dabble in blog and website writing every single day. At a first glance, it seems like a great way to make money from home – or indeed, from anywhere else in the world! However, it isn’t as easy as everyone would have you believe. Monetizing your WordPress blog actually requires a lot of time and effort, and it certainly isn’t for everyone.
If you do want to earn a bit of money from your blog, then you need to make sure that you have a fairly decent amount of website traffic. The people who visit your website – your readers, followers, and viewers – are the people who will help you earn money from your content.
There are a number of ways to monetize WordPress blogs and websites, and the best ones for you will depend on your website and the types of content you have. Some of the more popular monetization methods include:
PPC (Pay Per Click) Advertisements
This is probably the most common website monetization method among part-time and casual bloggers. It is relatively simple, and doesn’t take a long time to set up or a lot of maintenance. PPC advertising is simple – you place advertisements on your website, and you get paid a small amount every time someone clicks on one of the ads. Payments vary according to the advertising broker you use, but generally aren’t huge.
When it comes to small business accounting, record keeping is everything. Accountants Australia advise that keeping decent records can help minimise your taxable income, can save you a lot of time, and can make things a lot easier when it comes time to file your tax return.
If you are struggling with record keeping, you’re not alone – most small business owners have some sort of trouble keeping the right records, and this often comes back to bite them at tax time. If you don’t really understand what your obligations are when it comes to record keeping, you should think about speaking to an experienced accountant.
What sort of records do I need to keep?
When it comes to record keeping, there are a few things that it is absolutely essential to keep track of throughout the year so you don’t run into trouble at tax time. Some of the most important include:
Any web developer will tell you that no WordPress website is complete without a full suite of different plugins. WordPress plugins are basically tools which help you monitor your website, perform menial tasks, and which can provide helpful insight into your content and visitor trends.
With that in mind, we have compiled a list of the top five WordPress plugins:
Modern search algorithms are becoming more and more complex. With increasing competition every day, it is becoming harder and harder for websites to get themselves into the top search engine results. Yoast SEO (Search engine optimisation) is a great WordPress tool which can provide SEO insights and suggestions with regards to your sites content. It can help you craft content which will perform well in search engine ratings. Any website on the first page of Google for a popular keyword is bound to do well – use Yoast to help yourself get there!
If you are building some sort of website which aims for community involvement, then you may want to consider using a plugin like Slack. Slack allows you to communicate with people from around the world, and can be integrated directly into your website. It is extremely convenient, and can be used in conjunction with a suite of other tools.
Email marketing is a powerful and effective way to communicate with your subscribers and promote your products. There are many marketers who simply add subscribers to their lists week in week out and send out generic emails to each and every one of them. The problem with this is that sending the same message or promotion to everyone means that it will not resonate with many of them and so the email is effectively wasted.
The solution to this is to segment your subscriber list into sub-lists so that you can tailor specific messages to each group for maximum effectiveness. There are several ways you can segment your list, but here are 5 which tend to get the best results.
#1 Buyers of Specific Product Lines
Some marketers segment merely between buyers and prospects and whilst it is step in the right direction you should go even further. If you have several product lines, you should segment buyers by which ones they purchased so that you promote other products to them instead of the ones they have already bought.
#2 Open Rates
Your email autoresponder service should have the capacity to give you data which will include the frequency with which each subscriber opens your emails. Knowing this will allow you to send differently crafted emails to the segments which do open regularly compared to those that don’t. The objective is to improve your open rates amongst the latter group.
Talk to any seasoned exponent of email marketing about the best way to make it effective and they’ll tell you that you need to create a relationship with your subscribers. The question is, how can you do that?
If you are just starting an online business, unless you have an extremely large amount of financial backing or investment, it is likely you are starting the business yourself or possibly with a partner. This is a perfect opportunity for you to connect with your subscribers right away.
This can be done in several ways but one of the most effective is to add a personal touch to your emails instead of making them all business talk from start to finish. In other words, let your email subscriber know that there is a real person behind these emails.
If you feel comfortable doing so, you might want to add in a little bit of your personal life, by mentioning you partner, kids, family, friends or even your pets. Don’t go overboard with this but remember your subscribers are like the rest us, and so they love hearing other people’s news, especially if it’s interesting.
A great way to use your personal life is to take some of the things that have or are happening and relate them in some way to the advice you are giving your subscribers. If your emails give advice to other businesses, you might want to talk about great customer service your family received whilst eating out. Or if you are in the personal development field, you could relate a story about how a friend transformed their life using the art of goal setting.
If you have a new or existing business and have not yet started to formulate your social media marketing strategy, then the first question you must answer is ‘Why not?’.
It may be that you have not yet realised all the ways that social media can help expand your business and therefore do not see the need to use it. This leaves you at a huge disadvantage, especially when it is more than likely that competitors in your niche are using social media to gain customers that might otherwise have been yours.
To give you an insight into benefits of social media and working with a digital business consultant, here are two of the ways it can help you build and expand your business.
The first benefit is that it is very cost effective in comparison to traditional marketing methods. For many businesses advertising is one of their highest costs, so it is understandable that there may be some reluctance to start paying for social media marketing. The crucial point here is that initially, social media marketing need not cost you much at all. Creating your profiles, and building your following can be done with a very small budget and the return on this small investment can be huge.
Ask any person to describe branding to you, and they’ll most likely talk about logos, graphics, colours and web design, and they are not wrong. But according to branding & marketing expert Peter Brittain, what they, and more importantly what many business people overlook is that branding can be about more than just what people can see.
What you must realise is whilst visual branding such as logos is important for a company or business it is also possible to use audio as well to build brand awareness.
Just think of the number of companies who you can instantly recognise, simply by hearing a short piece of music, a voice, a tone or some other sound. A couple of prime examples are the four notes that you hear at the end of an Intel ad, and how about ‘I’m loving it’, being sung after McDonald’s have told you about their latest meal deal.
If you go to the movies you are bound to know that when you hear the snare drums and trumpets start playing it’s going to be a 20th Century Fox movie on the screen, and another movie company proves you don’t even need music to have an instantly recognisable audio. We are of course, referring to Leo the lion roaring twice, before the intro of every MGM movie.
