6 Reasons Blogging Is A Good Home Business Idea (quickbooks accounting)
No commentsBy David Ogden
If you can talk you can create your own home business blog. Blogging is a very powerful way to get your message out on the Internet today. In this article we will look at six reasons blogging is a good home business idea for anyone to start today.
1. First of all blogging is much easier to do than building a website. It also cost less to set up. There are many free blog platforms you can do, and if you choose to you can host your own. You can do that very inexpensively as well.
2. Getting a blog post on the Internet is much easier than building a web page. All you do is type your words and click submit and the blogging platform builds the page for you. It does not get much simpler than that.
3. Another thing about blogging is that you don’t need a lot of technical knowledge to do it. Even if you hire a blog builder initially you can make updates to your site on a regular basis from there. In many instances uploading graphics is extremely simple as well.
4. Having a blog is much easier to promote on the Internet too. When you combine social bookmarking with writing blog articles, you have an excellent combination to create search engine traffic as well as traffic from social directories. Once you master this technique you can quickly began getting quality traffic to your site.
5. When you start your own business it’s a great idea to start with a blog because many of your competitors may already have one. You’ll see that they are in already interacting with their visitors.
They do this by posting comments and replying to them, adding video to their blog articles, allowing your visitors to vote in polls as these sorts of things. Blogging is very interactive with your prospects.
6. Today many businesses choose to use their blog to keep their customers up to date about what is going on with their business. Customers can subscribe to your RSS feed and immediately be notified whenever you make a new blog post.
If you are going to run a special you can post it on your blog and they can hear about right away. If you have got a new product to announce, changes in personnel, or anything that is interesting, a blog is a great way to notify everyone of it.
This is six reasons blogging is a good home business idea. Anyone can do it and so should you.
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Copyright: David Ogden
Presentation Skills - The Path To An Impactful Presentation
By Shaun Parker
Most roles in business require good presentation skills. Not only is proficient communication essential to convey information, an exciting or entertaining delivery is an integral ingredient for keeping an audience’s attention and ultimately getting the response you want. A successful presentation will have energy from beginning to end, engage the audience, use dynamic body language and include innovative and creative ways of bringing facts to life and making them memorable. All the while, ‘death by PowerPoint’ should be avoided at all costs. Competent presentation skills can be used in many aspects of working life, from winning pitches, to getting a pay raise. Getting your messages across with impact will give you the best possible results.
Preparation is synonymous with success. A poorly planned presentation, lecture or pitch will leave you nervous, easily distracted and vulnerable to a feisty audience if you haven’t got your facts straight. You will need to identify your target audience, pin-point the purpose of the delivery, and be clear about what your key messages are. After that you need plenty of practice to ensure you stay within the allotted time, get over any potential tongue twisters and fine tune the content. There are so many tangents that an inadequately planned presentation can go down; the more you rehearse, the more of these winding paths you will discover, along with dead-end statements that you can choose to avoid. More importantly you can ensure you can bring your content to life and make if highly impactful. If you can practise in front of someone who will give you feedback, or video yourself, so that you can see how you come across, that will be highly beneficial. Ideally, for a big and important presentation you might like to have some individual presentation skills training or coaching for some expert and tailored advice.
First of all it’s necessary to understand your audience. Knowing who the audience are their roles, objectives and interests should inform the way you plan and deliver a presentation. Right from the start, all your key messages should you be tailored to meet your objectives and theirs. Make sure that all references, anecdotes and metaphors relate to the topical issues and interests of your audience, ensuring sure that you keep it relevant to the ideas under discussion.
It’s very important to open your presentation with a bang. It’s far easier to present to an audience who’s attention you’ve grabbed and which is engaged. There are several ways to do this: you might like to start with a striking or surprising fact, ask them a question, introduce an analogy or crack a joke. These are just a few ideas - there are many more ways to open with impact.
Using PowerPoint, or another form of media display can bring a presentation to life, clarify points and help them stick in people’s minds. However, it can also have the opposite effect, so it’s crucial to get it right. Any slides used in a presentation should be kept to a minimum and include only the key points. As a guide, you should include no more than 6 words per line and 6 lines per slide. This keeps the slides clear and easy to read and avoids overload. It can also be helpful to reveal each point separately as you talk about it, to avoid the audience jumping ahead and not concentrating on what you’re saying. If you do this though, ensure your reveals are consistent and that they’re not whizzing in from all sides with crazy sound effects for each - this will just distract your audience and make you look amateur. Instead, it should be the words you use, the anecdotes and stories you tell and the relevant imagery you use that engage, amuse and inspire the audience.
Pictures, diagrams and graphs can help bring facts and figures to life and help them stick in people’s minds. A carefully chosen image or chart can drive a point home far more successfully than a whole slide of words. Sometimes it can also be useful to use video clips to change the pace and add interest. They should be kept short though, to avoid the audience’s attention drifting.
Finally, be prepared for questions. A well planned and informative speech will inspire listeners to respond with ideas you may not have considered, or inadvertently overlooked in research. It’s a good idea to flag up from the beginning when you will be responding to questions, to avoid disruptive questions throughout. Once again, knowing the topic inside out will prepare you for questions from any angle. Give yourself time to respond, repeat the question back for the audience, try not to waffle when you reply and don’t get emotional! If you don’t know the answer, it’s ok to admit that, but tell them you’ll find out and get back to them. Or give them an answer to the best of your ability, but explain that you’re not 100% sure.
There are many more tips to creating the perfect presentation, but these should get you started and help you to make your presentation clear, impressive and engaging. Presentation skills training will take you through many areas of tips and advice, give you the opportunity to practise and offer personalised feedback and advice.
Shaun Parker is a leading business consultant with many years of experience in the industry. Find out more about presentation skills and a variety of communication skills at Speak First.
Find Accounting Information And Resources For Your Business
How To Open A Business Bank Account
By Thomas Pretty
When opening a business account with a bank there is a large amount of documentation that is essential in order for the account to be opened. Naturally you must give the bank a clear idea of what the business is, and what it intends to do. Additionally most bank managers will want to see details of where the start up finances came from; whether it is your personal capital, or funding from a group of investors. The reason these are needed by the bank is because in order to support your business, they need information on how development will occur, and the security of your start up capital.
As part of the bank recognising your goals and objectives it is likely that the account manager will want to see a detailed business plan. This plan is a simple enough document to put together and should include information on the operations, the long and short term objectives of the business and what types of strategies will be utilised in order to achieve these goals. In addition, most business plans should include detailed financial forecasts, usually based on the estimated income over the next three to five years. The bank will normally use this information to assess whether the goals are realistic and to evaluate the level of success in the coming years.
As well as the business plan, the representative will want to see a number of other documents in order for you to open a business account. The first of these documents cover identification, such as passports or driving licences for yourself and any other partners; the bank needs to see these to prevent any illegal money laundering operations. For limited companies, a Certificate of Incorporation will be required although sole traders will need no such certification. As well as these two key elements a credit history and a list of signatories will also have to be presented before an account can be opened.
When selecting an account it is important to remember bank charges. Obviously details of bank charging policy will be available in the accompanying literature; this is information worth reading and understanding fully. The majority of charges are compiled in a monthly or quarterly format although some charges, for instance those relating to transactions can be based upon a pro rata basis.
Many business owners find it difficult to get down to the bank during office hours due to the restrictions of owning and running a business. Fortunately the majority of banks now have internet and phone banking options meaning that finances are either a click or phone call away at any point during the day or night. Many will also want to utilise services such as direct debit that allow customers to make payments automatically, meaning that bills and rent are never forgotten and hence no financial penalties are levied.
Naturally opening a business account for many is a daunting and difficult task. Unfortunately it is an essential part of starting a company. Having a specialist account, even as a sole trader can make tax returns and accounting functions that much easier. Also, a bank can provide great levels of support in terms of advice and hence these services should be utilised extensively. A final tip is to always build a good rapport with the bank’s representatives, by keeping them on side as well as giving them a clear idea of your goals and objectives it is possible to create a solid financial base for a company.
Financial expert Thomas Pretty looks into the key considerations that should be made when opening a business bank account and the processes involved.
Friday, August 22nd, 2008 at 2:40 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.
