Website Marketing Skills For Small Businesses

The number one reason workers fail to adapt to operating remotely is they don’t see the criticality of having good quality organisation and enduring self discipline.

I have been working remotely for almost a decade since I first discovered Quickbooks online an ‘on demand’ small business accounting software web application and was spellbound by the fact that if you can do accounting on the web then why shouldn’t you be able to do other important types of work remotely?

Whilst working remotely has substantial gains there are numerous traps that people easily fall into which convert into issues that cause decreased productivity and reduced morale. The key reason for decreases in work output from remote professionals is interruption and it is a confirmed and well known fact that it can take a employee up to twenty minutes to return to their original efficiency level after experiencing an interruption.

Research also shows that people who are continuously affected by interruptions are more likely to be susceptible to decreased memory ability and are prone to developing mental health problems in old age. We exist in an over communicated world and it is essential that you recognise the problems this causes before you decide to work remotely. When operating remotely you must do everything possible to reduce the risk of being distracted.

Here’s how I do it:

1, Get a consistent schedule, tell everyone about it and rigidly adhere to it!

Good examples are a specific time of day when you look at or write and send e-mail and make or take phone conversatiions. Before I began working remotely I used to receive in the region of two hundred electronic mails in 24 hours. Now I think I am unfortunate if I get over 5. To start over with my e-mail experience I changed my e-mail address and obsessively took precautions to guard the details being made available to anyone. I then ‘trained’ every person who I gave my e-mail address to, to use it wisely and sparingly. I also created an automatic reply that swiftly told anyone sending me mail my schedule for attending to mail and if an item must have my immediate consideration to mark it as ‘Urgent’.

2. Get rid of alerts.

Turn off every possible mechanism that can send you a perceptible alert. This includes cell and
conventional telephones and types of alerts from e-mail such as visual alerts, warning sounds, display changes to your inbox list and of course facing a window. Get a door on your work place and put up a ‘do not disturb’ sign on it.

In ‘Remote Working Part 3 – Best online software’ I will reveal my favourite tools and software.

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When you hear the term “internet marketing“, what do you think of?

For many, that term conjures thoughts of websites or spamming or search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. For others, it’s all about graphical design, writing fancy code or even affiliate programs. All of those answers correct, but the essence of internet marketing is much simpler.

At its core, internet marketing is about these things:

* Understanding the target market to which the product/service/cause you’re marketing will appeal
* Determining exactly how your target market interacts with the internet
* Positioning your content on the internet to attract the attention of your target market
* Collecting information about your target market (also known as “leads”) for follow-up and conversion into sales
* Design of offers or incentives to induce the desired actions from your leads

Since there is insufficient space in this article to give all of these topics adequate attention, let’s focus on just one specific topic with the realm of internet marketing: Email Marketing.

My best payoff has always come by focusing on permission-based email marketing. Permission-based email marketing refers to the practice of collecting information (including email addresses) from website visitors and communicating with them via e-mail with their direct consent. The “permission” aspect of permission-based email marketing is what separates legitimate email marketers from the spammers that everyone despises.

My love of email marketing is strong for one reason: It works very well. Email marketing has been much like a never-ending goldmine: It enables us to produce income on demand simply by sending a good offer to our list. When you have thousands of loyal subscribers – as we do – and you put a strong and compatible offer in front of them, income becomes nearly automatic.

However, the key to successful email marketing is the development of a legitimate trust relationship with your subscribers. If you opt to send your subscribers a request for purchases every single day, they will likely tire of your badgering and cease reading your emails altogether.

Alternatively, if you take the time to provide good content to your readers on a regular and frequent basis, you’ll discover that your readers take all of your emails far more seriously, and as a result your emails will be opened, read and acted upon with greater frequency. Essentially, email marketing is really an exercise in trust.

Even though there are more sides to internet marketing than just email marketing (permission based), email has been the foundation that our business sits on.

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