Business Corner

When you cut to the chase on every interview, there is really only one question that every employer needs to ask: “Why should we hire you?” Every job seeker needs to be able to answer this question in one form or another, without hesitation and with conviction. Here are some tips to help you prepare your answer:
Right Skills: Every job requires some core skills. Hopefully you have some or all of the skills required for the job. It is unusual for any candidate to have a complete match for every aspect of the job requirements. Nevertheless, before you are prepared to answer the key question, you must understand what the employer is looking for in a candidate. If you have experience in the industry, you are likely familiar with the specific job requirements. If you don’t have experience or if you are a recent graduate, then find out what skills are required for the job by asking around. If you don’t have the skills or are making a career change, then you either need to go back to school or look for an entry-level job where you can acquire the skills. In today’s competitive environment, having the right skills is a minimum job requirement.
Right Experience: If you are looking for something more than an entry-level job, then you must have experience. Employers will pay a premium for people who have been through the “school of hard knocks” and can bring their experience with them to a new job. If you have relevant experience, then you will quickly become productive without a long training period. Furthermore, you are less likely to make “rookie” mistakes that could cost the employer money, production time, and possibly customers.
Right Attitude: More than skills and experience is the right attitude. When people are fired, more often than not, the reason is poor attitude and not their technical ability to do the job. Employers look for people who can work together well with others. Business is a team sport. While individual positions are important, every enterprise succeeds based on the ability of everyone in the organization to work together and succeed as a team. Thus, bringing the “right attitude” to the game is a key to a successful job search.
These are three critical elements to answer the basic question for all employers: “Why should we hire you?” If you can craft a concise response that includes the right skills, the right experience and the right attitude, you will be on your way to respond with confidence. This will be your “elevator pitch” that you can practice until you can say it without thinking about it. Whatever else you might be asked, nothing is more important than conveying this core message. Even if the question is never asked, you can conclude your interview by summarizing the essence of why they should hire you, and leave them with a positive lasting message to remember you. While this will not guarantee you will get hired, it will be the best way to maximize your chances of success.

You own a small business and you’re doing well but recently you have noticed that your competitors have a slight edge on you. Wondering why? Chances are, it has nothing to do with your product or price – it’s the simple fact that they are more memorable than you. There are two ways that you can increase your memorability. The first is through advertising and marketing and the second is through small business branding and brand strategy. To learn more, continue reading this article. Today, we will discuss the branding basics and give you some need-to-know branding tips.
Before we discuss branding tips, let’s begin by discussing a simple question: what is branding? Think about small business branding as a definition of what the clients think your business is about. With a good brand strategy, you can easily differentiate your services or products from those of your competitors, giving you the leading edge. To clarify, let’s use a brief example. You wake up late one morning and if you don’t leave soon you will be late for work. You don’t have time to make your own breakfast but you do have time to stop for a quick drive through bite. As you are thinking about where to go, you suddenly hear “Badabababa I’m lovin it” play in your mind. Where do you head? Towards the golden arches!
Why did you choose McDonalds? You may think that it is because their food tastes great (and that can definitely be part of it), but doesn’t most fast food taste good? Most people do not realize that many of the decisions they make are based on branding. McDonalds has developed a great tag line that sticks in our heads. On top of that, anyone over the age of 3 knows what the golden arches represent. Small business branding, or the combination of a good tag line and a memorable logo, play a significant role in the success that McDonalds has seen in the past decade. By creating a strong brand strategy and developing your own tagline and logo, you too can see your business expand by making it memorable to your clients.
Let’s cover some cool branding tips to help you build a magnetic brand. First of all, there are many things that you can do to increase the successfulness of your logo and tagline. However, of all the branding tips available, there is one that stands out as the most important; small business branding alone is not enough. Once you have developed a brand strategy, logo, and tagline, you must follow through on your promises. If your tagline is “I’m lovin it”, you better keep customers loving it. You can do this through brand management. Brand management involves a great deal of things, each of which is designed to keep your customers happy and keep them remembering your brand in a positive light. Brand management can include things such as manufacturing a high quality product, keeping your prices reasonable, and providing high quality customer service.
If you own a business, small business branding will become a necessary part of attracting customers. By developing a brand for your customers, you will make your business memorable, keeping them interested and returning for more. If there is one piece of information that you should take away from branding tips it is this one; branding alone is not enough. You must also engage in brand management tactics to ensure that your brand is seen in a positive light rather than a negative one. Start developing a brand strategy for your business today and give your customers something to remember you by!

When it comes to advertising, customers often see your logo before they even know what your product is. Some logos, like the Nike swoosh or the McDonalds’ arches, are so synonymous with their brands an explanation isn’t needed. It has been estimated that Americans are exposed to over 2,000 ads a day. In this consumer market, how do you make your logo stand out?

There are several basic elements to keep in mind when you go to create a logo. A memorable logo is able to be described by consumers. This is beneficial to your company because even if the public forgets your name, they can still convey the message to others. Not everyone will remember Lacoste, but if someone says, “the shirt with the alligator on it,” you know what they’re referring to.

The trick to creating any logo is to keep it simple. When you design a logo, keep in mind people need to be able to tell what it is at a glance. If the logo is too cluttered or the text is too difficult to read, it won’t work. When you play with fonts, it’s easy to become distracted by the various font options. Your public will not know what was going through your mind when you were creating it, so unless it’s simple, they won’t know what you were trying to say.

Logos also need to be both effective without color and able to be scaled down. When you advertise, you may not always have a color or large space to work with. For those reasons, your logo still needs to work no matter what context it is being viewed in.  Read more... (459 words, estimated 1:50 mins reading time)

If you want to learn to play Guitar, you should be able to do so without having to struggle a lot in the process. In fact, the steps are fairly simple and easy to follow, but knowing what to keep in mind might be the important thing here. Although there are a lot of different approaches, only a handful of them are effective. Therefore, being on guard and knowing more about these should be the thing that you would want to keep in mind. Here are some of the more effective steps that are worth trying out.

First, keep in mind that you cannot learn to play Guitar overnight and if someone said you can do so, it is a bold-faced lie! It is strongly recommended that you keep aside a certain number of hours every day in order to master the task and learn all the nuances to it. Ideally, beginners should target at least two to four hours on a daily basis to ensure that you don’t forget what was taught to you the previous day. This is very important, and essentially the thing that can make all the difference.

Next, you should stick to the same form of instruction over your course of learning. Shifting methodologies will usually end up quite badly and you might never really learn to play Guitar. Not only will you be able to easily figure out the instrument but you will also be able to do so without having to struggle in the process. It might seem lucrative at some points to shift over to other methods, but ideally, you should stick with the same method so that you don’t end up mixing up two or more approaches and not knowing anything as a result of it.  Read more... (495 words, estimated 1:59 mins reading time)

Contrary to popular belief, an eCover is not just something thrown onto your eBook without a second thought. In fact, creating your cover is a crucial part of the book writing process.

The hard fact is that you may have the greatest book in the world, but a lackluster cover will hinder your sales tremendously.

Buyers are accustomed to surfing the Internet. Every day, each and every one of us visits more websites than we can count, and most of the time we hardly even remember what we just read.

Your customers suffer from the same problem.

When your customer looks at your eBook, chances are they are looking at other books too. They may even be looking at many, many other books.

A lackluster eCover has no chance of standing out from the rest of the books out there. Let’s say that someone is looking at a book on horse training and they have looked at five other books on the subject. If your eCover does not stand out, your book will be just one of many. Sure, you may squeak out a few sales here and there, but the real sales and the real money, is going to the business-person with the eye catching book cover. If a customer does not remember your book, they will not buy from you. It is that simple.

So what is the easiest way to make sure that your eBooks are always remembered?

Work to ensure that your eBook covers are designed to create emotion in your potential customers.

Your cover layout should show customers that their lives will be much better once they have your book. Customers should feel like they cannot go one more day without your book in their hands.  Read more... (433 words, estimated 1:44 mins reading time)