Saturday, September 28, 2013

3 ways to find outsourced staff for your small business

 Outsourcing can be a major source of savings or a major source of headaches. Knowing how to choose your outsourcing staff and where to find them is extremely important.

Within these websites there are also good and bad outsourced staff available so it's important that you have a good qualification process to help you sift through and find the right person for your business.

Below are just a list of the most popular websites to find outsourced staff.


1. OUTSOURCING WEBSITES

Websites where you can hire outsourcing staff is the easiest and most straight forward way to hire your next resource, however keep in mind that most of the recruitment and management process is your responsibility and it's important to know that you may not be perfect at this first go. Otherwise, you can find staff quickly and cheaply without any additional agency fees.

oDesk

oDesk is a great freelancing website where you can find the right worker for your work. You can select the contractor based on ratings and reviews. You can review the work and pay the contractor with ease.

Pros: Large network of developers, tools for tracking employees (keyboard, mouse activity, screenshots), no limit on bids so you can find cheap work 

Cons: No limit on bids so jobs often reduce to pricing wars and quality can fall by the wayside, no escrow system, users can game profile ratings by hiding negative reviews and having friends provide reviews, etc. 

Elance

You can find top skilled workers on Elance in almost all fields such as writing, web designing, programming, software development, graphic design, medical transcription, legal and finance. You can post your work on Elance and get proposals instantly. This site has more than 1,300,000 professionals ready to be hired.

Pros: Geared towards fixed-bid work (hire-by-hour or by-project), minimum bid ($50) keeps out some lower-quality programmers (also requires payment to start account) 

Cons: This applies to ODesk too but sometimes contractors will try to sell your projects or solutions to other employers, pricier than ODesk, dispute system incurs fee for both parties, buyers sometimes avoid giving bad feedback b/c they find that it becomes more difficult to find bidders if they do 

Freelancer

It's a great outsourcing market place where you can outsource anything you can think of. You can find hundreds of skilled programmers, web designers, content writers and ghost writers at highly competitive rates. You can pay your freelancers only if you are fully satisfied with their work. You can also post your first work for free over there.

Pros: Pay through milestone complete, suited to smaller jobs, good for project-based work 

Cons: Similar to many of the above i.e. game able ratings, lack of talent in pool 

Getacoder

This is a popular global services market place that is doing business in more than 200 countries. You can find great talents in all fields at very competitive rates.

Pros: Has a reasonable dispute resolution policy. 

Cons: Harder to navigate than other sites and offers fewer features. Can be more expensive for freelancers to use this site 

Guru

This freelancing site has over a million registered users. You can find the right freelancer for your work at affordable prices. You can post your job for free. You can pay after the satisfactory completion of your project.

Pros: Lots of US-based workers, pay for completed work via escrow system 

Cons: Costly if non-member (10+%), otherwise monthly fee 

2. OUTSOURCING AGENCIES


You will be paying a premium but outsourcing agencies have offices and managers in place to manage your resources, and are great for companies looking for a little more professionalism and don't mind paying a premium. Major corporations use outsourcing agencies to employ their telemarketing staff as the agencies ensure training, replacement of resources and work on a results basis. 

For roles that need to be available and to save management time, especially if you are not used to managing outsourced staff, this is a great way to save some money as well as get quality results.

3. HIRING A PERSON TO CONNECT YOU TO THE RIGHT PEOPLE

Using a outsourcing recruiter is similar to using a local recruiter. They help collect resumes for you and sort through the duds according to your requirements. Having a recruiter can have added benefits such as having local staff that will chase them up if you cannot contact them online. Also some will handle payroll for you and help you replace staff if they are not meeting expectations.

If you hate looking through resume's and don't mind paying a little more for peace of mind a recruiter can help you find the right person. Keep in mind these services usually prefer to help you find staff that you are planning to train and keep for longer periods (6 months or above)

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Why your email marketing efforts are not as awesome as they can be

Well, maybe they are? If they are please share your tips with us in the comments section! But chances are you may be one of those people that are struggling with how to get your grips on your email marketing efforts.

Yes, it's happened to me too, the online marketer


No one is immune to this phenomenon and it doesn't mean your bad at what you do. And yes, I have been there before - when you send out emails you spend a week working on, only to find that 40% of the people didn't even bother to OPEN it, much less read it, well it gets pretty depressing. Then out of those 40% that OPENED it, 5% of them told you to get the hell away from their inbox, and maybe a few people clicked on your links - well great! But before you throw your email templates and confidence out the window, there may be a few things you can do to improve this and make it work! 

There is a reason why e-mail marketing is the top strategy for online marketing, it gives you great returns, and it does not cost that much once you have a list of people to send to. The key is really, doing a bit of ground work on your list. So how do I do that you ask? Well you have come to the right little asian girl for that answer :)


Segment, segment, segment 


This is not dissimilar to the "location, location, location" chant in real estate circles - it is just as important in this context as location is in theirs. The first question you want to ask is have you segmented your user base in a meaningful way. By that I mean, are you lumping all your subscribers, in one huge email list? Are all your customers really interested in green milk from purple cows? If so, then sending an email that interests someone that loves green milk from purple cows will be a hit. But chances are, not everyone on your list will be interested in green milk. So what next? You need to start breaking up your list in a way which allows you to send different content to different parts of your list. You are more likely to be relevant to your individual groups of customers if you don't put them all in the same category. After all, we are all special in our own way right? Some more than others :)

So sit down and have a think? What is my customer base made up of? What are the ways I can group them so that I can make sense of how to market to them. Some common ways to start grouping your database subscribers are:
  • By interests, because some people just want to hear about toffee and not just about green milk.
  • by location if you serve different offerings to different areas, you want to be able to just send the relevant message to that area. I mean Mars and Venus don't really get along right?
  • by frequency, some people want daily digests, because they are just bored and need some loving, and some only want to hear from you once a month, which don't mean they don't love you, just think about how you felt about your parents checking up on you when you first moved out? Some people just appreciate marketing violation in their inboxes. 
These are some bare basics to get you started, after all, you know your customers better than I do, well I hope so at least :). 


So why do this?


Doing your groundwork upfront can save you a lot of time and ego crushing in the long run. Think about the time you'd spend analysing your email failures trying to work out why you have a low open rate and a high unsubscribe rate. If you have the luxury from starting from scratch you can incorporate some questions into your subscribe form to save you from working this out later. Give your subscribers an option to pick how they want to receive their updates. Some examples are:


What are you interested in receiving?

1. Receive promotional and sales messages such as discounts and specials on our range
2. Receive news and updates about events
3. Receive helpful informational tips on our range

Also give a select all option (default tick all options and allow them to remove the ones they don't want to receive). Although it may feel discouraging knowing you can't market your sales messages to some users, but chances are you're going to avoid the uncomfortable situation when they unsubscribe to you or stop listening to your messages as a result of them not receiving what they want to receive.

If you already have a list and don't know how you are going to find out more about them there are options for you to start drawing that information out as well, and it may take some time to get all users to respond, but it will be well worth it for both of you.


What are my options if I already have a unsegmented list?


If you don't have the luxury of doing this from scratch you can send out a simple survey that gives people the options to choose and customise what they want to receive. You can then start segmenting the messages to the customers that respond to that. If you think there is a low level of corporation with your brand, you can sweeten up the process by including your information grab as a part of a very attractive promotion such as a give-away or a discount. People love getting things for free or things for cheap :)


So what do I send to my toffee lovers vs green milk lovers?


If you have the opportunity, speak to some people in these groups and ask them what they want to receive from you. Go with that. Otherwise if your subscribers don't want to talk to you, you can always experiment. Try a few angles and see which one sticks (your typical email stats should be able to tell you this quite quickly). But remember to always be helpful vs. trying to sell them. They have subscribed to you because they like you, and would appreciate it if you can stop tooting your own horn.

Here is an example of a valuable email strategy that is engaging and effective. You're going to have to pretend you now sell kitchen appliances, you also have a mo. Now, twist the end of your mo and...think very hard of a way to please your customers! What do all your customers love to do? Well a pretty obvious guess is cooking (thats what you do with kitchen appliances) so they must enjoy trying new things in the kitchen. AHA! you got it! Send them weekly recipes to inspire them to use the stuff they bought from you (we all know that % of unused kitchen appliances are staggering) and also maybe  get them wanting more things from you! You may even want to then have your data segmented into working mums and house mums. These two will have very different requirements for recipes. The former would want meals they can whip up meals in 30 minutes or less. The later may want more creative recipes that require a bit of fiddling around. You may want to go one step further and identify who in your list are trying to lose weight, that want recipes with no fat no nothing - these are the easiest to please "wash celery, cut celery, avoid peanut butter".  

So how do I sell my stuff you ask? Well, once you have made your subscribers happy, putting in a message saying "all slow cookers are now 30% off", will be more effective underneath a recipe for beef stew. Or a message saying "make your meal 20 minutes faster with a pressure cooker" to your working mums under a recipe for the saw stew (that they would never have time to make without the pressure cooker). Get creative with the way you deliver your marketing messages so that it actually helps your customers. They will appreciate it much more. Remember, be helpful first sell later.


So take care of your babies




Your database is too precious to ruin for a few more sales, so nurture it wisely and you'll receive a steady revenue stream from your green milk lovers for a long time to come! Who knows, if your emails are interesting enough, it may even be shared to people that are not on your list. Lets go get em!

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

20 online survey sites that will help you gather feedback!

 HOW DO I SEND OUT ONLINE SURVEYS?


Online surveys help you gather information quickly and get feedback from your customers. From internal uses such as voting for your next team building event to getting feedback from customers, online services make it easier to collect information and collate it into meaningful reports  without all that manual labour.

Here are some of our favorite sites which you can use to create surveys. If you have any that you recommend please let us know in the comments section.

We'll have to start with our favourite:

Wufoo

Plans: Freemium + Paid Package ($14.95-$199.95/month)

The stand-out feature in this survey tool is the payment integration – your PayPal, Google Checkout or Authorize.net accounts can be connected to WuFoo Forms to collect donations or payments.Wufooreally breaks the survey process down, keeping the process simple and still flexible enough to customize. The actual forms and reports are as clean, customizable and beautiful as the survey process. While all of the survey tools listed here offer discounts for nonprofits, Wufoo offers an impressive 50 percent discount.
Link: http://wufoo.com/ 

SurveyMonkey

Plans: Freemium + Select Package ($16.99/month) + Gold Package ($24.99/month) + Premium Package ($64.99)

SurveyMonkey is one of the more popular online survey tools today. They offer a free version for small and informal surveys, but the customization options are very limited. The paid packages offers unlimited questions and responses, customizability, skip logic, and the ability to export Excel and PDF files. Reports are minimal, but they allow you to export results for further analysis with the use of another application.


Zoomerang

Plans: Freemium + Pro Package ($149/year) + Premium Package ($449)

Zoomerang is similar to SurveyMonkey in many respects, but offers in a more powerful package for more money. Zoomerang has a very limited free package; the more useful Pro package is offered to nonprofits for unlimited surveys, questions and respondents, and a Premium package includes mobile surveys, comparison reports, multi-user survey sharing and collaboration, and statistical analysis. The survey building tools are not quite as intuitive as SurveyMonkey’s, and it can be more difficult to learn. However, Zoomerang offers more extensive reporting, with a flexible cross-tabulation report tool that lets survey administrators see the data relationships across any set of questions. 


SurveyGizmo

Plans: 14-day Trial + Basic ($19/month) + Advanced ($49-$160/month)

SurveyGizmo offers a low-cost solution with some advanced features—it supports 1,000 responses per month, and basic logic—as well as a range of more advanced packages. At all levels, SurveyGizmo offers basic piping, fully customizable survey look and feel, and the ability to embed images and videos hosted on your own website. More advanced levels offer many randomization options.


PollDaddy

Plans: Freemium + Advanced ($200-$900/year)

PollDaddy offers surveys and polls that can be easily embedded into external websites and applications. The free package offers a maximum of 10 questions per survey and 100 responses per month, plus basic reporting. Survey features are more limited than some of the other options in this category, with no skip logic or piping, but survey administrators have a lot of flexibility over the look of the survey, by selecting from pre-designed templates, or fully customizing the template by editing style sheet code.


Constant Contact

Plans: Pro Package ($10-$150/month)

Although known primarily as an email marketing tool, Constant Contact offers “Listen-Up,” a hosted survey tool with some interesting benefits. There’s no free option, but fee-based packages are competitive with other lower-cost options depending on the number of respondents who will be answering surveys. Constant Contact offers more than 40 predesigned templates with some ability to customize. Surveys can include skip logic, and can be scheduled in advance. The tool also offers a variety of emailing and email management services, including contact importing, list segmentation and basic contact management. Reports are quite basic, but data can be exported for analysis in another tool.


FormSite

Plans: Fremium + Pro Package ($10-$100/month)

FormSite offers a tool for building website forms—everything from simple “contact us” forms to evaluation forms. Although the focus is forms for feedback and test-taking, FormSite offers a basic set of survey features, and may be useful to those looking to collect a lot of different types of information via web-forms. Features include multiple page surveys, question randomization, basic skip logic and piping. Surveys can be customized to match your website by someone familiar with HTML.


Moodle

Plans: Free

Moodle is a powerful open source course management software package primarily targeted at schools and universities. It integrates website content management and online course management with survey and test-taking solutions. The survey tools are geared toward those gathering feedback from students to assess teaching methods, and several verified survey instruments are provided for this purpose. Moodle may be appropriate for nonprofits running training programs or schools seeking an all-in-one website, course and survey management solution for their programs. The package is free to download, but will require substantial technical knowledge to install, configure, customize and support.


Qualtrics

Plans: Corporate Plan ($10,000/year)

Formerly known as SurveyZ, Qualtrics provides advanced survey logic and analysis targeted at research surveys, with a focus on academic institutions. Qualifying nonprofits can get a bargain with a free-for-a-year “consultant” account which allows up to 1,000 responses per month and two surveys at a time. The corporate plan provides data analysis support for cross-tabulation, conjoint analysis, subgroup analysis, time series analysis and more. 


QuestionPro

Plans: Freemium + Advanced Package ($14-$99/month)

QuestionPro packages range from limited free versions to more advanced options. The free package lets you re-use questions from one survey to the next, or pull questions from a standard survey template library. The more advanced packages offer unlimited surveys, questions and responses with skip logic, piping, randomization and even more complex survey logic, as well as multimedia and multilingual support. QuestionPro also offers an API to exchange survey data with outside applications, including a module for Salesforce.com integration.


LimeSurvey

Plans: Free

This is a powerful, free and open source survey package appropriate for nonprofits looking for advanced survey logic and analysis features and who have substantial technology support. Its range of features includes full customization of survey look and feel, support for 40 different languages, piping, skip logic, a library of available survey questions and blast emailing. The tool has a large support community and is under active development. This is an open source package that can be downloaded for free, installed on your own web server, and customized to your needs by a developer with knowledge of PHP/ MySQL. Although the tool itself is free, be prepared to bear the costs for your own web hosting, and the time it takes to properly install, configure, customize and support this product on your own.


KeySurvey

Plans: Pro Package ($1,950 to $5,950/year)
This is the most robust of the advanced survey tools covered in this article. It offers a full set of features, including several unusually advanced ones such as LDAP integration to allow single-sign-on models for large organizations, role based permissions, support for “teacher/student” surveys, multimedia questions and much more. Key Survey also offers an API to exchange survey data with outside applications, with a module for Salesforce.com integration.

Cool Web Toys
Plans: Free
After you register for a free account at Cool Web Toys, you can create a poll by choosing from a web poll, an embedded web chat client, or a “CoolWebOfTheDay”. The poll can include content such as word of the day, quote of the day, or any other content. As far as poll creation goes, it’s quite easy to use. You can specify size and colors to match your site! Results appear quickly and the visitor will not leave your site unless they click on “More Info”. If they click on that link a new browser window will open up and they will be on the site with a bunch of Adsense ads.

Vizu
Plans: Free
Polls generated by Vizu.com are delivered via a Flash widget rather than a snippet of JavaScript or HTML code.  Vizu walks you through the steps of creating a poll and gives you total control of the look and feel. To create a poll, you first create the question, then choose if it’s an “opinion” or a “prediciton” poll, then choose keywords and categories so that your poll is easy to find. You can also add pictures or links to your poll. A Vizu poll on your site is free with registration.

Blog Flux
Plans: Free
Blog Flux requires that you create an account on their site before you can create a poll. Once your account is created, you can then create the poll with up to five options. You also have a choice of customizing the poll's look and feel. After the visitor clicks on the add my vote link, the results will appear in place of the poll questions on your site. A unique feature is that the voting results are mapped on Google maps. The site has other tools to enhance your blog such as a button or chicklet creator, a link logger, and a page rank checker.

Quibblo
Plans: Free
Creating a poll at Quibblo.com is a simple two-step process. After you are registered, log-in and choose your question and create the answers. There is no customization however. Visitors who choose to click on the “Discuss this poll at Quibblo.com” link will be taken to their site, where they will need to register as a user before they are allowed to leave a comment about the poll.

Ballot-Box
Plans: Free
Purpose:   Ballot-Box allows you to create a free online poll for your website. Before you can get started, you'll need to create an account. Then you can create 15 questions for your poll and each question can have 15 answers. Poll appearances are completely customizable with real-time updates and poll results. Poll results can be made private or public and also prevents users from voting twice. You can also create up to 25 polls. If you are conducting a survey, you might want to consider creating a poll with multiple questions.

Easy Poll
Plans: Free
Easy Poll is an easy and effective way to make your site more interactive. Easy-Poll has a large selection of patterns and colors for free polls. They offer two sorts of polls: a yes or no poll and a multiple-choice poll. Another great thing about this poll creation site is that you don't need additional software or IT support - everything is handled and calculated on their servers quickly and safely. Two minutes is all it takes to sign up, and you can create a poll for free.

FluidSurveys

Plans: Freemium + Pro Package ($17-49/month)

If you need form tools to build a questionnaire, online forms, quizzes, polls or surveys, choose FluidSurveys. Their free plan allows for the creation of unlimited polls with unlimited responses, and their powerful drag & drop interface is incredibly easy to use. For an alternative to Survey Monkey, or to conduct an advanced longitudinal survey, FluidSurveys is right for the job. Its powerful questionnaire tool and online survey software enable you to design and launch your project in minutes. Deploy your survey online, offline, and even on mobile devices.


Google Forms

Plans: Free

If you’re looking for a free service for small-scale surveying, this is hands down the best option out there. All of the other survey tools do have a free option, which usually entails a limit to the amount of surveys (10 per month) and responses (100 per month).Google Formsoffers an unlimited amount of surveys and space for well over 1,000 responses. Themes for your survey are plentiful, the software makes email or web embedding easy and, being Google, there are a number of ways to visualize your data. To use it, just go toGoogle Docsand create a new form.


Conducting and analyzing surveys can be really difficult and frustrating, but these sites will help make your life easier. Don't forget to market them though! The best way to see if they work for you is to try it out.

Share your favorites with us!

Friday, August 9, 2013

5 free blogging platforms you can use to start your business blog

 Types of Blog platforms

Blogginh has become a must for any business owner. Not only does it help you keep your website full of fresh content for Search Engine Optimisation purposes, but also blogging allows you to connect with your community of customers and potential customers and increase your reach online. 

Here is some great blogs for you to start your business blogging adventures!

Benefits of using a blog

Blogs are usually made based on one major topic or a particular niche. For us it's about tips that can help a small business owner. 

Having a single category or chine helps you focus your content and create a depth of content that is so important on a blog. 

The most important thing is to choose a platform that you find easy to use. The ones we have listed below are fairly simple to master and after a few posts you should be incredibly familiar with at least updating inforamtion.

Some platforms give you an ability to tweak things like layouts and designs easier then others so I highly recommend you have a go and see which one you gind easiest to handle. For a great blog you don't need a full set of features and you can also outsource layout and design updates quote cheaply. 

The most important thing for you to focus on when starting a blog is your content. Make sure it's consistent and regular and valuable to your audience.


So what platform is most suitable for you?

Here are some of the most popular blog platforms:

WordPress

WordPress is a free, open-source blogging platform that has grown into a full-fledged content management system. It enjoys enormous community support. WordPress is one of the most scalable blogging platforms there is today especially if you install it yourself to your own server. Otherwise the free hosted accounts are also very easy to use and have some great looking templates.
Pros

  • Platform, domain, and hosting is free
  • Ability to upgrade to your own customer domain for a low monthly fee of $13.
  • A wide range of free design templates
  • Wordpress supports categories. If you write about different subjects, this is a great way to organize posts.
  • You can password-protect posts.
  • You can embed popular JavaScripts like YouTube videos.
  • Great SEO
Cons

 Not as simple as Blogger
  • May not be able to embed iframes
  • You can't upload plugins unless you have your own installed version. Most hosting providers have an easy install option, however this will require some technical knowledge.
Blogger

Google owns Blogger and has it integrated with Google Accounts. The platform has been around since blogging's beginnings, and is still an excellent choice.
Pros 


  • Platform, domain, and hosting is free
  • Ability to upgrade to a custom domain name
  • Backed by Google, so it integrates well with other Google products and is more protected from the DDoS attacks that often plague human rights blogs.
  • Free design templates
  • You can embed popular JavaScripts like YouTube videos.
  • If you are more tech-savvy, Blogger does allow you to FTP the files generated for your blog to your own website. 
Cons
  • Limited ability to customize your blog
  • Google owns your content and can shut down your blog if they do not like your content.
  • You cannot categorize posts, or have a blogroll. This is replaced by labels. 
Tumblr is one of the fastest growing blogging platforms in 2011. The demographics on Tumblr however tend to be very skewed towards certain demographics so you should choose a platform that is suited to your target audience.
Pros

  • Originally just a photo-posting blog,   Tumblr recently added new features and expanded the things you can do with a Tumblr blog.
  • Easy-to-use interface
  • Encourages customisation 
Cons
  • You have to set up the comments function separately, using http://disqus.com.
  • Not ideal if you have long posts 

Posterous

Posterous has recently reinvented itself, introducing a concept it calls spaces. The idea is to offer more control over how content is shared. In some ways this makes Posterous as much a social network as a platform.
Pros


  • Posterous is very simple to use. Once you sign up for a Posterous account, you are given a Posterous address to e-mail posts to. Compose an e-mail with text or attach a photo or video send it to the Posterous e-mail you are provided, and it is converted into a post on your site.
  • It is also geared toward mobile blogging. It's easy to post an update when you are not at a computer.
  • They have been adding new features,   like a new post editor, the ability to add stand-alone pages, moderate comments, and manage image galleries more easily. 
CONS 
  • Posterous only launched in 2008, so it is a smaller, less well-known community.
  • Even though you can post by e-mail,   you will find yourself going to the Posterous interface to adjust the formatting. 


  

Blog.com


Blog.com is another popular WordPress-powered blogging platform.
PROS 


  • it offers many beautiful premium themes in its free accounts,
  • advanced plugins that one can expect only on a self-hosted blog 
CONS 

  • the free service displays more ads as compared to WordPress.com 


Conclusion

Having cited the pros and cons of popular blog platforms, this does not mean that I encourage or discourage these platforms. All the platforms above will provide more than enough features to kick start your business blog, it's a matter of choosing an interface you love!