4 Essential Tips to Increase Productivity in Small Business

4 ways to increase productivity
Whether you’re a small business owner, aspiring entrepreneur or hard-working professional, the battle to constantly produce good work is ongoing. Maybe it’s the monotony of workloads or effort we put forth to get better, but seasons of high productivity seem to come and go. If you’re stuck in a slump, you’re not alone. Millions of professionals struggle to meet expectations every day. Luckily, the parade of employees and entrepreneurs hoping to boost their output has led to helpful tools and strategies.

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Calm in a Crisis — How Egypt’s SMEs are Weathering the Financial Storm

How Egypt SMEs are weathering financial storm
When turmoil strikes and everyone around you is losing their head (and money), it’s hard to stay calm and find solutions. Egypt is one such place where entrepreneurs have had to breathe in deep and think smart while revolution and financial turmoil increased unemployment and caused businesses to think hard about their economic future.

Faced with unemployment, many Egyptians have rolled up their sleeves, started their own business, and tried to make things work. But what about the SMEs that existed before the revolution and the financial crisis broke out?

Here are some of the problems they’ve faced, and how they’ve handled them.
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How to Make Best Use of Downtime in Small Business

How to make best use of downtime in small business
Every business undergoes a lull at some point. Even the most trailblazing, rip-roaring successes either see a period of plateau in the sales figures, a drop off in engagement online, an unexpected downtime or a hush in the office.

But don’t panic.

Quite periods can be caused by a variety of factors – seasonality, block holiday periods, geo-political changes, strikes, illness, market uncertainty, recessions – you name it.

The fact is – it happens; it’s part of the cycle.

It can be incredibly frustrating, primed as you are with all that energy ready to channel into your business, only to be denied when you try and side-step the inevitable.

But, knowing their inevitability, you can prepare for these periods with a strategy of how to use them productively and constructively.

Here are some little nuggets to think about when that next low wave rolls in.

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Small Businesses Benefit from Local SEO

Small businesses can benefit from local SEO
Making an impact on the World Wide Web can be daunting for small businesses. The initial instinct is often to appeal to the largest audience possible online. However, when your brick and mortar business is located in a provincial town, small businesses can benefit better from local SEO than an all-encompassing search strategy. Optimising local search listings can help small businesses increase their online presence with limited budget.
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How Recruiting Firms Can Help Small Businesses Grow

How recruiting firms can help small business grow
Many small business owners make the mistake of assuming they can’t afford to hire a recruiting firm. In reality they cannot afford not to retain expert assistance when it comes to expanding their labor force. Not only can busy small business owners save time and money, but they can also be relieved of a stress by delegating recruiting to the professionals who can provide qualified candidates both quickly and efficiently.

Recruiting firms help small businesses in multiple ways as shown below.

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6 Tips for Relocating Your Small Business Office

6 tips for relocating your small business office
Relocating your business office requires a lot of planning and attention to details. You may have to temporarily close or scale down your operation, which can result in financial loss. Your new location may inconvenience your existing customers and business associates. In your hurry or enthusiasm, you may overlook many things crucial to the success of your business. Therefore, you must plan your business relocation with utmost care and execute every step meticulously.

Here are 6 tips on how to relocate your small business office:
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Do Small Businesses Need Social Media Policies?

Social media policies for small business

Most companies now use at least some level of social media to promote their business. Assuming your company uses this method of promotion, it is important to ensure that your online message is professional and consistent.

Large companies create detailed social media policies to make clear to staff exactly how their businesses can and should contribute to these online platforms. This ensures that the company creates the correct impression across all of their online presence – from blog posts to Twitter “tweets.”

Given the high visibility and spontaneous nature of social media, it is fair to say that creating a social media policy is equally important for a smaller business, to ensure that costly mistakes are not made when interacting with customers online.

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Tax Season Opens Security Risks for Small Businesses

Tax Season Opens Security Risks for Small Businesses
According to a nationwide survey conducted by the National Cybersecurity Alliance, 73 percent of small businesses rely on trusted Internet connections and 77 percent report that information security is of the utmost importance. Despite this, over 87 percent of small businesses are unprepared for data breaches that may occur online or through other, traditional methods.

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Small Business Owners – Do you have Long-term Saving Plan?

Long term saving plan for small business owners
If you are like most small business owners you don’t pay enough attention to saving for the long-term. After all, when you can invest money in your own business and get higher return than saving at a bank why wouldn’t you reinvest in your business instead of saving it. Many business owners do not even keep their personal and business finances separate. Their accounts and expenses are intertwined moving money from personal to business and vice versa all the time.

This could be a big mistake. As much as you would like to invest your money back in the business this can create number of issues potentially not only impacting you, but your family too. First of all, if something goes wrong with the business you could lose it all with no rainy day fund to tap into. The tax authorities will also come down hard in audits if you cannot show how your personal and business finances are kept separate.
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Too Much, Too Fast – Lessons from JC Penney Failure for Small Business

Too much too fast - lessons from JC Penney failure - 2
By now, most in the business community have heard about the ouster of Ron Johnson as CEO of JC Penney after only 17 months on the job. This was a stunning reversal of fortune for Ron Johnson who was regarded as retail Guru based on his accomplishments in transforming Target to “Cheap Chick” retailer and hugely successful launch of Apple Stores. When he was hired at JC Penney he was viewed as a savior who would rescue JC Penney from the downfall it was experiencing for several years.

However, things have not turned out to be that way. In 17 months JC Penney has been in complete turmoil. Sales in 2012 declined 25% compared to prior year representing a staggering $4.3 Billion in lost sales. In 2012 it recorded loss of $1 Billion. No other company has seen such a precipitous loss of value in this short time. So, what went wrong and what lessons can small business owner learn from this?
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