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4 Tips to Help Your Business Prepare for Seasonal Sales

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christmas sales

Most companies experience seasonal surges and dips in revenue. For example, online retailers may enjoy higher sales during the holiday season than they experience in August. However, some businesses really focus on seasonal items, so they collect most of their revenue during a certain set of weeks during the year. Some examples of seasonal businesses include Halloween costume stores, Christmas tree farms, and even swim shops.

4 Tips to Manage Seasonal Companies

During the off-peak season, these companies may not take in much revenue. So, while some of these companies may do very well overall, they face challenges when they need to manage operating costs during slow parts of the year. Employees still need to get paid, products need to get manufactured or stocked, and other fixed expenses must get handled. Consider these tips to help your seasonal business prosper during the on-season and the off-season.

1. Understand Your Industry’s Seasonal Cycles

You can only be ready for seasonal cycles if you prepare for them. People who own successful Christmas tree farms probably don’t expect to sell a lot of trees in January. This means they plan for a drop in revenue and therefore manage operating expenses with this in mind. These low-revenue periods might be the time when seasonal companies make repairs, plan for production, or even schedule vacations.

If your company is fairly new, you should probably consider industry-wide data for other companies in your industry as it can be difficult to plot trends when you have little to no actual information about your own business. [Read more…]

Originally posted on October 18, 2016 @ 11:21 pm

How Podcasting Can Improve Your Blog’s Reach

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You’ve probably heard, at some point, that blogging has created massive opportunities for creative individuals. It offered an avenue for stating your opinions, and share your voice with others via digital means.

But once a blog was in place, the next level of challenge settled into your creative concerns: How do you reach more people? Because everyone is vying for limited attention, your blog has to be exceptional in all regards.

One way to convince those millions of potential readers on the web that your perspective is worthy of their time is to add a podcasting element to the mix. The podcast format allows people to listen (instead of just read) your blog … and a number of other opportunities become apparent once you’ve done a bit of research.

Make Sure You Understand Both Platforms First

Before you jump too far into podcasting, though, make sure you understand the basic frameworks of both blogging and podcasting. When you decided to create a blog, what general format did you use? WordPress, maybe, or Joomla? Or did you build your site totally from scratch?

Whatever your method, you should be sure that you understand that format fully so you’re not missing any opportunities for advancing your goals. The same goes for podcasting.

Do you intend to stream it somewhere? Are there any potential music copyright issues to be aware of? Address those questions first. [Read more…]

Originally posted on October 11, 2016 @ 1:29 am

How To Market Your Podcast

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Podcasting is the new cool thing to do. It’s like radio for bloggers, in a way. You can podcast about nearly anything you want, from music or sports to clothing and makeup. They sky’s the limit.

However, just making a podcast isn’t going to make your podcast popular. You need to market it just like you would a business or a blog. You need to do what you can to get the word out on it and attract people to your hosting site to listen.

Email It To People

Whether you start a newsletter or you simply start sending your podcast links to people on your current email list, using your email can be a great way to reach out to people. Less people are using email since social media has become so much more popular, but it is still a great device to use for marketing.

Make sure you use an encrypted email to help protect your information and ensure that you aren’t sending viruses or anything to people. Don’t just send a link, give them a reason to click on it and let them know how listening to your podcast is going to benefit them.

Talk About It On Social Media

Social media is an excellent source for promoting anything and everything. Make sure you do more than just share links to your podcast from your personal page though. You should set up a business page, at least on Facebook, for your podcast itself.

Use the page to introduce people to your podcast, to give them info on your upcoming shows, and to share links so they can listen. Social media will be one of the best places to get the most listens. And it allows fan to easily share your links as well.

Start A Blog And Website

Start a website where you can share your podcast host link. It gives you another place to introduce people to your podcast as well. They can see what you look like, learn about the reasoning behind your podcast, and more.

Plus, it gives you the opportunity to start a blog. Your blog can delve deeper into the things you’ve covered in your podcast. You might want to limit the amount of time your podcast takes up, so you don’t lose listeners, so for each cast you could do an alternative post that goes into more detail.

Make sure that you are podcasting on a regular schedule. Think of it like your favorite weekly TV show; how would you feel if your show only aired sporadically? You don’t want your listeners to get disappointed and stop coming back because you say you’ll do a new podcast each week but are only really doing one a month.

Originally posted on August 29, 2016 @ 10:40 pm