Such a complex process made many global brands and big enterprises undergo a digital transformation, a struggle many still experience when trying to structure such a team. You need hires, but the problem is determining how many. The optimal size of a digital team depends on the size and model of a business. Usually, a project starts with just one “project owner” or champion and grows from there.

In this article, we’ll identify the most important roles or hires that must be a part of your digital business, divided into three distinct groups: The Digital Business Group, the Extended Business Group, and the Digital Technology Group.

The Digital Business Group

At the beginning of the first group, we have a Digital Business Vision Owner who develops key business procedures and goals for the digital property, that includes target market segments and their goals. This person makes all final decisions about the digital product direction.

Then we have the Program and Product Managers. The first ones deal with long-term strategies about achieving the product roadmap, budget and resource allocations and the maintenance of the release schedule. The second ones own the product on a daily frequency and communicate with other groups about the realization of a digital value proposition.

Their responsibilities also include commissions and reviews about customer research for the developing and maintaining the product roadmap while following the company’s vision and the prioritization of the backlog of changes and upgrades.

After this, we have Content Development hires that create non-marketing and non-campaign or editorial content for the site. Think in terms of blogs, articles, FAQ, and instructions or help content. Their work is about creating content that’s simple to read and in line with the brand’s voice or tone.

In the end, we have the User Experience/User Interface hires that are whose responsibilities lie in the overall feel and look of the digital product. Their work is about maintaining and developing UI standards which are going to be used as the product is being developed, user testing and the QA about new releases.

The extended Business Group

For starters, here we have marketing hires that work on some crucial digital operations. They’re about developing campaigns and offers to drive traffic, managing executions and email lists, and maintaining and managing the CRM system.

Then we have the administrative hires. Full of mundane and repetitive tasks that consume much time and efforts. You must be able to communicate with such hires quickly and on a daily basis if you want from them to complete their part of the job successfully. Here many companies prefer to hire on a local basis to resolve this problem. For example, a Sydney based business will much more likely search for administration jobs in Sydney than going with the search in other cities.

Next, we have Business Development, which is focused on creating partnerships that build traffic and increase sales or finding new revenue and streams. Customer support, on the other hand, is focused solely on maintaining knowledge about policies, digital platforms, and known problems and their solutions. They assist your consumers and track their interactions to report on trends and their satisfaction levels.

Lastly, we have financial advisors, whose main task is to help you avoid bad financial decisions. They come with strong mathematical and analytical skills and are adepts of business software utilization and of modern technological tools. They monitor the business’s financial health, and how to develop and maintain it. Besides other responsibilities, they handle taxes, manage the cash flow, watch for the company’s expenses and find various growth opportunities.

The Digital Technology Group

Firstly, we have front end developers that select the framework and develop client-side coding procedures for technologies that are utilized. They write the code that executes in the browser section, or on mobiles, in numerous languages such as JavaScript, HTML, HTML5, and Objective-C. These client-side developers drive the necessities for back end developers, in order to create the full user experience.

Secondly, there are back-end developers that manage core enterprise systems, financial and inventory parts and CRMs. They identify the capabilities required for client-side development. They create and enforce procedures for protecting the integrity of the enterprise system, and decide about requests for implementation of new capabilities.

Successful companies today incorporate efficiently into themselves the right amount of manpower, because of two distinct benefits that come with it. Firstly, managers are relieved from multitasking various burdensome duties and can focus on what they most skilled for. Secondly, the vital areas of the business are in the hands of professionals that are able to maximize the results. Identify what hires your company needs at its core business. And in the end, develop an effective process for recruitment, testing, and selection of candidates.

The post The Most Important Hires for Your Digital Business appeared first on Tech Web Space.

Make sure you use an adequate reward system

As you know, if you are using the agile methodology it enables you to assess the project in real time during one of the sprint meetings. Based on this assessment you can get to problem-solving quite quickly. Now, the best option is rewarding the team members who find the most elegant solutions to the problem at hand so that you can solve it and move forward with the project.

The next step is to praise your tech engineers for their efficiency, so a simple money boost is not enough, you also need to implement verbal or written acknowledgment of the great work they are doing. That way your team members will feel appreciated, and know that their contribution to the project has been noticed and valued. Great problem-solving skills are what makes up a great tech engineer, and if you have members of your team who possess these skills it is imperative that you foster them.

Make sure that each member of the team feels included

This is especially important if you are outsourcing. Your team member might come from different walks of life ad they can be working from home or from office space. But in order for the agile methodology to work properly, you need to make sure that your communication is the same as each and every team member. The good thing about outsourcing is that it gives you the opportunity to hire people through disability employment services, so people who are highly skilled and have a high level of competence but might not be able to work from an office.

Integrating all your team member into a single team is important if you want to have a unified team that can get the job done. In addition, unlike companies that have all their employees in a single space, organizing team building gatherings might get a bit tricky, but it is an important step in running a successful tech team. So you might consider a gathering outside work, once every few months, and ensure that you get all members of the team together. That way the communication won’t only be limited to chat groups and video calls, and you can create stronger bonds within team members.

Make sure you get your team all the relevant feedback

Now, there are several types of feedback. The first one is from you as a team leader. This is regarding the work your engineers do on the project. The second feedback comes from the company, and it is regarding the entire team, its productivity, and overall success. And finally, the third feedback comes from the customers who are the end users of the product your team has been working on. It is essential that your team members get the opportunity to hear all three types of feedback.

Good or bad, they need to know how they performed, what can be better and how the project they have been working for so long has been performing on the market. So use the feedback that your sales team has gathered from the customers, and inform your team about it regularly. This way they will have the feeling that what they have been working on is used and valued, and it is great for morale. Having the end product insight is always a good motivator.

The technical part of running a tech team is always clear-cut, you have the agile methodology and all the necessary process in place for it to work properly. The human part is the tricky one. Nurturing skilled engineers takes time and effort, and it is especially difficult if we are managing a remote team spread across the globe. But it is not impossible, by showing your team members that they are valued and that their contribution is important you are motivating them to work harder.

In addition, making the time to have team building meetings and to provide them with a whole array of useful feedback will make them feel included, and at the same time far more invested in the project they are working on.

The post How to Manage Your Tech Team appeared first on Tech Web Space.

Sometimes, different channels and trends make us forget the initial purpose and the greatest benefit of digital marketing- building strong customer relationships and bringing value to them.

This is where building a vibrant online community steps in. It tells your customers that you care about them, that you want to get to know them, and that you want to keep them happy. As a result, your customers will care more about your brand and stay loyal to it.

When managed properly, your online community becomes more than a random group of people. It becomes a family, where each member makes a positive contribution and helps the rest.

Here are a few tips on how to grow such strong relationships among your community members.

Do Research and Choose where to Build your Community

Before you even start building your community, you need to know what its goals, missions, and values should be. Most importantly, you need to determine your target audience. Based on that, you should choose where to build your online community.

For example, many businesses choose to build and grow a Facebook group, as most of their customers already use this social network. Building a Facebook community is great, as it doesn’t have limitations for the number of group members and constantly gets updated. One of such updates is their recent Watch Party that lets group members watch videos simultaneously and communicate in real-time.

LinkedIn groups are also popular both among freelancers and businesses looking for new clients or partners. Many brands like Nomad List also choose Slack to build their communities, as it offers greater flexibility.

Keep your Community Members Engaged

Choosing the right platform for your community and targeting the right people is just half the job done. The other half is to keep your community members engaged and help them understand what value they’re getting by coming back to you regularly.

#1 Communicate regularly.

Building an online community comes with great responsibility. This is a place your customers visit to find answers to their questions and solve specific problems. And, they expect fast and accurate answers. This is why you need to keep your communication consistent. When publishing content, do so when your community members are active. Also, monitor your customers’ questions and try to provide real-time answers.

#2 Don’t be overly promotional.

Building an online community is one of the most effective ways to boost brand trust by sharing truly helpful tips and content with your community members. This is not a place where you should share the link to your site or promoting your products. When sharing your content, always make sure it makes sense for the people reading it. Each comment you publish and each link you publish needs to be relevant to your audiences.

#3 Build a sense of helpfulness among community members.

People follow you on social networks or sign up for your newsletter because they’re interested in your brand. They join your community, on the other hand, to find a safe place where they can communicate with likeminded people and find answers to their questions.

So, as a community builder, your goal is to connect your followers and inspire them to help their peers. Erik Martin explained that beautifully in an interview back in 2014:

“You’re not as smart as your users collectively. Just listen more and trust that the people who are passionate about the subject matter are going to do interesting and unexpected and amazing things with control you give them.”

Promote your Online Community

Once you’ve established a solid foundation for your community, it’s time to attract those members that will help you scale it. Here a few tactics that will help you do so:

#1 Start a referral program.

If you already have 10 people that are getting value from your community and coming back to it again and again, why not encourage them to spread the word about your community with their friends and followers? As 90% of online customers trust online reviews as much as their friends and families’ advice, this is a great opportunity to build trust with them.

Sure, these early community members will expect some sort of a reward in return. This could be anything that adds value to them, from access to exclusive product features, massive product discounts, free products, or event tickets. Many brands also use points systems in their referral programs to keep their customers engaged.

#2 Promote it via your newsletter.

The mere fact that your customers are already on your email list means that they’re interested in your brand and content. Precisely because of that, you should design a highly personalized newsletter, with a strong subject line and CTR, to let them know about your online community and the value they may get by joining it.

#3 Use social networks.

Social channels are the right place to promote your brand to a wider audience, engage them, and build stronger relationships with them. As such, they’re one of the most powerful ways to spread the word about your new community. Let your followers know about your community’s latest milestones, share highlights and insights, and even post screenshots. Inform your broader audience about your missions and give them a taste of what they’re missing out.

#4 Work with influencers.

Be it popular bloggers or social media stars, working with influencers brings your brand credibility. In the sea of influencers, you should reach out to the one that aligns with your goals and values and targets the same group of people. When reaching out, make sure you emphasize the value of your community and explain what they will get out of it.

Track the Performance of your Community

To get the most out of your online community, you need to gain valuable insights into its performance. So, set the right metrics and choose a digital marketing reporting tool that will help you utilize this data in the right way. This type of analysis will help you measure the overall success of your campaign, learn which posts triggered the greatest engagement, review your target demographics, keep up with your member count, as well as monitor your key metrics like check-ins, impressions, unique clicks, the click-through rate, and so forth.

Above all, don’t let this data sit forgotten somewhere in your folders. Instead, find a way to integrate your analytics into your digital marketing strategy. Use the information you collect actively to improve your online community, eliminate those practices that don’t speak to your audiences, and keep them satisfied.

Back to You

Growing an engaged online community may be tedious, but it pays off. It lets you learn more about your customers, their needs, problems, and expectations. You can use this data to solve your customers’ specific problems, create more targeted content, and nourish stronger relationships with them. This is how loyal customers and brand ambassadors are born, after all.

How do you grow your online community?

The post Hacks for Growing a Vibrant Online Community in 2019 appeared first on Tech Web Space.

For this, you need an efficient e-commerce team. Both assembling such a team and making it work can be quite hard, which is why you need to build a winning e-commerce team. With that in mind, here are several tips you might want to adhere to in order to make this idea come to life.

Productivity analysis

The first thing you need to do in order to make your team more efficient is to see just how efficient it is at the moment. The simplest way for you to achieve this is to start analyzing its productivity the right way around. First of all, you get to analyze the productivity of your team by finding an employee monitoring tool and measuring their productivity in time spent working.

Sure, just because someone spent six hours in a work-related app and someone else spends two (while idling on Facebook the rest of the time) doesn’t mean that the first person did more in these six hours. However, it’s a strong indicator that you have someone on your team who isn’t fully dedicated to the cause.

Don’t rush it

Building trust takes time and e-commerce has somewhat lower conversion rates, to begin with. This is due to the fact that people tend to check out other offers every time they’re about to make a purchase. This will keep happening even after they’ve made several successful purchases beforehand. This is why the aforementioned method is so useful and reliable. Sure, you can see that your business isn’t going right but why would you be too hasty to accuse your team of being responsible for this.

Maybe it’s your pricing strategy, your design or your outreach that is problematic. All of these can be fixed but if you start pressing your team harder and accusing them when they’re not at fault, you might create an even bigger problem.

Expand your talent pool

The next thing you need to do is find a way to expand your talent pool in order to get a higher chance of getting productive, creative and talented employees. In the digital era and especially in the field of e-commerce, there’s an option of expanding your talent pool without actually having to bring people to the office.

This means that you can hire people from all over the globe and even consult disability employment services in your quest for efficient labor. The latter demographic may contain a ton of hidden talents and checking this out might be the right thing for you to do.

Collaboration and communication

The thing about e-commerce is the fact that while your team members should be allowed to act autonomously, they shouldn’t do so independently. Each of them is doing a part of work that’s supposed to contribute to a much bigger picture. This is why you need to pick individuals who know how to communicate their thoughts and ideas to others and those who know how to actively listen.

Other than this, you need to provide them with a platform (or platforms) through which they can communicate with others. Emails, IM services (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Viber) and similar options apply.

Efficient leadership

Due to the fact that part of your staff (or even your entire staff) might be working from home, it’s much harder to establish a corporate hierarchy, at least in a traditional sense. Still, just because it’s hard it doesn’t mean that it’s impossible or that it’s not necessary. What you need to do is impose yourself as an authority through efficiency and knowledge of the market.

For this to work, you need to constantly self-improve, be passionate about what you do (and let others see it) and know how to set an example. Other than this, you need to be able to admit when you’re wrong, however, grieving or taking too much responsibility can make you appear weak and undermine your authority.

Conclusion

The best thing about making a team lies in the fact that, once things get going, it’ll be able to work on its own, allowing you to assume a more passive (supervisory) role. The above-listed five tips might just be a way for you to get there.

The post How to Build a Winning E-commerce Team? appeared first on Tech Web Space.

A team

The first thing you need to do when starting a business is creating an efficient team. For this to work, you need to start by finding the adequate talent and organizing them into a homogenous work unit. Two of the most important factors for this to work are A) finding individuals with a complementary set of skills and B) ensuring reliable leadership.

For the first one to work, you need to pay special attention during your hiring process and even consider getting some outside help. Recruitment experts or a professional recruitment agency can help you out quite a bit.

As for the leadership, you need to choose a figure of authority (or someone who can eventually become one) and encourage them to develop relationships with their employees.

Workspace

The next thing you need is a workspace, which is even more complex now that work takes place in both the real and digital worlds. Still, if you’re planning to lease an office, you need to find a place that

A) has enough space,

B) you can afford,

C) contributes to your image and

D) feels pleasant to be in.

The problem with this brief four-item list lies in the fact that first-time entrepreneurs often overestimate the first two while downplaying the significance of the latter two items. As for the digital environment, you need to ensure that your infrastructure (hardware and broadband plan) are satisfactory and that your digital arsenal is adjusted to your industry.

Ethical investment

The next thing you need to understand is the fact that every single investment that you make has an impact on the environment. This means that its sustainability and its relationship with the local laws, norms, and regulations might be in question if all you’re concerned about is profit.

Moreover, this is a highly localized issue, seeing as how everything from the carbon impact to the reaction of the local community depends on the region in question. For instance, laws and regulations in Hong Kong are still somewhat different than those in mainland China, which is another factor to consider.

Fortunately, this is not an issue that you have to tackle on your own. So, if you are running a Hong Kong-based company (in order to use the same example), what you need to do is do some ESG reporting in Hong Kong prior to an investment.

Cash flow management

Other than this, you need to invest in a system which ensures that your business is solvent at all times. We’re not just talking about having money on paper. What we’re talking about is having enough cash to cover day-to-day, week-to-week, and month-to-month expenses. Now, there are various mechanisms through which you can achieve this and it’s up to you to make a choice.

You can incentivize immediate payments with a discount, check the credit history of your customers, sell invoices (when needed) or have a close relationship with a debt-collection agency (also to use when needed). Either way, the cash must flow.

Feedback analysis

The last thing you need is a testing method that will provide you with an adequate feedback analysis. For instance, negative comment and a positive one don’t have the same impact on the image of your company or the relationship that your audience has towards it. You need to see which is which, which is why just estimating the impact isn’t enough. What you should invest in is big data and business intelligence software.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, it’s important to mention that you don’t have to tend to all of this on your own. Outsourcing is one example of assigning your tasks to someone else and delegating various responsibilities to your own team members is another. Only with this kind of resourcefulness can your business thrive and prosper.

The post Things to Invest in Your New Business appeared first on Tech Web Space.

Yes, with every trend and opportunity in the EMS industry comes a challenge that businesses need to analyze and eventually overcome in order to stay relevant in the competitive marketplace. With that in mind, here are the five trends that currently dominate the electronics manufacturing field that will reshape the future of the industry.

Green electronics manufacturing is on the rise

The challenge of meeting environmental standards and lowering the impact of device manufacturing, assembly, transportation, as well as the impact that the devices itself have on the environment is paramount. As countries around the globe are enforcing strict preservation and conservation legislation in hopes of decreasing green gas emissions and hindering the progress of global warming and climate change, EMS businesses are finding new ways to cut energy consumption across the board.

Not only is reducing energy consumption important for the environment, but it benefits the business as well by aiding cost control. Moreover, this leads to a positive trend that emphasizes the need for businesses and consumers to choose energy-efficient devices instead of their obsolete counterparts. The pressure manufacturers are experiencing can lead to positive changes in society, and benefit the industry as well as the consumer market.

The never-ending rise of smart electronics manufacturing

Smart technology has become an inextricable part of our reality, and it is set to dominate the near and far future in every aspect of human existence. As we are barely scratching the surface of the potential of smart technology by manufacturing crude AI-driven smartphones and software, the demand for smart devices is on a constant rise.

From smart electronics in smartphones, personal computers, vehicles, and homes, the world stands on the verge of unprecedented levels of global connectivity. This means that manufacturers are starting to partner up with tech innovators who can aid the production of smart devices that boast seamless connectivity between each other. For instance, by focusing on consumer demands, manufacturers can sense the urgency for innovation and seamless integration of smart technology in mature products such as TVs and laptops.

Healthcare continues to thrive with EMS

Aside from the military industry, the medical field has always been one of the biggest proponents of technology and its integration into every aspect of its operations. This trend is on a steady rise currently as well, as the healthcare industry is always in need of a reliable electronics manufacturer such as M&M Qualtech with a forward-thinking strategy to deliver on the needs and expectations of medical staff and patients alike.

Improving patient care while reducing medical costs is the core strategy of the medical field, and EMS businesses are at the forefront of this struggle. From ensuring high quality and reliability, to being the key partners in the lifecycle of a product, EMS companies are invaluable to the medical industry.  

Cost control with long-term strategic partnerships

The technology equipment manufacturing field is constantly evolving, and subsequently, as technological advancements become more refined, controlling manufacturing costs becomes a challenge. This is why original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are starting to partner up with EMS companies in order to outsource product design and development in hopes of cutting costs and stabilizing cash flow.

What this means for their EMS partners is that now these businesses have the opportunity to venture into new markets, thus opening new opportunities in terms of growth and revenue. This is why, in recent years, the industry has seen a surge in strategic partnerships, with EMS companies offering new lines of services ranging from design to product testing.

Manufacturers are expected to reduce delivery times

The timeframe for product delivery from inception to completion is shortening with each passing year, and currently, manufacturers are expected to expedite the entire process for what is now called “rapid delivery”. Rapid delivery entails the use of logistics systems to effectuate faster delivery times for select customers.

For the foreseeable future, delivery speed will play a vital role in the survival of EMS businesses across the globe, as customer expectations are increasing and product life cycles are decreasing due to tech innovation trends.

The electronics manufacturing industry is evolving at a fast rate in hopes of keeping up with the demands set by the consumers, investors, and technology innovators of the world. These five trends highlight the need for EMS businesses to introduce new tactics and business solutions in order to stay relevant in the competitive industry.

The post Top 5 Trends in the Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) Industry appeared first on Tech Web Space.

Well, it does not have to be that way— you can put an end to diminishing efficiency and come on top. To pull it off, you will have to proactively face the issues before they get blown out of proportion. This investment pays dividends down the road and promises to propel your whole company forward.

The right approach

It all starts with the right mindset. Namely, you need to realize that customer support is the lifeline of any business. It lays the foundations for steady, sustainable growth. Alas, it can also hinder your organization. A large portion of customers abandons brands because they feel they were treated indifferently.

So, doing the bare minimum does not cut it. Simply hiring your way out of a perilous situation is not the way to go either. You will have to employ smart tactics and refine the workflow. That way, you can sustain the level of service and gradually ramp it up.

Get clear on your goals

Next, you need to establish clear, realistic, and tangible goals. Customer retention should sit right at the top of the list of priorities. After all, an increase of just 5% in retention can elevate your profitability by whopping 75%. Likewise, you may want to focus on consumer satisfaction, repeat purchases, and referrals.

Through it all, do not get caught up in the process of overcoming growing pains. Fight for financial prosperity and larger market share instead of mere survival. Make an effort to plan ahead of time to tackle the growing complexities and shifting expectations.

Automation and self-service

One of the best strategies at your disposal is to use advanced tools to streamline manual and repetitive tasks that consume a whole lot of time. Email correspondence is the prime example of how artificial intelligence adds value to business communication.

Along the similar lines, put together a complete knowledge pool and enable online self-service. Create an FAQ section on the website, prepare introduction documentation, craft video tutorials, and set up a community forum for customers who help each other. These features reduce the strain on your staff.

Human face of business

Bear in mind that the ultimate trick is to implement technology without losing the warmth and personal touch. So, always have human representatives ready to jump in and make up for the shortcomings of technology. They need to show a high degree of both professionalism and empathy.

Therefore, pay close attention to employee training and hone your recruitment policies. Consider putting together a help desk to empower your team with robust features. You should be able to achieve a significant productivity boost and allocate resources more efficiently.

Raise the bar  

Furthermore, put a standard operating procedure (SOP) in place to organize communication. This set of rules encompasses various aspects such as tone of voice, putting customers on hold, phone call transferring, etc. It leads to more agent efficiency, faster responses, and at the same time, it reduces contact time.

Just make sure the tech infrastructure is facilitating the daily workflow. Have the right internet plan, fixed line, and mobile package to accommodate each and every customer. Providers like Orange have multiple offers that should suit any business. Take your time shopping around.

Ongoing fine-tuning

Finally, you should never waste time resting on the laurels. Soak in customer feedback regularly to alleviate any pain points. You can also directly ask people what they would like to see improved. In addition, revise your policies and processes every now and then to bring them in line with changing expectations and preferences.

Keep up with prominent trends and novelty technologies reshaping the world of customer service. Getting complacent or looking down on consumers is not an option really. Like it or not, they are always right.

Shape up or ship out

Customer support has a profound impact on the bottom line and long-term success. To attain excellence, come up with a solid game plan and identify your goals. Take a holistic approach— assemble a truly customer-centric business rather than playing catch-up on separate fronts.

Select your tech tools and automate processes without neglecting the one-on-one human contact. Take on the increasing workload, delight your customers, and turn them into devout brand ambassadors. They will spread the good word around and feed your sales funnel.

The post 6 Ways to Scaling Up Customer Support and Increasing Sales appeared first on Tech Web Space.

Companies are now able to tap into the global talent pool. Looking for efficient employees across the world has never been easier. What’s more, employees can work remotely for any company on the globe, without leaving the comfort of their homes. However, with all the benefits remote work can bring to both businesses and employees, there are certain challenges both sides must overcome, in order to make the best out of a virtual team. Therefore, here are a few tips on how to build a successful virtual team.

Hire based on your expectations

Remote work is a bit tricky because you have employees working from various countries and different time zones. When hiring remote workers, you’re not just looking for good talent, efficiency and cultural fit. You must also set clear expectations and hire workers who are able to meet them. For example, remote work can make employees feel disengaged. You need to hire workers who are comfortable with working independently.

What’s more, you must explain the rules and protocols of your company and hire employees who are able to abide by those rules. The main reason you must focus on employees who can meet your expectations is that remote work is more difficult to manage. You can’t check up on your remote workers regularly nor can you invite them for a chat in your office. Instead, you must leverage technology to do so. That’s why you need trustworthy employees who don’t need to be managed frequently.

Implement the onboarding process

Onboarding is one of the most important processes when hiring remote employees for your virtual team. The fact of the matter is that your team is indeed virtual, which means you can’t help them adjust to your company and its culture in person. That’s why it’s important to place extra effort into your onboarding process. For example, make sure you communicate with your employees to learn what they need.

Moreover, you can also provide convenience for your remote employees. As an example, if your remote workers are from Australia and they have difficulties working from home, you can find them a serviced office in Melbourne with more suitable work conditions and work environment. Also, be available to them as much as possible in case they have any questions or misunderstandings. In addition, lower your expectations for productivity and results and give your new employees more time to adjust.

Communicate at all times

Communication is essential for building a successful virtual team. Since you and your workers won’t have many opportunities to meet in person, it’s important to establish good lines of communication to compensate. You can leverage instant messaging software, such as Slack, Google Hangouts or others to enable communication between your virtual team and in-house employees. In addition, make sure you involve your remote employees in staff meetings, so they don’t become disengaged from your company.

You can use Skype for video calls or implement some other software for conference calls to help your remote workers attend important meetings. Communication with your employees face-to-face is quite beneficial for their morale and productivity. After all, no matter how independent your remote workers may be, after a while, they’ll become isolated if your communication is falling behind and they may also consider looking for employment elsewhere.

Meet your employees in person

Virtual communication and team building are great for connecting with your remote employees. However, if you want to establish good relationships with them, it’s a good idea to bring them all together and meet them in person. This activity is best attended to early on, so that your employees have the opportunity to familiarize themselves with you and other employees.

It’s a good strategy to foster relations and ensure your remote workers don’t feel left out. In addition, you can schedule annual meetings to re-engage with everyone and ensure they’re all satisfied. This endeavor may be a bit more difficult to organize, but if you make some effort, you’ll be able to manage without any difficulties.

Remote work is highly beneficial to businesses. However, virtual teams are more difficult to manage, especially since not everyone is at the same place. But, with a bit of effort and dedication, you can easily create a successful virtual team that will help drive your company forward.

The post How to Build a Successful Virtual Team appeared first on Tech Web Space.

And, here are a few steps every digital business should take.

It all Starts with a Responsive Website

Given the fact that search engines are still the major traffic drivers, setting up a killer site and optimizing it for search engines is a necessity.

To get people to stay on your site and convert, you need to make it visually appealing, responsive and user-friendly. Sites that provide exceptional user experience and make their visitors’ journey through different stages of a sales funnel pleasant are seen as trustworthy.

Another important step in building an online reputation is your content strategy. Data-backed, relevant, and engaging content will make you a reliable source of information people visit, share, and link to regularly.

Invest in Social Media Marketing

To target the right customers and hook their attention, you need to promote your business across the channels they use. And, social networks are definitely the most important of them.

This is where you can share your content, promote your products, as well as start loyalty programs, get customers to share UGC, and provide real-time customer support. You can even share some behind-the-scenes photos and post fun gifs and videos. This is a great way humanize your online business and make your online presence more appealing.

Work on your Visual Personality

Your visual personality communicates your brand’s values and makes it recognizable among the sea of similar brands. This is especially important in the digital world, where there is no face-to-face interaction between you and your target audience.  

Here are a few elements you should have in mind:

Colors add a pinch of harmony to your brand. Always go with the ones that denote positive meanings and make sense for your brand. For example, green stands for renewal, growth, eco-friendliness. On the other hand, blue symbolizes reliability, sincerity, and confidence.

Your logo is the visual representation of your brand and everything it stands for. It needs to be recognizable, simple and easy to understand (e.g. McDonald’s, Apple, or Nike). Consulting branding experts, like this digital agency from Sydney, helps you create unique design which spreads the emotional appeal, communicates loyalty and relates to your brand.

Fonts need to be simple, bold and match other visual elements on your site. Make sure that the font is visually appealing, well-distributed, and available on all devices your customers use. Once you choose the right font for your site, you should stick to it to deliver consistency.  

The visual content (images, animations, videos, infographics) you create and share needs to be consistent and recognizable. This means that you should always use the same image sizes, patterns, filters, fonts, and colors.

Offer Exceptional Customer Support

To stand out from your rivals, you need to position yourself as a leader in your niche. And, to do so, your online reputation needs to be flawless. Of course, this is something you cannot build overnight. You need to go the extra mile in making your customers happy and it all starts with providing outstanding customer support.

Answer their emails and phone calls regularly and inform them about major changes at your company.

Make sure your site interacts well with your customers- your CTAs should communicate the value of your offers and the information needs to be easily accessible.

Use social networks to chat with your customers regularly or implement chatbots to do so for you. Participate in your customers’ discussions regularly and make sure you always answer their questions. You can use social media monitoring tools to notify you whenever your brand is mentioned.

Share Social Proof

Today’s customers are bombarded with thousands of similar products every day and they don’t know who to trust when making their buying decisions. This is why they don’t rely on branded content anymore. On the contrary, they focus on the experiences of people who have already used the products they need.

In the past, they asked their friends and family for recommendations. But, with the rise of the web, such information is just a mouse-click away from them.

And, for you, this is a great opportunity to get your brand in front of the right people. Here are a few strategies you may like:

• Register your business on all major business review sites and constantly remind your customers to rate you and leave comments.
• Get your customers to review you on social networks.
• Publish your customers/clients’ testimonials on your site.
• Encourage your customers to share user-generated content on social networks.
• Team up with social media influencers to promote your products.

Social proof will boost your credibility, spread the positive word of mouth about your brand, and drive more customers to your site.

Conclusions

Building a strong brand identity will help you rise above the crowd and build trust among your target audience. This way, you will make it easier for them to notice you and, above all, remember you.

What strategies do you use to build your brand identity?

The post How to Create Strong Brand Identity for Your Digital Business appeared first on Tech Web Space.

Yet, the general ideas are mostly the same. The truth is, however, that SEO isn’t easy, but it’s there to make your life a whole lot easier. By simply automating your SEO efforts, you don’t waste as much time as when you’d do the whole thing manually. Naturally, this saves you a lot of time and money, so let’s not waste any more of the same and get straight down to business.

Automating your link building strategies

Link building has been an integral part of SEO campaigns for quite some time now. Creating those quality backlinks is tougher than it seems though. It’s not always easy getting the most authoritative sites to pass on that credibility to you. What’s more, there could, in fact, be backlinks coming from low-quality sources, potentially harming you in the process.

For this very reason, people have created tools such as ScreamingFrog, Ahrefs, SEO Spyglass and so on, to keep a close eye on these unwanted backlinks and have them removed as soon as possible. ScreamingFrog, in particular, helps you deal with broken links (404 not found errors) and fix them. Moreover, they’ll alert you if any new backlinks are created towards your site.

Keeping track of so much data can be simply overwhelming for a single human being, but for technology, it’s really a piece of cake. Despite this, there’s always a need for that gentle human touch, as most of these tools can find and present data rather quickly, but humans still have to decide how to use that data effectively.

Semi-automated content management

Content creation is yet another important factor in SEO, so why not try and automate it as well, right? After all, finding duplicate content, conducting competitor analysis and searching for top keywords and phrases manually is one heck of a job. This is why tools such as BuzzSumo, Google Keyword Planner, SpyFu, QuickSprout exist. You see, Google hates finding duplicated content and penalizes sites that do just that.

Thus, you need to write compelling content that will engage your audience and provide lots of organic traffic due to shares and likes on social media. But how exactly do you achieve this? Simply, by using these tools to analyze which keywords are most prominent for your content, to find topics which are currently trending and evaluate your competitors more closely. Consulting experts from the industry, such as Leafcutter, can also help you with a strategy and improve your digital presence.

With this info in mind, you can then plan your content accordingly and proceed with writing it. Therefore, the process isn’t fully automated but it’s close enough. The data you’ve collected will be invaluable in assisting you to write top quality posts that will bring the most credible backlinks into the fold and raise your site’s authority as a result.

Creating sophisticated reports

Nobody likes doing their paperwork, but it’s a necessary part of any solid SEO campaign. Especially so if it’s done for an important client. Luckily for us, excel spreadsheets are a thing of the past as they’ve become today’s equivalents of stone tablets. Technology has become not only smarter but more sophisticated as well, allowing us to create more visually appealing reports with ease.

This semi-automated process not only saves a lot of our valuable time, it presents data more meaningfully, which in turn keeps our clients happy and content. After all, reports are there for a reason, you need to provide evidence that you’re doing a proper job to justify the money your clients have invested, and hopefully will keep investing, in you.

For this reason, automated SEO reports are an excellent way of cementing the relations you have with your clients and keeping it nice and professional. Likewise, sending amateurish reports will only make your work look sloppy and incompetent. Hence, you should avoid wasting time on writing manual reports altogether and have your computer make more refined reports for you instead.

All in all, technology has come a long way in these past few years. With Google’s algorithm getting smarter with each passing year, new tools need to be acquired for running an effective SEO strategy. These tools not only save precious time by semi-automating the whole process but also do an outstanding job while they’re at it.

The post Make Your Life Easier by Automating Your SEO Efforts appeared first on Tech Web Space.