Do you really know who you truely are?

Discover Wonderful Facts About Your Personality Here

When we start a business we start all sorts of analysis about consumer behavior, how to sell and how to get more visitor. But what we often overlook the most important question. Do I really know myself? Can I list my 5 strength and 5 weakness in 10 minutes? I guess most of the people can’t answer any of the above the questions.

The link I provided will give you a whole new perspective about yourself. If you know why you are exceptional, you can connect better with your consumers. Better connections always perform better while generating money.

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Using Instagram to Grow Your Blog or Personal Brand

Branding

Thanks to the writer for this fresh perspective. I loved it and you can use her advice to give your business a boost.

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The Daily Post

Some of you may not use Instagram as actively as others, but even if you’re not an addict of the app, it might offer a new outlet to build your personal brand. After all, your WordPress.com site is just one aspect of you — if you’re on Instagram, perhaps you can find ways to bridge these two networks and grow your online presence.

Looking to give your site a boost and reach new audiences? From a custom domain to advanced SEO tools and more design options, there’s a WordPress.com plan that’s right for you.

Lead new visitors to your site

The simplest thing you can do? Include your WordPress.com site URL in your Instagram profile, so your followers can access and explore (the mobile version of) your site.

If you post regularly, keep the link in your Instagram profile current. If you’re a travel photographer who has just…

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Scenario Analysis: Basic tool helps generate great insight

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Nothing in this world is certain not even the sunlight. There could be a patch of cloud on the sky that will make your day a gloomy one. There are two things you can do about it hiding away from it or consider it as a reality and plan around it. Any single projection of the future is clearly vulnerable to disruption by a range of different factors. Scenario analysis is the father of all strategy that helps you to understand and get prepared for all possible outcomes. It is not always true that bad things always come from bad places. Even a favorable environment can create unforeseen trouble for you.

Sometimes Bad comes from good places

Suppose, you are the second largest provider of movie entertainment provider in your community. Suddenly, the largest and your only competitor goes bankrupt or stops serving. What will happen? you will start facing more consumers demanding entertainment from you. This is a good thing right that you have more consumers, more profit etc. But think twice are you really ready to serve the increased demand. If you focus more on your newly developed consumer base you might lose your older, tried and true ones as there is a capacity issue deal with. So, if you fail to manage all your consumers properly you might even hurt your overall brand perception because frustrated consumers might create a bad word of mouth and make your loyal consumers doubt your service quality. If you are not ready a favorable situation can turn extremely bad.

Scenario Analysis helps you bring these uncertainties into the open and gives you a rational and professional framework to prepare strategic decisions and action plans to face those uncertainties.

The Best of This Tool

Scenario Analysis facilitates you to make decisions in the context of the different futures outcomes that may come to pass. What i love about this tool is it can be used any time as you will develop different future stories about you, your business, your profession, your market or the world. How things could turn out or change if certain trends continue/discontinue and if certain conditions are met/fail.

Start Writing Your Story

It is as simple as writing your story. If you already have a habit of keeping a diary you are half way there. Now start listing all about your business and key trends like a story. Like,
“My name is Fitz. I am an ice cream parlour owner. I have 5 people working for me. My competitor is a witch who always try to find new magics to hypnotize my customer with the promise of new flavors.”
Though this is an awfully short story it has some insights already. Like you have a small ice cream parlour which is getting trouble due to continuous innovation from the competitor side. Now here you developed your problem. This is only the beginning.

Developing Scenarios

We now know the story, lets start develop some simple scenarios. But this time try act as a third person who is analyzing the story rather yourself. Why? if you try to analyze the story as yourself you might try to look good and make some false pretentious assumption what will ruin the whole idea. Rather if  you take a bird’s-eye view as a third person you will understand your business better and avoid the chance of misjudging the situation.

Scenarios

  • Fitz introduce several new flavors and start getting his customers back.
  • Fitz keep indifferent about introduction of new flavors by his competitor
  • Fitz try something new and die (joking I just saw The Croods)
  • Fitz introduced something new as a value added service (like a karaoke or 8 ball pool)

Pains and Gains

  • Cost of introducing new flavors vs. value generated by new customers
  • Cost of remaining indifferent vs. loss of customer lifetime value (the total revenue generated from a customer’s lifetime expected purchases)
  • Cost of introducing a value added service vs. revenue addition generated by old and new consumers

The Result

Now start quantifying all the factors based on your confident judgement and if possible try to take help from other businesses in your community which tried to follow the same path. Don’t make a judgement just because you think so. I always try a different approach that is to discuss my decision with a person who has no idea about my business and another person who has reasonably good idea about my line of work. Well you are thinking why should I discuss it with someone who doesn’t have a clue about what I do. The answer is simple, most of your consumer are like that person who just comes to your place to consume the service and don’t know anything about your business. The ignorant person sometimes give you some great insight as they can think outside your business whereas you and your educated friend could not think differently as you are bound to think structurally considering all odds of the industry.

I hope you can now make great use of this tool and soar you business through troubling days. Don’t forget to come back. See ya and thank you for reading this strategy blog written for dummy’s by a dummy. Ha ha ha!
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Strategy: Do You Really Need One?

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From the beginning of business competition strategy saw its inception to bring an edge over the competitors. Now every process and every business has its own strategy for every operation like HR to Communication. Yes if you are an entrepreneur you are thinking: “I don’t have a strategy” but are you sure you don’t have one. When you pick clients do you prefer certain businesses? When you are picking an employee are you looking for any specific quality? If you start asking yourself all these questions then you will find that you are also using certain strategies. May be not a wall planned one but you have a strategy.

Now the question I would be asking why should I have a strategy? Well, the answer could take several books but I will give you the most important ones.

Easy Management:

Your business is small right now but if you have it inside you it won’t be for long. A nicely crafted strategy helps you to understand your business in a structured way so that you can have control over every part of it even when you are not actively involved and the business will become a complex system of overlapping processes. Don’t wait for later because later it might get out of hand.

Meticulous Planning:

You are not the god to remember every bit of your business and your competitors’ operation and remain everywhere to lead the way all the moment. If you analyze your competitor and lay down strategies for everyday troubles then your people can easily solve them for you. Moreover, it is also helpful for increasing productivity from your new recruits.

Generate Confidence:

Yes, even your clients will like it when they will find out that you are well prepared to face any catastrophe and have a very clear line of sight of where you are going.

Control Output:

Creating a strategy will help you to evaluate your business from time to time for any anomalies or detecting unprecedented situation right when it occurs and will give you the command over your business to keep it on its designated path.

Sustainable Growth:

It will help your business achieve sustainable growth. Well it is different than regular growth. Suppose, you sell emergency lamp and there is a storm. Obviously your sales will rise up immediately but it won’t sustain in the long run and will return to its pre-storm value.

These are some basic reason why should you have a business strategy before you jump into the woods. hope you found what you are looking for. If not visit related articles. Anyways thanks for your visit and wish to see you explore the blog for everyday strategic tools you can use for your start-up.

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