July has come and gone! Check out what was launched on our networks. Videos from Michigan Chiropractic Association, Fraser Trebilcock, Michigan Primary Care Consortium and Child and Family Charities.
You can watch each of these videos on our UnoDeuce Multimedia Channel: http://bit.ly/2jklgle
Dr. Susan talks about how dentistry can be more proactive in the prevention of other diseases outside the mouth. Seeing as there is a definite decline in health that will only get worse, she sees that dentists can step up and help.
To watch the whole conversation: https://wp.me/p8q8pr-1uJ
For more on Dr. Susan Maples: http://www.drsusanmaples.com/
Planning to deal with any disaster or adversity doesn’t sound appealing but nowadays, the advancement in technology and repeated incidences of natural as well as man made disasters has made it very crucial to have a plan in hand.
Natural disasters can be any unforeseen situation like fire or flooding, infrastructure failure, or ransomware infection that can make you shut down your business if you don’t have a strategy. Also, the disruption in a digital system like cyberattacks as well as viruses or malware, power failure or telecommunication failure can interrupt your business especially if you are an online company and have all your data in systems.
So here are 6 most essential business continuity tips to redeem your business in case of such minor or catastrophic disasters.
Business continuity plan helps a company to continue their business and to redeem the business in case of any such unfortunate incident. And in order to develop a plan, you need to identify potential risks and threats that can affect your business at any point, and measuring the possible outcome of such risks.
After that, you can implement steps to save yourself from such incidences like backing up your data, making up a team, and training of the team. You also need to test those procedures with mock situations and ensure you update your plan regularly.
You should have impact analysis of your business prepared as it will help you analyze which business departments, sites or functions are needed to recover. You should carry a complete analysis of your information, sites, and employees to estimate the financial and operational harm caused to your company in case of any disaster.
You should also be aware of the connection and interdependency of different departments of your business so that you can make strategies to keep your crucial departments operational. This analysis will provide you with important information to establish priorities and recovery time frame of your continuity plan.
Damage to the office, equipment issue, or IT disruption can impact the business and cause financial loss. Recovery strategies are the alternate ways to keep your business operational even at a minimal level. You need to analyze your resources like people, buildings and machinery, supplies, and IT data to identify loopholes.
These strategies can involve improvising the office environment in case of infrastructure failures like setting up an office in other building or unaffected side of the facility. You can use telecommuting, entering into a contract with the third part, or developing a partnership or agreement.
Develop a disaster recovery team that would be responsible for the emergency situation and get them trained. Select highly talented, competent, and senior staff from every branch and main departments of your company. Make them in charge of any emergency and implementation on business continuity plan. Every individual should be assigned a clear role and has to be responsible for their tasks and responsibilities.
Keep them involved in making business continuity plan and make them familiar with their responsibilities through repeated testing so that they can perform swiftly under pressure.
While covering the important aspects of emergency management, you should also keep in mind the basic and minor disaster recovery items that would be of immediate help in minor issues and save you from a serious disruption. Make sure that you have working fire extinguishers in every room. Invest in getting your staff trained for first aid and CPR as this can be of great help in danger as well as in general.
Also, keep automated external defibrillation unit and train your staff for its use. Always keep your first aid kit up to date with every essential accessory. Install an emergency alert system that can warn you in case of fire. Every member should have an emergency contact number list and also of other staff members. Keep your emergency exits functional and clear and every employee should know the drill of the evacuation plan.
Last but not least, stay calm and composed. Getting panicked over the problem can only make it worse. Also, it conveys a negative message to your employees. Your worry and anxiety also would affect their performance negatively and can ruin your plan. If you stay relax and focused, you would be able to think about the business continuity and other disaster management plans clearly.
Your execution of the plans would be more clear and confident and you can tackle the situation with great ease. To relax, talk to a loved one, go through all the planning that you have done to tackle such situation and let things go in a flow.
Following these steps can greatly help you to deal with disastrous situation efficiently and effectively. These investments can benefit you significantly in the long run so don’t hesitate to hire a business continuity consultant, getting your staff trained and equipping your office with all necessary disaster management equipment.
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Leona is part of the content and community team at Specialty Fuel Services – providers of emergency fuel continuation services, in locations affected by catastrophic events.
In this conversation, I sit down with Keith Morris, executive director of Elder Law of Michigan. We talk moving from South Carolina, teaching law school, changing careers and of course taking care of our senior population.
For more on Elder Law of Michigan : http://www.elderlawofmi.org/
Dr. Susan talks about what it’s like to be in a new place and how she acclimates herself in a short amount of time.
To watch the whole conversation: https://wp.me/p8q8pr-1uJ
Learn how you can better market your ecommerce business through Facebook, Instagram, and Pintrest. These 5 simple tips will teach you how to increase sales using social media.
Cherilyn and I were next door neighbors ten years ago. Since that time, we have both moved–she moved to a different state and I moved to a different city. Despite the distance of two hundred and forty miles between us, I know that Cherilyn recently started her own online business selling beauty products.
How do I know? She announced it to me and all of her other friends on Facebook. In addition, I know when she’s having specials on certain products or running promotions. And it has all been done without a cent of her money being spent on marketing.
What’s the secret? The secret is social media. Viewers of social media know you and trust you because you have a relationship. According to DEI Worldwide, 70% of consumers use social media as often as they use firm websites to gather information about products. In addition, 60-70% of people believe that recommendations from other people online are “valuable, credible, and honest.”
Consumers Online81% of the developed world now has internet access. Essentially that means that of the countries with expendable income, 81% can be reached from anywhere in the world. Global accessibility has never been greater than it is at this time. But with that accessibility also comes an overload of information and products.
Social media can help shoppers sort through it all. Social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, allows business owners to build relationships with their prospects, as well as use existing relationships to turn friends into customers.
Think about how many adults use social media while at work–just to get a mental break from their jobs. They may be on a coffee break, scrolling through their Instagram feed, when they see your business’s post. With every social media post your business makes, you’re reaching prospects during a time or place that television, radio, and print ads often cannot.
When a viewer sees a post, it can be almost like magic. According to Forbes contributor Jayson DeMers, “studies have shown that social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing.” And an IDC study released in 2014, found that buyers that use social media have 84% larger budgets than buyers that don’t. That’s a powerful formula!
Most of the developed world has internet + social media users have larger budgets + 100% higher closing rate = success!
Social media can bring you more leads and more sales without investing a fortune in marketing. However, social media marketing often falls flat. So I’ve gathered five tricks to help you successfully connect with your customers.
(Thanks Hubspot for these great stats!)
So next time you are searching for a way to boost your sales, take a closer look at social media. It’s a great way to build your brand and boost your sales.
Developer: Vidlab
Cost: Free (in app purchases)
App Overview (from iTunes): VidLab is a multi-track, multi-clip video editor that allows you to easily create beautiful, fun videos & photo stories by adding text, artwork, music, video, sound effects, overlays, voice-overs & more to your videos (and photos)!
What I Like: I really like the ability to edit your clips prior to input. I also like how they automatically conform a vertical video to a horizontal video by adding a blurred background to it. That’s a nice touch. The ability to fine tune sound editing and transitions.
What I Don’t Like: No discernible speed ramping features. Does not save projects, have to complete project in one sitting. Filters are limited. Text is hard to manipulate with a touch screen. No music selection, everything comes from your iTunes/music library. iOS Only. Options without in app purchases are extremely limited. So much so, it’s not even worth using the free stuff. The watermark.
What I Think is Special About the App: The ability to choose to do a video, a collage or a slideshow is a nice touch and offers variety.
Dr. Susan is a practitioner of total health dentistry. But what exactly is it? She explains in this video.
To watch the whole conversation: https://wp.me/p8q8pr-1uJ
For more on total health dentistry: http://www.drsusanmaples.com/total-health-dentistry.html
There’s a reason plenty of businesses have embraced social media marketing wholeheartedly: it gives them the chance to reach a wide range of potential customers. Facebook alone had approximately 2.19 billion active monthly users in the first quarter of 2018. Additionally, surveys indicate that people tend to access social media platforms multiple times a day. This gives marketers many opportunities to reach their audience.
Of course, marketers still need to abide by key best practices in order to leverage social media to its full potential. Partnering with experts at a YouTube or Facebook marketing agency can be a great way to learn these practices. This guide will also help you better understand each major platform, and how you can advertise effectively on them.
Facebook is one of the most useful social media platforms for marketers, not only because it boasts a high number of users, but also because it offers tools to enhance and monitor a campaign.
Facebook allows marketers to target specific types of people when they run ads, using factors like geography, interests, and demographics to define an audience. Facebook also lets marketers track a wide range of metrics to assess how a campaign is performing.
It’s worth noting that Facebook is helpful because it allows marketers to post several different types of ads, including video ads, carousels, and individual images with text. To start using this platform, create a Facebook Business account.
Did you know that 80% of Instagram users say they follow at least one business on the platform? That may be because Instagram lets marketers run visually compelling ads that don’t feel like they’re cluttering a user’s feed.
On a platform like Facebook, where posts can take several different forms, an ad doesn’t always blend into the newsfeed naturally. On Instagram, where the vast majority of posts are pictures or images, ads are more seamless. Brands can also leverage hashtags to attract customers interested in similar products or services.
YouTubeContent marketing is effective because it offers customers genuine value. Video content marketing is helpful because, as long as a potential customer watches a video through to completion, this type of ad lets you maintain engagement for an extended period of time.
Brands can publish videos on YouTube that tell a deeper story or offer more information than a basic image and text ad could. Companies can also monetize their channels with ads from other businesses.
According to some experts, LinkedIn remains the most effective social media platform for marketing a B2B business. That’s because the user base typically consists of professionals who use the platform to post or find jobs and network with others in their industry.
LinkedIn is unique because you can generally be confident a person using it is willing to interact with a business. In fact, that’s what the platform is designed for. This isn’t the case with other social media sites, where users may typically rely on to stay in touch with family members or friends.
Because Snapchat is particularly attractive to Millennial users, it’s a helpful marketing tool for brands that serve younger customers.
Of course, Snapchat content is designed to disappear after a set amount of time. Instead of using it to publish evergreen marketing content, marketers can use Snapchat for more spontaneous and exclusive advertising tactics. For example, you could publish a short video of a behind-the-scenes event related to your brand. Customers will appreciate the innovative form of advertising you publish on this unique platform.
Deciding which of these platforms to focus on involves evaluating what kind of business you run. If you tend to serve other brands, LinkedIn is essential. If you market to Millennials, you need to be on Snapchat. Facebook, on the other hand, can be useful to companies in a wide range of industries.
As always, it’s important to experiment. The more you play around with different social media marketing tactics and platforms, the easier it is to find out what does and does not work.
About the Author: Rae Steinbach is a graduate of Tufts University with a combined International Relations and Chinese degree. After spending time living and working abroad in China, she returned to NYC to pursue her career and continue curating quality content. Rae is passionate about travel, food, and writing (of course)
Developer: Vizmato
Cost: Free (in app purchases)
App Overview (from iTunes): Now you can make great looking videos within minutes! Vizmato is an easy to use Movie maker, that let’s you add filters, themes, music, effects and text to make your videos super cool. Share these videos with your friends on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Whatsapp and other social media channels!
What I Like: The effects you can add are really cool and easy to apply. You can order your scenes however you would like whether on the import or during the edit. Easy to upload to your particular social platform.
What I Don’t Like: You can only have five scenes. No transitions. Not easy to trim clips during editing. Ducking audio is not intuitive. Limited selection for the music. iOS Only. The in app purchases were weak as a selection. The watermark.
What I Think is Special About the App: Did not care for using this app. I cannot recommend.
Sample Video: