Category: Leadership

A quick search on the internet for sexual harassment will tell you that little has been done in preventing cases of sexual harassment at work. On any given day, the internet is filled with dozens of news headlines about sexual harassment. Even though most organizations tend to believe that sexual harassment at work isn’t in their workplace, the truth is that sexual harassment is widely prevalent. For this reason, we shall continue to share with you the top solutions to prevent sexual harassment in workplaces.

Define Sexual harassment

As an employer, you must inform every member of your organization about what sexual harassment is all about. What is defined as sexual harassment? This is one question that many employees find confusing. For example, is it wrong to hold a coworker’s hand while at work? The answer is dependent on the situation. If the other worker isn’t comfortable with you holding hands or touching the body, then that can be deemed as sexual harassment. 

Most organizations discourage dating among colleagues. Doing so can help in many ways, among them improving productivity at work. Most importantly, this rule helps curb cases of sexual harassment. It ensures that employees focus on work and not flirting with colleagues. In an instance where one engages the other colleague in unwanted flirting or asking for dates that have continuously been turned down, this may be considered harassment. 

Also, sexual harassment can happen online. For example, transmitting sexual harassment pictures to a coworker is a criminal offense. It’s for this reason that most companies usually monitor work emails to prevent such incidents from happening. The mentioned examples are just a tip in the ice of the many incidences that may be deemed as sexual harassment. 

Professional training

Sexual harassment is a crime. As an employer, it, therefore, means that you should boldly let your employees know that your workplace has a strict zero-tolerance rule to this. While your anti-harassment policies may deliver the message, introducing sexual harassment courses is highly recommended. The training should be conducted for both employees and supervisors. Refresher courses should also be provided annually or as needed. Doing this helps everyone in the company understand the definition of this act and the rights and remedies to those who feel that they have been victimized.

Develop Sexual Harassment Policies

Defining sexual harassment is one thing, but making your employees understand the consequences of this harmful act is another topic, and that asks for attention. As an employee, you are tasked with creating clear and detailed sexual harassment policies. With the policies in place, everyone in the organization will understand that your company doesn’t condone such actions. 

The policies should indicate the specific behaviors that will constitute sexual harassment and that aren’t tolerated. The policies should also include punishments for those who cause sexual harm to others. To ensure that everyone understands the policies well, circulate them widely to every member and ensure that they sign to indicate that they have read and understood. In addition, you can bring in professional trainers to help establish an understanding of the topic and the policies you’ve in place. 

Lead by Example 

On most occasions, sexual harassment allegations at work revolve around the top bosses taking advantage of the juniors. This is sad since most of these cases go unresolved as the juniors fear losing their jobs. As the employer, you should lead by example. It will make no sense setting up policies that you can’t follow. 

According to successful entrepreneurs, having a solid management and HR team is essential for creating a respectful workplace culture. If it means holding management-level pieces of training, don’t hesitate to bring them up. Remember, most of these juniors look up to you for protection. If you don’t lead by example, the employees won’t feel comfortable approaching you with such an allegation. But, once you present yourself as a boss who understands your work, then this means that handling such investigations won’t be a problem at your premises. 

Have a Clear Harassment Reporting Procedure

Generally, reporting sexual harassment cases can be tiring. Many victims may find themselves giving up with the process, depending on the structure you’ve at your workplace. Some may even feel intimidated to report to their seniors such cases. As the employer, you should, therefore, have a clear and straightforward harassment reporting procedure. 

The procedure should be detailed and shouldn’t involve going through different offices for the matter to be considered legit. Instead, you can form a committee that listens to such allegations and carry out the needed investigations before implementing the necessary punishments. With a straightforward reporting procedure, it means that all the matters will be attended to and the culprits punished without making the victim feel intimidated or threatened. If it’s a matter that requires police intervention, you shouldn’t hesitate to bring them onboard so that they can take over the case. 

Take Decisive Actions when an Issue Arises

As mentioned earlier, most organizations assume that sexual harassment cases don’t exist on their premises. The sad truth is that they are there. The big question remains, what actions should one take when a matter of such nature emerges? As an employer, it’s recommended that you respond promptly to reports of harassment whenever they are presented. You should carry out a thorough investigation of the matter and impose meaningful consequences on the culprits. 

Taking swift and informed decisions isn’t only good for your company’s reputation, but it also makes the employees feel that they are working in a safe environment. Failure to deal with the issue when it arises sees the criminal employees continue doing so as they are sure nothing will be done. Therefore, you shouldn’t hesitate to take action and let every employee be aware of the consequences. 

Currently, sexual harassment allegations have been on the rise. It’s right to say that the increase is influenced by the fact that most employers tend to ignore the existence of these cases. Mentioned in this article are some of the proven ways you can help prevent sexual harassment in your workplace. Read through the article to see how easy this should be to solve them and the intensity of the topic.

With the prices of traditional academic learning now higher than ever before, online courses have transitioned from a supplementary source of knowledge to one of the most popular methods of learning worldwide. It’s one of the most impactful and fastest ways to spread knowledge to people around the world. 

In recent years it has also become an essential tool utilized by entrepreneurs of all kinds. By teaching your specific field or skill, you can prove to people that you are indeed highly knowledgeable and worth investing in. In which case, an online course functions as a business card of sorts, attracting many to learn from your evident experience and possibly invest in your business as well. 

Here are 8 steps for making a successful online course. 

Choose Your Topic

Your choice of topic is the foundation of your online course’s entire conception and success.

You’ll want to choose a topic that you are highly proficient at, whether your knowledge is formal or self-taught. Most importantly, you need to choose a topic that you are passionate about, and this increases the chances of successfully engaging customers through your course. 

These days any topic is fair game; to list the variety of courses on the market would be practically endless. Use this factor to your advantage and really choose the exact niche which you resonate with the most, and try to align that with what’s in high demand in your respective market. 

Dictate The Course Outcomes 

So you’ve found the right topic for you, the next step is to carefully decide on the outcomes of your course. These are the core deliverables of your course, what your customers will essentially gain from buying and taking your course, whether it’s new skills, knowledge, or an emotional impact of sorts, for example. 

Not only will this be one of the unique selling points to your customer base, but it will also help to ensure that you attract the type of customer with which you intend to interact through your course.

Gather Your Content 

One of the reasons online courses and other methods of learning have become so popular is the sheer amount of rapidly developing information we are exposed to these days. So the art of gathering content for your course lies in what things to exclude, as opposed to what thing to include. 

Your main focus is making sure every predetermined learning outcome has its own dedicated compilation of content. These will be the main influence of what content to include. Once that has been achieved, be sure to filter as much non-essential information as possible.

Outline Your Course Structure 

This is when you start organizing your gathered content into groups that share similar themes or ideas into modules. Once these modules have been grouped accordingly, they should then be ordered in a logical manner that flows naturally. 

The progression between each of your modules must be smooth so that customers can easily digest the information you are providing over the span of the course. This tends to keep them more engaged and motivated throughout.  

Choose Your Delivery Methods 

The next step is to decide on which delivery methods to use for your course. A good rule of thumb is to include a balance of visual, audio, and practical methodologies amongst your course modules. It helps to do some prior research surrounding the learning preferences of your target customer base in order to cater the delivery methods to their needs. 

There are several services that make this easy, even without prior teaching experience. Some online resources can give you insight into how an easy-to-use course creation platform allows you to focus on the content whilst tech, hosting, design, and marketing integration is taken care of. Another top tip is to try to keep things interesting, and courses don’t necessarily have to be purely informal. Some unexpected twists or tricks sporadically placed throughout the course can provide an element of surprise, keeping people interested. 

Filming and Editing 

Now that your course’s foundations are in place, it’s time to start actually filming and editing your content. There are many styles for filming and editing; most of the choices to be made relying on the preferences of your customer base. And what you feel the most comfortable doing as well. 

Try not to convey things too simple, but also be sure not to overwhelm your customers with too many different elements all at once. You can do this with basic equipment at home and basic research on filming and editing, or you could do this with the assistance of a media production agency. 

Pricing and Marketing  

At the end of the day, the process of creating and operating an online course requires time, effort, and money. An investment on which you will expect returns. You must determine where your online course will fall into your existing business model or whether it will need a business model of its own. 

Although there are no strict rules defining how to price and market a course, it should mostly abide by the general trends within your specific segment of the market, both in terms of pricing and marketing strategies. With Teachables offering bundle services, you can offer your online courses at a discounted price. It’s important to note that in some cases, courses can be provided free of charge as a means of attracting interest towards one’s primary product or service, in which case pricing is not an important element as profits are not the goal. 

Set Up Your Online School

There are 3 major ways to sell your online course:

1. Online course marketplaces 
2. Learning Management Systems (LMS)
3. Plugins or software on your website

The most comprehensive method is usually a Learning Management system (LMS). It simplifies the course creation and selling process in an all-inclusive package. It functions as your very own learning platform that you can then link to your website. This keeps all the maintenance and operation functions centralized on one efficient platform instead of integrating the different aspects across several platforms. 

The steps in this article are by no means a comprehensive guide to creating your online course, but they provide you with the crucial elements you need to address throughout the process. By following these steps and putting them into action, you will find that the learning curve is exponential in this rapidly booming industry as you settle into things. 

Starting a business, launching a new venture or making an app will be one of the most exciting and thrilling things you can do. You nurture this awesome idea in your head, get validation from others as to whether it’s worth pursuing and start working on bringing it to life.

We all live in this wonderful, marvellous and adventurous technological world that allows anyone with the right motivation and guidance to start businesses and make a real difference in the world. The question is what you want from this life and if you have decided you want to make an app, it’s quite clear you have chosen the creative route. This path is not for everyone and if you are at the beginning of your journey into this world, brace yourself for a rough ride with ups and downs like you’ve never known before.

The route to success in the app world is riddled with mistakes, pain points and lessons. You’ve got to strap in and become a real student of the game if you want to make this happen and realise your own dreams.

So I’m Making An App, What Do I Need To Know Before Launching It?

Be Prepared For It To Take Time

Success in any sector does not happen overnight and it requires an enormous amount of organisation, dedication and personal commitment to launch an app. They say that patience is a virtue and it’s especially true in the sector given the complexity of the applications and the time it takes to actually build an app, test it and have it signed off ready for wider use by the public.

Real Traction Takes Persistence

Never give up and you will eventually get there. Persistence is a trait that all successful people own, and they never take no for an answer. Become a sponge, take in as much information and believe in the process. Keep reminding yourself that this will eventually happen for you, persevere and persist like you have never done before.

This Is An Ongoing Process That Requires Constant Development

Because you’ve already started down this path you will be more than aware of the ongoing work that is required when making an app. Don’t fall in love with each stage too much, find out what Performance Engineering is as chances are your first ever launch version will end up looking a lot different to the improvements you make down the lines. If there’s anything that the successful apps which have come before us have shown it’s that there will be multiple versions and stages of your app development.

Be Ready To Invest At The Beginning

This doesn’t necessarily just mean the financial side of things, but time, energy and effort. Building something from nothing and actually making a success of it is a product of extreme investment on the front end. Ensure you have your overall business plan ready, along with an idea of the team you want to build and experienced mentors in place to guide you through this whole process. Be ready to invest more time into this than you have any other project.

You Need Exposure In Order To Explode

So it’s all good and well to have a good idea for an app accompanied by the right levels of motivation and a solid plan, but how are you actually going to get your app to the masses? If you are serious about this and want to monetise the app then you need an action plan on how you are going to get real coverage and exposure.

If you are struggling with this aspect of your plan, you could try:

• Researching how the most successful apps build their user base
• Speaking to someone who has done this before, employing them as your mentor to show you the ropes and share both their successes and mistakes with you
• Joining a networking group or finding some sessions to join with other like-minded individuals who could offer you some good ideas or insights
• Reading some books about how to make it happen in these areas

This needs to be one of your overarching goals and be at the forefront of your mind on a daily basis. Yes your app might be amazing and could even be something that the market has never seen before, but if you don’t have engaged users then you essentially have nothing.

This Is A Technical Business

It’s understandable for you to get fully wrapped up in your own little world with your idea and the actual creation of the app. However, you need to be mindful of the fact there is a wider world out there once you have your app ready. 

Where Are You Going To Launch It?

There are certain platforms which you need to get your app registered and signed off by before you can start marketing it to potential users. The main and most obvious ones are for iPhone and Android, so starting to look into how this process works will pay dividends down the line. However, your app might not be targeted for mobiles or tablets so do a bit of research into the best platforms to advertise your app on once it’s ready to launch.

Who Is Your Target Audience?

You might have a fairly good idea in mind as to who the ideal person your app would be used by. Once you form and mould this, you can then start to envision the best ways to market the app based on location, demographic, age and copy or visual advertisements.

It’s incredibly exciting that you are looking into or have already started this journey towards making your own app. If done correctly this can be extremely rewarding in a lot of ways, so throw yourself into the process and bear in mind the points we have discussed above. Taking control of your own life, steering the reigns and leading the way in your own destiny is the most fulfilling thing we can do and gives us complete power in life.

Cliche templates with dull visuals and charts belong to the stone age. Stats reveal that 37% of customers turn to social media channels for making purchasing decisions. Today, with a whopping 2.7 billion active users, Facebook remains one of the most popular social media channels globally. With that comes Facebook reporting into the picture!

Analyzing and tracking social media business activities on Facebook becomes essential as it is the first choice of users for people worldwide. Constructing Facebook reports is imperative to showcase the ROI of your digital marketing campaigns to your investors. 

A well-structured Facebook report garners the opportunity for you to discover promotional insights. What’s a better medium than PowerPoint presentations to showcase your Facebook reports to your clients. 

Slide decks prove ideal for delivering these reports owing to their visual appeal. SlideModel offers a plethora of specialized eye-catching templates perfect for Facebook reporting. This article will enlighten you on how to create the best Facebook reports and further understand how to reach a wide audience, align both- B2C and B2B goals while keeping the existing audience engaged.

Why is Facebook Reporting Important?

Facebook Reports form an essential part of your digital marketing strategy since it allows you to pick goals that bring you growth, further measure your marketing baseline to check how it is performing over time. They help you to present the analytical data in a visually appealing manner. Your ultimate goal with creating them is to make the data easily digestible for your audience. 

More often than not, long and tedious reports presented by professionals send the audience into a slumber. Hefty paragraphs with data crunched in plain bullets do not work their charm and leave your clients with more questions. Hence, it poses essential to leverage unique PowerPoint templates that display your analysis comprehensively.  

Here is why every organization must create beautiful Facebook reports for social media success:

• Assess the ROI of a Facebook campaign
• Highlights the growth or decline of search
• Identifies the strengths and shortcomings of posts
• Features the most valued product by customers
• Tracks brand awareness over time
• Identifies high engagement content 
• Tracks organic vs. inorganic campaign success

Utilizing tailor-made templates like Social Media Reports enables you to record, measure, and hone your socially-driven efforts & boost your presentation manifolds. Save your investors the hassle of sitting in hour-long reports. Instead, design compelling slide decks with all the figures and statistics to wow your stakeholders.

Facebook reports offer real insights into behaviors, page views, and interactions as it contains its set of practices, rules, and metrics. It will help you to track your KPIs and analyze metrics for boosting brand reach and perform better. When done right, forming Facebook reports act as a boon for refining your Facebook digital marketing strategy. 

5 Steps of Creating Interesting Facebook Reports

Leverage Top-Notch Templates

Facebook reports constructed with stellar PPT templates will not only make them attractive but understandable as well. Today’s digital marketing era demands reports to be crisp and compact with a stunning graphical appeal. 

Choose avant-garde templates like Social Media Analysis Reports to present your Facebook insights in an engaging manner. These customizable templates save your time from creating the Facebook report from scratch and instill a professional look to them. Present your report’s KPIs, post engagement, demographics, and return on investment (ROI) with ease. 

Integrate Charming Visuals 

All text and no visuals will render your Facebook report bland. Powerful and attractive visuals prove to be the best companion for it to reflect its content. Relatable visuals help to reinforce the message of your report rather than decorate. Ensure to use HD and vector graphics to create the maximum impact. 

For example, if your Facebook report concerns demographic campaign success, it can include visuals of that respective area. Also, always remember to use high-resolution and non-blurred images as nobody likes to squint their eyes for deconstructing an image. Images and graphics will make your Facebook report lively and aesthetically pleasing.

Color Scheme is the Key (Differences)

The color scheme in a report becomes a significant tool for letting your clients decipher key points and skim information. Color used appropriately can make them know about your best and worst performance. Employ a color-coding scheme to show the differences among various elements. For example, assign red for losses and blue for success. 

A golden tip here is to avoid a color overload. You don’t want your report to resemble a coloring book. Keep the color scheme subtle and use them consistently. Keep in mind the color contrast. Always place light text on a dark background and vice versa. The goal of your color scheme must be to highlight the chief points in your report rather than distract. 

Data Visualization

Add some vigor to your Facebook reports with impressive data visualizations. Employ charts, timelines, flowcharts, diagrams, shapes, and tables to display your data elegantly. You can employ parallel coordinates, heat maps, 3D charts, trend lines, and infographics for your pricing strategy models. 

Remember to keep your data visuals uncluttered and clean. A tip here is to make them large enough for everybody to read what’s written inside the visual. Label them properly and make them as captivating as possible. You can even color-code specific portions in your charts to highlight them. 

Incorporate Return on Investment (ROI)

Social media ROI reports are based on key performance indicators (KPIs) including Conversion Rate (CR), Click-Through Rate (CTR), Cost per Click (CPC) and several others. It determines the success of your money invested in the social media campaign. Any Facebook report is incomplete without ROI figures. Ensure to track your ROI with appropriate metrics to help your clients see whether your brand performed well or not. Present it with powerful data visuals. 

It’s no hidden secret that social media carries a huge potential for brands to build their standing in the 21st century. Facebook is one such platform that has emerged as one of the greatest mediums for digital marketing. Thus, it becomes critical for brands to reach their audience on it and track their performance. 

A neat report crafted by following the above steps can help you create beautiful performance-based reports to present to your audience. Embrace the power of Facebook reporting and reap endless benefits for your social media strategy.

Being a business owner of an online store can be challenging. There’s a lot of noise and competition out there to cut through and you must find ways to stand apart from the rest.

You must be able to attract customers and keep them coming back in the future if you want to be successful over the long term. There are a few ways you can go about doing this that will benefit you and ensure that you continue to increase your leads and sales. Define your target market and then use the following tips to help you get the right people coming to your website and online store.

Apply Best Practices to Your Website & Store

You can attract customers to your online business by setting yourself up for success from the start. Apply best practices to your website and store by ensuring the design is functional and user-friendly and that you use SEO techniques to gain attention. Remind yourself that first impressions count so you want to make sure your website is serving its purpose and isn’t overly complicated or frustrating to use. Confirm the checkout process is easy and that it’s effortless to navigate around from one page to the next.

Connect Via Text Messaging

Another way to attract customers to your online business is to connect via text messaging. Send successful Bulk SMS campaigns here to make announcements or share about an upcoming sale or event. It’s an excellent way to grab the attention of your customers and keep them in the loop of what your company is up to and how it impacts those doing business with you. Many consumers are on their phones these days performing research on a company or texting with friends and family. Jump into their online world by sending out messages that pertain to them and let them know why they should check out your store and website.

Blog Consistently

Attract customers to your online business by launching a blog. Get it set up and then make sure you blog consistently to keep customers interested in what you’re doing. Share interesting and exciting content that positions your business as the experts in your industry. Make sure the content you’re producing is not only high-quality but also sharable. Blogging is a useful tool for connecting with customers and lets your customers know that your site and store is an authority in the marketplace. Update it and post frequently, use visuals, and respond to comments to keep your business blog going strong.

Engage on Social Media

You must be on social media and have business pages you can update and where you can share information with your followers. You not only need to have a presence on platforms such as Instagram but then also take the time to actively engage on social media so that you can build relationships and improve your brand reputation. Social media is an ideal way to freely promote your website and what you’re selling. Use visual elements and interact with your followers often to keep them interested in what you’re doing.

Offer Special Sales & Promotions

Your customers ultimately want to save money and be in the loop about specials you’re running. Attract customers to your online business by offering special sales and promotions to draw them in and keep them coming back. You may even want to consider a referral program so that your current customers can help you bring in more business. It’ll get people talking and sharing about your company and website and is an excellent way to show your customers some appreciation for doing business with you in the past.

Collect & Post Reviews

Reviews can go a long way in helping you attract customers to your online business. Collect testimonials and reviews from satisfied customers and then post them to your website so others see them. Other consumers want to know what it’s like doing business with you before jumping in and spending money with you. Let your reviews do the work of getting more consumers to your online store for you and enjoy all the benefits that come from you collecting positive feedback.

Conclusion

These ideas will help you attract more customers to your online business and hopefully increase sales in the process. Be prepared for an uptick in traffic after applying these suggestions and ensure that each customer who visits your store has a positive experience shopping around. It won’t be long before you have to restock merchandise and come up with solutions for keeping up with all the attention you’re receiving.

If you are an entrepreneur, it would be safe for us to assume that you have a website to market your business online. After all, a website is an essential tool today for business growth as it defines your corporate identity in the digital world and lets users learn about your brand and how to reach you. That improves your prospects of capturing more leads and driving sales and revenue. 

With that said, putting up a website and keeping it operational are two separate things. Just because your website exists and shows up in search results does not mean that your job is over. That is just the beginning. You must focus on maintaining your site regularly to ensure that it remains secured and visitors do not experience any annoying glitches or sluggish performance. An unresponsive or outdated website can be disastrous to your business as it is a surefire way of losing customers. 

Here is a list of some vital routine maintenance checks that you need to perform to ensure that your business website works flawlessly without any troubles.

Keep It Updated

An essential website maintenance habit you must develop is to keep it up to date by installing new updates now and then. Whether you use WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or any other Content Management System (CMS), you must update it constantly to keep your online storefront functioning perfectly and protect it against any security threats. Avoiding regular software updates leaves your site vulnerable to cyber attacks, which can be disastrous for your business. 

Besides, keep your plugins updated too. Outdated plugins can make your website buggy, affecting the usability of the site and leading to a frustrating user experience. Long story short, always keep your website, plugins, and themes updated to the latest versions to mitigate security risks and provide an optimal user experience. 

Create Backups

An easily overlooked aspect of a smoothly functioning business website is creating backs up every month. It is an essential element of website maintenance and should be high on your list of priorities. Regularly backing up your site would ensure that you do not lose out on anything if your site breaks down due to any updates or system failures. 

Backups are also crucial from a safety and security perspective. They will store your content and other sensitive data safely and securely in the event your website gets hacked. As mentioned by a WordPress website maintenance company, it will enable you to restore your website using the offsite backups and rebuild it from where you left instead of scrambling to fix it from scratch. That would help avoid any downtime that could cause the loss of valuable potential customers.

Test It In Different Browsers

It is essential to check your website’s performance across multiple browsers to ensure a smooth online customer journey regardless of which browser they are surfing. We recommend that you test your website on the most popular ones- Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, and Internet Explorer. 

Check the compatibility on each by observing if the layout and display fit perfectly, how long it takes to load pages, or any other features that may behave differently on a particular browser. You may utilize various online tools like Browsershots that allow you to test your website’s compatibility with different browsers.

Fix Broken Links

Broken links are links that lead the user to pages that do not exist. Finding and fixing broken links should be part of your business website’s regular maintenance. Broken links and 404 error web pages not only ruin the user’s experience and cause them to stop browsing any further but also damage your site’s credibility and professional outlook resulting in lower search engine rankings. 

That makes it imperative that you monitor your web pages regularly to check for any dead links. Google Webmaster Tools is a valuable resource to detect and remove invalid URLs and detect other technical errors on your website. They help keep your website running at optimal performance, so if you have not registered your website there yet, do so immediately.

It is easy to set up a website and forget about maintaining it until something unfortunate happens. Neglecting your site’s maintenance may impact its functionality and leave it vulnerable to cyber attacks, which can be detrimental to your business. 

The good news is that you do not have to be a technical wizard to keep your website up and running. Performing some simple routine maintenance checks will ensure that your website runs smoothly and renders a delightful user experience.