We are now providing professional blogging services for businesses that want to incorporate a coporate blog to their marketing plan.

We specialize in the creation and marketing of blogs for businesses providing professional blogging to increase the awareness of your company, products, and services.

Blogs are an emerging marketing tool for your company’s advertising effort. They help you attract new clients, build your relationship and loyalty with current clients, and demonstrate your expertise in your industry.

-Set up a blog to integrate into your existing site

-Write blog posts to keep you communication up-to-date

-Ghost blogging and article writing for busy executives

-Viral marketing to increase your blog’s awareness and traffic

We are business people and we understand how to build value through corporate blogs and corporate blogging for your target audience. We specialize in business products, business services, and the energy field (oil, natural gas, alternative energies)

A business blog will allow you to connect directly with your audience quickly and friendly. Business blogging is an effect marketing technique used by CEO’s, executives, management, and marketing companies.

Call me today at (512) 589-0920 for a free consultation.

Or email me at damon @ ceoconsultant.com

You can view all the services we offer here at CEOConsultant.com

Q: We have hired a interior design company to come into our office and make it more professional and comfortable to clients. Our office is located in an old historic house that has been rezoned as commercial space and we are a small law firm practicing family law. What types of changes will they be recommending.

-Stan, Michigan

A: There are a lot of things you can do to a historic house that has been deemed a commercial space. If your focus is on family law, then it only makes sense to have an office in a house. I have seen a lot of family law lawyers do exactly what you are doing right now. In their offices that I have visited it felt very comfortable adding chandeliers on the ceiling along with big leather couches and bookshelves in the waiting area. This allows your clients to calm down since they are in a “cozy” type atmosphere and not a busy office building.

Q: We have an employee that has been going through addiction treatment for the past two months. He is scheduled to come back to work on Monday. How do we put this employee back into his old role and reacquaint himself to the job?

-Susan, Florida

A: After any long absence from work, the employee will have to catch up to any changes the business has made. These changes could include policy, method, or structure. You will need to take a day or two to allow the employee to become familiar with any and all changes that have happened in the workplace. Once they are comfortable, you can allow them to go on with their daily tasks.

Isn’t it great for people when minimum wage is increased? Last week, the lowest tier in the employment sector saw their wages increased from $5.15 to $5.85. Over the next two summers the minimum wage will increase another $0.70 to $7.25 by July 2009.

John Kerry said in a report that:

“In fact, the last time Congress raised the minimum wage, our country experienced the strongest economic growth in decades. We saw lower unemployment, lower poverty rates, and lower inflation.”

Somehow, Senator John Kerry is trying to argue that the technology boom of the late 1990’s was caused by the increase in minimum wage in 1997. This is a bad correlation because if it was true, we would have an economic boom each time they raised the minimum wage. History tells us that this is not the case. In fact, with the newest minimum wage hike, it looks like we’ll be going into a recession with the sub-prime mortgage fallout which will trickle through the rest of the economy as the S&P has its biggest two down days since September 2002.

Minimum wage hikes hurt more people than they help.

A poll last year by the Gallop poll said that “86 percent of small businesses would not be impacted by an increase in the minimum wage“, however in a much more recent survey it said that “nearly 60% of small business owners will not be able to off-set the cost of the wage increase.”

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that if costs increase, those costs will be passed on to the consumer. Now, that small business owner will be paying more to his vendors for parts and supplies, and he will also have to pay more for his employees to put those parts together. It would be noble of him to say, “Well, I don’t want to raise my price so I’ll have to live with my profit margins being smaller”. The more common response is “I can keep my prices the same but I won’t have enough to keep all of my employees or hire new ones. Also, I have a family to feed. I will have to increase my prices so I can keep all my employees, maybe hire new ones, and provide for my family”.

That same report says that small businesses have the hardest time handling wage increases. They now have to look at payrolls and budgets so they can eliminate jobs or other resources so they can still run their business. Not only will they have to lay off some workers, they may also have to stop new hiring altogether.

Those already on fixed incomes will be the hardest hit when goods and services are increased to meet the demand of higher minimum wages employees.

What once cost $1.25 to purchase will now be $1.50. That’s what happens when minimum wages are increased. Increased costs do not promote increased production.

In the end, minimum wage hikes don’t solve the problem of these employees finding better paying jobs so they can increase their quality of living. It just keeps them exactly where they are in life. Their paychecks may be bigger, but their bills will offset any financial increase in their paycheck.

Minimum wage should be a discouragement so employees find something better, not an opportunity to be cheered.

A recent Yahoo survey says that employees who feel undervalued and boredom are wasting up to 20% of their time at work. Typically they are surfing the Internet or gossiping with fellow coworkers.

As a manager, the best way to combat this is to delegate more tasks to your employees and add some daily praise in the mix and they will feel more valued. Creating a culture of valued employees will raise the company’s morale and lead to either higher revenue or decrease costs. However you look at it, it will raise the bottom line!

To those employees who are wasting time, watch out, the majority of companies are watching when you surf online. For the most part, they have to do it because of compliance. If they did not monitor web activities, they could be found liable in certain court cases or be found to not have sufficient evidence if an ex-employee filed a complaint. Do not take it personally, consider it a business decision.

To you, if you feel like you’re wasting time at work it is your responsibility to ask for more tasks or go above and beyond on your current tasks. If you can do this, and you still don’t feel valued, it’s time to take your skills somewhere else where they may appreciate you and the work that you do.

Training is an essential part of your human resources to better equip your employees with the tools and skills that they need to perform their job functions. It will also add to your employees work performance and meet company goals. The business landscape changes dramatically over time with the advent of new technologies and business theories put into practice.

Training also makes your employees feel like they are important to your business. There is nothing worse than having employees who do not enjoy being at work because they feel undervalued. Training allows your employees to use their mind to learn new skills and utilize those skills at the workplace.

You can either have a training program directly at your business, or you can set up a training program online.

Having a computer based training program established for your business will allow your employees to complete training whether they are at work, or they are at home. If you have a small or medium sized business then an online training program would be beneficial so your employees can complete the work at home. This way, they won’t have to take off company time and you can run your business as usual.

Resource Bridge provides customized learning programs to fit your business needs and can provide training anywhere from the accounting department to the sales team. They have a methodology that will allow your employees to benefit the most from online training and put it into practice in the work place.

Make sure your employees stay up to date with the latest technologies and methods for effectively completing their job functions with proper training. Your employees, along with your business, will greatly benefit from it.

Business is a relationship game. The more you get your name and the services or products you provide out to others, the more business you can generate. If you just stand still and do nothing, nothing will happen. You must take action to generate business.

A new form of building traffic to your website and brand recognition is through text links. You can go to individual business websites and contact the owners for either a link exchange or a paid link back to your site. This can be very beneficial to your business, but doing it this way takes a lot of time out of your busy schedule.

There is a company called LinkWorth serves as an intermediate between advertisers and publishers. They have thousands of publishers that are willing to sell text links on their site. You as the advertiser can go through the different sites and see which ones you would like to place a text link on and process the transaction all through LinkWorth. You can also tell them what types of sites you want to have a text link on and let them sort through their list of publishers and place them on the appropriate pages.

Text link marketing does two things.

First, you will be creating more backlinks to your website. This will increase your page rank and list you website higher on search results. You will be generating more traffic to your website, and as long as your website is professional, it should turn into more sales. All search engine optimization gurus say you need to create backlinks to your site to increase your website on search engines. It’s the concept that the more exposure you have and the more sites that link to you, the more people will come to you.

Second, you will be piggybacking on the readership of the sites you place text links on. If you sell services to businesses, you want to make sure you place your text link on business websites. The visitors to that website will already be interested in business and business services or products and are more likely to purchase your service or product when they click on the text link you have placed on that page. If the other website has a link to yours, it’s like a vote of confidence for you. They are telling their readers that they trust you and if they need your services they should call you.

The cost efficiency is basic. If it costs you $20 per month to have a text link on a site, how much will you make from just one client per month? If you make $20 you break even. But if you’re bound to make much more like $50, $200, or $1000 from just one client a month then it pays for itself many times over. It’s like the old saying “it costs money to make money”.

With all the marketing available to your business, text link marketing is a method where you can get more “bang for your buck”. Try it out and let me know how it works for you.

I just finished Jeffrey Gitomer’s book called Little Green Book of Getting Your Way and I thought it was absolutely wonderful to read and a fresh reminder of the skills that I have and tips to improve the skills that I still need to work on. This book is excellent for any sales rep, project manager, or executive to read because it’s filled with information on how you can negotiate with others to create a real “win-win” situation.

Many times, a person will go into a negotiation meeting (or sales meeting) and come away with a feeling of despair because they don’t feel like they got what they wanted to out of the meeting. That is because that person didn’t go into the meeting prepared to negotiate and compromise. Or the person sitting across the table was so good at negotiating and had a feeling that they had to win and you had to lose. You shouldn’t do business with these types of people because it’s not going to be a good relationship for you in the long run. There are too many good people, companies, and deals out there to sacrifice yourself for someone who will not compromise or give you the things you need.

After reading the book you will not only be able to identify the people who you should work with, but you will also learn how to identify the key issues that face them and how you can solve their problems with your products or services.

You may be an excellent negotiator, but if you feel you need your speaking, writing, presenting, persuading, influencing, or selling skills touched up, check the book out and use it as a tool to become better.

Little Green Book of Getting Your Way is a quick and fun read and you can place it somewhere convenient to use it as a reference later.

If you’ve read the book, let me know what you think about it in the comments section.

A portal is a central place for making all types of information accessible to an audience of varying range.

Teams come in all shapes and sizes and range in experience from the intern to the CEO of a company. An intranet portal for a company is a place where all of these different levels of employees can come together and share ideas, thoughts, projects, and other work related material to create a better work environment to either decrease costs or drive revenue for the company.

There is a lot of research on how teams function together and the dynamics that they can bring to your business to produce more, work faster, and reduce costs or bring in higher profits. The easier it is for these teams to share and collaborate, the better the execution will be on their projects.

One of the most beneficial features of an intranet portal is that everyone involved can stay up to date and informed on the projects they are working on. The thing that slows down team work the most is when the people involved don’t know what the status is on the work or who needs to complete their work before the next step can be taken. Portals solve that dilemma by allowing everyone who can access the portal the status of the projects, who’s responsible for what, and when those responsibilities will be completed.

Portals also allow members of a team to access information, documents, and other critical data while away from the office. So whether they’re at home, away on business, or just working remotely, they can still be an active participate on projects and complete their responsibilities on time.

You can also set up your portal to allow outside contractors and consultants to complete work on your projects. The security settings can be set up to allow a consultant to work on one particular project or multiple projects at the same time. This allows you to control what they can access and how much information they will be able to see.

My company has its own intranet portal because of the reasons stated above. We all have our satellite offices, but the use of a portal allows us to complete our projects and come up with better processes to work more efficiently. You can set up your own intranet portal with the help of Sharepoint Portal Consultancy who offer their services to companies looking to set up their own portals and improve the way your team works together.

If your company wants to be more efficient, having a portal is the most cost effective solution. You will see your team collaborate more on their projects while completing the required tasks more quickly. The end result will be bringing products and services to market faster, or resolving internal processes quicker to meet your business needs.

Many companies outsource their fulfillment services to save time and money running their business. Most small and medium sized business do not want to hire an employee to run their fulfillment division because frankly, they don’t have that much to do. Unless that employee has other responsibilities, there should be no reason to hire a person to run your fulfillment duties. Outsourcing it is the most cost effective way to handle those tasks.

So, where do you start when looking for fulfillment companies to work with? First, you have to understand what your companies marketing strategies are and how a fulfillment service will benefit your company. You can find companies that can provide a complete turnkey solution to where they store, process, and send all of your company’s literature and marketing pieces. Some of these companies also offer marketing services so they can put together your literature and marketing pieces. You will have to have a realistic budget put together so when you’re locating your fulfillment business partner you will be able to decide if their services will remain under your budget.

Once you’ve done these two things, you should have a better understanding of the products, marketing pieces and the fulfillment services you will need.

Just with any employee you hire, you want to make sure that an outsourcing company understands your business and you can have a beneficial working relationship with that company. Too many businesses try to do too much and control everything. If you want your business to go to the next level, you will need to find quality partners to work with to ease the burden on yourself. Once this is done, you will be able to focus more on your expertise and the products you offer to clients. This in turn will increase your sales and bring in more revenue.