Month: Jul 2012

  • Use your words wisely and sparingly.

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    “If I have made this letter longer, it is because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” -Blaise Pascal.

    I really like this quote as it spells out exactly the point I am going to make. The better you know the subject matter you’re writing about, the shorter and more direct your writing will be.

    You see, it takes very little skill to put down in words everything you know about a subject, but reading everything you know about a subject is not what your reader is looking for. Your reader is looking to understand the message you are sending in as short a time period as possible because people’s time is precious to them.

    For some subjects where there is a great deal of technical information, the piece you’re writing will have to be long enough to incorporate all the necessary details, but with subjects such as social media, that technical detail is not necessary unless you’re writing tutorials to teach new recruits and thus you can convey your message in as few words as possible.
    We can break down the content you’re sharing into three categories. The heading, the content, and the message.

    The heading should be relevant to the subject matter being discussed and not something that’s used to get people’s attention. “shooting at the cinema” will get attention, but if you are discussing how to make a Sunday roast, you will have a lot of disappointed readers.
    The words you use should be the simplest possible in order for the piece to be easily understood. I have started to read a few articles in my time where I needed a dictionary to understand the language being used, and the only message I received was, “I must get away from this article as quickly as possible.”

    The message should be relevant right down through the piece you are writing, if you flesh out your original thought with information that doesn’t complement the original statement, the reader is just going to get confused as to what the article is about.

    The message of this post is that if you can communicate your message using twenty words, only use twenty words.

    Quality not quantity is important in every aspect of business, including writing.

  • “Outsourcing is essential to Growing Your Business in our current economy”

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    “Do what you do best and outsource the rest” is the only way to survive and thrive in our current economy. The banks are doing what they do best and are banking away what money they have until enough business’s prove that they don’t need the money they are looking for. The only alternative for small business is to concentrate on the core business and outsource the elements of their business that they are not efficient in.

    What is outsourcing?

    Outsourcing is defined as any task, operation, job or process that could be performed by employees within your company, but is instead contracted to a third-party for a given period of time.

    History of outsourcing

    Outsourcing was once seen as a strategic tool to gain advantage in the world of supply chain management to gain a competitive advantage over the competition perfect examples of this is the car industry or the computer industry where suppliers were expected to set up distribution outlets within a five-minute drive of where the computers were assembled, it was then moved to the services industry where your local call center can and often does all your customer service,  now outsourcing is seen as the only way that some business’s can survive what has been reported as the most difficult period of trading that the world has seen in our current history.

    Why businesses outsource?

    Business are forced into outsourcing by the continuous drop in demand for their products and services, as demand falls, the number of full-time positions also drops. The business is put in a situation where they can no longer justify paying a person a full salary for what can be accomplished in two or three days. No employer likes to be in the situation where they have a loyal employee who has been with the business for years and has shown a great deal of loyalty over that time period. The employer is now left with the choice of letting the business fail or making the tough decision of making the employee redundant and outsourcing the remaining tasks that the employee used to accomplish.

    Businesses that are fortunate enough to be growing in our current economy are also faced with difficult decisions; there is more work to be done than people available to get it done, as mention above banks are not as generous now as they have been in the past, they advertise that they have money to lend but when businesses apply, they are given a different response. In this situation there are two alternatives let the business stifle through lack of drive or outsource the tasks that you just don’t have the time to get done to the standard you wish to achieve.

    What can be outsourced?

     Administration and Human Resources: There are a number of businesses who specialise in secretarial, payroll processing and HR paperwork.

    Transcription outsourcing: Businesses offering transcription services will often include legal notes, emails, newsletters, reports, interviews and press releases to name a few. They will also do the content for your websites, Facebook and other social media sites.

    Accounting: Balance sheets, financial statements, billing, auditing and tax returns are some to the services provided by your local accountant.

    Information Technology: IT outsourcing gives you access to the best brains in IT at a much cheaper cost. Companies can outsource functions like software and hardware development and maintenance. The IT functions of businesses are the most infrequently used.

    Logistics and Distribution: Logistic and distribution companies have networks in place that make them much more efficient at delivering your parcels that you could ever be unless you are Dell and your suppliers have to be within 5 minutes of where the goods are needed.

    Knowledge Process outsourcing: There will always be area’s that will have to be outsourced due to professional and legal requirements. Barristers, Solicitors, Doctors, Engineers and industry experts will fall into this category. These all have expert knowledge and know how to charge appropriately.

    Sales & Marketing: Activities such as Social Media Management &Strategy, Advertising, Customer profiling, Logo design, Campaign design, Public relations, Communication and event management can all be outsourced.

    *Outsourcing allows businesses both large and small to reduce costs that will benefit the consumer and the survival and growth of the business in the long run.

    *If you need to outsource your social media management or just require training in social media please contact me,

    Till Later

    Kind regards,

    Brendan Dunne

    Arrow Digital Marketing

    PS: please click on the links to follow me on Facebook and Twitter. Facebook Twitter

  • Wasting the Time You are Given is Equal to Burning your Hard Earned Money

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    Time is free, it’s how you use of the time you’re given that will cost you money. In any business environment you don’t have the luxury of frittering away your time doing tasks, that with a little bit of planning and organisation you can avoid doing altogether. We are going to look at the basic things that you will do in the office everyday and see how much of your time you could be wasting?

    We will first look at the little things such as finding a pen, a stapler, a stamp or one of the many objects that is required to run an office. We will take a pen for example, if you spend 15 to 20 seconds looking for a pen every day? that adds up to 1 hour a year looking for a pen, and if you charge by the hour you can quite easily calculate the cost.

    Now we will look at finding a file or folder that hasn’t been put where it belongs. The length of time used to locate this file might take up to five minutes, if you spend this time every day, the yearly loss of time is 20 hours. Calculating the cost of 20 hours of lost working time can be far more painful.

    Now we will look at the end of financial year, we spend days trying to find all the receipts and statements that if we had put them away correctly in the first place would only take a few minutes to put together. Calculating the cost of working days is easier but not any the less painful.

    The biggest robber of our time is procrastination, this is normally the result of not putting adequate planning into the tasks that are needed to be accomplished daily, most people find that once they have put in adequate research the task at hand is usually done quite quickly, the cost of procrastination can be enormous, many a person will sit a computer for quite some time doing nothing other than wondering where to start. If we put a figure of one hour a day this adds up to 240 hours a year at a cost of $20 per hour equates to $4800 per year.

    Time is free it’s the use of the time you a given that costs you money, put thought into accomplishing the tasks at hand, Put the pen in the holder every time, plan your days or your days will end up looking like feathers on the wind, flying aimlessly from one spot to another.

    If you enjoyed my post please share with your colleagues

    Kind regards,

    Brendan Dunne

    Arrow Digital Marketing.

    PS: please click on the links to follow me on Facebook and Twitter. Facebook Twitter