Business consultant, Anne McGurty is passionate about business productivity and social media marketing and enjoya sharing her knowledge with others. She writes about how to be more effective at work, trends in social media and provide advice to small businesses on how to get more done, be more efficient -- saving time and money. Give her 30 minutes and she will help you come up with a strategy to get you focused. For information, visit www.AnneMcGurty.com or call/text 303-881-0174.
Friday, November 13, 2015
Saturday, October 17, 2015
How to Create a Google Plus Page for Your Small Business
Just like Facebook and Twitter, Google+ offers you the opportunity to create a business page to promote your business, organization or a specific product you have in mind. The Google Plus community is growing in numbers and you can take advantage of a Google Plus page to get your business to a wider audience.
I want to take you through the process of creating a Google Plus page for your business or organization. Just like Facebook, you will need a personal profile on Google Plus to get started. If you don’t have one yet, sign up and create a personal Google Plus profile first. You can only create that business page once your profile has been created.
If you have a Google Plus personal profile, follow these steps to create a new Google Plus business page.
How to Create a Google Plus Page
Pick a Category for Your Business
1. Visit Create a business page on Google Plus (or follow “All Your Google Plus Pages” in the pull down under your profile photo) and hit “create a page.” Pick a category for your business. Pick the right category that perfectly describes your business or organization. You can choose from local business or place; product or brand; company, institution or organization; arts, entertainment or sports and other if the specific choices mentioned do not apply to your business.
2. Depending on the main category you select, you will be presented with subcategories that go into greater detail describing what you do. For example, if you selected “local business or place” you would first be asked to provide the country where your business is located and then a primary telephone number. If you selected product or brand, subcategories will include “antiques and collectibles,” “apparel and accessories,” “appliances” etc. Select your subcategory and click next.
Add Basic Information
3. If you have successfully selected the best category for your business, you can then add basic information for your brand, product or business page at the add info page.
Begin by choosing a name for your page and a link to an external website, if you have one.
It’s not a requirement to enter a link to your website but a website with detailed information about what you do can significantly improve the image of your business or product.
Then select the kind of Google Plus user your content is appropriate for. For example, your content may be appropriate for “any Google Plus user,” “users 18 and older,” “users 21 and older” or content that is “alcohol related.”
The final step on the add info page is to check the “I agree to the Pages Terms and I am authorized to create this page.” Take some time to really check out the Google plus page terms to see their notes on Authority, Access, Content, Data, Contests and Suspension & Termination. Once you take note of the terms of use, click “continue” to customize your page.
Begin Customization
4. Begin customizing your Google Plus by adding a cover and profile photo. Click on the icon in the default profile picture and add a profile picture. Select a profile picture from your computer or photos you have already uploaded on your personal profile. Google allows you to select from images on Picasa if you already have a Picasa account and your preferred image is hosted on the photo sharing service.
5. Use the same procedure to change the cover picture. Cover pictures are larger than profile pictures. If you have an image of your product, company or brand that can promote and enhance your business, the cover photo works best for that purpose.
6. Under story, add the ten words that best describe your business. Choose carefully. This will be your business’s tagline, at least for Google Plus users. Your tagline must be consistent with other taglines you have used for branding purposes on other sites. Finally fill in your contact information including phone, mobile, email, fax, pager, chat and address. Hit “finish” to complete the customization of your page.
7. When you complete the basic information, you can begin using your administration dashboard to manage your new Google Plus page. You can use the “About” section of the dashboard to fill in any additional information about your page and begin building your network.
Under People, you will be able to determine how Google Plus users see your business page. For example, you can group your page fans (once you have them) under customers, following, team members, VIPs. You can also see who has added your new business page to their circles and then follow them back to their pages and follow them in return.
Edit your Story to add an introduction to your page. You should complete the introduction with a description of your business and what you do. Keep in mind important keywords related to your business. You can still make changes to your contact information if you like. You can also add links to other pages that interest you or that are related to your business. Finally, you can add links to your other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
Start Sharing Content
8. Once your Google Plus business page is ready, you can start posting to your page by sharing links, photos and videos just like you do on your personal Google Plus profile or Facebook page. Make your posts interactive and engaging by adding photos, videos or links. And you can share your posts with people in different circles.
To make it easy for your fans to interact and engage on your page, Google has provided navigation tabs just below your Google Plus business page name: About, Posts, Photos, Videos and Reviews. All the tabs are shown to visitors so be sure to upload content to give visitors information and updates when they visit your Google Plus page.
9. If you want to find out who has added your page to their Circles, on the left sidebar click “Circles” under “More.” On the display screen, you can drag your fans into one or more of the four default circles and you can also create your own circle.
To interact and engage with your fans, follow their posts, comment on their status messages, and +1 their updates using your page profile. Share relevant information your fans will find most useful. Do not just promote your products, educate your fans as well.
10. Use your Google Plus page to add data to your Google Local Plus page. If you get these two pages confused, you’re not alone. Google Local Plus expert Mike Blumenthal explained to Small Business Trends recently:
One of the issues is that most businesses do not understand that their listing at Google is a search result. And that Google gives the business the privilege of adding some trusted data to that listing from either the Places Dashboard or from Google Plus.
Do you have any suggestions for how to improve your Google Plus business page? What have been your experiences with Google Plus for business thus far?
Source: http://smallbiztrends.com/2013/06/create-a-google-plus-page.html
Build and increase your Google Plus business presence! Know your target audience and grow your business online.
303-881-0174 Colorado/New Mexico 480-442-2014 Arizona
Strategize And Organize Your Business On Social Media With Anne
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Social Media For Business
Share your brand with millions of social media users around the world. Small businesses all over the world have proven success optimizing social media. They invest on marketing and the ROI (Return of investment) is incredibly awesome. However, in order to understand and be able to succeed on getting your business on the virtual world there are a lot of things to consider and be familiar of. And Every business is unique and thus the approach should also be unique.
Social media will increase your online presence which helps you find new customers, expand your audience and gather leads. One example and very important feature of Facebook is their insight for your page and content. When you posted something and as soon as you refresh the page you will see how many reach and clicks you've got. When you explore more of the insight, you will then see the gender, age, location, language, etc of the engage audience. Using this feature helps you see what content for your business is engaging, what content is not working and what kind of audience are of interest. You can also start reaching out to your new likers or followers by inviting them to see more of what your brand could offer.
You are also allowed to choose which target audience you would like to reach for your business.
Social media is such an easy way to learn more about your audience. The key to success for every small and large businesses is going with what the people like or need to read, see or use. In the virtual world you can get an instant feedback if your brand seem to interest them by liking, commenting and sharing your post. Whether it is negative or positive as long as there is an interaction your business seem to be relevant but be sure to work and improve on the negatives!
Also as long as you are online and the potential customer has questions to asked, you can then exchange messages in real time which brings you more chance of getting more leads for your business.
When you just started building your social media account for your business the secret incredient is to ask your friends to like, interact or share your post. For others this might seem awkward but this is really effective and really works for starters. You and your customers can share content easier and faster.
Building a social media account is free but with the overwhelming information around, you could be lost from time to time, one wrong move can give negative impact on your business. And infact investing on social media marketing for your online business is much cheaper compared to traditional marketing.
Social Media like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest will automatically generate similar business for your brand. You can monitor the competitors, their strategic approach, therefore you can improve or create an offer that is somehow unique and an offer that is missing with your competitors.
Using social media helps you build more traffic to your website. The more share, mentions, comments you get, chances are you'll get high ranking on google search engine.
Should you have an account on every platform? Yes but not necessarily. We at Strategize and Organize strongly believed that no matter what type of business you are in, you should have an account for each social media and at the same time we will help you focus on each platform one at a time.
Businesses worldwide are going virtual, social media success rate are increasing from small businesses to large corporations!
Why do we suggest to have your business on every social media platform? Well it’s better to get started than to get lost and left out on the virtual world and no matter what it will increase your social presence and connections.
Strategize and Organize your business on social with Anne. Get started with all of the social networks Facebook Twitter Google+ Instagram Pinterest. We can help you figure out which social network will work best with your business.
Social media for business is a very powerful tool to promote your brand and get in touch with your customers.
Build and increase your social media presence! Know your target audience and grow your business online.
303-881-0174 Colorado/New Mexico 480-442-2014 Arizona
Strategize And Organize Your Business On Social Media With Anne
Saturday, October 10, 2015
Executive Spends Six Weeks Per Year Retrieving Or Replacing Lost Documents
Paper Tiger Top 10 Tips
Did you know that the average executive spends six weeks per year retrieving or replacing lost documents? Naturally, it makes sense to create a system that is quick and easy so you can save that lost time. Here are some ideas to get it done now once you have The Paper Tiger. If you don’t have The Paper Tiger now,download this link to get started. Here are the top ten tips I recommend:
1. Look at the “hot spot of files”. You know the pile that seems the most urgent and makes your stomach churn every time you look at it. Take the paperwork and make a decision on each piece and separate into four piles:
- Reference, those items you need, just not right now
- Action, current projects, ongoing projects
- Toss, you know where those are going
- Timed, you need these on a specific date.
2. When deciding on whether to file something or throw it away, ask yourself if how difficult would it be to find this information again? Does it have any legal or financial ramifications if you were to throw it away? If you can live with the answer of throwing it away after those thoughts, let it go.
3. Set up the Paper Tiger Filing System Software and Document Management, an indexing system that works like a search engine for paper files to help you get organized and stay organized. It’s essentially creating an inventory for all of your files.
4. Use names that you will be able to recall easily. The obvious file names that you’ve used in the past. Then the interesting thing is with The Paper Tiger is that will also be able to add keywords into the database so that any name you think of when you need to find a file, the software will be able to tell you where it is in seconds. So in the case of “Auto” the Item Name would be “Ford Explorer”, and in the keywords section, you would input the name of the company, i.e., “Vehicle, Car”, possible the name of the dealer, the service person’s name, etc., and you might use “Personal” in the Category section.
5. Oftentimes, people receive notices of an event and they never know what to do with the postcard. Set up a monthly filing system (a Tickler File) to keep track of when to throw them away. Create 12 hanging file folders, one for each month. As you rsvp or pull the information for “dress code” or directions. When the day rolls around, you can retrieve it for a reminder. This will ensure that you never miss an event or an expiration date on an rsvp or offer.
6. When sorting through paperwork make a decision. If you’re not in a decision-making mood, have a place set up for “unprocessed paperwork”. Then when you’re ready, if you need to take action, do it now or place it in the appropriate action file. If someone else needs to attend to it, give it to them. If it is something to reference later on, add it to a reference file and place it there. Putting it back in the pile to address later is no longer an option for you as an organized person.
7. When you have a lot of tasks to do for the day, quickly sort the tasks in order of importance. Do what is most profitable or important to you first, then move on from there. Therefore, if you only have a little bit of time you will be addressing the most critical issues first. All other tasks need to be scheduled for the when it makes sense. This final step is critical otherwise you’ll be starting a new pile.
8. Print out reports of what you have inventoried in your filing system, place a folder in the front of each door labeled “File Index”. Having a quick and easy reference when you don’t want to open your computer makes it easier to find quickly.
9. Get into a maintenance habit of printing out a report of all of your files, quarterly or no less often than annually, and identify what you no longer need and purge or create steps to archive via off site store or scanning.
10. Finally, create a time management habit. Take 10-15 minutes every morning looking at your priorities, including your Actions within your Paper Tiger system and pulling files from your Tickler File. Do the same thing each evening by placing all documents collected through the day back into your systems.
Congratulations on your progress, if you haven’t done it yet. Set up your Paper Tiger system now and get started. As you go throughout your day, keep in mind the task at hand and focus on completing that one task. Remember that “things don’t clutter, people clutter”. When we make simple decisions and take action, we can improve the quality of our life at work and at home.
Anne McGurty
480-442-2014 – Arizona
303-881-0174 – Colorado/New Mexico
Anne McGurty is CEO of Strategize & Organize, a company devoted to training individuals to be more effective with the tools and resources to be productive in their work environment.
If you liked these tips, Anne is a dynamic strategist. She can help you organize your business — and yourself — ranging from consulting to keynote speaking and corporate training programs to improve efficiencies in the workplace and improve productivity.
While Anne is best known for her expertise in productivity and expert office organizing, her clients share that her biggest impact comes from her philosophy of “personalizing her programs to fit the needs of her clients so they can streamline more efficiently with existing processes” – ensuring to create a sustainable work environment. This, Anne says, is the most important key to bringing an individual to personal freedom with time and organization.
You can learn more about Anne and her services, programs, and products for small businesses and to book her as a speaker or trainer, visitwww.StrategizeAndOrganize.com.
Twitter: @StratOrg for business, @organiz for residential, @AnneMcGurty for personal
303-881-0174 Colorado/New Mexico 480-442-2014 Arizona
Monday, August 3, 2015
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Why Do People Procrastinate?
Procrastination is the most expensive invisible cost in business today. A recent study of 10,000 U.S. employees polled, revealed that the average worker self-admitted to wasting 2.09 hours each day on non-job-related activities. Considering the average salaried employee makes $39,795, that means procrastination costs employers $10,396 per year – per employee.
It is extremely common for us to put off doing something simply because we are too lazy to do so. However, procrastination goes beyond that. It is a habitual and intentional act to delay doing or completing their responsibilities, and over time, can have severe negative impact on the person’s life. Their overall well-being suffers as well, as feelings of guilt, inadequacy, stress and depression may kick in.
Why do people procrastinate then? More often than not, people procrastinate not because they are lazy. There are many causes and reasons for procrastination, and below we shall identify a few of the more common ones. By understanding the reason and the emotions behind your procrastination, you can then go about getting rid of this bad habit.
Perfectionism
Some people have unrealistically high standards and expectations, and this causes them to procrastinate as they feel that they do not have the skills and abilities that are needed to complete it satisfactorily. They are afraid of attempting it, and not doing it perfectly, hence they make excuses that they need to acquire more knowledge before they can attempt it. The best way to break out of this cycle is to tell yourself that you can do it, and the task is easier than what you think it is. Or perhaps, you need to speak to your superior to draw up accurate and realistic level of expectations.
Anger
This occurs when you find yourself avoiding the task, or simply refusing to complete it. The cause of this could be an argument with your superior, or your teacher or project team. The feelings of anger and resentment against them can translate into an unwillingness to do what they have assigned you to. Another common reason for procrastination could be the anger felt at having the task forced upon you, when you are either unwilling or uninterested in it, and have expressed so and been ignored. This would cause feelings of resentment and result in avoidance. As a business coach, it's important to recognize that if the anger isn't eventually dealt with responsibly, it can be a major block to business and personal growth.
Negative Thinking
This one personally exhausts me! When I hear someone start a sentence with "The problem with me (referring to themselves)" or refers to "see what I have to deal with all the time", I absolutely cringe and think, here we go with a victim mentality. These people who constantly harbor thoughts that they are not good enough, or that they always fail, and are probably just lacking common sense and incapable. This kind of negative thinking makes it difficult for them to attempt projects, especially important ones as they feel so inadequate that they should not even be doing a task of this magnitude or importance. The root cause of this form of thinking could be previous failures, or abrasive and abusive comments from people around them, causing them to be labelled with their own inadequacies and perceived shortcomings.
Hence, there are many different reasons why people tend to procrastinate, and this is a bad habit that many people are guilty of. There is a difference between being momentarily lazy, and procrastinating as a habit. By identifying the reason for your procrastination, you will be able to eliminate it and finally get your work done on time.
Anne McGurty is CEO and Founder of Strategize and Organize, Inc. Productivity Expert and Problem Solver and author of the Amazon published "Lost in Your Own Office: Tips for Getting Organized." For more information, visit www.AnneMcGurty.com.
Source:
www.AnneMcGurty.com
480-442-2014
303-881-0174 mobile
amcgurty@gmail.com
Lost in Your Own Office; Anne McGurty, 2010-2015; Amazon.
Sunday, June 7, 2015
3 Reasons to Keep Your Day Job
Why? What is your why. Why are you doing the things that you are doing? Are you you busy going to work everyday so you can have enough money to retire? so you have enough money to go on vacation? so you can have all the nice trappings of the latest gadgets and household comforts. None of these reasons are bad, they all motivate you probably to get up each morning. But do you have a plan to how to enjoy what you are working for. let's take a look at each of these possibilities.
Retirement: You work hard so you can retire. Great! So have you met with a financial planner to know what you need financially to retire? Ignorance and denial keep too many people sticking their head in the sand every day not wanting to deal with the reality of what they really need to retire. Put on your big girl panties, so to speak, and sit down with a financial planner to know how you can have investments, and products that will help you retire in comfort. I started my career with Merrill Lynch on Wall Street, and I learned some wise investment strategies -- unfortunately not all did I put into place. Looking back now I have tremendous insight to help friends and clients today. You may also find out that this will inspire you to get a better job, pursue some more business certifications or go back to school so you can earn more. There's also the opportunity to develop a entrepreneurial business for a some residual income. I encourage you to think outside the box to create hope and security.
Vacation: Does this just sound like a dream, something other people do? Do you just end up visiting family or staying home because your annual time off has come up and you had nothing planned. Or if you're an entrepreneur or business owner, are you thinking you 're too busy to leave or too broke to go anywhere. Sounds kind of pathetic doesn't it. Working so hard, that you can't enjoy what is supposed to be a vacation. Make an intention. I moved to Phoenix a couple of years ago and last year, i realized that the business climate slows down in the summer for obvious reasons. So I said "next year, I will work/live somewhere cooler for the summer". Funny how it all transpired because by putting it out there, I found an opportunity to stay in a country village in New Mexico and work virtually. Now I'm enjoying an extended vacation while maintaining my income. Wouldn't you like to take some time off and know that it enhanced your life and rejuvenated your energy.
Materialism: I'm not going to judge anyone for being materialistic. I enjoy nice things too. I've had the drive for the Gucci shoes, the Louis Vuitton handbags, and driving the latest Mercedes Benz. The problem is, you don't want to be a slave to your work or job for the materialism. Again, it's like working with the financial planner, work with an accountability partner, or someone like me a business coach, to help you plan out what you want your life to look like. What provides the comforts to support your hard work. I see clients randomly purchasing items, then repurchasing them because they either didn't know they had them or they were too distracted to take the time to understand or appreciate what they had, so they would just push their purchases aside. They would continue the cycle because they had the money or credit available and would "crash" wondering why they felt overwhelmed, frustrated, or came home to clutter.
Wishing you the best as you keep showing up each day. Should you want to improve the quality of your life at work and at home, call me NOW at 303-881-0174 or visit my website at www.annemcgurty.com to schedule a FREE 20 minute strategy session.
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| Anne McGurty, Your Productivity Partner Project Manager and Small Business Consultant www.AnneMcGurty.com Mobile: 303-881-0174 |
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