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Branding Matters: Why You Need Social Media Marketing

With over 2.072 billion active users monthly, Facebook has become the biggest Social Networking Site (SNS)–trumping both Instagram and Twitter with 800 million and 330 million active users respectively. It only makes sense for businesses to use these online avenues for advertising their products and services. This rising marketing trend led to the creation of social media marketing and has proven itself to be very effective as a means of directing traffic. BPO companies around the world began offering social media management services, so businesses can get a boost in their online presence.

Reach a wider audience

Using Social Media Platforms broadcasts brand awareness to a wider, international audience. Social network platforms also come with built-in tools that will help you gauge analytics and enables you to choose a specific target audience for marketing. Facebook and Instagram for example, allows business profiles to create a paid advertisement and customise parameters in order to filter in users who are likely to be interested in your product or service. You can also easily monitor the progress of your marketing campaigns through page insights, complete with options for optimising the visibility of your page and its content.

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Create an online personality for your brand

Ever since the advent of the internet, viral content has the potential to reach “immortality”–funny and interesting videos, pictures, and any kind of engaging content remain relevant for years and even decades. This is why brands have started launching their own viral marketing campaigns on their official SNS accounts that help attract new customers for your product or service. Among the most memorable examples would be the Wendy’s Twitter account, that shot to fame overnight due to its hilarious comebacks and sarcastic replies to people who tried to engage with the official account. In fact, the marketing stunt was so popular, people have started making fan art, fan fiction stories, and even dressing up as Wendy’s iconic mascot. The viral marketing campaign had dramatically raised their social media engagements, resulting in a profit of around $64 Million that year. Social media marketing brings your brand closer to your audience by interacting and engaging with them through a defined personality according to your brand’s tone and image. You can also opt for hiring a community manager which can further drive people towards your online channels.

Community Managers vs. Social Media Managers

You can broaden your reach by hiring community managers to support your official SNS profiles. Community managers create their own persona and endorse the brand to followers in their accounts. The main difference between a social media manager and a community manager is that the former engages with people already familiar and following your brand, while the latter is responsible for bringing the brand closer towards people outside your normal reach, and help more people discover your products or services. Community managers help your business become more accessible to potential customers as they are not confined to a corporate tone or persona when engaging with other people online.

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Overall, your business will surely benefit a lot from social media marketing, especially when it’s done right. Not only does SNS help people connect with each other, it also helps you connect with your target audience!

Want to give social media marketing a try? Check out our services to see which staffing solutions can help you amp up your branding online!

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Top Benefits of Outsourcing Your Accounting Operations

Every business, no matter the size, needs a reliable accounting department to sort out any financial matter. However, since the demand for highly qualified accountants is constant, hiring a team can get very expensive depending on your home country’s wage rates. This can put a strain on your budget, especially for startups and smaller enterprises. Luckily, the business process outsourcing industry makes it easier for companies of any scale to hire an offshore staff to render their accounting services needs. We’ve compiled for you a short list of reasons on how your business can benefit from outsourcing your accounting services!

Virtually risk-free service, made affordable for you

Accounting outsourcing has made great strides in improving business systems around the world. Having professional accountants do your bookkeeping and whatnot also increases the efficiency of risk management and reduces the probability of errors. This includes fraud checks as well, as your service providers will be held responsible for the processing of every transaction making accuracy control stricter compared to a more relaxed in-house staff. Today, most offshore back office services have achieved a 99.95% accuracy level. Since highly-skilled experts are handling your data processing, data encoding, and other accounting services, you can rest assured that your data is in safe and capable hands. In Australia alone, a regular accountant can cost you around $4,600 AUD per month on average, that’s twice or even thrice the wages an offshore accountant usually charges for the same quality of output. Not only will you get security, you also get to save your hard-earned money.

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Access the latest technology, trends, and accounting standards

One of the best advantages you can get when you outsource is that competent BPO services are always up to date with their systems and staff training. When you hire an offshore staff, seat fees and set-up fees are already integrated into the billing. These added expenses are well worth it because it is what a BPO company uses to equip your staff with the latest tools they need to perform their job. BPO companies also encourage their employees to regularly upskill themselves through sponsored training or boot camps. This gives outsourced accountants an edge over in-house hiring.

Allows you to focus on your core operations

Smaller tasks under accounting services such as data encoding and data processing can get very tedious due to the nature of the job. Smaller enterprises tend to bypass this problem by having their staff multitask and handle several responsibilities. To avoid overworking your in-house team, outsourcing your back office accounting work can free your staff and help you save time. Another thing to consider is that most back office functions do not drive revenue. Spending more on labour fees for non-profiting posts, especially when you’re only working with a limited budget, is pretty unwise. Outsourcing will help you direct more funding on aspects of your business that will increase your revenue, thus effectively improving your cash flow.

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These are only a few of the many benefits you can reap from outsourcing your accounting operations. Smarter solutions don’t necessarily need to be expensive. Hiring an offshore staff can help you further grow your business through efficient services, and it starts with finding the right BPO company to partner with.

Interested in outsourcing? Check out our services to see which options fit your business best. You might even find what you’ve been looking for all this time!

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Key Tips For Managing Your Offshore Team

Already got a team abroad working on your operations? If this is your first time hiring an offshore staff, it can be a bit difficult to handle a whole team. You’ll eventually get used to it, but instead of finding your way in the dark, entrepreneur.com shares some vital tips on how to cater to your outsourced team.

One of the crucial things to consider when hiring an offshore staff is ensuring smooth communication. This includes choosing offshore employees with strong English skills and assigning a team leader that will help ease communication between you and the rest of your remote staff. Another way would be to visit your team abroad at least once a year, this is to strengthen your connection with your staff members and engage with them on a more personal level.

To learn more about these tips, you can read the full article here.

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The Power of a Positive Attitude

Keeping a positive outlook in life comes naturally to some, but not all. As working adults, we often overlook positivity in favour of being grounded in reality to avoid getting disappointed. When it comes to your career, however, being cheerful and optimistic can actually help you a lot. If you find yourself having trouble thinking more about the good things in life, we’ve listed some of the ways you can change your state of mind.

1. Monitor thoughts by keeping a journal

We all have bad days and go through rough patches in life–it cannot be avoided. When the times are tough, staying optimistic is often the last thing we have in mind. By keeping a journal, you can keep track of your thoughts, feelings, opinions and ideas. You can then look back at what you’ve written and proceed to assess your mental state. Ever seen a Facebook status you wrote years ago pop up on your FB Memories? A lot of people cringe at their older selves for posting such stuff when they were younger, and keeping a journal is exactly like that. You can reminisce about all the good things that have happened, and remind yourself of what you’ve learned from your past mistakes and misfortunes. Some people maintain specific journals, like a “gratitude journal” to remind themselves of what to be thankful for, some people keep a dream journal and so on. Keeping a journal is also a healthy way of airing out your thoughts while still keeping your privacy.

2. Practice using affirmative language

Instead of saying “I can’t”, there are positive ways to approach tasks and situations. You can repeat the following phrases to yourself, or just keep them in mind to help motivate you:

  • “I know I can do it.”
  • “I can beat any challenge.”
  • “I’m one day closer to my goals.”
  • “If I believe it, I can achieve it.”  

Using this as a mantra helps set your mind in working towards your goals and keeps you in focus.

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3. Dedicate a few minutes to power posing

A new study has revealed that holding a power pose for as short as two minutes can help boost your confidence and performance. In a Ted Talk by Amy Cuddy, body language and non-verbal communication significantly affects and reflects our attitude and behaviour. By tweaking the way we use our body, we can project a stronger character that our brains can later adapt into. As she puts it, “fake it ‘til you make it.” Amy advises that this trick can be easily applied to real-life situations such as getting a confidence boost before a job interview or giving a speech. Power posing can raise testosterone levels by 20% and decrease cortisol levels (a hormone released by the body when under stress) by 25%.

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4. Change the way you approach challenges

Whenever you hit a particularly difficult part of your life, or when things don’t go according to what you’ve expected, think of it as a simple detour. To quote Aaron Burr from Hamilton: An American musical, “I am the one thing in life I can control.” There are a lot of things that are beyond our control, but we can always incite changes within ourselves. Re-frame your challenges by thinking of failures as mere redirections instead of dead-ends: when one door closes, another one will open.

 

These are just a few ways on how you can maintain a positive attitude. When practised regularly, it will be just as easy as breathing.

Did you enjoy reading this article? You can check out this one for tips on how to spice up your work life.

happy businessman

How to Effectively Manage Your Career

There are no shortcuts or a secret formula to success, no matter how many books and talk show hosts claim to say so. However, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t surefire ways to manage your progress. It’s all about self-improvement, discipline, and finding the right motivation. We’ve listed some tips that can help guide you through your journey to building the perfect career.

1. Choose your career path and define your goals

What do you do best and where do you want to be in five or ten years? These are some of the questions you need to reflect on. Before you start your journey, you have to pick your destination and the route you will take to get there. Assess your talents, where your passions lie, and what you need to achieve. This way, you get a clear picture of your end goal, and it will be easier to plan ahead. For example, suppose your best skill is in cooking and your dream is to be able to run your own restaurant–from there, you can get a better idea of how to proceed in achieving that goal. In the next five years or so, maybe you can strive to upskill yourself by working alongside professionals and saving money for your capital–and along the way you can pick up some knowledge on how to run and sustain a business. Let your goal be your compass.

2. Build a strong foundation

As mentioned earlier, you can upgrade your skill set by working your way up the food chain. Start small, gather resources and build a network: this applies to any industry. Say you are an aspiring artist, immerse yourself in the community and start by creating a name for yourself. Put your work out there–whether it be online or through joining galleries, go to conventions, meet people and market yourself. The stronger your base is, the easier it will be to push yourself forward. Take Walt Disney for example, currently the biggest name in entertainment history. Disney wasn’t born a billionaire, but he was born an artist. Even at an early age, he knew the value of entertainment and art–he drew pictures for his neighbours in exchange for money, made cartoons for his school newspaper, and after going through a rough jobless phase, Disney finally went into the field of advertising where he first started earning big. Disney’s venture into advertising served as a launchpad for his career in animation and that’s how he became the entertainment powerhouse we knew today.

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3. Brace yourself for challenges and changes

Life will always throw us curveballs that could leave us derailed, but the difference between successful people and those who aren’t is their ability get back up when they’re knocked down. This is always the hardest part, and sometimes it could seem like it never ends. If a job is starting to have more pitfalls than advantages, maybe it’s time to leave. Don’t be afraid of starting over, because as long as you carry on and learn from your mistakes, it still counts as a huge improvement.

4. Create your own definition of success

Success is such a relative term, that it could mean different things to different people. What is success to you? Is it monetary gain? Is it satisfaction? Sometimes we get so caught up in the daily grind that we forget to appreciate what we already achieved. Though it’s good to have a strong drive, it’s equally important to know when to stop pushing yourself. Reward yourself for all your hard work and efforts, and learn how to thank the people that got you where you are. Once you feel like you’ve found what success means to you and finally achieved it, you can help out others reach their own.

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It’s not wrong to dream big, but if you don’t put in the efforts to make that dream a reality, it will only stay a dream. Believe in yourself and your own capabilities, that’s what will truly launch you forward!

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Telltale Signs That You Might Need to Outsource

Building a sustainable startup business from the ground up is no easy task. Even after you overcome all preliminary hurdles, your company is sure to face harder challenges along the way. At that point, the difference between success and failure lies in your ability to adapt. Outsourcing is lauded to be a great option in surviving these challenges, especially for a small business looking to grow or expand. In this article, we will enumerate some of the signs that you might need to outsource in order to help your business thrive.