Mohit Tater's Blog, page 612

6 Areas That You Should Be Aware of Getting Hacked

Just two years ago, hackers breached roughly 50% of the 28 million small businesses across the U.S. No business is small enough to be immune to the growing threat of cyber attacks and the negative impacts such breaches can have on operations. Having said that, what online information or accounts are small business owners most concerned about when it comes to fear of hacking?

Global Resources compiled a list of the online accounts and information people most fear being hacked. Let’s take a look at them in greater detail.

Online Banking

Online banking crime poses a legitimate threat to small businesses. Having your small business bank accounts hacked or the banking information of your customers stolen can prove irreversibly detrimental to a small business.

Social Media

Social media hacking is a rising threat for small businesses and companies, potentially diminishing your business’s reputation and credibility. It is therefore critical that you adequately protect your small business’s social media accounts through steps such as not recycling passwords across sites and reporting any suspicious activity immediately.

Amazon

If your small business has an Amazon account to buy or sell items, you should be aware that cyber criminals target Amazon users with password reuse attacks. It is therefore vital that you closely monitor your Amazon business account.

Medical

Three years ago, Anthem was hacked, resulting in their clients’ medical and personal information being stolen and exposed. Having health and medical data stolen is regarded as one of the biggest threats to security.

Personal Email

It is not rare for members of your staff to access their personal email accounts at work. Cyber criminals seek out personal email accounts to steal people’s information and send out fraudulent emails to contacts. Subsequently, it is critical for those using personal email accounts at work to take the required steps to adequately preserve their accounts.

Work Email

Accessing and manipulating work emails can potentially end a business’s operations, as emails may not be able to reach their destination. With email hacking on the rise, it is essential that every member of staff at your company acts diligently in relation to emails. Having secure passwords is the clear and obvious step in fighting work email crime, as secure passwords making it harder for hackers to penetrate email accounts. Take time to make sure that all of your accounts are protected in order to avoid exposing personal information. You won’t regret it.

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5 Awesome Reasons to Have a Website For Your Small Business

The notion that nearly 50% of small business owners still don’t use social media because they don’t feel it’s important for their business has caused quite a stir. Furthermore, this conversation has slowly morphed into the debate of whether small businesses should even have a website or Internet presence at all.

Wild, right?

Even though you likely know some businesses who are doing well without a website, Ryan Hibbert often wonders how much better they could be doing if they took the time to invest in one. Let’s take a look at five awesome benefits of having a high-functioning company website.

You’re Not Invisible

By creating a website, you stop being invisible to the people trying to find you online. Research shows us about the “ROBO effect” where customers research online before buying offline. If you don’t have a web presence, there’s no chance of you showing up in search results.

You Control Your Rankings

Fortunately, you can use SEO basics to help control where your site shows up and for which questions. By generating optimized content, building relevant links, and creating a brand that customers want to engage with, you set yourself up as an authority in the eyes of the search engine and increase your chances of appearing for the right searches.

You Create Another Sales Tool

A website is a highly powerful sales tool and one that gives you the power to address your customers’ concerns, give them the information they need to make a decision and create compelling calls-to-action.

You Build Authority

Though the Internet has been around for some time, you didn’t always need a website to find your audience. It was a lot easier to market via direct mailings, Yellow Page advertisements, and local word-of-mouth. However, today your website and your social presence are the factors that customers are looking for when they research a small business. Take time to let people know you’re stable enough to have a dedicated web presence, that you’ll be around tomorrow should something go wrong, and that they can get ahold of you when they need to.

You Build An Email List

Having a company website allows you to track customers’ email addresses more efficiently. You’ll want to create a site that users can trust and then use it to generate and build your email list. Along with your website, that list just may end up being one of your strongest sales tools.

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How to Get Money for a New Business

Starting a new business can be stressful, exciting, and frustrating all at the same time. One of the first steps into starting a new business is finding a funding source. You don’t need millions of dollars to start a new venture and bootstrapping is often the smart way to go. However, even the simplest businesses need some money to get rolling.  Below I will discuss the ways you can get some money to start that business.

Family and Friends

A great place to start to raise some money is through family and friends.  Family especially are often more willing than others to help out because they generally want to see you succeed more.  One word of caution is be sure to get everything in writing. How much are you borrowing or are the family members getting a percentage of the business.  Friends can work out the same way and you should take the same precautions whether it’s a loan or a stake in the business.

Venture Capital Money

If your new business idea is scalable and new there is a good chance you can pitch your idea to venture capitalist. This is going to be a harder sell and you will have to really work for venture capital money. Often times you may have to pitch to dozens of firms before you get interest.  You can read about how to pitch to venture capitalist here.

Get a Loan

Whether it’s a traditional bank loan or a small personal loan this is an option. Many entrepreneurs starting out put up personal collateral when they need a loan now.  If you are truly bootstrapping your business you don’t need a large loan. Only borrow the amount of money you need and don’t over extend yourself. While starting a business is risky it’s important to be able to pay back your loans on time.

Home Equity Loans

One of my favorite ways to get the startup money you need is to get a home equity loan. If you owe your home you can use the equity you have built and borrow against it. What is great about these type of loans is the interest rate is relatively low compared to personal loans.  The payments are also paid back over a long period of time so the monthly loan amount is usually really low.

Credit Cards

Not the best option but many people do this and it’s a viable option. Sure the interest rate will generally be 14%-30% but for some people this is the easiest way to fund a new business. The only caution here is to be sure you will be able to make the monthly payments even if the business fails.

Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding has become very popular the past few years. Kickstarter has helped start thousands of business and can be a powerful tool for entrepreneurs. It’s important to know that with Kickstarter you have to meet your funding goal or you receive no money.

Borrow from 401K

Taking money out of your 401K is another great option similar to a home equity loan except you are borrowing your own money. If you happen to have an IRA you won’t be eligible for this option.  There are several rules to borrowing but usually you are only allowed to borrow half of the amount you have in your 401K. The interest rate is usually the current prime rate plus 1% on top.

Starting a business can be difficult especially if you don’t have money already saved up to fund it. Most people never have enough saved so borrowing money or getting investments into your business are all great options.

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Why You Should Consider Turning Your Real Estate Investment Business Into an LLC

When you own real estate properties, you are well aware that you are prone to issues of management, liability, and risk. Something can face your investments out of blues, and you will be solely responsible for any loss or long court battles that may prove expensive and time-consuming. However, you can eliminate and shield yourself and your properties by considering to form a limited liability company where you will transfer your properties. One may ask, what is a limited liability company?

What is a Limited Liability Company?

A limited liability company, or LLC, is a legal entity that can transact on its behalf and be responsible for its debts and liabilities. The primary purpose of forming a limited liability company for your real estate investment is to ensure that you shield yourself against the risks that are likely to face you the same way a corporation protects its shareholders. Holding real estate properties in a limited liability company is becoming a common practice in the industry today.

Benefits of Turning Your Real Estate Investments into an LLC

Liability Protection – The primary business of turning your real estate investments into an LLC is to gain liability protection. In the course of business, there may arise a scenario where you real estate company will be sued for injuries, damages caused, and sometimes debts. In such a situation, your personal properties will not be taken to settle the obligations of the company. However, you should ensure that the LLC operates as a business to remove yourself from the equation in totality. The real estate LLC will be responsible for its debts and liabilities.

Easy and Inexpensive – Forming an LLC for your real estate properties is a straightforward process that does not require much money as compared to the process involved in the formation of a corporation. You will just create articles of association that highlight the internal operations of the company. However, creating the articles of association can prove to be a little bit technical. In such a case, you can seek the services of an attorney or use self-help or professional websites for a streamlined process.

Tax Benefits – One of the standout benefits of forming a limited liability company is that there is no double taxation. All the taxes are passed to the owners of the company, unlike in a corporation where the firm is taxed, and its shareholders are taxed upon receiving either profits or dividends or even the proceeds from the sale of their shares. By turning your real estate investment into an LLC, you will be saving a tremendous amount of money every taxable duration.

What is the Process of Turning Your Real Estate Investments into an LLC?

Choose a Business Name – You will be required to choose a business name that is not used by other organization. Your name should have a comma and then initials LLC.
Create and File the Articles of Association – After choosing a name and determining the physical addresses of the business. You will be required to create and submit the articles of association. You can file this through the mail or in person to the secretary of state.
Create an Operational Agreement – This is a document that shows how the internal affairs of the LLC are undertaken including appointing directors and sharing of both profits and losses. The document is used in settling internal disputes, in case of any, in the court of law.
Obtain the License and Business Permits – Typically, your LLC is assumed to have been formed when the secretary of state has accepted the articles of association. However, you need to comply with local authorities by applying for business permits and other necessary licenses. You should also ensure that you get a tax identification number and a bank account for your LLC.

Do You Need Help?

Sometimes it might become too much for you to follow the due process and turn your real estate investments into an LLC. You might consider hiring the services of a real estate attorney who will guide you through this process. A real estate asset protection expert may also come in handy as he/she understands the legal process and may well be versed with your state laws than you. A real estate investment lawyer or an asset protection expert will be instrumental while transferring your real estate to the newly formed LLC.

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Agnosticism: Divine Diplomacy

In a constant battle between the ones who worship God and ones who don’t, there is another group of people who sit back and watch the other two fight to choose between a rock and a hard place- the rock being the community of believers and the hard place being the community of non-believers.

While we have been familiar with the words atheist and theist, agnostic is a more unknown concept. So, who is an agnostic? Agnostics are those who believe that it is impossible to know whether there is any supreme power controlling the universe. Agnostics are not atheists. Atheists question the honour of the supreme Lord and even deny its existence. Atheism is the lack of belief in the existence of gods. Whereas on the other hand agnostics say that there is not sufficient evidence either for affirmation or for denial. Agnostics feel while spiritual things may exist, there is no conclusive evidence to be found in the material world for believing so.

Agnostics allow divine mystery to be molded in different aspects with respect to various contemporary cultures. When there is a discussion about spirits, there are some who believe that occasionally there is an interaction between the physical realm and the spiritual realm. But a person who looks for evidence in these discussions is an agnostic. If there is evidence supporting the existence of supernatural forces, the agnostic may change his belief system; otherwise he would remain an agnostic. An agnostic needs a convincing reason to adopt the particular belief system. So, he would swing between the two zones, trying to find evidence in support of the faith system.

Agnosticism involves uncertainty, discernment, and curiosity. Agnosticism revolves around the question- ‘What is beyond the infinite transcendence?’

Does an agnostic do whatever he please? What are his system of rights and wrongs?

A theist may not do something because he may feel his religion considers it a sin, but agnostic will not do it because his conscience won’t allow him to.

Atheists and theists are battling it out for ultimate divine supremacy, each side making haughty declarations as to whether or not God truly exists. As far as this battle is considered the answer is not simply black or white.

Agnostics are skeptical of those who say the answers to all the questions with regards to the universe and life.  They view both teams with equal derision- Not forming opinions and judgments about undeniable uncertainties.

‘I don’t know and you don’t know either. I would rather have my mind opened by the wonder of not knowing that one closed by a lack of belief or by a strong belief that refuses to acknowledge any other possibilities.’

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How Your Office Building Could be Jeopardizing Your Business

Having offices is a sign of success, right? Well, they should be! That means that there are people on your team who regularly come in during the day (or night) to build it into something bigger and better! However, an office space can also be a stumbling block for your growth.

The Price

Have you ever thought of what a financial commitment the ownership or rental of an office is? Apart from the mortgage or rent payments, you have to outfit the interior with furniture, equipment, branding elements and common spaces. This could be money that could create a lot of movement in the production and development side of things, however, often you can’t just eliminate the office altogether because of cost savings. What some business owners have done, though, is encouraging staff to work from home, at least a few days a week, or else rent flexible office space. There are many coworking and incubator centers which allow you to grow organically and with less financial risk.

The Liability

Business insurance is something that every company has, or at least should. Accidents can create a massive negative impact on your company’s reputation, be that an error or omission, or a workplace injury. Does a business risk audit and cover the bases that your office does have, and this could prompt you to install a freestanding guard rail to prevent you from falling or even bring in outside drinking water because of the low quality available in the building. While the liability at the office is lower than at a workshop, it’s still there and something to be taken seriously.

Work Culture

Think of “cool businesses” like Facebook or Google. Their workplaces are amazing, and they really cater to the needs of their employees. We are in a point of time in which we are competing for talent, and not having the right kind of office space, be that in terms of location, feel, flow, or amenities could mean that you are missing out on employees who could be playing on your team and helping you grow. Don’t let your office keep you from attracting talent!

Now it’s time to examine your office building. Is it a worthwhile risk? Financially, in terms of liability, and for communicating your brand, is your corporate space the ideal fit for you? If not, it’s time to start looking for something that fits the bill.

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How to Prevent Marketing Emails from Getting Flagged as Spam

Does your business have a budding email campaign or a newsletter? If so, your brand’s efforts will eventually encounter spam warnings.

All inboxes these days have some form of protection against spam. Marketing emails are highly likely to end up clashing against spam barriers and never reach the intended audience. This article will explain how to prevent your company’s marketing emails from ending up in the junk mail folder.

First of all, it’s important to have a basic understanding of what spam email is. It refers to any email that is unsolicited, misleading, or intrusive in any manner. Spam emails are also sent to a user as a part of a bulk emailing campaign. Users can easily flag an email as spam if they find it irrelevant and unwanted. Your company’s sender address could end up on a spam blacklist if multiple users flag it.

Read below to learn about how to prevent the scenario described above and to actually deliver your promotional emails to the inboxes of potential customers:

Keep Your Email List Clean

Do you know how many emails in your list actually belong to real people? Your email list could be littered with invalid, blacklisted, or otherwise illegitimate addresses that increase the risk of your campaign getting marked as spam. Therefore, clean up your list and make sure all the addresses in it belong only to subscribers. To do this, use an email verifier available through a reputable vendor.

Know the Spam Laws

Countries do have spam email laws, much like for direct mail. Services you may use to send emails in bulk, such as MailChimp, are legally obliged to enforce these laws. Knowing the spam laws in your state and country will certainly reduce the risk of sending marketing emails that end up in spam folders.

Spam laws usually spell out how an email should look like to be considered legitimate. For example, the CAN-SPAM Act enforced by the Federal Trade Commission includes a list of requirements that bulk emails must adhere to be legitimate. The Act, for example, bans bulk email senders from using misleading information in the subject lines, headers, and other parts of an email that prompt people to click.

An unsubscribe button or a link is mandatory as well. If your company follows these rules, your email campaign should largely be safe from spam flags.

Avoid Linking if Possible

Email clients like Gmail automatically invalidate certain links included in promotional emails to throttle the spread of malware and phishing scams. The promotional links you include in your emails could be perfectly legitimate, but the email client may not recognize it as such. Therefore, avoid linking to a website in the email or newsletter, if possible. If you do add a link, make sure it is secure and links only to a legitimate website. Securing your business domain with an SSL certificate may reduce the risk of emails containing links to it from getting flagged as spam.

Express Permission is a Must

The best way to prevent getting blacklisted for spam is to ensure that the emails only go to inboxes of people who have expressly given your company permission to send promotional emails. This is the main reason why businesses should avoid buying email lists online. Permission is crucial for keeping your company’s name on the legitimate side of sending marketing emails.

A successful email campaign hinges on the fact that the target audience actually sees the emails your brand sends. Eliminate the risk of spam flagging thus by carefully following the above steps.

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How Automation Can Improve Profitability

Running a successful business is all about finding an edge over your competitors; being able to provide a service no-one else can match and attracting your ideal client base. There are multiple factors involved in this simple premise, however, which is what makes being an entrepreneur such a complex and exciting experience. A great deal of the success of your business will depend on the decisions you make and the judgement you use to reach those decisions. Some decisions are easier to make than others, and when it comes to finding ways to rise above the competition, automation is becoming a go-to technology.

Free up staff time for other roles

A high proportion of staff time is frequently spent on administrative tasks that could be run quickly and efficiently by automation software. Email systems that send out communications to predefined recipients at allocated times are becoming recognised as a simple and effective way to deal with email lists. The software is capable of automating almost every aspect of your email marketing, freeing up considerable staff time. As another example, payroll can be a time-consuming task that has to be done, but does nothing in practical terms towards building your business. Even if your staff numbers wouldn’t justify an entire accounting system for dealing with payroll, you can use online software services such as a check stub maker to suit your needs, freeing up time for the tasks that require staff input and therefore making more productive uses of human resources.

Improve speed and accuracy

Taking book-keeping as an example, one person – or a team in a bigger business – could take several hours to complete the entries and calculations required for the business accounts each day. An automated accounting system can reduce this to mere minutes, depending on the processes you use. It also eliminates the need for extensive cross-checking and supervision. Providing the system is set up correctly and programmed to perform the tasks exactly as required, you can eliminate human error from the process too. You then have a system that works constantly behind the scenes, gathering data from your invoicing, supply and banking systems and updating your accounts on a constant basis.

The challenges of automation

It can take a while to get these systems set up to run precisely as you wish and get the most benefit from them. The length of time will vary according to the type of software and what you wish to achieve, but the investment will be worthwhile once the new system is fully functional. You will also need to think about change management to ensure your staff are embracing the new technology. Introducing change such as this is likely to concern at least some of your staff, who may worry that their jobs are under threat, or that they won’t be able to work with the new software. You need to anticipate this and demonstrate to the staff the advantages to them of implementing new systems, as well as the benefits to the operation of the business.

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Manufacturing, Data Analytics & Improved Production

Manufacturing is one of the most important industries to the United States and global economies. About $2.25 trillion was added to the U.S. economy in 2016 thanks to manufacturers; and that number continues to grow. With so much capital flowing through the manufacturing world, it makes sense that companies want to do whatever it takes to improve operations. This is where data analytics has started playing a bigger role in the manufacturing process. Data offers manufacturers a unique opportunity to take their production to totally new heights.

More Efficient Production Processes

There are few industries that can be boiled down quantitatively more than manufacturing. Just about everything in the manufacturing process can be turned into data. On the production floor, each step can be made more efficient, or organized in a less wasteful way. Sometimes it’s easy to see what’s causing bottlenecks in the manufacturing process or supply chain. Other times, the causes are too discrete to be detected by the human eye. These are the situations where data analytics really comes in handy. By having all processes linked to cloud-connected data collection devices, manufacturers can find weaknesses in their systems. And identifying issues is the first step to developing solutions.

Identify Future Trends

The world is changing faster now than ever before. With the proliferation of technology, businesses everywhere are taking advantage of new resources. But the benefits also come with their own sets of challenges. Due to the quickly evolving nature of modern tech, it’s essential that organizations stay ahead of what’s happening in their respective industries. Manufacturers absolutely need to be aware of this and do whatever they can do keep up with competitors. Manufacturing business analytics is essential to this goal. By utilizing data and data tools, companies can do a better job of identifying future trends than ever before. For example, breaking down regional sales trends can now be done at an extremely specific level, almost instantly. This helps organizations plan for tomorrow, as they can get a clearer picture of what’s happening today.

Solutions Work on the Enterprise Level

When it comes to manufacturing, everything should ideally be working in unison all the time. This is of course not possible given the immense number of variables involved in the whole process—from design and material sourcing, to product delivery. Data analytics, however, is giving companies greater power than they’ve ever had before on this front. Using a cloud-based data analytics tool isn’t just about the data collection itself. It’s also about unifying your whole enterprise under one system. There are two main benefits that go along with this. First, it of course allows for unprecedented insights from across the whole spectrum of the production process. But it also facilitates collaboration between departments and key players that otherwise might have a difficult time on this front. This kind of unification makes it possible for manufacturers to bring operations to a whole new level.

The spread of data analytics is a blessing for people in the business world. This is particularly true in the manufacturing industry, which so heavily relies on hard numbers. There’s no question that data analytics is improving production for manufacturers.

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3 Effective Fundamental Strategies for Better SEO

Search engine optimization is a critical aspect of a business’ online marketing campaign. It goes without saying that often webmasters get tempted with the latest SEO trends in order to help their website reach the top positions in the search engine rankings. Apart from applying mobile first, using structured data to optimizing your site for featured snippets, you should never get misdirected from the main goal of your marketing campaign.

Speaking of which, there are still some fundamentals of a typical search engine optimization that defines the success of your online business. In order to leverage the leads and traffic generation for maximizing your ROI, here are some basic strategies that you should follow in your SEO program.

Value the User Experience

Needless to say, the sole purpose of your online business and building your website is to offer your target audience something to keep revisiting your site frequently. This can be effectively done when the user experience on your website is harmonizing and people can easily access the information they need. Moreover, the major search engines like Google always put the user experience on top priority while indexing a site for the search engine rankings.

In order to ensure that your targeted audience is satisfied with your offerings and web design, put yourself in their shoes and develop a site that offers great functionality. You can also engage SEO experts such as Tayloright who can take care of your page loading speed, content, and other critical user-friendly elements.

Build Relationships

Earlier, there were various tactics to get links directed to your site, but ever since the latest algorithm changes, Google is no more fooled by spammy links. Hence in order to build authentic and quality links to your website, you have spent some time researching and give overwhelming efforts to the process. Form relationships with some genuine organizations or groups that will enlist you in their list of members. You can also develop a co-marketing program with a related business for increasing your brand awareness among more people. When properly done, links will definitely come to your site.

Effective Communication

This is the root cause that determines the success of your website and overall business. If you are able to engage with your clients and customers through your site, half of the SEO work is accomplished. To carry out this SEO strategy effectively, take some time in employing the right language and arranging it in such an empathetic manner that has the best chance to influence and convert your targeted audience. Studies show that the online users are always looking for useful and fitting content for their needs and queries. Also, spend some time in making your headlines captivating along with a content that is filled with persuasive call-to-actions, which will help you in achieving better ranks on the SERPs. Get your content writing team on board and work together for crafting high-quality pieces of content.

Concluding Thoughts

Ultimately, it boils down to the basic fundamentals of SEO that determines the long-term success of a business website. Stick to the above-stated guidelines and build your SEO campaign that is best for your audience and caters to their needs.

Author Bio – Maria Jones describes the important and profitable aspects of SEO in her blogs. She also reviews the web design carried out by reputable firms like Tayloright and tells her readers about them in her blogs.

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