Get Your Office Greener With These Ten Easy Tips
A lot of people, when they discuss the environment, tend to get heated and bogged down in minutiae. With terms like “saving the planet” and “creation care” and “eco-friendly”, etc. being thrown around like confetti at a victory parade, often, nothing gets done. Someone has to start the ball rolling and while we are mired in debate and the politicians argue back and forth about cost, the polar bears have less and less ice caps to hunt on, temperature changes become more noticeable and more and more species are on the brink of extinction.
What can we do, as an entrepreneur or as an individual, to help? I’ve thought of a few good ideas that you can institute personally, each and every workday — as well as at home. Make them a habit and you will be doing more than the majority of people are doing, to help with our Mother Earth
Kickstart Your Eco Efforts
Tip 1 – Reduce Your Office Supply Use
Only print your documents when you have to. Use E-storage instead of hard copies. Back up your computer data at the end of the day by using an external hard drive (if you have a lot), or a flash drive. Use recycled paper and recycled toner and recycled inks and then recycle those if you can, after use and when you don’t need them anymore. Do not simply scrunch up paper and throw it into the rubbish basket, keep it in a tray turn it over and you’ve got an endless supply of notepaper. Recycle your glass bottles, aluminum cans and plastic whenever you can. Empty them frequently so that they won’t smell. Nothing smells worse than a partially full soda can.
Tip 2 – Share Your Space With A Live Plant
They take in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen. Don’t get angry around them too often, or you’ll overload their bio-mechanism and they’ll wilt. Besides, all that hot air would only work for tropical plants! If you have low light in your office, a nice Dracaena or Peace Lily will work well.
Tip 3 – Use Curly Bulbs & Don’t Eat Curly Fries
LED clusters are best and they use very little energy. They are super bright so before you turn them on, warn other staffers to avert their eyes if they are sitting inches away. They last a long time as well. Some of those CFL bulbs contain mercury, so if you want to use those, then read the labels. Lower your office thermostat and unplug any equipment that you can, before leaving for the day because even machinery which is turned off, uses some electricity.
Tip 4 – Use Real Dishes & Cutlery
Wash your utensils and dishes instead of using disposables, and your food and drink will taste better, too. Take home to sterilize occasionally as those coffee mugs can get pretty nasty after sitting around for hours!
Tip 5 – Decorate With Abandon, But Use Green Products
Try and have management use bamboo flooring in the office (it grows super fast and is a giant grass, not a tree). Low or no VOC (volatile organic compounds) paint should be used so that people can breathe easier, and the air in general is sweeter. Office chairs can be made from natural fabrics and renewable wood. It may take a bit of searching, but they can be found and are they are not necessarily more expensive. Reuse and repair stuff when you can.
Tip 6 – Telecommute & Save Fuel Costs & Time
Use the computer to work from a home office, if you can. Carpool if you have to be physically in the office. You’ll have more time for the family at home, and far less stress. Set up your home office with recycled furniture such as a home office computer desk, and use those recycled supplies.
Tip 7 – Eat Food With Ingredients You Can Read Without a Masters Degree
Better yet, eat single ingredient foods and drink simple liquids such as water and tea and juices. Locally grown and organic food is better. Fair Trade coffee tastes far better and helps local growers in the various coffee-producing countries. Use a non-disposable coffee filter. Wash the latter with soap (try eco-friendly soap) and water because the filter holes get bunged up with coffee oils.
Tip 8 – Eco-Friendly Office Travel
Try and use a vehicle that’s a hybrid or electric, or a super-saver on other fuel. Reduce and consolidate all trips, whether inside or outside the office. Perhaps you can use a bicycle for short trips. This helps with exercise and saves on fuel.
Tip 9 – Office Equipment Tips
Make sure that all Energy Star Power Management features are optimized. Set a sleep mode for your monitors and other equipment as soon as after five minutes of inactivity. They will take only seconds to come back on. When you replace equipment put the energy saving fetures at the top of the list of priorities. Properly recycle the old stuff so that third world countries are not affected.
Tip 10 – Cut Browsing Time
Making a cup of tea produces as much carbon dioxide as two Google searches. Blow on hot tea near your live plants, so that they can suck up that carbon dioxide easier! Don’t let it make you become paralyzed, but try and think before starting a new task and see if you can do it in a more environmentally friendly way.
How On Earth Do You Start?
It’s not globe-shattering, and you don’t have to do everything the first day. Being exhausted and crabby will not help Mother Nature. She prefers a sunny disposition. Pick one item, start the ball rolling, then incorporate another one. You’ll no doubt think of more things you can do yourself, and recruit your fellow office workers, too. Do start soon though, because more and more of the world we live on is being frittered away and wasted. Do not expound on your new green methods because this turns others off. Set an example and others will follow.
Join The Eco Bandwagon
The future is bright if we can all chip in and do our part. As a business owner and entrepreneur remember that you are in the driving seat and that you can take a break whenever you feel like it. Take that break when you’re at work and go outside if you can. Breathe in the great air and look at some flowers. Watch a butterfly for a few moments. Smile when you go back inside. It’s contagious.
About the Author:Lloyd Burrell, formerly an auditor in the City of London, has learned a thing or two about office desks over his long and varied business career.
He loves to put this knowledge to good use and provide detailed reviews of office desks, click here for details. He reviews everything from contemporary office desks built out of modern materials like glass and metal to more traditional models made out of wood. Lloyd particularly likes to review ergonomic office desks because comfort and posture are so important when spending long periods in one place. Lloyd lives on the charming Atlantic coast of France with his wife and two children.
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4 Tips on Building Quick Friendly Support
If you are running some business, which is aimed at provision of different services and involves direct communication between you or your staff and your customers, you need to do all your best in order to look the most polite, the most friendly and the most professional service provider in the niche.
Some things described there may sound familiar to you, but I believe that many will find this article and the tips below useful. Here they are:
Separate the Departments
I bet you would be confused if a serious company had only one mailbox in order to sort out all the queries. Believe me they would be confused as well. Thus, instead of providing just a common info@yourdomain.com mailbox, it is always advisable to share several email addresses of different departments, let’s say sales@ billing@ and support@yourdomain.com. This will let you filter all support requests, while your customers will feel confident about the staff they are addressing to.
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If you also provide online support – via chats or phone, you should distinguish the departments, too. Of course, the customers can be put through some live coordinator, which may resolve some issues personally or transfer the call/chat to the correspondent representative, but I don’t think that “Thank you for you call (Welcome to our chat support), please hold” is the right start of the conversation. Especially when the customer is experiencing an urgent issue. Many people do find it irritating, when their conversations are being constantly transferred or put on hold. Thus, it is recommended to create several extensions under your VOIP server and configure your online chatting software with department selection option.
Limit the Support Options
The company representative should know all the rules and regulations of support terms, they provide. Especially if there are a lot of staff members with different training level. This is very important since some may help with a wider range of issues which are not actually supported, while some fail, causing the customers’ frustration like “Wait, I remember a different guy helping me out the other day! How come you don’t support it?” Such situations should be escaped. Thus, the first rule about this is “Nothing personal – just business.” This may be your favorite customer and it’s alright, but if your company doesn’t support let’s say step-by-step phone co-ordination of router installation and adjustment – then you should politely ask this customer to consult the manual supplied along with the device.
Keep Your Emotions
When talking about customers’ frustration, we can’t hide the fact we may get irritated, too. We are all human and it is natural. However, you should never let your emotions go. First of all, you are the professional, who should stay calm in any situation. Secondly, you are a representative of the company and your attitude does not have anything to do with the others and shouldn’t spoil the good name of the company. Finally, when the customer blames you or the company – do not ever take anything personally – and do not forget that you have a right to quit the conversation in case the customer uses bad language. This is very important since communication policies are required to be introduced. Such policies do not only save your nerves, but also protect the company in case illegal charges from the customer’s end emerge.
Drive Your Support to Social Media
Good customer service is the service which can be exposed to the public with no blushing. Apart from using social media on promotion purposes, the company can also use its social network profiles to discuss the quality of support and the peculiarities of service. Testimonials, suggestion boxes and polls are the very points to address to when escalating some conflicts that may grow from chat conversation or correspondence with management to flaming on forums and in social networks.
Thus, using social media you will get active support. If the fault was not on the company’s end. Such manner works well for both services improvement and promotion. On one hand your current customers will be able to share their views and ideas, while on the other hand those of your followers, who do not yet have any service with you will get a more complete clear picture of what is happening behind the screens.
To Summarize
Being competitive is not only providing the best service or product, it is also providing the best support. Many think that when the client meets the seller their relations begin and end as soon as the purchase is made. Well, if it is not a square market – it is wrong. The business-to-client relations start only when the product or service is purchased, since once a person becomes someone’s customer, the vendor takes the responsibility for the offered product or service. Thus, those relations need to exist in a friendly non-conflict way. Sure, all this requires mutual understanding, which may sometimes lack on any side, but if we take a few steps to get ourselves better organized – we will see that we can be faster and avoid many unpleasant phenomena.
Author’s Bio: Arkadij “Archie” Shkolnik, PR Manager of SiteValley.com web hosting company, the provider of affordable and reliable Linux hosting for personal and small business web sites. Current administrator and author of the corporate blog – svhostingblog.com. Follow Archie on Twitter: @archiescol
Photo Credit: Tim Green aka atoach
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Targeting Your Social Media Efforts
Whether you like it or not social media has become a piece of the marketing puzzle and can be a great way to reach your target audience on a more personable level. But before you start making Facebook fan pages and YouTube channels, you should do some research on who and what people are looking for when they go to these sites.
A Look at The Numbers
A study done by Chitika, a full service online advertising network, has broken down the users of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and Digg. They found that an overwhelming 47% of Twitter users go there to find news, while 51% of MySpace users are there for either video games or celebrity/entertainment purposes. Twenty-eight percent of Facebook users go there for the news, while Digg seemed to be distributed evenly between news, tech, and video games.
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These types of numbers are important to know where to target your social media efforts. Having a game plan is half the battle—for both offline and online marketing. It seems that many marketers are starting to realize that social media is important, they just don’t exactly know what to do with it yet.
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Another study conducted by Econsultancy and Bigmouthmedia concluded that 86% of the companies they surveyed said they wanted to allocate more money to social media, but not sure what to do with their findings once on these sites. Knowing why people are going to these networks can help with this.
Find Your Target
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Once you target your efforts and know exactly why your customers are going to these sites, the easier it will be to give the information they want. Since 47% of Twitter users are there for news, have your Twitter updates be more information based. Your tweets may not have to be all informational, but give the people what they want.
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If you apply your knowledge of traditional marketing strategies to social media you can be very successful. You wouldn’t run an advertisement for makeup on a channel predominantly watched by males—so why would you create a YouTube Channel if no one is interested there?
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Research is half the battle in marketing, the same goes for social media. It can be very beneficial for companies when used right, it just takes some planning and research first. Tackle it like you would other traditional marketing tactics and you should see some success.
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About the Author: Shannon Suetos is an expert writer on phone systems based in San Diego, California. She writes extensively for an online resource that provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs such as VoIP Service at Resource Nation.
Photo Credit: Bogdan Suditu
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Expanding? 6 Business Essentials Worth Splurging On
Helping your business grow is no small task, and the fact that you’ve even made it to the point of expansion deserves some respect. As you continue your march to victory, however, you may want to reevaluate your priorities.
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While staying alive was once the top concern; there are now dozens of other extras that you need to consider. These range from quality of life to long-term business framework investments.
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Of the many bells and whistles available for businesses, a few investments shine out as vital to your overall success. Here’s a brief list of essentials worth splurging on.
Essential #1: Branding
Maybe you already did this when you started out, but many companies don’t do much for branding in the early stages of their businesses. Branding includes having a professional logo designed, maintaining a high quality website, and pushing for the beautiful synergy of brand recognition.
Essential #2: Computer Security
While an early stage business may not have the funds to invest in antivirus, antispam, and other malware blockers, these pieces of software become increasingly important as the loss of a terminal gets more devastating. Additionally, preventing any possible “whoops, I sent a client a virus”snafus is a solid idea.
Essential #3: Email Hosting
While the free email suites might have done a decent job in the past, they simply don’t cut it in the modern business world. Using a high quality email hosting platform to send and receive emails will enable more security, better branding, larger storage space, and more synchronization options.
Essential #4: Technology
Yes, you can start with a five-year-old computer. However, you need to move beyond that if you’re going to succeed.
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Better desktops, netbooks, tablets, and mobile devices all create a foundation for success. While this is most important in tech industries where productivity happens on a computer, all businesses stand to gain from these items.
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The first things to look at are RAM for your computer and some sort of mobile computing for your employees.
Essential #5: Storage Space
As your company gets bigger, so does the list of vital documents and resources. It’s also likely the number of collaborators on each project will increase. To ensure projects aren’t held up because of lost files or unclear documents, it’s a good idea to invest in storage space.
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This can mean a flash drive, a two terabyte external hard drive, or even a project management system. Use whatever works for you, so long as it can safely hold your files.
Essential #6: Livable Office Space
If you want to retain employees and keep everyone’s quality of life high, you may want to consider investing in nicer office accoutrements in general. Nicer chairs, plenty of light, plants, and even motivational posters can all impact the work experience. Things to consider include filing cabinets, fully stocked break rooms, and everything in between.
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As you grow your business, you’re not just inching forward. You’re laying the groundwork for the business’s future. The essentials you purchase now will help prepare your business for success in the future, so you must decide what things to buy and invest wisely.
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About the Author: Selena Narayanasamy can be found blogging about technology, social media, ridiculousness and drinking gallons of caffeine. Unfortunately, she loves to chat about anything and everything, so you can find her on her blog, Esvienne, or her professional Twitter account, @selenavidya
Photo Credit: http://www.aha-business-ideas.com/
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2 Emerging Social Media Platforms You Should be Using RIGHT NOW
In the brave new world of Social Media for Small Business there are the big, well known and highly lauded vehicles for promotion (Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, Yelp, LinkedIn) that almost every business has heard of, if not tried.
And then there are the new entrees into the scene, which get a lot of buzz in certain industries but which have not yet reached mainstream awareness. The obvious barrier to embracing these tactics as an “early adopter” is that your target audience may not have jumped on board either which will delay the potential benefits of directing your energy into these strategies.
However there are a multitude of advantages to being among the first in your area/industry to embrace these new platforms and a potentially greater payoff in the long run then directing your efforts to competing in the over saturated Social Media spheres.
These newer tactics are not as widely used, and therefore not as competitive, as the older social media platforms. There is plentiful room for growth on these platforms, potential for untapped markets and above all else an advantage to having more time to getting a toehold in the space before others flood the market.
These two tactics are heavily favored to succeed (both by investors and by predictive trending based on early adoption). By being the first to embrace them your business has a distinct advantage in capitalizing on the potential business expansion opportunities.
Platform: Social Q&A
Sites: Quora, Yahoo Answers, LinkedIn Questions , OnStartups Q&A, Focus, Matchpoint, Facebook Questions, Aardvark
Social Q&A is relatively new to the Social Media Market. Quora launched with much fanfare this summer following in the heels of high profile social search acquisitions by big names like Apple, Google and Yahoo. Social search and crowdsourcing information and Q&A is here to stay. Yahoo Answers, one of the oldest and therefore more pervasive of the Q&A models, consistently shows up in search queries and no doubt these other sites will also start to pop up as they grow in notoriety and popularity.
In fact, several hours after answering my first question on Quora we experienced immediate results in the form of site visits and conversions. Although not everyone can expect immediate turn around, there is no doubt that these communities are by their very nature active and seeking, and that demonstrating your expertise can give you a toehold in your field and give your business exposure in a highly directed way.
If you sell custom made bicycles and someone is researching a purchase and comes across a thoughtful (and well ranked answer) how much more likely will that potential customer be to seek you out when it comes time to purchase?
The reason to embrace this tactic right now is simple, to get there and answer questions before other people do. If you look at older sites like Yahoo Answers or LinkedIn, some questions have tens (even hundreds!) of answers. Being first, and at the top, increases the likelihood your response will actually get read and have an impact, much like keyword and search ranking ensures that your website will get visited. In fact some of the sites close questions after a period of time, which means if you don’t answer a question while it’s open, you may never get to answer it.
Platform: Geolocation
Sites: Facebook Places, Loopt, Foursquare, Gowalla
Before the launch of Facebook Places, only 7% of Americans were even aware that Geolocation services exists (according to Mashable). After the launch of Facebook Places, the burgeoning field of geolocation has been exposed to Facebook’s community of 500 million active users, according to Facebook’s own statistics. Each user has an average of 130 friends, 50% of whom log on to Facebook in any given day.
Facebook Places is therefore a huge windfall for the geolocation market. Not only did they dramatically increase the awareness of the “check in”, they also opened up the technology to people who don’t have smartphones (while it may seem that everybody has a smartphone, the actual statistics reveal that only about 30% of mobile users are using their browser!). With the introduction of Facebook Places, even if you can’t check-in you can see and comment on other people’s check ins.
The result is an widespread awareness of geolocation which coincides with market predictions that indicate that by the year 2013 1 billion people will have smartphones. This means that adopting and cultivating your geolocation strategy now will give you a distinct advantage of operating in a less competitive space, much like the early Yelp users and facebook fan page adopters before the novelty of the technology wore off and people began to feel over solicited.
Another motivator is that unlike Facebook Places (which requires you to upload documents that demonstrate proof of ownership of your business) the other geolocation services do not have such rigorous protections in place at this time, which means someone else could claim your business.
These two tactics both possess inherent advantages for early adopters. Why wait? Check out these new social media platforms and explore how they can enrich your existing social media strategy!
About the Author: Dena Stern is the Community Resources and Marketing Manager at WorkingPoint, a financial accounting tool for Small Businesses. She is responsible for community outreach and is a frequent contributor on the subject of technology trends, social media and marketing on the WorkingPoint Blog.
Photo Credit: webtreats
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The Secret to Being a Workplace Training Ninja
Let’s face the facts: training your employees is expensive. And putting the word “ninja” in the title of this post certainly does not make the realities of training any more better, or fun in the least bit. There is a great cost to you to teach your people how to do things “your way,” but hopefully it all pays off when they take that training and your business and workflow is better organized.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen that way. It’s not easy as cake.
Training your employees seems to work for a day or two and then everyone goes back to doing things the way they always have. So how do you change the culture of your work place and finally make a training program that will work for your employees? Follow these rules and your next training program will [hopefully] be a success.
Show the Method to your Madness
It feels like most training programs are there just to frustrate employees. Most of employees think it’s just you- making a change for the sake of change and being a tyrant. It’s important to communicate to your employees why you are doing things this way.
This will give them a better understanding of why training matters to the overall success of the business. Sometimes seeing the whole picture helps the employee get involved in the steps.
Make It Necessary
This is an important step. Change in the workplace, especially when dealing with long standing employees, should be brought about by a real need for improvement in an area. Bringing about training programs for things that aren’t in need of fixing is just a waste of money and will result in a training program that falls on deaf ears. You’ll get rogue employees… and those are the worst.
Be Hands On
This is an effective tool to training that has been used for decades. People learn better when they are asked to do the activity, as opposed to listening to lectures or taking written tests. People learn best when they are doing the job so make sure that as part of your training program there is a lot of time to be hands on. This will ensure that your employees learn in the best way possible.
Be Flexible
No training program is so good that it can’t ever be improved upon. The fact is that employees will respond better to training when they feel like they have some input on the process. This doesn’t mean you have to listen to everything an employee says, but if they find a better way to accomplish a portion of the job then you should consider putting that into the training. You are looking to implement change so let the employees help you do that.
Re-Visit
Just because you spend three days learning about something doesn’t mean your employees have it down. Most of the time your employees need extra attention in learning the ins and outs of the process. Make sure you are following up with your employees and giving them extra training when they need it. This will keep them from reverting back to the old way of doing things and improving upon the knowledge they learned in the training program. That equals better business for you.
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Training is important to your business- if these ideas don’t set the flooring for a good program, there’s plenty of workplace training resources available. These can open your eyes to different techniques and tricks.
What ideas do you have to train your employees?
About the Author: Elysabeth Teeko spends her time stalking technology, social media news and interior decorating. She loves to spend her time writing on new topics and broadening her expertise. You can follow her at @Elysateek.
Photo Credit: brunkfordbraun
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