The blog can be the most vital part of any website, even though it may not have the style any essential information other sections of your website has.  Why is this? It comes down to a mixture of attracting people to your site with quality content, while also “showing off” for the search engines.

People stay on websites when there is information they are interested in.  Writing blog posts designated for your website’s niche is a great way to keep these potential clients on your site.  Blogs that are boring with lots of text and no pictures can leave to people quickly leaving your site. It is best to have lots of separations in paragraphs and to implement images or videos when possible.  The photos create more time on your website, which leads to better potential leads when blogging in your niche.

Target Audience

Your website viewers are smart and know what they like.  If you are putting out fluff content to fill your site with no real goal, both visitors and Google will notice. Fluff can occur if you are using any auto writer consistently. Due to the negative impact on your Google search ranking, this is not encouraged as it can end up hurting your website as opposed to helping it.

Google is the most widely used search engine, so its ranking is significant.  When you first create your website, you will be low in the ranks for a variety of reasons.  The first being Google recognizes a website’s age and gives older sites more credibility, thus ranking them higher.  This can immediately put you at a disadvantage to any competitors who have older websites, and who are already blogging in your niche.

This can make getting a newly created websites to be recognized by the significant search engines difficult.  The blog is one primary free gateway to this. You can post as much content as you would like about your niche while helping your site get found without having to spend any money!

Promote Yourself

Paid promotions are the fastest way for any website to be recognized.  Before they have site authority or have started working their way up the natural search results.  You can pay for ads through either social media networks like Facebook and Twitter or through Google itself.  Doing research will ensure you show up for the keywords that you bid on. This can all be done through Google’s AdWord program, which allows you to promote your website based on a customizable budget.

Whether you are an individual with no budget or a large corporation, you should be blogging in your niche.  It helps with search engine optimization and gives your clients additional useful information about your industry. Kallen Media can rocket your company forward, so get in contact with us today for your free demo.

Finding Your Managerial Style

Being a member of management is challenging; there’s no doubt about it. Finding your management style can be even harder. How should you lead your team? What’s the best way to increase efficiency while keeping the members of your team satisfied and motivated to work?

The short answer is, there is no short answer. There are many different things to take into account when figuring out what management style is going to be most successful for you and your company. For example, how much work needs immediate attention, and what kind of personalities do you and the members of your team have? It’s also essential to think about the type of business you are managing in.

Let’s go over 3 of the most effective management styles: authoritarian, affiliative,  and democratic, and how each can be beneficial to your business.

Authoritarian Management Style

As the name suggests, this is a more aggressive management style. This style can be helpful in certain situations. As of about 100 years ago, you aren’t going to have much of a following if you always boss everyone around. Often referred to as Autocratic, the leader of the group is in control of all aspects. Rules are enforced with little or no feedback from the team members. All of the decisions are created by the leader to get the job done.

There are some situational benefits to this style and can be useful to have in your leadership toolbox if a task or set of functions has a fast-approaching deadline, set evident expectations. These expectations will allow you to meet that timeline may be the best course. There might not be enough time to discuss the tasks at hand further. Often in small businesses, the available staff is small, and time-critical jobs will approach quickly. In these situations, management may need to put their foot down.

Additionally, this style can apply to novice team members. Newer employees may still be unfamiliar with the broader goals of the company. Many may need some guidance on properly prioritizing tasks. In these situations, it’s wise for management to list a clear plan for these employees. Subsequently, new employees can familiarize themselves with exactly how the company operates. This can help the employee learn while still providing their available skill set to the company.

Affiliative Management Style

Affiliative leaders love to keep their employees happy and aim to build relationships throughout the company. They take pride in leading by joining in and working directly with the team on various tasks, lending a hand wherever necessary, all while building stronger connections throughout the organization.

At times an affiliative mindset can be a great help. Sometimes, people disagree with each other, and this will no doubt happen at some point with any team of employees. In situations like this, having a leader to come in and remedy the condition can prevent the feelings worsening between the group. Through motivation and an overwhelmingly positive attitude, the affiliative manager will join in and try to help mediate the situation.

An affiliative manager will always reward employees. Positive feedback comes with a job well done, encouraging a healthy mindset and motivation to continue working hard. The feedback provides employees with a sense of belonging and will result in them seeing the manager as an ally to them. In turn, team members will often return to the manager whenever problems arise, or questions need answering, which means the manager is more connected to exactly what goes on in the workspace.

It’s worth noting that an affiliative style should be part of a higher management style, and not used by itself. A completely affiliative management style may result in members of the team slacking off more, knowing that their manager will come in and fix problems for them without any repercussions. Employees may also be used to continue receiving positive feedback even if they aren’t providing their best work, and start to think that mediocre performance is sufficient. This can result in overall poor performance and negatively affect the quality of life rapidly if left unchecked.

Democratic Management Style

A democratic manager is one that is open and dynamic. They allow all members of the team to have a voice and often collaborate on tasks with everyone working on them. Discussions flow freely through the organization, and decisions are made as a whole, with everyone’s opinion in mind.

Fast-moving companies can benefit significantly from a democratic management style. When things are always changing, any chance to improve or streamline operations needs to be voiced and discussed. Allowing employees to be part of the conversation can help, as they are most involved in job completion. A democratic leader will be able to hear all ideas and translate them into the best decision for the company, and then be able to give that decision back to the employees.

A democratic leader is most effective in a sophisticated and professional work environment. The structure allows all members of the team to bring their expertise to the table and collectively put the right plan in action. Many times, an experienced employee will prefer to be in a democratic situation. This is where we are heard rather than expected to follow explicit direction.

The Choice is Yours

There is a slight downside to this management approach, however. When everyone has a voice in every task at hand, it can slow things down. Often, different team members will have different approaches to the same job. Taking the time to hear them all and then decide on the best route to take can bring things to a halt. Within certain situations, there may not be enough time. That is why, again, this should be one of the many tools in your theoretical box of management skills.

Get in contact with us today to have us give you a free demo on how to make your business run more effectively here.

 

When a company or an individual decides to create a website to market their wares, one of the single most notable additions is a regularly updated Blog.  Over the lifetime of your website, this weblog will typically help increase natural traffic to your site. Blog posts capture both the attention of search engines as well as potential clients, making them a marketing necessity.

1.      Skimming –

When a new user stumbles upon your site, a blog is often the right place for content and keywords. These thoughts and ideas attract users and encourage them to dive deeper into your site. Similarly, search engines like Google browse your articles for keywords to rank your website.  Often a blog post is one of the first places a user will land on your site.  Give them something interesting to catch their attention, so they’re likely to stick around as we discussed in “How Do I Get My Business Noticed.”

2.      Content is king –

When a casual user is skimming through your site, it is the exciting content, linked to other pages in your website, that will keep them browsing for more extended periods. This creates potential leads and takes these users to areas that will result in engagement. The purpose is to give your business the best chance to win their business.  Your blog is the perfect place on your website to have more abundant information about various subjects of interest relating to your field.

3.      New content –

While generalized content can be useful for guiding a reader to the next page you want them to discover, it is original content that will likely keep a user coming back to find out what’s new.  In the world of blog posts, regularly scheduled fresh content is always preferable. The occasional post for both potential clients and search engines will no longer cut it in the competitive online world.

At Kallen Media, we recommend a minimum of one new post per week. With that said, content optimized for SEO should be no less than 500 words. This is because Google “crawlers” often do not pick up on pages or posts that have less content on them. Top ranking posts often will have over 1,000 words. Posts that last the reader an average of 7 minutes to read through the material are ideal.

4.      Lifetime value –

One of the best features of a blog post is that once it is live on your site and gets indexed by the search engines, then it’s there for users to find forever.  In other words, this one post will be on the internet for people to see. The link refers back to for as long as your site is active. These links make posting quality content that much more critical. You want your company linked to trustworthy articles and sources, not poor content. Often it can be better to edit and change old material rather than trying to delete it for search engine indexing reasons.

5.      Blog posts are the #1 marketing tool for SEO –

Down to the most fundamental point for internet marketing… adding a blog and keeping it regularly updated can seem like a chore and can be a challenge.  However, the reward is that your addition of regular content to your website (quickly done through scheduled blog posts) tells the search engines that your site is active and provides valuable information for the potential client.  If you want users to find you, start blogging!

Kallen Media can help you create and maintain a blog on your website.  Call us today at (773)-524-1483 or click here to find out just how easy and economical it is to get started.