Guest Post – Keeping a Healthy Balance Between Capital and Cashflow

Posted on June 4, 2013 Leave a comment

Capital. Every business needs it, especially small businesses. However it’s cash that keeps a business alive on an everyday basis. As the saying goes ‘turnover is vanity, profit is sanity, but cash is king’. If money is not available to keep the business ticking over from day-to-day it will collapse. An organisation that keeps a close eye on a healthy cash flow and restricts spending in terms of monthly turnover and profits will also have greater control over investment.

This article will help explain some of the simple techniques which will enable you, as a small business owner, to maintain a healthy balance between capital and cashflow.

The business manager – the juggler

Having too much cash available at any one time can starve the business of investment and growth. This is where you need to start juggling. If you keep too much money tied up in capital your cashflow will suffer and if you have too much cash for everyday business needs your enterprise is not benefiting potential investment.

Forecast into the future – not just next week

So let’s start from the beginning. Future capital can be distilled from monitoring weekly and monthly cashflow. So, in order to remain safe you need to have a clear idea of where cash is going to be used. Only then can it be placed in long-term assets, business savings and investment schemes. You also need to be able to forecast into the future. OK, this month’s costs seem to be pretty easy to judge but how about next month or six months’ time? With the ever tightening recession and reduced business growth, is it likely costs will increase or decrease?

Controlling the unpredictable

Some factors at first seem hard to judge. For instance late payments can turn forecasted cashflow upside down in an instant and cause great problems. By tracking back over how previous payments were paid you can get a better idea of ‘patterns of payment’. Do certain clients have a habit of always paying late? Is it the same suppliers you have to chase month-on-month? Having this knowledge can give you a much better insight into how much ‘liquid cash’ you are going to need – it also acts as a ‘financial cushion’.

For more information on the trials and tribulations of late payments read this article.

Controlling cash is essential and management accountants deal with a range of cash issues:

ensuring that sufficient cash is available for investment by not tying up cash in stock unnecessarily

putting procedures in place for chasing up outstanding debts

controlling different levels of cash outflows in relation to the size of the business.

A finance system that takes your cash flow into account

Of course filtering money from cash flow is only one form of gaining future investment in your business. However the obvious example of is business loans but these continue to be difficult to access as the recession continues. While the Government have put various schemes in place to encourage banks and finance houses to lend, the business market are yet to see any real benefits. It’s always worth considering a business cash advance.

This post was contributed by Business Cash Advance, who offer a finance scheme that takes your cash flow into your account.

Katie’s Top Tip for Businesses – Digital Marketing Services

Posted on December 5, 2012 Leave a comment

Calling all entrepreneurs! Our very own founder and managing director Katie has contributed to an article on creative business site The OnRamp. When asked how she fought through the fear that entrepreneurs can feel during the infancy of a business, she cast her mind back to the founding of her digital marketing services company and replied:

‘When first starting out, if I was worried about the future of the business I would stay late at the office after everyone had left and take time to reflect. Often I make my best decisions at the end of the day when I’m tired, hungry or just want to go home, as this adds a sense of urgency to the decision making process!
So far all the decisions I have made this way have helped drive the business forward immensely.’

You can read the other 11 hints over at The OnRamp’s site.

Katie is able to offer consulting and mentoring as part of I Say! Digital’s full-service digital marketing services, so if you want to know how to get your new venture off the ground, give us a call.

YouTube: What Can it Do For a Business?

Posted on November 15, 2012 Leave a comment

YouTube and Digital Marketing

A discussion broke out earlier this week in the office about YouTube.

We were talking about life before the site, and how as recent as 2005, we dreamed of a place on the internet which would act as a magical wishing well for whatever niche or interest you had: ‘I want to watch my favourite childhood TV programme’ or ‘I want to see that goal again’. With YouTube, these aims are achievable. Yes, we probably use it mainly for cute cat videos or the latest film trailers, but one shouldn’t exclude YouTube from any discussion of useful social media.

How Social is YouTube?

Yes, YouTube is more widely considered a video-streaming site (which it is); but there is a huge social element too, which gets lost in the shuffle. Visual items, such as video and infographics, are a lot more likely to be shared and go viral than a long, wordy article; and because social is becoming more and more decisive in SEO, creating something that people will want to show off to friends is becoming vital. YouTube users have a profile which they can play around with; made easier with its integration with Google, to the point where you can now have your own name (which will please anyone who came up with an immature username at the age of 15). Unfortunately, a strong majority of users don’t bother to contribute or even read comments, because they’ve already seen a related video that they want to click on to. You’ll have your usual trolls with their all-caps, swear word-infested arguments, but you can find some very thoughtful, well-structured back-and-forth replies as well. You just have to scroll.

Like Facebook or Twitter, you can also see relationships built up over time. Someone posts a video here and there; someone else replies with a ‘cool video dude’; more people see it, and want to throw in their two pence or expand on your reply. A comment strikes a chord and gets a “thumbs up”. If you keep at it as a creator, promoting your video on the other proper social networks, and tagging your video properly, your uploads will spread further. People will post a link on forums, or even sites like Reddit, and in turn, YouTube will register that your upload is getting a lot of views, and give it a nudge.

Soon you’ll have subscribers (i.e. followers) who’ll look forward to your next upload. They can even see it pop up by making YouTube’s homepage a port-of-call, along with Facebook or Twitter. If they’ve decided to follow you on those platforms, you can post a link there to remind them you’re still around and have uploaded fresh content. Like the concept of ‘followers’, ‘subscribers’ assumes that even if you don’t personally know someone, it’s socially acceptable to follow their activity. So whereas some businesses struggle to earn likes from those beyond their friends and family, YouTube is a bit more lax in that you don’t have to wait for someone to accept your request. This way, strangers can observe you from a distance for a while before making a decision to take on your services.

How YouTube Can Be Used By Business

Only a small majority of our clients use YouTube, because it captures a visual element of their services which they wish to demonstrate and which is not as applicable to other industries. How-To tutorial videos, for instance, builds up authority as a knowledgeable or capable source if you’re in the building trade. Viewers can put a face to a business and get to know you as a personality – which can be endearing, provided you pick the right person to represent you on camera. Videos are also an alternative route to posting images on their own on Pinterest or Facebook; putting together a slideshow to music can be easier on the eye, and show that much more effort has been put in.

If you’re interested in seeking out this, or another of our services, browse our services or get in touch with us.

Instagram For Business: Power of the Visual

Posted on September 27, 2012 Leave a comment

We’ve recently jumped on the Instagram-wagon (terrible, we know). As well as making us all point our smartphones at our meals or look like tourists in the street, we’ve unlocked some great possibilities when it comes to producing content for clients.

We all know the famous line ‘content is king’; or ‘content is kingmaker’ as Yousaf Sekander recently stated at Brighton SEO. For people to actually follow you, you need to have your content reach them, and to do that you need to encourage those who do follow you in the beginning to spread it around. If you can produce something completely unique that can transcend the field or niche you’re in, you’re onto a winner.

Instagram has a bit of a reputation as being the tool for wannabe photographers who think adding a filter to any old photo makes them trendy. Yes, those people do exist but Instagram also an easy and free way to jazz up an image. It can separate you from the hundreds of images that an individual sees each day. It also feels a bit more personal and the filters can stir feelings of nostalgia which people instantly gravitate towards. Unlike something like a YouTube video which requires you to put in time to consume, a picture is a bite-sized chunk.

I also came across Pinstagram, where you can actually view your photos on a desktop which you can’t do at the moment through Instagram alone. You can also easily upload these to Pinterest. On these kinds of sites, with the right bit of filter-magic, mundane products like door locks, which we take for granted, can be transformed into gothic masterpieces.

So who could Instagram benefit? Well, like Pinterest, those who work in a field whereby their product or service relies on the visual, would benefit largely from a presence here. Those services where the finished product captures an audience and floods them with possibilities in their own life. Interior design or home improvement sites give themselves up to material which can instantly stir a reaction in someone and prompt them to click ‘Like’ and want to share it with others. And as we were taught at Brighton SEO, if you can get in with the right “influencers” to relay your content, you’re onto a winner.

That’s what is so great about social media, especially for business. Many incorrectly view it from the outside as something which teenagers sit on updating each other about what sandwich they’ve just made. YouTube is a social media site or at least is a video-streaming site which has integrated social media aspects into it’s interface so you can follow or subscribe, comment back and forth, create your own profile and more. The active element sometimes gets overshadowed by the passive nature. For businesses, there is a wealth of tools available (and more being made every year) to be utilised and get your message across.

So think about the possibilities for your business to make an impact through a visual form. Words are important in the form of web-copy and article-writing, but there are many other avenues to go down.

Four Things That Turn Off Twitter Followers

Posted on September 21, 2012 Leave a comment

If you’re trying to get ahead on social media, specifically Twitter, you need followers. To encourage those followers to jump on your bandwagon, there’s a few things you can do to attract them, and have your tweets spread a bit further. However, there are just as many things you shouldn’t do. Without going into too many boring details and giving away our services completely, here are a few to start you off:

1) Re-tweeting Everything

People want to follow you; not YOUR followers, otherwise they would just cut out the middle-man. While it’s always acceptable to re-tweet the occasional good read, consider whether a strong majority of your followers would enjoy it too. What do they want to get from you? If you want to RT something that you personally like, then fine; but accept that not everyone will want their feed constantly cluttered up.

2) Tweeting Too Much

Originally I thought Twitter was just the Facebook status, and that was about it. Well it is to some extent, but I now appreciate it more as a quick chunk of bite-size information or entertainment. Just like on Facebook, tweeting every little detail in your day is incredibly boring. Move on!

3) Bad Hashtags

Hashtags are great for specific events so conversations and comments can be collected and viewed together in one go. However, if you’re in the habit of coming up with really convoluted or overly long hashtags, these can be a bit silly and unnecessary. Hashtags should be phrases that deserve to catch on, a bit like a mantra or ideology. It could be a joke, though only if your followers will ‘get it’ (and even RT it). Be careful to confine hashtags to Twitter, as using them on other platforms reeks of blind posting.

4) Speaking Generally

Saying ‘Hey followers’ is quite formal and general. It puts a barrier between you and your followers. If you have an idea who follows you, like a certain demographic, speak to them in their language. It’s not a bad thing to tweet specifically to them every now and then. It expands your reach and appeal, and shows to those you’re not addressing that you’re a popular Tweeter.

We are currently offering a free Twitter drop-in session for anyone to come along and learn the basics, with professionals who use this daily for work and place. Come along, network, eat biscuits and learn how Twitter can help you; whether as a business owner wanting to improve their publicity in 2012, or simply as an individual wanting to learn something new and show off.