When youngsters are so frequent to Internet these days, make the most of it and use it as a medium to reach them and draw them to the library.

Build an interactive website

It’s very important to have your presence on the Internet, and tell your target group that you are not behind any globally renowned library. This will make your library appear updated, concerned about changing trend and demand. But building a website won’t be enough. You need to be different from others and the more interactive your website is the higher the chances you have to captivate the younger audience. You may make it interactive by keeping interesting down-loadable widgets, virtual bookmarks for eBook reading, puzzles, riddles etc.

Facebook can be a great tool

Since these days every person is on Facebook and it is such a rage among the young people, make the most of it. Make a page for your library and draw fans. Run contests for free gifts or discount on membership fee, discount for referring to a friend, free stationeries like bookmarks, stick on pads, pens etc. You may run interesting polls and frequently update status to keep your target group interested. You may also buy Facebook advertisement space and advertise your library there.

New updates

You may dedicate a section in your website called ‘News’ or ‘what’s new?’ where you can talk about the new additions in your library. You may send similar message through newsletters, blog updates and Facebook or Twitter. People should know that your library is not age old and outdated. Talk about new books in brief and the author’s details.

Issue a book and get a DVD free for 15 days

Youngsters are more interested in seeing interesting films, shows, soaps, documentaries than reading books always. Lure them with your audio-video collection and issue an extra DVD for next 15 days when issuing a book for home. This way they will remain more motivated to take home book and read within 15 days time.

What are you waiting for? Try these ideas right away.

Images are necessary, not an option

Do not suffocate your brochure with too much of text. Too much of text not only makes the layout dull and boring, but also difficult to be read. Keep a balance between text and picture. Include as many pictures as you can in your brochure. Make sure pictures are relevant and appealing. Insert photographs which you own or product shots and drawings. Else you may get into copyright issues.

Colors should be handled with care

A colorful brochure draws more attention than a brochure in grey scale. A colorful splash always draws more attention of the viewer. But too many colors, not complementing each other can spoil it too. Make sure the colors complement each other. Use colors which suit your product category or the corporate image. Colors are highly related to emotions, use them effectively.

Enough of white space

At times marketers want to talk too much in a brochure, and suffocate the reader. But unfortunately, no one is interested in too much text. People scan a brochure they don’t read actively. And a brochure with enough of white space allows eyes to wander freely and make the rest of the things look prominent, bright and attractive.

Consistency in typeface

You may use a wide variety of typefaces on the cover or in a particular part of the brochure to draw attention; but in the main content of your brochure maintain typeface harmony, by using same font throughout. Be consistent in font size as well. Headline font size can be 14 or 16, 12 for the body text and 10 for captions and taglines.

Be careful about the folds

Be careful about the page folds and grids. At times, brochures are ruined, when page folds right through its text or picture in center. When photo and text runs through the fold, it’s a complete wastage. You can’t send across message effectively in mid of a fold. You may check the final design with a print out and see that folds compliment its design.

These are simple things about brochure designing yet commonly mistaken. Make sure you do your best at these.

Unlike big businesses, customer base of a typical small business is located in one particular area. A small business need to break the spell and stretch its wings to reach out as far as possible should it want to become a big business.

And how can one do that?

A small business can break the tyranny of space, time, and working hour by going online. Just take your business online and see how your business fares. There are measurable benefits of taking your business online, which I am going to show you below.

Benefits of taking a business online

1. You will not be dependent on your clock to open your shop. Your business will remain open throughout, and it can take order 24X7.
2. You can exponentially increase the reach of your business by going online. Your business will not be confined to one geographic location, nor will it be dependent on local buyers for profit.
3. By going online, you will level the playing field because the Internet offers you the same opportunity that any big business gets over here.
4. Your online business will help you maximize the return you get on your investment by opening doors of new market for you.

By going online, you will add wings to your small business, which will help your it fly higher and higher. And taking your business online is not that big a deal. It is just a three step process.

1. You buy a domain name
2. Purchase web hosting account on a reliable server, and
3. Find someone to design, develop, and deploy your online store.

Yes, the process is this simple, but it will take some time for you to get hang of. But, it is worth the effort. And if you want to save some money on web hosting and domain name registration then you should consider going with Gossimer.com. The web hosting plan of Gossimer will cost you a mere $4 a month, and you will get everything that you will need for successfully running your online business.

But, why people got involved with virtual assistants, if their works were successfully done by regular employees, and whom the employer can monitor from the comfort of his office? This question quizzes everyone who has never used a virtual assistant for his business and for these people only I have written this article. Read it to the end and you will know why to use a virtual assistant.

Why to hire a virtual assistant

Low cost

By charging less and allowing extra cash to sit in the employer’s pocket, a virtual assistant gives a competitive advantage to its employer which is hard to match using a regular employee. A small business owner hiring a virtual assistant has an unfair advantage. He can attack the competitors by lowering the price below the industry’s norm. He can do it as his operation cost is low.

Comparable quality

When compared, the output produced by a virtual assistant is same as the output of a regular employee of the similar capability. If both of them produce comparable results then why to hire one who costs more?

Operational flexibility

A company that runs an online business could keep his operation manned 24X7 by hiring a person from across the globe. If you are in the United States then you can hire a virtual assistant from Asia, so that your virtual assistant works when you sleep and sleeps when you work. This way you could keep your online shop open and manned the entire day.

Use as a Swiss knife

You can use a virtual employee as a Swiss knife by making him do all kinds of administrative and promotion jobs. Unlike most of the regular employees, a virtual employee keeps himself involved in many fields.

Hire a virtual assistant and see your profit skyrocketing. I have seen many small and mid-size businesses transforming themselves by hiring one to do the works for which the presence of an employee in the office is not required.

Once the above parameter is set, you need to do some quality check so that the sweetness of memory you have captured in the pictures does not get soured by the low quality of print’s output. You need to determine certain things before you give any company the responsibility to print your memories on pieces of papers.

For home users

Before finalizing a spectrum digital printing service provider, always keep in mind that it is not just the photos that you are sending for print, it is a piece of memory that you want the digital printing company to cut up on the finest piece of paper. If you approach a printing company with this mindset then you definitely will succeed in finding a good Digital Printing service provider.

For business users

You should adopt the same approach that has been suggested above for home users when searching for offset printing services providing companies. This helps you keep your needs and requirement in the center while deciding on a printing company. It also saves you from getting lured by the freebies and frills offered by the printing company, which in fact, will not do you any good if your business suffers because of the bad quality of printed marketing materials (flyers, business cards, brochures, and catalog, etc.).

Printing Services Checklist

Personal or business, whatever kind of printing requirements you have, you should first filter the available options using the questions written below before you choose a company for your printing job.

• For how long the printing company is in business?
• What kinds of printing services do the company offers?
• Are the technicians employed by the printing company qualified enough?
• What kind of paper will the company use?
• Does it have experience in printing the kind of work you have?
• Can the service provider show you the work it has done in the recent past?
• Is the company charging too much?
• Can the high price be justified by the quality of printing it provides?
• Which image format (TIF, TIFF, JPG, EPS, AI, PSD, or PDF) does it accept?
• What color modes does the company accept?
• And what image resolution does the company accept? Does it matches with the image you have?
• How many days will the company take to complete the assignment?
• What kind of clients does the printing company has? (This question becomes more important, if you are looking for an offset printer to get your marketing materials printed.)
• Can the company give reference to any known business unit in your locality that has used its services? (This is also important for business users).
• Does the company offer image enhancement and photo optimization services?
• How Far is the printing company from your location? If the unit is far away, will it offer pick-up and drop?
• Can you send large images files in e-mail attachments?

The Digital Printing service provider that passes the test with maximum “yeses” should be given the preference. This test is very important; therefore, I will suggest searching the Internet for reviewers who reviews Printing Services, if you cannot find time to run the company through the checklist yourself.

Or is it so?

I don’t care what you are told, but as far as I am concerned, this is not going to happen. It is always the small business that has an upper hand while dealing with customers or fulfilling their need, or even when fighting with big giants.

Why?

Because…

• It is the David who always wins the battle.
• It is the David who clicks with the masses.
• It is the David who knows to connect.
• It is the David who does not underestimate the competitor, and prepare the strategy accordingly.
• It is the David who does not become myopic.
• It is the David who tries harder.
• It is the David whose life is at stake.

Goliaths (big corporations) are managed by managers, they are not owned by them. And the distance f ownership from those who runs it plays a big role in deciding how much power one exerts.

The small business owners understand that if he loses his livelihood will go for a toss, so he fights. Contrary to this, a manager thinks: how does it matter if his corporation wins or loses now or in the long term. Neither losing nor winning is going to affect the paycheck he is drawing every month. The manager feels satisfied as long as the target set for him by his superior is met.

It is about the target, not about the customers or their satisfaction.

This is not so with small business owners. Go to a neighborhood shop, and he will cordially greet you and will ask for your well-being. You will not receive the same warmth from big giants. Indeed, they will greet you, but you also know how superficial and greed-dipped it is.

Small business do have a chance to stand against big business, but for them they have to stop pretending that they are big, and start behaving what they are. They will have to connect with the audience, and give personal touch to all the interaction with every customer.

Follow this and you will defeat the goliath (giant company) sooner than you ever expected.

SWOT

SWOT stands for Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and threat. Strength and weakness is internal to the product, whereas, opportunity and threats are external to the product. We use this matrix to find out strengths and weaknesses of our product, see what opportunity (matching our ability) the market is presenting, and gauge the threats presented by the market.

PLC

PLC stands for Product Life Cycle. A PLC study of your product gives you an idea about what stage your product is in, and what marketing channel and strategy to use. We divide PLC in following parts: introduction, Growth, Maturity, and Decline.

Introduction is the phase when the product is introduced to the market, and the organization is striving to create awareness about the product. Profit in this phase is either negative or low.

Growth is the phase in which the product gets acceptance, which results in increase in sales. Profits are high in this phase, and to cash in on the momentum the product has got, organization tends to invest some advertising dollars.

Maturity is the phase when sales start slowing down because most of the buyers have your product. Sales and profit has already passed its peak. Sales and profit may not be increasing but they are steady.

Some marketers divide this phase into early maturity and late maturity to figure out how close the product is to decline phase.

Decline is the phase when sales and profit both starts falling. It could be because the need of the market has changed and some better product is fulfilling that need, or because some other product is meeting the same need at lower cost.

From this phase either the product dies out in oblivion, or get reinvented, reintroduced and pushed on the growth track.

PESTEL

Some call it PEST while other calls it PESTEL. I have taken PESTEL because it is more complete a matrix then PEST. PESTEL is a macro-environment scanning matrix that helps a business find out how the various external factors going to affect it. PESTEL Stands for:

P: Political factors (Policy changes and how it is going to affect you)

E: Economic factors (economic growth, exchange rates, inflation, interest rates, and taxation changes are going to affect your business)

S: Social factors (How does social changes like, education, demographic, occupational, etc., going to affect you)

T: Technological factors (How advent of new technology will affect your business)

E: Environmental factors (How change in climate or rising temperature can affect your business)

L: Legal Factors (how change in legal environment going to affect your low. How much will your business suffer if the carbon emission level is set lower, and government pension plan is made mandatory for every organization, regardless of size?)

PEST matrix analyzes all the factors we discussed above except for the last two.