Technology and entrepreneurship are two separate entities that can greatly influence one another. Today, these two pillars of society are revolutionizing the world as new events unfold. As the world approaches another year with hopes of better days ahead, technology has become indispensable for various industries and markets.
In 2020, business owners will encounter more opportunities and challenges. Technology will play a critical role in the growth and continuity of many companies and organizations. During these times, entrepreneurs should be resilient and flexible.
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Evolving With Business Trends: The Ultimate Boss
Change is ubiquitous and evident in every part of society. As a business, you can either adapt to the changes and make them work to your advantage, or neglect them and witness your company get left out in a sea of competitors. As your respective industry steps into these changes, you’ll have to look out for potential consequences by conducting industry research and analyzing trend reports.
Consequently, the biggest challenge you’ll face as an entrepreneur is evolving with these emerging trends. How can you utilize these trends in your business strategies? Business trends are your ultimate boss in the entrepreneurship game, and no matter how intimidating they may seem, you’ll have to face and conquer them to win the game.
How Technology Can Improve Your Business Strategy
Since business trends come and go and even return, it’s crucial to take advantage and incorporate them into your business. In this innovative age, technologies like cloud automation developer can help improve your business strategies in the following ways:
- Enhanced Mobile Connectivity In and Out The Company
As of October 2020, there are 5.2 billion unique mobile users worldwide, with a growing rate of 2% annually. With this overwhelming number of mobile users today, imagine how one simple click can reach thousands of people every day. Thanks to technological advancement, computers are now portable in the form of mobile phones.
It’s not too late to incorporate mobile usage into your business strategies. 2020 is an excellent year to invest in mobile-related efforts to improve your mobile connectivity both within your workplace and when bringing in new customers and investors. Here are two ways to do that:
- VoIP: With the help of VoIP services, you can establish seamless communication with your leads and customers. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), or Internet Protocol (IP) telephony, is a technology characterized by voice and multimedia communications through the Internet. Simply put, integrating VoIP services into your business is an innovative cloud-based solution to expand your communication in and out of your company.
Moreover, the demand for enhanced mobile communications as a service will increase in the following years. Today, the leading communication channel service is Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) that utilizes VoIP technology. Businesses can use this technology to boost workplace communication and productivity, thanks to its collaborative features, including instant messaging, faxing, and web and video conferencing.
- Non-Intrusive Marketing: Since many consumers dislike the inconvenience of telemarketing, you can invest in non-intrusive telemarketing solutions like ringless voicemail. Compared to traditional voicemails, ringless voicemails allow businesses to send voicemails to customers without the ringtone interruption.
- 5G: Stepping into 2020, businesses and consumers will get to enjoy the benefits of the most awaited 5G mobile network technology. This technology features increased bandwidth, enhanced capacity, and lower latency to boost the connectivity and reliability of your business operations. While 5G has commenced in some parts of the globe already, its extensive release will happen in 2020. You definitely want to make sure your business is ready for it.
To prepare your business for 5G, assess which aspects of your company will benefit the most from 5G technology. If you’re an organization with thousands of employees, the faster speed that 5G offers can improve your workplace efficiency and reduce employees’ downtime. Next, find the right 5G service provider that can help oversee your service requirements in a proactive approach. It would be ideal to find a provider that can assist you in preparing for this change.
- Get Known In Social Media Platforms
Due to the overwhelming growth of the online world, digital marketing can be your most powerful tool if used correctly. As most people today have access to online content, especially on social media platforms, it would be advantageous to establish and grow your online presence in these avenues. Small businesses will immensely benefit from the online environment.
When navigating social media, make sure that you’re choosing the right platforms to advertise your business. Also, it’s crucial to define your target audience first before starting any social media marketing campaigns. Combining the right social media channels and audience can positively impact your online growth.
For instance, Facebook houses users of different generations ranging from the Silent Generation to Millennials as it’s one of the main communication channels presently. Thus, it’s best to implement customer acquisition strategies in this platform. On the other hand, Instagram is an excellent choice for eCommerce.
Furthermore, you can boost your social media marketing campaigns through your telemarketing solutions. You can use an SMS text blast to send out your campaigns to a large population from one source, then add call-to-action links that will lead users to your social media accounts and pages.
Here are some social media marketing trends to take note of for 2020:
- People-first social media: An engaged online community can drive your social media success, so make sure to find different ways to interact with them through responding to feedback, chatting with your followers, hosting giveaways, and more. Social media apps and websites have numerous features that can facilitate these actions as app developers and engineers improve them constantly.
- Live social media events: Live streaming achieved an unexpected boom in social media, mainly because of the lack of physical connection this year. As the world approaches the new normal, live content streaming will remain relevant. From low-quality videotapes, technology improved video streaming experiences that people have today.
- Diversification: Businesses always have a fixed target market. However, companies should challenge themselves to engage in diversification as you never know what the next trends and opportunities will be. For example, TikTok initiated a new social media engagement approach showcasing short videos produced by users themselves, with content such as dance, makeovers, cooking, and social media challenges, to name a few.
- Social commerce: Today, consumers love to exert as little movement as possible when shopping. Thanks to social media, 87% of online shoppers think that they make better buying decisions. Instead of focusing on your website, you should get more immersed in social media, where many people spend most of their time, especially while staying at their homes.
- Mobile Optimization For Better User Satisfaction
As more and more people own mobile phones, it’s time to upgrade your website into a mobile-friendly one. In the third quarter of 2020, 51% of the global website traffic belongs to mobile phones alone. If you still don’t have a mobile-friendly website, you shouldn’t hesitate to have one, as it’s an influential factor in defining your online presence.
Businesses can make their website mobile-friendly through mobile optimization, which involves adjusting the design and interface of your website to cater not only to visitors using computers but also to those who are using a smaller screen. Since mobile devices are portable and can be used on-the-go, it’s essential to give your mobile users a smooth and hassle-free browsing experience.
Also, top search engines like Google implement mobile-first indexing where they prioritize websites optimized for browsing on different devices, mobile phones included. Google will include mobile optimization as one of their baseline factors in determining rankings. If your website is mobile-friendly, this changing web landscape will be advantageous to your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.
Check out these tips when designing a mobile-friendly website:
- Start designing on a smaller screen and work your way up. Don’t make a separate mobile design.
- Always include a search function, preferably on the topmost part of your website.
- Simplify your content. Refrain from using fancy elements and overdecorating your website.
- Don’t use Adobe Flash Player as it doesn’t support Android and iOS. It also slows down your website’s load time, which is a big no-no in mobile optimization.
- Images and CSS language inhibits your website’s speed. Compress these elements to speed up your load time, but ensure that they won’t affect your website’s quality.
- Stay away from pop-ups and refreshers as they only work well on desktop environments.
- Optimize For Voice Search And No-Touch Tech
Along with the mobilegeddon, the mobile-friendly update that Google established in 2015, other technologies can significantly impact your SEO. Forty percent of US internet users alone utilize voice searching technology, and it’s expected to skyrocket to 122.7 million users in 2020. Instead of browsing the web with their fingertips, many people have personal assistants such as Alexa, Echo, and Cortana.
At this rate, it’s no doubt that voice search and no-touch technology will become the future of web navigation. Hence, it would be best if you started optimizing your website for voice search as early as you can with these tips:
- People talk and type differently. When people type, they tend to use short, awkward keywords but talking is a different situation. The query syntax has transformed into a more natural language, so concentrate on long-tail keywords and phrases.
- Design your content in an intuitive and specific way as people talk conversationally with their tech assistants. Take note of the questions that people may ask related to your business, and answer them indirectly on your FAQ page, blog posts, and more.
- Voice searching has three times more tendency to have a local nature. When users ask, “Where can I buy pastries in New York?” the voice search results will feature places near the user’s location. Since users want detailed results when searching, optimize your content, and add important details about your business to rank higher on the voice search results.
- Full Migration To Cloud Computing
Cloud-based ecosystems will dominate the digital world in the following years. While cloud computing has been around for a while now, leaders have only recently realized its potential and long-term benefits. If you’re still unfamiliar with cloud computing, you should start educating yourself right now and plan your organization’s entire migration to cloud computing services.
Without cloud computing, the foundation of app-based and data-driven ecosystems, top technological trends of today including Internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) wouldn’t exist in the first place.
Adopting a cloud-based solution for your business allows you to handle your business-related tasks seamlessly. As long as your organization members have an internet connection, they can access data and programs regardless of location. Cloud computing also accommodates cloud hosting, cloud backup, automation, and long-term growth planning.
When using cloud computing for the first time, there are three types of cloud computing services to choose from: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), software as a service (SaaS), and function as a service (FaaS). Additionally, you should select your cloud deployment, which defines how your system is implemented, hosted, and accessed. The four deployment categories include public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud, and community cloud.
Going into the monumental contribution of cloud computing, everyone has witnessed how it helped deal with the global shock brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. IT departments of various industries changed their digital approach and made it more adaptable to the new normal. Also, millions of clerical employees had to shift to remote working. If the cloud and its computing services didn’t exist, how do you think online infrastructures, systems, tools, and services would work?
As cloud computing services continue to serve different functions and features, it’s important to have a detailed understanding of how it can help your company’s individual goals. To maximize your cloud computing utilization, focus on your company’s comprehensive needs in the long run, which are reliability, connectivity, security, and performance.
Bottom Line
As Max McKeown said in his book The Strategy Book, ‘all failure is failure to adapt, all success is successful adaptation.’ Businesses and organizations, and even individuals, are bound to encounter changes in their journey. One will only realize if a change is good or bad after dealing with it face-to-face and turning this challenge into fruitful results. In terms of running a business, technology is an excellent tool for growth, yet many companies still fail to use it to their advantage.
