Every year you have something to gain as well as to lose and at the end something to feel, to do or to memorize. Also at the beginning of every year you get a chance to start something new. We should not live the same way we did in last year. Consider your past year as your last academic year where you learnt newer things, and utilize those learning in the coming year. This is what I try to practise and this way I grow myself every year to reach my goal. Today I am going to share few important learning I have learned in the last year from both professional and personal field.
Patience and Hard-work
As a human being it’s not prudent to expect all things will come in real life just as you dreamt or planned. You need to wait. You don’t have a Aladdin’s genie, that all your wish will instantly be true. But in real life you have to play both role; you must have a will and must work hard like Aladdin’s genie to make the wish true. I have acquired some assets from my father and few of them are patience, honesty and hard-work. These three assets helped me make the last year successful, the way I dreamt.
Productivity
Have you ever realized how productive your team members are?
At the midst of past year I found that we are not doing a great job, team members were not doing their best, not speeding up their works. Most of them were less productive, that directly affected the growth of my company. I realized I have to invest more time to find the solution, to promote our business. I did some research how I can increase our productivity. I can’t blame any one, because I am the leader of this cool team. I didn’t find anything to show excuse for such flop. I must have to find the way to increase productivity. I started to think that what we did in last few months and found the following points
- No internal Meeting
- Lack of Fun
- Lack of Professionalism
- Even Lack of Strictness
All of these 4 parts are important to ensure a better productive campaign. Then I started to work one by one, did some experiment and finally was able to increase the rate of productivity 3 times better than the past few months. This is one of the big skills I achieved in 2013.
Research
As an internet marketer I am to pass a great deal of time doing various researches, and I know it is pretty simple for most of the online professionals, especially for the people who are working on Internet Marketing and SEO industry. That time google brought some big algorithm update which made the journey tougher for SEO professionals. But in professional career it is common thing. So the more worried you would be the more behind you will fall. The biggest SEO update, Penguin 2.0, in 2013 drastically changed the SEO industries. In May 2013, two of my clients businesses have seriously impacted due to that update and it was a challenge for me to show my skill. I successfully retrieved their business by bringing back their SERP. What do you do when a google algo update occur? Here is what I have been doing for the last 4 years-
“Do Nothing”
Yes, I do nothing when I find an algo update live. I just stop my external SEO activities for a week or more, and see what exactly is happening. What the senior SEO professionals are saying and guessing about this. More often you will find the solution from those SEO giants. At least you will get the idea from their blog posts. Here are a few blogs you should follow for latest SEO updates
Finance Calculation
As I am the only owner of the firm Bizcope I didn’t have to involve anyone to share the financial activities. So I was not keeping any organized record of the finance data. That was one of the biggest mistakes I made. I should have kept a clear and organized record of all the investments, returns, growth/lose ratio etc etc. At the last quarter of the year I realized that I should maintain a system to keep the record of all expenses so that I can calculate the overall productivity. I started doing so and sooner I realized I have more clear idea about the strength, possibility and productivity. Now I know how extent I’m getting return against my investment. So that was another positive thing I worked on last year. Although I had to put lots of efforts and time to organize all past data, this is now more systematic and will be flexible from now to go on.
Long Term Plan
I am one of them who love to plan for long term. But I was not as mature as I am now. Two years ago I didn’t have any long term plan. Abul Kashem, one of the senior SEO professionals in Bangladesh, always inspired, suggested and motivated me to create a long term plan. Whenever I talked to him over phone or skype he always inspired me to take a long term plan. Now I have an approximate plan for the next few years. So I will suggest all of my readers to make a plan for at least next 5 years. What you want to do in the next 5 years, where you want to see yourself after 5 years.
Rebranding
As I was thinking to take a long term business plan I decided to bring changes everywhere in my brand name, working style, management and promotional activities. Bizcope was a continuation in this process. I rebranded my brand name from Outsource BD into Bizcope to cover a broad arena of business. Although I was working under the brand name Outsource BD, I dealt with few clients in BD (Bangladesh). In fact most of my clients were in USA, UK, Canada, Australia and in other countries. So my brand name wasn’t reflecting the scope of my business. My brand name was also a threat for my growing business. I could perceive that I was missing some clients just because my brand name doesn’t reflect what I was offering to my clients. So I changed my brand name to cover the international market as well as local market by focusing on the key areas of internet marketing.
Now I’m feeling how big decision I took, the outcome is tremendous. Over the last few months I could manage very important small and medium-sized business clients across the world with a great rate of success.
Instant Decision
People who involves in SEO still remember about Paul and Angela Packets which were passing great link juice in past (approximate one and half years ago). But what’s now? Do you still use those packets? Surely no! This is how Internet Marketing Industry has changed. You can’t tell what you are doing now will work tomorrow. Let’s think about Website Theme, while choosing the theme for your website the first thing you have in your mind is, “is the theme responsive?”. But did you think like this in past? So to run an online business you must have to be prepared for changing your business plan by taking instant decision. This is what I did in the last year as well. After the penguin 2.0 updates in May, I instantly changed few services and included few new ones. For example, besides full SEO services I started to work on Guest Blog Posting Services, Penguin Recovery Services and few more. And honestly it worked, I was able to get a good amount of clients, and by making few of them happy, I was able to create long term working relationship with them.
Reduced Social Media Usage
Nowadays no one can think a day without social media, I am not an exception. I pass a great amount of time in social media. I upload lots of photos, videos, funny posts, also some political views, some motivational sayings etc etc. But in the last month of 2013 I didn’t use social media sites that much. For professional and personal purpose I can’t ignore it, but I planned to involve at an fixed time instead of lots of short visits along the day. Because I found social media have great impact to reduce my productivity as well.
Three in One Trip to Singapore
At the beginning of 2013 we had a family trip in Singapore. That time I had the opportunity to meet up with few of my past SEO clients. I also managed to discuss different matters with few local business owners. Being a three in one (Family trip, business trip, second honeymoon) kind of package that trip was very important for me. That was the first time my wife was with me during an overseas tour. We had a two month long great trip; we had a great time with lots of fun, food and photos :D. Here are few of those photos I am going to share with my friends and followers.
Things I will miss from 2013
I will miss McDonald Big Mac, Cheeseburger and Mac Spicy. I will miss various Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Malaysian, Indian and Korean foods as well. I will miss one of my aunt who passed away. I will miss the logo of Outsource Bd in my office wall and many more.
Photos from 2013 memory.
Singapore Zoo
Marina Bay Sands Singapore
Marina
Hot and Spicy Thai Food at Orchard
Various Drinks at Changi Village
Working
Bizcope Workstation
Squid Dish
So in total I can say, I had a great 2013, and I want to say thanks to Allah for keep me healthy and safe. How was your 2013, I am waiting to hear from you as well.
