Business and Conscience: Inspiring Examples of Companies Giving Back during Coronavirus Outbreak

  1. Jackson Brown Jr. once said, “Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.” Couldn’t agree more, right? I don’t know about you, but this virus outbreak somehow opens my eyes towards what I can’t see and what I don’t know. You only know the importance of washing hands properly and how to do it after the outbreak. You know the importance of growing your human conscience during this period and you certainly know some people are not willing to be selfless and instead being the opposite of it by taking advantage of the situation. However, if there was one thing that was mostly tested in this outbreak, I could say that businesses could be prompted to take certain actions to the next level, in a cringeworthy way. Sure, the Melbourne SEO services I have provided for the past few years might be losing some of our customers this year, but that’s actually the risk we might see coming, but not the virus. That being said, I wouldn’t start selling masks and hand sanitizers just because of this situation and I am sure my employer wouldn’t do that either. Yes, when I mentioned this, I have seen some businesses doing ridiculous things just as a way to deal with coronavirus outbreak. I mean, a restaurant that sells food and beverages could go so far by selling masks and hand sanitizers on Grab Food. Like, what the… Okay, I don’t want to curse here, but I didn’t see that coming. That being said, setting aside this kind of discovery, let’s start seeing kindness everywhere conducted by inspiring companies that give back to the community during coronavirus outbreak that can become your inspiration as well. Yes, there are people who are nice out there. If those businesses can do it, you can do it too. Keep reading this article to be inspired!

As mentioned above, here are the companies that are giving back to the community:

  • Microsoft announced that they will keep paying the hourly workers who support their campus.
  • Google established a COVID-19 fund that enables all temporary staff and vendors, globally, to take paid sick leave if they have potential symptoms of COVID-19, or can’t come into work because they’re quarantined. They have also made their video conferencing service, Hangouts Meet, available for all G-suite customers until July 1, 2020.
  • Forbes8 is hosting a free digital summit on March 20, 2020 under the theme of Business Resilience: Thriving in Crucial Times. The speaker roster includes top experts and best-selling authors such as Chris Brogan, Rohit Bhargava, and Dorie Clark. Many of the speakers were slated to speak at the cancelled SXSW this year.
  • LinkedIn is opening up 16 of its learning courses for free. Courses that provide tips on how to stay productive, build relationships when you’re not face-to-face, use virtual meeting tools and balance family and work dynamics in a healthy way.
  • Adobe is giving higher education and K-12 institutional customers of their Creative Cloud apps the ability to request temporary “at-home” access for their students and educators. This is being granted through May 31, 2020 at no additional cost and is available globally.
  • Amazon is hiring 100,000 more workers and giving raises to current staff to deal with coronavirus demands. Well, unlike some bosses who cut people’s salary with an excuse of coronavirus outbreak, Amazon is doing amazing things to appreciate their employees.
  • Starbucks has extended its mental health benefits. In partnership with Lyra Health, Starbucks is offering its partners personalized, confidential mental health care, 20 free in-person or video sessions every year for partners and each of their eligible family members, online scheduling with most providers available within two weeks, and access to a provider network of mental health therapists and coaches.
  • Dolce & Gabbana announced that it has partnered with Humanitas University to fund a coronavirus research project.
  • Giorgio Armani has donated $1.43 million dollars to four hospitals in Rome and Milan, as well as to the Civil Protection Agency.

Denzel Washington said, “At the end of the day it’s not about what you have or even what you’ve accomplished… it’s about who you’ve lifted up, who you’ve made better. It’s about what you’ve given back.” It’s never too late to share kindness and you are not going to be poor for that. You don’t have to give millions if you can’t afford it. A kind gesture can reach a wound that only compassion can heal, so whatever you have and you want to give, that’s all that matters.

Security Threatened: Signs You Are Hiring A Bad Web Hosting Provider

When it comes to building a business, almost many business owners nowadays know the importance of having a website for their business. However, not many know that having a website means having to protect it from unwanted attacks, such as virus, hacks and even malwares. Yes, having a website comes with many risks that can be bad for a business. For that reason, some business owners who are doing their homework on website knowledge hire web hosting services to protect their website. If you are one of them, good for you, but are you one of the business owners who hire a bad web hosting provider? If yes, please get out of there and rescue your business. If you are unsure, this article will tell you how to spot the signs. Keep reading to find out!

Too much downtime

One of the most important aspects of running a website is that you make sure the website has a good uptime. The uptime for your site can directly affect sales and conversions. If your website is down frequently, it should reflect in your traffic statistics as well as in your conversions. Nobody wants a website that is down more than 10% of the time. Every second that your website is down you are losing money. Most web hosting companies offer you a promise that the website will be up for a certain uptime percentage. However, you need to make sure they are telling the truth and proving their quality by looking at the reviews.

Poor customer services

One of the reasons why having a website is the best value for your business is that your website will be your 24-hour marketing strategy and 24-hour customer services. However, that also comes with a web hosting that is available for 24 hours a day. Whether you just have a question about the billing cycle or you are experiencing adware, viruses or other malfunctions on your site, the customer service department should be able to guide you in getting your website back up and running or answer any questions about billing to your account. If you cannot get in touch with the customer service department of your web hosting provider, then you’ve got a problem there.

Slow loading times

The first thing you have to have in your website in order to get the best first impression of your business is that you make sure your website visitors are not going to wait for your website to load the content they need to see. The amount of time that it takes for your website to load can be a strong factor to determine whether or not customers convert into sales. There is nothing more annoying than waiting for a website to load when with the simple click of a back button you can have other websites within a couple of seconds. Chances are if it’s taking your site too long to load, there is not enough bandwidth across the host server. Cheaper web hosting companies will sell shared hosting packages to multiple websites and bog down the processors and amount of bandwidth across the server making the websites slow. If your site takes more than 3 seconds to load, you need to change your web hosting provider.

That’s the most important parts in noticing whether or not you are hiring a bad web hosting provider. If you have got similar problems like the ones I have mentioned above, then I suggest that you change your web hosting provider. I know it is not as easy as it sounds, but when you look at it deeper, you will find what you are looking for. Don’t forget to check the reviews as well.

The Key Ingredients that Make Your Content Interesting for SEO

When it comes to business world, every business owner is not only required to be smart in saving and using money for their company, but they also need to be creative with their content especially if they set up SEO for their business. Why? As a person who provides Melbourne SEO services for business owners, I know one thing that can strengthen the SEO process; content. The thing is; not everyone is gifted to always provide unique content every day. However, if you know these key ingredients, you know you are on the right path. So, what are these key ingredients that help boost your content and make it more interesting for SEO? Keep reading this article to find out!

Focus on adding more fun to the topics

In general, we may need technical writing to a certain topic in order to increase people’s knowledge and familiarity with our products; however, too much technical writing can only make your content boring. For example, a post about how to use Aloe Vera to remove makeup and to apply it on puffy eyes is more interesting than describing the benefits of Aloe Vera as a whole. In short, focus on writing subjects that your readers can take and use in real life.

Use images and video in your content

Writing content is the easiest way to make content for free, and certainly, written content is the most useful in terms of optimizing your site for SEO, but images and video can quickly turn an otherwise flat, stagnant piece into a much more captivating and diverse one. Vision is the strongest human sense, so people are naturally drawn to visually appealing pieces. Break up your bulky content with whatever images you can find – they could be photos of your subject, images that illustrate a concept, or memes that lighten the mood. Using video to engage your audience adds further to your content marketing strategy. Just make sure you are using images or video that are available for you to use (not stealing from your competitors, of course!).

Use casual and personal approach in your writing

There is one thing that most business owners tend to forget when it comes to creating and writing content; they forget that they are writing and making content for humans. Almost all of us are too absorbed in marketing strategy that we forget that our target audience is human. One of the biggest secrets to success in content marketing is writing in a consistent brand voice, and most brands want their voices to be professional, authoritative, and distinguished. However, if you are using it wrong, your brand content quality might come off as uninteresting and just plain boring. Therefore, start taking the main characteristics of your brand’s voice and blend them with your own personal style. Inject your own personality into your blog writing, and adopt a more casual, conversational tone to liven up your piece.

Add a sense of humor

I mean, who doesn’t love jokes? Even boring jokes can sometimes make us laugh. Your content should add a sense of humor to increase its interesting part. You can even turn a plain boring content into a more entertaining content that is still useful but fun. However, not all people can understand jokes, especially if it is some kind of ‘homemade’ jokes that some people might not realize it’s a joke. Some can even take it seriously and be offended. Therefore, be careful when exploring this point.

The best way to improve over the long term is to make changes in an iterative process. Measure how effective your content currently is, make one change at a time, and take more measurements to see how each change affects your overall impact. This way, you’ll know exactly which changes to exaggerate and how to improve your content further in the future. Remember content marketing is a long-term strategy, so don’t be discouraged if it takes a while to find your perfect groove.