 Image credit: Bich Tran on Pexels If you’re feeling overwhelmed by Covid-19 you’re certainly not alone. Most people are feeling a little anxious, and concerned over what it may bring. Restrictions have been put into place right across the globe and many people face a period of isolation at some point. This comes with a lot of concerns including lack of essentials, no access to medication, the feeling a=of being trapped, and getting bored. Many people are talking out about their concerns, but not many are thinking of ways they can fill their time with useful and productive tasks. Once you’ve completed any working from requirements, you are likely to have a little more free time than usual, but what can you do with it?
Some of the thing you could do include: Updating Your Resume This is a task that often gets left behind until you are searching for a new job. It’s understandable though, as most will not think they need to update until such as time. However, updating your resume as you learn a new skill is a great practice to be in. Whether you suddenly lose your job from something like Covid-19 or see an opportunity that’s too good to miss, you’re going to want your resume to be as up to date as possible so you can act fast. Learn A New Skill If you ave found that you now have more time on your hands, learning a new skill is a great reason to use some of it. Whether you fancy learning a new hobby like sewing, painting, or baking or you want to learn a professional qualification, this could be a great time to start. It will not only improve your skill set but it will also help you keep focused and motivated. Long-Term Projects There is usually at least one long-term project that you haven’t got around to. Maybe you’ve been thinking of starting a blog, decorating the bedroom or landscaping the garden. If you find yourself with some free time during a lockdown (where you are still able to leave the house for limited reasons) then it could give you the opportunity to be productive and get one of these ticked off. For example, if you’ve been meaning to move some stuff from your home or garden think about using Sydney Ute Van Hire to finally get it taken to the dump yard, charity shop or recycling centre. Reassess Or Create A Budget Most people will live the wing it mode when it comes to money. However, if Covid-19 has taught us anything, it’s that a budget can help us through a tough time. You may be more concerned about money now more than ever, meaning a budget could really help to minimise this stress. If you know exactly where you stand you will be able to start planning for the future and make it through Covid-19 in a possibly better financial situation. Staying at home for long periods of time can be challenging. Remember to wipe everything down regularly, wash your hands, and try to use the time to complete something productive.
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 Image credit: Tracy Le Blanc on Pixabay Blogs have become hugely popular over the last few years, and there’s been a steady increase of those who’ve actually made a full-time career off the back of it. Regardless of whether you consider it a business or not, there are ways to help improve your blog through the use of social media. Make Use Of Hashtags & Trends
Consider the social media platforms and how they perform on a day to day basis. You have Twitter that tends to have a trending element, and that might be a way of getting your blog promoted. And there are platforms like Instagram, that might use hashtags in order to promote content. It’s good to know first what each social media platform does, how to be popular on said platform, and what you might find useful to use for your blog. Once you’ve done that, you then want to work on using the elements that can make you popular on the platform. Whether they be hashtags or trending topics that you could piggyback off of, it’s good to learn the ropes where you can, and you’ll eventually get better at it. Promote Other Bloggers There are lots of other bloggers out there, and a good way to help promote your own blog is by helping to promote other bloggers. Look for those bloggers who have similar audiences to you and find ways to help build your blogger audience by advertising other bloggers. It could simply be featuring them on your Instagram story or mentioning them in a tweet. All bloggers have to start from the bottom and working their way up the chain of popularity can often be a case of them working with other bloggers and getting a leg up where needed. Interact With Your Followers Your followers are definitely important when it comes to growing your blog, and you, therefore, want to try and interact with them as often as possible. The more you engage with them, the more they’re likely going to engage with your content and your blog content too. Social media again can be a very good example of how to get more personal with your followers and by connecting your social media handles to your website and vice versa, you’re helping to boost your following across all channels. Feature On Other People’s Blogs As mentioned above, being friendly with other bloggers can be helpful. There are other ways to collaborate with bloggers in order to boost your following and improve your blog’s reputation, and that’s through guest posts. Guest posts can be a way of you providing content to another blogger, and in return, there’s a link in that post to your website. Not only does that look good for the search engines when it comes to your site, but it also sends their traffic over to yours. Improving your blog on social media is definitely something you want to take advantage of when you have the chance. Use social media as a tool for helping bring more traffic and attention to your blog.  Image credit: geralt on Pixabay Developing a new product is the cornerstone of any successful business, especially startups. You need to create something that meets the needs of consumers while also turning over a healthy profit for you. Getting to that point, however, can be a challenge. Building a product isn’t just a matter of getting out there and doing the work - it requires time and patience to get right. The failure rate for new products and services is notoriously high. In some quarters, it is north of 90 percent, meaning that that majority of new products on the market fail. So what’s the key here? How can you nail your product development cycle and deliver something that will generate substantial profits? Start By Satisfying A Need New products don’t just emerge out of the ether - they come from the fact that they solve problems that consumers have. We already have a highly sophisticated economy, churning out millions of different goods each year for these needs. So there is a lot of knowledge already about what customers want. The market is already excellent at determining their needs and satisfying them. Any new product, therefore, needs to fit into this context. It must understand how the market is currently failing consumers and how the new product can compete. And it needs to improve on whatever is already out there in some way. The most successful products, therefore, aren’t always something entirely novel. Instead, they find a way to improve on an existing formula while preserving their competitive advantage. Find Out How Much The Opportunity Is Worth You might have an excellent idea for a niche product, but if the market for it is small, you might not make a return on your original investment. Ideally, you want to figure out which market segments are most likely to consume whatever you build. Then you need to determine whether you will generate sufficient revenue for it to be worth your time.  Image credit: Mohamed _hassan on Pixabay User research platform, Userzoom, says that companies should try to understand the needs of users before building a new product or service and then validate prototypes. This approach helps to reduce risks and ensure that there is a feasible market out, therefore, for the products when you finally decide to scale.
Working out the size of the opportunity is, therefore, vital. You might have a product that a particular niche wants, but if there are too few people, you’ll ultimately wind up out of pocket. Figure Out How You Will Develop The Product The best way to work out how to develop a product is to look at how the market operates already. Look at the methods that companies already use to ship new goods and services to their customers and actually make it happen. Ask yourself the following questions:
Test Your Prototype In As Many Ways As You Can Prototypes are an essential stage in producing a successful product. They are the point where you find out whether you will be able to deliver something the market will accept or not. Companies tend, however, to look at their products through rose-tinted glasses. They see them as to how they want to see them, rather than how actual customers will. Regular people are the harshest critics of what you sell. If there’s a slight weakness or flaw, they’ll find it and let you know in online reviews. Prototyping, therefore, is your opportunity to wipe out as many of these concerns as possible. Be brutal with your product. Test it to its limits. If you find a flaw, plot a course of action to fix it. Ask yourself whether the product is robust enough, fast enough, or sufficiently flexible. Be honest with yourself about whether it offers customers enough features, or if there are too many. Also, question whether you can deliver it to the market on time. Many companies work to strict time constraints. There is a window of opportunity that they must exploit if they want their enterprise to thrive. If they miss it, then the profit opportunity will vanish. A prototype, therefore, could have all the bells and whistles imaginable. Still, if it is going to take years to bring to scale, then it is not fulfilling the needs of the business. Long development cycles are often what kills new companies. The chance for the product to shine passes. Figure Out How To Position The Product Once you’ve designed the product and studied your market thoroughly, the next step is to position it ready for launch. Companies need to have a good sense of where their product fits alongside the other options available in the marketplace. Positioning the product is essential and usually requires some pretty savvy marketing. For instance, is your product designed for a premium audience? Or are you looking to target people on a budget? Does your product offer superior technology than its competitors? Or does it do the same thing, but at a lower price? Finally, how will you use your brand image to sell the product? Will you use a value-driven approach where you talk about the broader benefits of your product? Or will you tap into different customer philosophies? Remember, your advertising doesn’t have to focus on product features. Instead, you can simply focus on how your company makes people feel. Coca-Cola, for instance, doesn’t talk about the high sugar content of its drinks. Instead, it just associates its brand with having a good time.  Image credit: StockSnap on Pixaby.com For years, sports companies have marketed their products to the choir - the skinny people most likely to wear them to the gym. Their advertising was flush with slim, toned people, jogging for miles, water bottle in hand, looking like they could conquer mountains. But, of course, that’s a long way from the real world. While Nike and the others sell to fit people, they also sell to a whole raft of other individuals who would like to get active but have a long way to go. Yet, until recently, they ignored that sizable constituency.  Image credit: sbl0323 on Pixaby.com That, however, is changing. Sports clothes companies can no longer ignore the fact that the vast bulk of their customers are on the heavier side. And they can’t resist the cultural shift in the direction of being more inclusive and making everyone feel as if they can enjoy exercise. The marketing would have you believe that we were still in the 1950s when practically everyone was slim and toned. That world no longer exists.
So what’s changed? Well, recently, Nike opened a store in London called NikeTown. As well as all the usual marketing material, the store featured large female mannequins, deliberately designed to show what the company’s products look like on bigger women. And we’re not just talking about slightly bigger either. These mannequins are at least triple the size of the regular variety and depict realistic excess fat distribution. Part of the push in this direction comes from the fact that Nike wants to be seen as supporting the current increase in female sports popularity. Women’s football has taken off in recent years, as has the idea that women should be at the gym with men, toning their bodies and increasing their strength. Nike, of course, isn’t the first company to take this tack. We’ve seen other brands, such as Old Navy and Debenhams, take a similar approach, placing plus-size mannequins alongside the regular variety. But this is a big turnaround for a brand that has traditionally associated itself with the body beautiful. How this change will impact health and female participation in sport remains to be seen. Currently, its popularity is on the rise, but whether Nike is upstream or downstream from that isn’t clear. What is obvious, though, is that the clothing industry is going to have to change. Customers no longer want to feel as if they have to fit into a particular mold. They want brands to represent them and provide them with just as many opportunities to buy clothes as their slim counterparts. Retail can’t afford to miss this opportunity. The high street is shrinking, and we’re seeing more clothing companies shift online. COVID-19 will probably accelerate that process even faster. Stores, therefore, need to take whatever steps they can to appeal to their entire customer base. They might have aesthetic preferences for slimmer people, but the reality is that most buyers are either overweight or obese. Only a small fraction of the population can identify with super-toned models wearing skin-tight clothing. |
Author - Chris
Author, Editor, Creator of Learn Develop Live Archives
October 2024
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