Best Online Courses for Entrepreneurs
As a business owner, you are responsible for many daily operations. There are many skills you must master in order to run a business smoothly. Entrepreneurs today are faced with many new challenges as a result of a technological revolution, and a slow economy, which pushes business leaders to be more creative and innovative in managing their corporations. Remaining on top of your game and staying up to date with current knowledge and innovations and methods is crucial. Therefore, the best way to maintain a successful business is to expand your knowledge whenever you can in order to make better business decisions.The advent and increasing popularity of online higher education has made it possible for business leaders and professionals to pursue a greater realm of knowledge on their own time, and in essence, truly enabling them to customize their educational experience. Being able to pick which courses you’d like to expand your understand on – for example finance, accounting, marketing, technology, and business management is now available at your fingertips. Perusing through classes available online allows you to read reviews from students that have taken the particular class and instructor before, giving you valuable insight. Class descriptions show you what you can be expected to learn and gain from the class. This information is very useful in deciding which class is worth our time or is suitable for your needs. Furthermore, choosing to continue your education online gives you the opportunity to meet new people with the same interests and network.There are many beneficial classes that would improve your business decision making skills and management skills. One of the most beneficial, but also the most time consuming degree is getting a Masters in Business Administration. Though this degree is rather general and broad, some entrepreneurs do not have the time or want a more specific course pertaining to marketing, management, finance, real estate, or any other related specific field. Accounting courses will give you greater insight on how to properly manage a company’s financial assets and adheres to all the proper taxes that must be filed. Financial handling is a key component of business responsibility so it is crucial that you find a reputable accounting course or find an accountant with the level of education needed to make important and large decisions on your behalf.Another great online course for entrepreneurs is finance, which include very useful topics like economics, international business, quantitative analysis, corporate finance, and banking. You can choose to focus on business law and business ethics, as well as statistics to become better-rounded.Whatever course or courses you decide to take, another important thing to keep in mind is that accredited online programs are more reputable and will benefit you more. Accredited business courses ensures that a degree program meets certain standards and ensures that the information you are learning is from a high quality educational source determined by several private accrediting agencies who regulate education. Online learning is great, just make sure you enroll in an accredited online institution.
Digital Photography School
Do you love photography but you feel as if you have been left behind because of this new fad called digital photography? Which had replaced your film camera? Or you are just a new in this field?There are numerous digital photography schools in the country. But in choosing one, make sure that you choose wisely. Remember that it involves your time, money, and prospective learning. So take time in choosing a photography school. Here are some of the points you should take note of in choosing a school.First, make sure that it is a digital photography school.There are schools that indicate photography course, which make an average reasonable person think of it as an implied digital photography school. However, some are wise enough not to not indicate the term in their ads and in doing so, they are able to gather students that has no more choice because they have already enrolled.Second, read every commercial ads and feedbacks.Evaluate schools according to what the majority thinks of it. Read every feedback and assess what needs of yours would that digital photography school would address. Are you not that good in lens selection? Choosing of subjects? Post processing? High dynamic range imaging? And the like? Well, you could see through the feedbacks, by implication, what field does a particular digital photography school is good at. Match it according to your need after which.Third, consider the price.Considering that the current economic situation may not be favourable to most people, you should also see to it that you can afford going to a particular school. The problem here, because, is that some digital photography schools are highly competitive but they really make your pockets fly out of money with its wapping tuition fee. Make sure that your preferred school has reasonable price along with reasonable services worth your money.Fourth, see to it that their facilities and items are up to date.Now, this is also a critical part. Your digital photography school might be a good one with reasonable fee, but you would later find out that they are using the first release of digital cameras, possibly with no live view, small lcd, lacks the more important features, no spot metering, and the like. Well that would be unfair for you. So make sure that you ask the personnel of your prospective school about their gadgets and make sure that they are at least up to date, so you could apply what you learn in current situations.Fifth, make sure that the instructors are professional photographers.Some digital photography schools have that tendency to hire artists, not photographers, to teach. Their basic reasoning is that artists are more knowledgeable than photographers because every person can shoot images while most are not able to paint. What is the logic there? Photographers are more capable of teaching photographers because they are such, so they are in a better position to impart knowledge to aspirants. Painters are good, yes, that is a given. But in terms of competency in teaching photography, well that is out of the question.Overall, the combination of these 5 points would really help you out in evaluating which digital photography school to enter in. Once you believe that one school contains most of your specifications, do not hesitate to enroll. Besides in would be to your advantage, learning and having fun at the same good time.
Your Logo Is Not Your Brand
Some company logos are so widely known that they are the face of a brand worldwide. They are not the brand itself, but they are the image associated with it. When you see a company logo, the image calls up your memories and feelings about the company’s products or services. Logos are designed to make you feel your loyalty to the brand and to stimulate your desire for what the company is selling. They are an important part of a company’s brand.Branding has changed a lot, though, since the days when the logo was king and the marketing campaign was its core activity. Branding today has more moving parts, and is much more complex than it used to be.The most common branding usually consists of a core message that is developed by the company, complete with a logo image, that is wrapped in upbeat videos and then pushed out to customers and potential customers through many outlets to get them to feel good about the company and buy more of what it sells. A brand is meant to create value through desire, to differentiate your products from other products, create customer loyalty, and increase your market share.I call this the intentional external brand. It is the manufactured and idealized story of a company and its products that is aimed at an external audience. This brand advertising piece is put together like a movie, and is a well-polished, multi-faceted presentation that is a targeted hunt for minds, hearts and wallets.This is the part of a brand that still gets the most corporate attention. Companies want so much to shape their relationship with you on their terms. We will tell you who we are, how you are to feel about us and our products, and what you are to do as a result (buy more stuff!).In today’s media-besotted world, the target audience tries hard to block out the intentional brand barrage. They are overwhelmed by so much of it from so many sources, and they are savvy enough to be skeptical of its claims.They are also very sensitive to unintentional brands.Your unintentional external brand is how people outside of your organization experience your company. This part of your brand is experienced on many levels – it is reactive, rational, emotional, interactive and fluid. It is about what people buy, what they hear, how they experience you, your people and technology, and most important, it’s about how their relationship with you makes them feel emotionally.Thanks to technology and social media, this awareness of your company is always and instantly open to change. It is not anymore about a static logo symbol or a piece of text. It is the sum of how you are known in the world, and how people think and feel about you.So, your overall brand includes both your intentional external brand, which is your company’s externally focused branding story, and your unintentional brand, which is peoples’ actual everyday experiences of anything and everything to do with your company.Frontier Airlines with its low, lowest fares – their intentional brand – and the very same Frontier Airlines with some of the highest customer complaint levels in the industry – their unintentional brand.Consider McDonald’s with its intentional external brand, “I’m lovin’ it”, and its unintentional brand – a growing public belief that their food is unhealthy. You can see how the unintentional brand can overwhelm the intentional brand and cause great trouble for a company.And there’s more, as they say in sales.There is another part of your brand that is also crucial – your internal brand. The internal brand has its intentional and unintentional parts, too, and it is about how all the people inside your company (your internal customers *) experience the organization.A company’s intentional internal branding efforts are often no less intense than those aimed at potential customers. They include motivational articles, newsletters, speeches and trainings, pep talks, friendly communication policies (“My door is always open… “), awards and rewards, and upbeat visions of the past and future. This internal company storyline strives to create a happy, productive brand for company people so they will be engaged and stick around. That only works, though, if it is not at odds with the company’s unintentional internal brand.The unintentional internal brand is how your people actually experience your company. This is not to be confused with your company culture-”the way we do things and treat people around here”. But, the way you do things around there will most certainly influence how your people really feel about your company, which will coalesce over time into your unintentional internal brand.Whew. Much more complicated than a logo with a song and some text, isn’t it?Take a second look at McDonald’s in that regard. They have a problem with their intentional external brand, “I’m lovin’ it” because of beliefs about their food content, and they also have a problem with their unintentional internal brand because of high-profile disagreements with franchise owners and workers. That’s a one-two punch.When intentional and unintentional brand segments collide, very big, bad things can happen.I worked for almost a year as a consultant for a company that had some real dissonance between its well-regarded external intentional brand as a supplier of equipment and its rock-bottom internal unintentional brand as a dysfunctional place to work. The internal negative brand started dramatically affecting the quality of work on projects and increased employee turnover, which in turn caused product recalls and lost customers. Ultimately the poor internal brand damaged the company’s overall brand.So, if you want a great brand that will survive and thrive with everything the new digital and business environments can throw at you, work to improve all the parts of your brand. A shiny logo, some zippy ads and a celebrity endorsement can help, but they will not by themselves move your branding meter where you want it to be. For that to happen you must have great and consistent intentional and unintentional brands, both inside and outside of your organization.Think Apple or Southwest Airlines. They are companies that function well internally, their external branding is superb, and the buzz about them out in the world is mostly positive.*Employees, shareholders and other stakeholders are internal customers.