Why Delegation is Necessary For Small Business 

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There are a lot of key factors to consider when owning a small business that is important to staying successful such as learning to delegate work within your team.  In the article Successful delegation- a must for small business, the authors consider the influence delegation has on a small business.  The article specifically states, “For the manager to perform the job he is supposed to be doing, and thus concern himself with the most significant issues relating to the organization, he must choose good men, according to specific criteria, and assign them subordinate responsibilities” (Rimler & Humphreys, 1976, 1976, p. 2).  This idea suggests that being able to delegate gives the owner further opportunity to invest his time into bigger matters.  In the article Delegating for small business success, the authors offer more evidence to support the idea that delegation skills are needed for small businesses. After conducting a study the authors concluded that “The delegating owners reaped significantly higher sales and profits than those owners who repeatedly performed tasks themselves, particularly the routine paperwork” (Cuba & Millbourn, 1982, p. 7). This study was able to demonstrate the financial impact that delegation could potentially have for a small business.  While it is easier as an owner to want full control of everything that is happening in your business it is shown that a lack of delegation negatively impacts the chance at future success.  When you begin to delegate tasks within your team it leaves you with better performances along with the energy to focus more important tasks.

 

Effective Ways to Delegate Using Communication and Strengths of Team 

 

Paul R. Lyons, Professor Emeritus at Frostburg State University offers managers advice in his article Helping managers to more effectively delegate authority.  He specifically states to “Plan carefully and consistently about provision of supervision and/or guidance to include checking-in, attainment of milestones and two-way feedback. We do not want to micro-manage the effort, yet we need to carefully consider a schedule of progress points, measurements and deadlines pursuant to the particular task at hand” (Lyons, 2016, p. 3).  This suggests that while managers should still be attached and involved to their business there are ways to trust employees in the delegation process.  Eugene Raudsep, the President of Princeton Creative Research, continues to write about the best ways to delegate in his article How to delegate effectively. Raudsep mentions that “A prime requisite for effective delegation is a comprehensive inventory of subordinates’ capabilities” (Raudsep, 1989, p. 1).  While author Raudsep is encouraging managers to delegate different tasks he also points out that knowing capabilities of teammates should influence what responsibilities you give them.  Both authors acknowledge that effective delegation is needed for management, however, they also offer key advice for managers who want to start giving out responsibilities.  Delegation requires careful planning and careful planning also means understanding the capabilities of who you are giving work to.

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Consumer Tendencies Within Social Media

 

Experts in social media marketing have identified that a majority of internet users prefer to consume content in the form of videos. David Lee King, the author of Designing the digital experience: How to use experience design tools and techniques and the digital branch manager of the Topeka & Shawnee County public library, states, "Video made up 73% of global internet traffic in 2016" (King, 2018, p. 7). King goes on to claim that making and sharing videos has a direct correlation with an increase of a company's sales. Shama Hyder, the CEO of the successful media company Zenn Media, also found video content to be a successful way for businesses to market their products. "66 percent of consumers prefer watching a video to reading about a product" (Hyder, 2020, para. 2). A majority of online traffic consists of consuming video content, and a significant portion of consumers prefer to learn about a business or product through the use of videos. 

 

The Benefits of Short Form Video Content for Businesses

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Short form video content has been found to be one of the most effective ways to market a product to a client. Yani Xiao, Lan Wang, and Ping Wang were researchers for the proceedings of the 2019 4th International Conference on Modern Management, Education, Technology and Social Science. They researched how short video marketing impacted consumer purchases. In their research they found, "In the consumer purchasing decision process, the intervention of short video has revolutionized the stages of information search and evaluation of alternatives. Compared with traditional video marketing, the information of goods or services can be more effectively conveyed to the consumer in short video because its content is more refined and incisive” (Xiao et al., 2019, p. 417). Short form video content allows businesses to quickly and effectively get information to their audience. Gao-fu Liu, Yu-chun Li, Peng-chao Gao, Zhuo-ping Zhang, researchers from the Business school of Jianxi Normal University in China, also found short form video content to be effective. “Compared with traditional video, short video is more interactive, so if you can effectively take advantage of short video marketing, it will promote the establishment and dissemination of the brand” (Liu et al., 2019, p. 785). Short form video content quickly and effectively allows a business to connect with their audience and establish their brand.

 

Social Media Strategies

 

A strong social media strategy must be implemented for the growth and success of a business in online marketing. Through an experimental model Tafesse and Wien found a positive correlation in having a good strategy and performing well on social media. They state that, “[t]he positive effect of social media strategy on social media performance is consistent with Hypothesis 1 and demonstrates the critical importance of a well-developed strategy for social media success.” (Tafesse, 2018, p. 13). Cao et al. (2018) elaborates on this premise of using social media citing their own results saying, “[the research] indicates that companies in China expected that social media use would bring potential benefits, around managing and building relationships with customers, partners, and employees, as well as facilitating internal and external communications” (p. 226). As such, effective social media use not only benefits the company but also positively affects the customer and even employees. Cao et al. and Tafesse & Wien show that social media has the power to improve a business in multiple ways if used and coordinated effectively. But merely being active isn’t enough to compensate for customer engagement. In fact without a strong strategy in place, increased activity may offput customers or even work against social media algorithms (Tafesse, 2018, p. 14).

 

Viral Marketing As a Tool for Small Businesses

 

Experts in the field of marketing have similar ideologies regarding the impact of viral marketing as a tool for small businesses. In writing about the impact of viral marketing, Soheila Bostanshirin, manager at Pardad Pakan and author of Online marketing: Challenges and opportunities, said, “Viral marketing spreads through social networks, and it is a virtual version of word of mouth. It is a very cheap mode of marketing and if you use it there is no need to spend massive amounts of money on traditional expensive marketing campaigns” (Bostanshirin, 2014, p. 4). This quote demonstrates how viral marketing is effective and accessible to small business owners. Danang Satrio, author of The effects of positive and negative emotion on viral marketing effectiveness, agrees with Bostanshirin when he wrote, “This is widely documented in the literature that viral marketing strategies are very important for consumer behavior” (Satrio, 2020, p. 10). Clearly, both authors demonstrate the importance of viral marketing as a tool for small businesses.

 

Utilizing Viral Marketing Strategies to Increase Purchasing Intentions 

 

A variety of experts on viral marketing have varying ideologies regarding the utilization of viral marketing strategies for businesses in general. Jay P Trivedi, associate Professor at MICA, said, “Viral marketing messages do not exhibit a direct significant influence on purchase intentions” (Trivedi, 2017, p. 9). This demonstrates that viral marketing messages do not have a direct influence on purchase intentions. However, Dananag Satrio, author of The effects of positive and negative emotion on viral marketing effectiveness, disagrees with Trivedi when he said, “The intention of customer buying behavior is important in this research because it is considered as a measure of the effectiveness of viral marketing strategies” (Satrio, 2020, p. 4). Clearly, both experts demonstrate having varying ideologies regarding the utilization of viral marketing strategies.

 

Organization of Managing Orders Improves WorkFlow

 

Having an order system allows business managers to access customers’ history through a software, which is a very helpful advantage to tracking systems (Simplifying e-commerce operations with an order management system, 2020). In this way, businesses can analyze detailed order histories from their customers. Within an article titled Order management importance to grow a business, the authors explain how automation and synchronicity means less human error (Burns, 2019), meaning as the volume of customers increases within a business, the organizational management becomes even more vital than it once was before and order managing systems can do the work for the business. Due to fierce competition, businesses need to have more than basic tracking and order management methods, it’s extremely important to invest in tracking and omnichannel functionality to improve workflow (Baxendale, 2019). Order managing systems ultimately simplify business transactions, making not only businesses’ lives easier, but customers’ as well.

 

Order Tracking Systems Yield Customer Satisfaction

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Efficient organization within order tracking is vital for creating a successful, online small business. Without a strong order tracking system, customer satisfaction can often be placed on the backburner. However, customer satisfaction is crucial for the development of a small business.  Kristina Lopienski with ShipBob states that the importance of customer satisfaction often comes down to the reliability and predictability of order management (Lopienski, 2019). In order to satisfy customers, you must meet their expectations. According to Lopienski, 97% of customers expect to be able to monitor their orders throughout the entire shipping process (Lopienski, 2019). If customers do experience issues, it is much easier to resolve them through a system rather than addressing many unhappy customers via one email. The implementation of an order tracking system removes the pressure from any customer service problems that may arise, and allows businesses to prioritize bigger, more important aspects of the business (The importance of order tracking and reporting, n.d.). Having a reliable back-end order tracking helps businesses run much more smoothly.

 

The Impact of Search Optimization

 

The modern market has been increasingly implementing online services to expand businesses. With online search engines being at the forefront of finding such services, search engine optimization has become especially important to a business’ online marketing strategy. In an experiment conducted by Jakub Zilincan (2015), 95% of their keywords were on the first Google search result page and 45% of those were displayed on top (p. 508). Additionally, by optimizing the website of the experiment, Zilincan (2015) reported to have more than 15x the average monthly traffic in by the second year (p. 508). Ziakis et al. (2019) further this point by including that unique phrases and content will aid in improving an engine’s results (p. 6). So by making sure a comprehensive list for the business is input to the search engine, a business will not only increase their online traffic but increase their pool for potential clients. It should be mentioned though that Ziakis et al. (2019) warn that search engines do need to link to a well-kept website as poor loading times can be negatively linked to their search algorithms (p. 5).

 

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