Poverty reduction ideas

Organizations should encourage and do volunteering to bring poverty reduction. It could be Corporate doing Corporate volunteering/CSR activities, United Nations volunteering and other kinds of volunteering like NGOs and schools could take up volunteering activities in villages. 

UN through United Nations International Year of Volunteers 2001, provided volunteering opportunities to many by providing an infra structure that included basic office operations facilities like office space, a brand name of UN  International Year of Volunteers (IYV) 2001, letter heads with IYV logos, print outs, zerox , courier service, fax, telephone, computers to work upon, floppies, UN notice board where one can paste the information about the events that was being conducted for a specific cause, to create awareness and participation and etc, United Nations (UN) Conference Hall to conduct conferences and the brand name helped in building partnerships/ collaborations with reputed organizations, creating and marketing the ideas/initiatives and raising funds. One could also bring media attention to their initiatives including Doordarshan (Television), radio and print media attention . United Nations International Year of Volunteers 2001 was celebrating volunteerism in all forms. It was giving a platform and an experience that was not only satisfying but also very valuable. It was a platform not only to build skills but also to carry on one's own initiatives. It was just being a part of United Nations.

This kind of Office infrastructure facility/platform, if it can be provided by many corporate, NGOs, United Nations organizations and even Government can look into this volunteering initiative, then many youth/rural youth can use this infrastructure facility to build their own future and brand. For educated unemployed youth and individuals who do not have proper education to compete in the market can through this kind of organization's volunteering initiative, not only achieve status, recognition but also income. A much needed initiative that would give space and positive encouragement to youth. This may bring poverty reduction and achieve the millennium development goals of United Nations.

Website statistics

Entrepreneurs should make use of Google Search Console to improve their websites as they can gather valuable information/statistics about their visitors, web pages, audience, clicks, queries, content keywords, links, index status, blocked resources, crawl stats, spam etc and this requirement may be placed in their business plan.

Google says, "Who should use Search Console?

 Business owners who delegates- Even if you don't think you know how to use Search Console, you should be aware of it and become familiar with the basics. You might hire your webmaster or marketing specialist to help you set up your website with Search Console (SEO specialist or marketer - you can use the information in Search Console to influence technical decisions for the website and do sophisticated marketing analysis in conjunction with other Google tools like Analytics, Google Trends and AdWords). In that case, you can work with that person to ensure you have access and control to all of the reports from your website. In addition, it's a good idea to learn all you can about how your site is performing in search results so you can make important business decisions about your site".

Google says, "If you're thinking about hiring an SEO, the earlier the better. A great time to hire is when you're considering a site redesign, or planning to launch a new site. That way, you and your SEO can ensure that your site is designed to be search engine-friendly from the bottom up. However, a good SEO can also help improve an existing site. While SEOs can provide clients with valuable services, some unethical SEOs have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to manipulate search engine results in unfair ways".

Businesses should employ Search Console data analysis to evaluate and improve their web presence and marketing.  

Business strategy

For your business strategy,  an entrepreneur needs to prepare on these:

Your business goals and how to achieve them?

Customers - Who would buy and why they would buy from you?

Target market  - Which age group you target for your product? Which section of the society you target for your products? Whether your products need rich clients only or any income group ? Whether your product demand depends on design, colour and buyer's taste besides quality?

Market research - Research on a group of your target customers in your choice of market (local, national, international) to understand the sales potential of your products amongst the target group of customers.

Market demand -  What would be the demand for the product when you come into the production/business? Would the demand for the product type would have changed?

Competition - Depending on the location and product demand explore on your competitors and whether you can also be in that business and make profits?

Pricing - Market research/exploration to know what price is running in the market and whether you can supply at that price and make profits? 

Orders - How will you get orders? Will you go to the buyers? Whether you will send samples to the buyers to collect orders? Or whether there will be factory site visit by buyers for placing you orders? For example for granite blocks/tiles, international/national/local buyers may visit the factory site for selection of granite tiles or go to querries for selection of rough granite blocks. What would be your marketing expenditure?

Payment mode - What methods/channels the buyers will use to pay you?

Internet - Can internet help in marketing of your products?

Manufacturing - How much you will manufacture annually? Land requirements for your factory site? What building construction you need for your factory site? Raw material availability? 

Finance - What are the costs (all costs) to be incurred for your business? Which financial institutions will you approach for loan? What other methods you will employ to repay the loan in case of non -repayment of loan to banks to stay in business?

Risks - what are the risks involved in your industry?

What advertising schemes you would use for your products and what would be the cost to bear?

MDG goals

There are 8 millennium development goals of United Nations. Entrepreneurship and especially women entrepreneurship could help in achieving two millennium development goals of United Nations and they are:

• Goal 1: Eradicate extreme hunger and poverty and
• Goal3: Promote gender equality and empower women

According to few third year engineering students: Their colleges have a society for students interested in becoming entrepreneurs. There is a central body of which the society members are members. Every year the central body gives a summit call where the society members present their full entrepreneurial ideas and the best one is awarded. They said they do not mind taking risks in business but needs to participate in those activities which will not interfere with their studies like art and craft business, laundry business and food business. The society members interested in entrepreneurship were helping other hostel students by bringing caterers to their doorsteps to solve food problems. The hostel students wanted assistance in laundry services also. Amongst the society members, there were marketing teams which were going to Big Bazaar (corporate retailing) and Archies to sell greeting cards. The college society facebook was the medium to join.

Similarly if rural youth can make use of the facebooks for connectivity and form a society for entrepreneurship development with the central body being the local government body like Block Development Offices in the grass root level then there may be development of entrepreneurship in rural youth and growth of entrepreneurs in villages. They may also look for the requirements in the villages for their entrepreneurial activities. They can also submit their ideas to the Block Development Offices not only for awards but also for bank loan sanction from cooperative banks and other banks. This may help in their empowerment and self employment through entrepreneurship and especially there will be empowerment of women through women entrepreneurship and this will bring gender equality.

This may help in achieving poverty reduction and gender equality and thus may achieve two of the millennium development goals of United Nations.

Business web search performance

What business owners should know for their website's performance in search results?

Google says, "Google's goal is to return highly relevant results for every query. Search results are returned from our search index. Our search index is constantly evolving as content is added and modified on the web. The changing content, as well as updates to our ranking algorithms, can cause URLs to change position in search results, and possibly though less likely to be removed.

If your site isn't appearing in Google search results, or it's performing more poorly than it once did, check out these steps to identify and fix potential causes of the problem - Check your site is in the Google index, see if your site has been impacted by a manual spam action, make sure google can index your site, make sure your content is useful and relevant.

If your site is very new, we may not know about it yet. Tell Google about your site. One way to expedite Google's discovery of new pages is to submit a Sitemap. Even if your site is already in the index, Sitemaps are a great way to tell Google about the pages you consider most important.

There's almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you're concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question.

Occasionally, fluctuation in search results is the result of differences in our data centers. When you perform a Google search, your query is sent to a Google data center in order to retrieve search results. There are numerous data centers, and many factors (such as geographic location and search traffic) determine where a query is sent. Because not all of our data centers are updated simultaneously, it's possible to see slightly different search results depending on which data center handles your query".

Entrepreneurship marketing skills

For how to bring market for your product entrepreneurs should know these:

• Location is important
• There may be government order to buy small scale industry products. Contact DIC or Directorate of Industries for more information
• Advertisements: Print, TV and Radio advertising and internet advertising
• Awareness creation through internet for your company's website
• SEO
• Blogs for business online presence and to attract more traffic
• Promotion: Online and offline promotion

Google says, "Putting effort into the offline promotion of your company or site can also be rewarding. For example, if you have a business site, make sure its URL is listed on your business cards, letterheads, posters, etc. You could also send out recurring newsletters to clients through the mail letting them know about new content on the company's website. Promoting your site and having quality links could lead to increasing your site's reputation. By having your business registered for Google Places, you can promote your site through Google Maps and Web searches. Chances are, there are a  number of sites that cover topic areas similar to yours. Opening up communication with these sites is usually beneficial. Hot topics in your niche or community could spark additional ideas for content or building a good community resource. Reach out to those in your site's related community. Know about social media sites - Sites built around user interaction and sharing have made it easier to match interested groups of people up with relevant content".

Businesses can make use of Google's free webmaster tools.

Google says, "High-level analysis is possible via Google Analytics and Website Optimizer. Web analytics programs like Google Analytics are a valuable source of insight for this. You can use these to get insight into how users reach and behave on your site, discover the most popular content on your site, measure the impact of optimizations you make to your site - e.g. did changing those title and description meta tags improve traffic from search engines?". Entrepreneurs, this may enhance your marketing skills.

Search engine optimization

Businesses to have top placement in search engine results may have to go for search engine optimization (SEO).

Google says, "Search engine optimization is often about making small modifications to parts of your website. When viewed individually, these changes might seem like incremental improvements, but when combined with other optimizations, they could have a noticeable impact on your site's user experience and performance in organic search results.

You should base your  optimization decisions first and foremost on what's best for the visitors of your site. They're the main consumers of your content and are using search engines to find your work. Search engine optimization affects only organic search results, not paid or "sponsored" results such as Google AdWords.

The various points on search engine optimization (SEO) are:

1. Create unique, accurate page titles - A title tag tells both users and search engines what the topic of a particular page is. Page title contents are displayed in search results. Page titles are an important aspect of search engine optimization.
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2. A page's description meta tag gives Google and other search engines a summary of what the page is about.  Description meta tags are important because Google might use them as snippets for your pages. Note that we say "might" because Google may choose to use a relevant section of your page's visible text if it does a good job of matching up with a user's query. Write a description that would both inform and interest users if they saw your description meta tag as a snippet in a search result. Avoid using a single description meta tag across all of your site's pages or a large group of pages. 

3. Choose a URL that will be easy for users and search engines to understand. Simple-to-understand URLs will convey content information easily.

4. Navigation is very important for search engines. You should think about how visitors will go from a general page (your root page) to a page containing more specific content. Plan out your navigation based on your homepage. Controlling most of the navigation from page to page on your site through text links makes it easier for search engines to crawl and understand your site. For navigation, the focus should be on simplicity and ease of use.

5. Heading tags are an important website component for catching the user's eye, so be careful how you use them.

6. Linking to sites that google considers spammy can affect the reputation of your own site. Make sure you have solid measures in place to deal with comment spam.

7. Optimizing content - Offer quality content and services.  Users know good content when they see it and will likely want to direct other users to it. This could be through blog posts, social media services, email, forums or other means. Organic or word-of-mouth buzz is what helps build your site's reputation with both users and Google, and it rarely comes without quality content".

Entrepreneurs, search engine optimization is one of the online marketing techniques.

Handicraft marketing

HHEC (Handicrafts and Handloom Exports Corporation of India) and CCIC (Central Cottage Industries Corporation of India Ltd) are buying handicraft products from women entrepreneurs. Women entrepreneurs who buy handicraft products from artisans if are unable to have HHEC or CCIC or State Emporiums as their buyers and do not have a showroom to sell their products then such women entrepreneurs if given a counter/stall  in HHEC or CCIC or State Emporiums showrooms to sell their handicraft products directly to customers that is direct customer interaction, then they may be able to overcome market difficulties. Artisans and women entrepreneurs both will benefit out of this activity.

The outcome of the interaction with the Government Handicraft organizations:

1. Handicrafts was in ancient times used for temple decoration  but now it is treated as economic/commercial activity, export earnings, small investment, labour oriented and a part of our culture and the need to preserve culture. The main motto is poverty reduction. The handicraft products now can be seen in the hotels, palaces. drawing rooms etc. Handicraft craftmanship is passing down form generation to generation and is a traditional product but it is a heterogenous product because it is handmade and not machine made.

Marketing of handicraft products depends on the quality of the product.  Artisan cum women entrepreneurs if in a raw stage can take financial help from banks for working capital assistance to start their business. They can avail marketing avenues/platform under the umbrella of DC Handicrafts. They can directly approach CCIC, HHEC for the formal processes. Registration would be needed for the inside hall counter. These organizations can also do visual merchandising for their products. They can also take export membership from Export Promotion Council for Handicrafts. Artisan cum women entrepreneurs can participate in international buyer sellers meet, domestic events and international events at nominal charges or that may even be exempted. Women will be self reliant in the field of handicraft and can support the group of artisans.

2. The government is promoting artisans by organizing state level, district level, block level different exhibitions, providing free stalls, transport allowance and daily allowance to facilitate sales of artisans products. Artisans are also deputed  to outside the state to participate in other state exhibitions.The prime work is marketing. Government is giving all kinds of financial support to the State emporiums (government) to buy products from artisans and also organizing special events and seminars.  State Emporiums are purchasing from artisans and selling the handicrafts. There are several schemes for marketing of the products of artisans but there are no such schemes to support women entrepreneurs.    Handicrafts is also a micro small  enterprise. So some mechanism has to be thought of so that women entrepreneurs also get the opportunity to market their products. Artisans require no registration .

Women entrepreneurs may first have to establish as a women entrepreneur, so they may have to register or get listed as women entrepreneurs with DIC, MSME, Director of Industries and Director of Handicrafts. This will be done for authenticity for their participation in events and space taking in showrooms. Also women entrepreneurs from marketing side, CCIC/HHEC and State (policy maker in government) together can form a marketing policy to provide  opportunities to women entrepreneurs to enter the showrooms/events to market their products.Women entrepreneurs can come as industry or NGOs.

If Government may support then this may become an incentive for many women to take up handicraft business. This may result in poverty reduction and achieve mdgs of United Nations. There will be growth of women entrepreneurs.

Online marketing techniques

Entrepreneurs should know how search engine works to have good online visibility.

Google says, "Search Engine is a website that allows users to search the Web by entering words or symbols into a search box. How Google Search Works
When you sit down at your computer  and do a Google search, you are almost instantly presented with a list of results from all over the web. How does Google find web pages matching your query and determine the order of search results? In the simplest terms, you could think of searching the web as looking in a very large book with an impressive index telling you exactly where everything is located. When you perform a Google search our programs check our index to determine the most relevant search results to be returned ("served") to you.

The three key processes in delivering search results to you are: crawling, indexing and serving.

Crawling
Crawling is the  process by which Googlebot discovers new and updated pages to be added to the Google index. We use a huge set of computers to fetch (or "crawl") billions of pages on the web. The program that does the fetching is called Googlebot (also known as a robot, bot, or spider). Googlebot uses an algorithmic process: computer programs determine which sites to crawl, how often, and how many pages to fetch from each site. Google's crawl process begins with a list of web page URLs, generated from previous crawl processes, and augmented with Sitemap data provided by webmasters. As Googlebot visit each of these websites it detects link on each page and adds them to its list of pages to crawl. New sites, changes to existing sites and dead links are noted and used to update the Google index. Google doesn't accept payments to crawl a site more frequently, and we keep the search side of our business separate from our revenue-generating AdWords service.

Indexing
Googlebot processes each of the pages it crawls in order to compile a massive index of all the words it sees and their location on each page. In addition, we process information included in key content tags and attributes, such as Title tags and ALT attributes. Googlebot can process many, but not all content types. For example, we cannot process the content of some rich media files or dynamic pages.

Serving results
When a user enters a query our machines search the index for matching pages and return the results we believe are the most relevant to the users. Relevancy is determined by over 200 factors, one of which is the PageRank for a given page. PageRank is the measure of the importance of a page based on the incoming links from other pages. In simple terms, each link to a page on your site from another site adds to your site's PageRank. Not all links are equal: Google works hard to improve the user experience by identifying spam links and other practices that negatively impact search results. The best types of links are those that are given based on the quality of your content. In order for your site to rank well in search results pages, it's important to make sure that Google can crawl and index your site correctly. Our Webmaster Guidelines outline some best practices that can help you avoid common pitfalls and improve your site's ranking".

Google says, "Google's Did you mean and Google Autocomplete features are designed to help users save time by displaying related terms, misspellings, and popular queries. We display predictions only when we think they might save the user time. If a site ranks well for a keyword, it's because we ha've algorithmically determined that it's content is, more relevant to the user's query". Entrepreneurs, if you want your website/product to appear where you want it to appear online, then you may have to do some research. Type your keywords in Google search box and also take the help of Google Autocomplete feature (Google says for Autocomplete -  "As you type in the search box you can find information quickly by seeing search predictions that might be similar to the search terms you're typing. When you choose a search prediction, you do a search using that prediction as your search term") and then see the kind of search results pages that appear from your typed keywords or from Google Autocomplete feature. You may go through the snippet of every website on the first search results pages. This will give you a better understanding of whether you want your website/product to appear in the search results there or not. There are categories so see which category your product would fit in. Keep experimenting for your Title of your website/product, till you arrive at where you want your site/product to be online. This is how you can work on your Title of  your website/product to make sure it appears there where you want it to appear to get customers.

Successful women entrepreneurs

To become successful women entrepreneurs, it depends on

• The right selection of the industry - explore the opportunities  for the business you are entering into in your desired location. Meet the nearby owners/entrepreneurs in the same industry to understand the  business and its opportunities. Meet other professionals also from both the government and private organizations in this field. Listen to their advice. Do not ignore.  Because if there is lack of experience then this may become a costly affair for you. The business domain you are entering into is essential for you to understand if you can manage that industry or not.
• Raw material - there should be selection of right supplier of raw material to ensure quality of raw material and timely supply of raw material. If it does not happen then there will be delay in production and delay in delivery of goods will occur.
• Machinery - the purchase of machinery will depend on your supply of raw material, how much labour you can employ, how much electricity bill you can pay, maintenance and replacement cost you can afford, your technical know-how, how much bank loan and interest on your bank loan you should avail because to be successful you have to repay the loan, who are the best supplier of machines to ensure production of quality product and to have their services for the installation of machinery
• Management of money - there should be sufficient money to run the factory because if there is insufficient money, procurement of raw material will suffer, there will be no timely payment of daily wages to the labourers and production will stop.
• Management of labourers - pay wages daily to prevent labour problems which is required for smooth production
• Delivery - check the quality before delivery. Deliver perfect quality materials to your buyers to get repeat orders
• Intelligence - although you may not have the experience but you need to have the  intelligence to take the  right approach to a problem. Intelligence is a must for business success.
• Transportation - arrange transport to take the raw material and the finished goods to and from your site.
• Market - market requires competitive price, quality products and timely delivery