10 Steps to Planning an Office Move
Planning an office move can be a daunting and time-consuming project to execute successfully. With so many tasks to juggle, deadlines to meet and people to organise, these 10 practical and easy steps cover all the important issues to help you plan, organise and execute a smooth and hassle-free office move.
Step 1: Define your reasons for moving
Expanding, downsizing, reducing costs or the need a better location are all contributing factors to businesses needing to move office. By having a clear understanding of your reasons for moving will help you to set your goals, new office requirements and communicate a clear and consistent message to staff and clients.
Step 2: Get a Checklist
A Moving Office Checklist is the starting point to planning a successful office move. It will guide you through the entire office move process from start to finish and become your “roadmap” to organise and execute a smooth office move without any disruption to business.
Step 3: Know your Key Dates
Once you have determined when you will be vacating your existing office, you can then begin to work backwards to establish what important tasks need to be done by, and when. Prepare a timeline of events and set yourself daily or weekly reminders so you ensure you never miss a deadline.
Step 4: Set a Budget
When your business is relocating you need to know roughly how much your office move is going to cost and more importantly, where all your money is going. Setting a realistic budget from the outset will help you keep a track of what’s being spent and avoid any unnecessary overspend.
Step 5: Brief your Property Agent
Select a local Property Agent to help you find the right office space and negotiate the best office lease terms. They’ll be able to advise you on the right size of office to look for, assess what facilities you need, and determine the best location for your business.
Step 6: Book your Office Removals Company
Choose and book an Office Removals Company. A meeting with them will help you to establish which office furniture items are going to be moved, what needs replacing and what can be disposed of.
Step 7: Plan your new Office Design & Space Layout
The design and delivery of your newly found office is central to the continuing success of your business. Good office design helps to improve productivity and increase staff morale. Appoint an Office Fit-Out Company to help you transform your new office space into an effective and functional workplace.
Step 8: Plan your IT Relocation
Work out the logistics of moving and re-commissioning your PCs and telephones in the new office. The right IT infrastructure will need to be in place in the new office so that your IT equipment is working as should in the new office without any disruption to services.
Step 9: Finalise your Office Lease
Ask a Property Solicitor to check through your office lease to make sure everything has been documented correctly before you sign the office lease.
Step 10: Dilapidations
Before you hand over your “old” office back to the Landlord, ensure that all dilapidations have been carried out and that the office is in a good state of repair so there will be no dispute in returning your rental deposit.
About the Author: Help Moving Office is the free website that guides companies through the office move process. It offers free Moving Office Checklists & Office Relocation Planning Guides to ensure that office moves happen on time, to budget and with the minimum disruption to the business.
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5 Biggest Website Mistakes That Too Many Small Businesses Make
Let’s face it – your company needs a website. For many customers, your website will provide their first impression of your business. A simple, well designed website can go a long way, but watch out for these common errors that can turn customers off.
1. Making your Customers Work to Find You
For me, the most common reason I visit a business website is to get their phone number or address. I’m of the opinion that contact information should be on the header or footer of every page of your website. Unless you are doing online sales, the ultimate goal is to get customers in your door, right? Don’t make them work so hard.
2. Burying the Lead
Ever click on a business website and think ‘what are they even selling?’ Every page of your website should give a strong indication of your product or service. This can be as simple as throwing a picture of a truck on every page is you’re a trucking company. A strong company name and logo can also do the trick. But if your company name is “Dynamic Systems Enterprises”, you’ll need to be clear of what your website is about, and remind your customer on every page why they are there.
3. Out of Date Content
It seems pretty basic: keep your contact information and prices up to date on your website, but too many small business owners forget it. Changing prices and disconnected phone numbers can immediately kill a new lead. But also watch for old information in other parts of your content. If I see a website advertising an event from 6 months ago, or running a promotion that ended last season, I don’t trust that ANY information is current. I might even think you’ve gone out of business.
4. Goofy Stock Photos
Stock photos are inevitable, but some of them are downright ridiculous. These photos have even sparked the new trend of “stocking”, or imitating stock photos.
Sure, visuals are a must for your website, and if you don’t have high quality photos of your business, products, and employees buying or getting free stock images can be a quick and cheap alternative. But really look at the picture before you put it up there, is this really how your employees look when celebrating a success?
5. Too Many Gimmicks
Skip the crazy animation and graphics; the last thing you want is for your website to take a long time to load. This can lead to instant click off. Small business owners also can’t seem to resist the allure of Hit Counters. Not only will it reveal if you have low traffic to every person who visits your site, it just looks tacky.
Avoid these mistakes by remembering that your website should match your business. If you are an upscale restaurant, your website should feel upscale as well. If the client services your store is relaxed and personable, that’s how your website should feel too.
Approach designing your website like you would designing your store front. Would you put those two colors together? Would you have a photo like that hanging up? Would you have any information out of date? Use these questions as your guide when setting up your online presence as well.
Having a website for your business is essential to staying competitive in today’s marketplace, make sure it’s bringing new customers in rather than making them “click off”.
About the Author: Becky Canary-King is an Account Manager and Press Contact at Direct Incorporation, a company focused on providing a more economical and efficient alternative to using a law firm for common legal/entrepreneurial issues. She blogs for Direct Incorporation’s Blog, offering tips for the first 6 months of your small business.
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3 No Brainer (But Often Forgotten) Leadership Tips for Small Businesses
Strong leadership is important for all business owners, regardless of the size of business. However, since small business owners often have many responsibilities, effective leadership is especially important. While leadership may come easy for some, many individuals have to work hard to develop into a good leader. Fortunately, leadership can be improved upon with some hard work. Below are some tips to help you are become the best leader possible while growing a successful business.
1. Make Specific Plans
Drop your ego at the door and get to work. Don’t assume that you know everything. Having an organized plan is a smart first move. Unless a plan is in place, how can you truly budget your time effectively? Laying out procedures and identifying specific roles for each person in the business provides clarity and increased productivity for everyone involved. Since small businesses often have their employee’s working on multiple things at a time, it is important to delegate properly.
You should have both short and long-term goals that address daily, monthly and yearly aspects of running the business. Also, remember that as you business grows and changes, so too should your plans. If you’re taking a “one size fits all” approach to your business, you’re doomed to fail.
It should go without saying, but if you’re putting all this work into developing your plans, make sure you follow through with them. Too often, plans get laid out and then filed away, only to be discovered a few years later as a failed business is cleaning out its offices.
2. Keep Your Eyes on the Horizon
Thinking forward is a key characteristic of good leaders. While the day-to-day operations of the business will often consume the majority of your time, you shouldn’t lose sight of the plans you’ve outlined. The future may seem far away, but ignoring it will certainly hinder your growth. Forward-thinking can help small businesses develop longevity.
Consider creating a mission statement for the business. Such a statement is a quick reference and reminder to you and your employees of why you’re working so hard. If employees have a reason to believe in the company they work for, they’ll put out a better product with a focus on good customer relations. And speaking of customers – they’ll continue to value your business as they notice your commitment to the future. Customers want to support businesses that have a passion for what they do. Your passion is directly related to thinking forward.
3. Invest in Your Employees
While a good business starts with a passionate owner, its success depends on talented employees who will represent the business to the masses. Employees are your best resources, not only in the daily operations, but also in the promotion and growth of your company.
A good employee will be able to do his or her job with very little help from anyone. A great employee will do the job while seeking new ways to make it better and more efficient. Training your employees on proper procedures is vital. A customer’s experience will be so much better if the representative of your business appears to be competent.
There may be times when problems arise. Your relationship with your employees will determine how quickly an issue can escalate. Having an open-door policy promotes dialogue between the business owner, managers and employees. If employees are comfortable in speaking to superiors when something happens, they’ll be more likely to work through a problem rather than just blowing up.
Make sure the open door swings both ways. Seek feedback from employees and let them know that their input is valued and considered. Working together to fix problems and grow the company makes everyone invested in the business.
Following these tips will help make you a good leader while helping your small business to become successful. People want to follow good leaders, so improving upon your skills can help build your business.
About the Author: Don’t forget to invest in yourself and education like you should with your business plan. Villanova University’s online programs provide small business owners and professionals the chance to learn without having to miss work. Villanova offers leadership courses, project management courses, and other professional training programs.
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Small Business Outsourcing Dos and Don’ts
As your small business grows, you’ll want to start outsourcing some of your tasks so you can grow your business. The following are tips I’ve learned from starting up and growing my own small business:
Outsourcing Dos
Do Outsource Tasks You Hate
We all have those tasks we despise. Personally, I hate the marketing end of things. I love working my craft, but I hate scrounging up new work. Hire someone to do the parts of the job you find yourself procrastinating, such as:
- Marketing efforts
- Writing copy
- Accounting
- Clean up/janitorial services
- Busywork
Do Outsource Offshore
You’ll find that a lot of tasks can be outsourced to offshore contractors for a fraction of the price it’d cost you to hire someone here in the US. Make sure you don’t need the contractor’s English to be perfect, and if not, consider giving a hardworking person in another country the gig.
Do Write Up a Contract
You need to be specific in what you expect from the contractor, how much and how often you’ll pay, and what time frame you expect the work to be completed within. Get all this is writing so there’s no confusion.
Do Pay Your Contract Employees Often
Contractors are afraid of getting burned, so you’ll need to pay them often (usually weekly) if you want to keep them.
Outsourcing Don’ts
Don’t Outsource Essential Tasks
You’ll want to keep your most important tasks in house, even if you find them tedious or exhausting. This is because you have to protect yourself against a flakey contractor or unanticipated circumstances. Only outsource tasks you can recover on your own in an emergency.
Don’t Outsource to Friends or Family
While the temptation is there to keep the work in the family, you’ll find an impartial contractor to be more efficient and respectful (in most cases). Unless you’re 100% sure your friend or family member can handle the task you need covered and will do it right, outsource to a neutral party. Then you won’t be jeopardizing important relationships if the project falls through or something goes wrong.
Don’t Trust a New Contractor
Your new contractor may claim to know how to hang the moon, but you don’t really know what the contractor is capable of until you’ve worked together for a while. Start with small projects and work your way up over time for best results.
Outsourcing Tips
I hope these tips were helpful! It’s important to start outsourcing once your business grows to the point where you can no longer do everything and do it all well. Just remember to outsource carefully and wisely. None of us can do it all!
About the Author: Erinn Stam is the Managing Editor for a nursing scholarship website. She attends Wake Technical Community College and is learning about lpn grants and scholarships. She lives in Durham, NC with her lovely 4-year-old daughter and exuberant husband.
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7 Must-Know Tips for Outsourcing Your Business
As an entrepreneur, you are probably more than familiar with having to juggle everything at the same time. Overseeing payroll, human resources, special projects, advertising, etc. – it can easily become costly and overwhelming. In an effort to save both time and money, however, many businesses outsource certain tasks.
For example, if your company’s business deals with e-commerce, you may not need to pay someone on-staff to answer your phone. Instead, outsourcing to a call center may be a better move. Or maybe you don’t have a web designer on staff but you need one to redesign your website. Rather than looking to hire one, you can have the project outsourced to fulfill your temporary needs.
In both examples, outsourcing is beneficial because you are able to manage your resources and handle issues or operations that you don’t necessarily know how to do (or just don’t want to do), and in most cases, you can save money. However, not doing your research can cause you to lose money, have high turnover and stifle your growth. Your outsourcing success rate really depends on your type of business, the quality of the provider, and the services you choose. If you observe the following tips, though, you can start heading in the right direction.
1. Determine Your Needs
Identify the work that isn’t a part of your core mission of business and then consider the following:
- Can someone external to your company do the work better than you can?
- Will outsourcing save you money?
- Will outsourcing enable you to put more of your resources and focus elsewhere?
Careful consideration of this step is vital to your success. If you are unable to be clear about what your needs are, how will you articulate those needs to an outsourcer? Again, make sure the work you outsource doesn’t entail lots of oversight, because if it does, it might have been better to just handle the job in-house.
2. Be Picky
When picking an outsourcer, request to see their previous work before you make a decision about whether or not to hire them. Are they fully equipped to handle the job? Say you outsourced your web design – do the designers have wireless Internet cards for their laptops if they suddenly have to travel during the work week? Are they available through email, phone, and several other means? A bad decision at this stage can cost you money down the line and compromise your entire operation.
Also, if they can’t show you something tangible for a previous work sample (if you’re outsourcing to a call center, for example), be sure to get some references. It also might be a good idea to check out their page at the Better Business Bureau.
3. Take One Project at a Time
So you identify a vendor and are presented with a two-year contract. Not so fast! Don’t sign any long-term contracts until you’ve seen that this provider has had success on smaller projects. If possible, test the outsourcer first by giving them a comparatively small task to accomplish. Their ability to handle this project well will prove whether they are a good match in the long run.
4. Brace Yourself for Challenges
As great as it would be to immediately hit the ground running with your new provider, realistically it will take some time to synchronize operations and build a professional relationship. In order for outsourcing to work, you and your staff are going to need to be patient and prepared for small missteps that may happen in the beginning. For example, if your provider is off-shore, there will be time-zone differences that can hamper proper communication. Setting up a realistic schedule that meets your needs may take some practice. If all parties are invested, though, a little practice and management of expectations will sort things out.
5. Be Aware of the Full Costs
Many companies outsource to save money, but outsourcing can get pricey too. Are your outsourcing projects going to require you to employ telecommuters or freelance staff who work remotely? If so, this could be costly depending on where the workers are based. What about equipment? Do the outsourcers have their own or are your fronting the bill? Make sure to get as much information as possible about the total costs – before it’s too late.
6. Are Your Expectations the Same?
Are all involved parties clear about what the end result should be? Miscommunication about benchmarks can cause a maelstrom of issues. Be clear about communicating what success looks like as well as when you expect to get there. If possible, provide the outsourcers with a concrete example of what you’d like their finished product to look like. For instance, perhaps you are outsourcing the redesign of your site. Is the vendor up to speed with the latest content management systems and development software? You should know what capabilities you want your site to have and ensure that your provider has already been able to provide that level of quality to other clients before giving them the job.
7. Prepare for Cultural Differences
If you are outsourcing abroad, you definitely need to be aware of the cultural differences that will arise. Outsourcing your calls, for example, would mean your provider would need to be attuned to the cultural and social customs of your business. If you’re outsourcing web design, you’ll want to make sure that the language your provider will be using fits your demographic. Customers are very observant and can tell very quickly if the message they are reading is of a low quality or poorly translated.
It is no secret that outsourcing has become the strategy of choice of the majority of American businesses. In 2008 alone, almost half of U.S. businesses took part in off-shore outsourcing. With some research and deliberation, outsourcing can be a valuable alternative for you too.
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3 Tips for Startups to Survive
No matter how good the idea is or how much money startups have, they have to first think of survival before they entertain thoughts of success; it’s not that easy to float a company today, simply because the competition is fierce and most spheres of business are saturated and overcrowded. Read more
The 5 Major Pitfalls of Business Start-Ups and How to Overcome
Entrepreneurship demands the ability to understand, appropriate and make use of risk. Successful entrepreneurs are those men and women who can develop a gut feeling, hunch, instinct or curiosity into a tangible project. Among the obstacles facing entrepreneurs, one must include self-doubt, hesitation and the inability to make wise decisions. New entrepreneurs in particular can be faced with a particularly powerful kind of doubt, one that suggests that an entrepreneurial idea “cannot be done”.
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An entrepreneur must engage in intelligent, proactive risk-taking in order to succeed in a new start-up. Paying attention to the process involved is crucial, and this article explains five major pitfalls and how to overcome.
1. Failure to Transform an Idea into a Sound Business Plan
Entrepreneurial success begins with two key factors: a good idea and its subsequent development. However, having a good or unique idea is not enough to form an entire business or launch a project. Your idea must be analyzed for its weaknesses, its strengths, and how it will unfurl into a marketable and potentially profitable project.
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For this to happen, you must transform your idea into a disciplined and thoughtful business plan. Your business plan outlines the execution of your idea. It takes the abstract aspects of an idea and transforms them into something tangible. Your business plan must include a cost analysis, a timeline of potential growth with various benchmarks, the expertise required to launch your project, and an analysis of the risks involved.
2. Failure to Overcome Fear
Fear is healthy and understandable but do not let it cripple your potential success. The obstacles you face are not yet mistakes! They are simply challenges.
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For young entrepreneurs, facing the rounds of self-doubt can be particularly daunting. Consider your status as a uniquely affirmative one: you are a maverick and not a wallflower. Act as such and you will start to believe it.
3. Failure to Find the Right Mentors
As you create a business plan and conquer self-doubt, be sure to surround yourself with people who complement and enhance your project. You cannot accomplish everything on your own. Recognize where your expertise lies and where it does not and form alliances with those who add what you do not have. This can include hiring experts in finance, negotiation, marketing, business strategy, law and tax. Engage such experts from the start to optimize your project’s potential.
4. Underperforming by Over Committing
Part of recognizing where your expertise lies involves recognizing what you can and cannot do in terms of personal resources, time and effort. As a new business owner you may also have an active family life, which may include raising children, running a household and holding down a job. These responsibilities will not lessen. Understand early on how to balance entrepreneurship with the rest of your life, or else both your project and your family life will suffer.
5. Overexposure
Whether male or female, first-time entrepreneurs run the risk of encountering untrustworthy individuals who are prepared to rob you. In your business start up you may face additional hazards because some may assume that you are a novice when it comes to business negotiation. Careful preparation of your business plan and your projected capacity for work and growth should help limit your exposure to swindles and scams. However, taking a small amount of time each week and reviewing the trust you have invested in certain people, companies, facilities and practices is crucial. Do this on your own or with your most trusted advisor. The key is to weigh the risk you are taking when dealing with any person or company.
About the Author: Alex Papa is an investor and owner of several offline and online businesses. He often helps people find new business ideas, build their own small businesses and enjoy the lifestyle they desire. In his blog he also offers a business start-up audio CD course and the latest Norton 360 Coupon Code.
Photo Credit: Michael | Ruiz
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Top Ten Teamwork Tips
Whatever the business you run and whatever position you currently occupy, you should always keep in mind that you are working in a team. Teamwork is one of the keys to success in any kind of business and there is a lot to learn. Looking back at my 2,5 year experience of work in Customer Service at one web-hosting company I now clearly realize many things, some of which I would like to share with you.
1. Start With Yourself
When you are being criticized by your management or just see that something is going wrong about the business you are working in – try to think what you can personally do to make the things better. Sure, you should not blame yourself for all the problems, but there is always room for improvement.
2. No “I” or “Me” – Just “We” and “Us”
There is no place for egoism in any team. Overestimated ambitions and selfish approach may ruin everything. Therefore, any time some organizational questions are being discussed, you should first think what profit it might bring to your team, not to you personally – even if it is not going to coincide with your own interests.
3. Your Team is Wider Than You Think
Sometimes people, who work in a big company, forget about other departments. They consider their home department to be their only team and work within it only. This is a mistake, no one should make – the Team is always wider – it involves everyone and makes everyone take as much care as possible of their business. You should communicate and co-operate with other departments members actively, since it is a common responsibility and success you share.
4. Gain Knowledge – Share Knowledge
If the company’s policy gets changed overnight – I’m not sure each team member will learn it at once. If you find out anything new regarding your company, your target market, your competitors – share this knowledge, so that there were no surprises. Such fast propagation of news may very well encourage new ideas – isn’t it what you need?
5. Do Not Hide Your Mistakes
To err is completely human, so you should not be afraid of the mistakes you may make and of course, you should never hide them. Each mistake you make saves everyone else from repeating it – this is the very case, when you should consider team profit higher than yours. Such lessons do improve team knowledgebase and highlight weak points.
6. Impersonalize
Whatever your relationship with colleagues is, you should always take everything impersonal. Being good or not that good person and being good or not that good worker are different things – and you should always keep this difference in mind. When a worker makes a mistake, you shouldn’t think of what a nice guy he is – there was an issue and you have to make sure it will not reoccur… and vice versa – if a person you do not like much deserves appreciation – you should appreciate him or her – because you appreciate the work your colleague did.
7. Go Informal
Schools, colleges, offices… people express themselves only partially in such formal places. If you want to co-operate with your colleagues more tightly and productively, you should understand each other better. This is where corporate parties come in handy – informal atmosphere makes its business – you start feeling more open and see others feeling the same – perfect time for making friends and learning each other closer… Next day is not the hangover, what you are going to feel – you are going to feel trusting others more and being more trusted.
8. Build Your Own Team Within The Team
This may sound funny, but this is exactly what you should do. Many minor tasks require sub-grouping. Do not wait for someone to choose you – be a volunteer and pick your own A Team, you are going to trust most and be proud of. Your leadership will be noticed and who knows… maybe one day you get your promotion.
9. Stay Protective
If you are fine with acknowledging your own mistake, try yourself out in taking the team’s blame on you solely. And it is not acting like a hero – if you a capable of doing it, it means that your conscious is team-oriented, that you will never hide behind the new guy’s back or assign someone else’s achievements.
10. Run a “Turn a Blind Eye” Test
A team is then perfectly built, when each its member can carry out the assigned tasks without delays, being under no control. If you are a manager, a team leader, or just one of the most active workers, you can temporarily step aside to watch the things being done without supervision. If everything is fine and your team does what you expected from each of its member, you will see problems being solved on their own – isn’t it a miracle? No, it is your achievement – the result of your brilliant work, which you should keep up.
About the Author: Arkadij Shkolnik is the current administrator and author of SiteValley.com. SiteValley.com is a reliable Cheap Web Hosting provider that can help you meet your online business challenges. They exist to provide the highest levels of quality and service in the highly specialized area of Internet hosting and deliver value and performance to our customers.
Photo Credit: psd
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4 Life Saving Tips for Small Business Marketing
Marketing for any small business is incredibly time consuming, and if you’re only one person or a small army of hardcore marketers, you want to make sure you’re optimizing around acquiring new customers and re-selling to current customers.
Focus on the RIGHT numbers
While marketing can be a volume game, it’s easy to measure the wrong metrics and to aim for the wrong goals. We came across that problem when we were shooting for high volume traffic, but it wasn’t converting as we expected. The Key Performance Indicator should have been sales, not traffic.
Spend money to get money back
Sure, goodwill is a good idea. Advertising is good for branding purposes too. But will these things help you reach your goals, which mean more revenue and more profit? Will goodwill turn into an amazing piece of press for your company that in turn will lead to sales? Will that branding campaign cause more people who were initially hesitant to purchase at one point, to actually pay for your product or service at another time? You have to have justification for your initiatives, as well as proper metrics to measure the effectiveness of the programs; otherwise you’re just wasting time doing things that might not be working or things that do not work as effectively as other things.
Double down on what’s working
It’s important to know what is affecting the bottom line and focus more of your efforts on what will help you reach your business’ goals. Cut out the fat and stop doing things that aren’t as effective as other things you can do or things that aren’t effective at all.
Test, Test, Test!
If what you’re doing works well enough for you, then that’s great, but if you want to take your business to the next level, test out ways to make what you’re doing even more effective. Try out new things with CRM like offering different sales and promotions, rearranging your website and its contents for readability and usability, or just testing a few things with your email marketing.
About the Author: Danny Wong is the Lead Evangelist for Blank Label, a provider of men’s custom dress shirts. He specializes in Small Business Marketing and Search Engine Optimization.
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Photo Credit: jsmjr
30 Minutes a Day Online Marketing Tips
Don’t think you have enough time in the day to effectively market your business? Think again! This is a guest post by Stacey Cavanagh of Tecmark: SEO Liverpool and Manchester, shows that with as little as 30 minutes a day you can be on your way to attracting more customers.
30 Minutes a Day Online Marketing Tips
For the small business operating in a particularly tricky financial period, the bulk of your marketing budget may come in the form of time.
While it’s true to say that online marketing, SEO, social media marketing etc is a worthwhile investment, we’re not just talking in terms of money.
Putting some time into online marketing can pay dividends for a small business and you can even make a difference in just half an hour a day by implementing some of the following:
It takes just a few minutes to make a contribution to Twitter and making this a part of your daily business routine is a steady way to build up a network of followers interested in your area of industry. Share a link to an interesting news story relating to your industry or details of a special offer on your own website. Just make it a post that offers the reader something (information or a great deal) and your followers will gradually build up. Start to search for people in a similar area and follow them. Begin networking within your niche to meet contacts.
Blog
The same sort of concept applies with blogging as with Twitter, except the posts are much longer! This needn’t be an everyday thing but posting to a blog a couple of times a week is a way to keep in touch with your customers and to convey more about your business and the market in which you operate to your potential clients. This is an excellent means of marketing. It takes a while for a blog to take off, so have patience. 20 minutes or so twice a week can really get this going for your business.
Blog commenting
Contribute to the conversations on blogs by bloggers in the same niche in which you operate. This, again, is a form of networking and it also keeps you abreast of everything else happening in your industry. You also get back links when commenting, which potentially has SEO benefits for your website. A few minutes a day to read and comment on blogs in a similar niche will make a big difference in the long term.
Forum Discussions
Find and sign up to forums on a related topic to your business. Actively take part and get to know your fellow posters. Yes, more virtual networking but once again, the importance of this cannot be overlooked. It contributes to building an online presence for your brand and can begin to establish you, the business owner, as something of an authority in the specific area in which you operate. This can eventually lead to people getting in touch with you about the products and services you supply, as well as encouraging more links from the sites of others back to yours (more SEO benefit)!
Checking your content
Make it a goal to read one page of your website through each day to check the content. You’re looking for grammatical and spelling errors, typos etc. But you should also be keeping an eye on how frequently your keyword is mentioned. By keyword, we mean the word relating to what the page is about. It’s surprising when reading back over content how infrequently your keyword might be mentioned. When you think about it, the only way in which Google can recognise the topic of your page is by the words on it. So ensuring you mention the keyword in the content is critical. However, this should not come at the detriment of the meaning of your content and if you struggle to write keyword rich content that reads naturally, you should consider investing in a professional copywriter through an online marketing company. But it’s certainly worth investing a few minutes a day to read through your own existing content.
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These are quick tips that will, over time, increase your web presence which will, in turn generate more traffic and thus more leads to your small business website.
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