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New year’s Checklist for Small Businesses

Now is the perfect time to think how you want your business to grow.

We all know that it’s really tough to set new goals when we are already struggling to meet the objectives leftover from last year. In fact if you are a small business owner then the stress gets doubled. Being a fellow business owner we understand how complicated it can be to take the time out and consider options for developing your business further.

We remain too busy juggling our current tasks, clients, bigger goals amongst other things, but making a comprehensive checklist can help us look at things from another viewpoint. If small businesses jot down a list of things they need to achieve this year then it can make their life much easier. Now is the perfect time to think how you want your business to grow. So here we present small business checklist for the New Year.

Update your website and add some fresh content.

You keep your office clean and maintained. Don’t you? Similarly, your website is your digital desk. It requires your attention and maintenance. Your website should contain some useful or interesting information for the visitors.

Updating fresh content doesn’t only help to keep visitors hooked to your website; it also helps in effective SEO.

Blog regularly

Blog is a kind of content you should regularly update to your website. There are numerous benefits of regular blogging. First of all it has a huge potential of lead generation. Blogging is like you’re sharing your knowledge and beliefs to the rest of the world, this way you attract traffic to your website. It’s observed that if you are creating content in terms of blogs and your target audience finds them helpful then it can establish you as an authority in their eyes.

Make your web presence user friendly

Let’s try to sum up the five major factors of user friendliness of your website – Page load speed, Accessibility, Navigation, information. If you have a website that’s not up to the mark then it’s equal to not having a website. A non user friendly website doesn’t entertain visitors and they quickly click that ‘cross’ button up there. Your website should be as friendly as possible to attract, make the potential customers stay and bring them to call to action.

Check your search rank

It’s necessary for you to know where your website stands for targeted words. If you have hired an SEO company then line-up a meeting with them every month to check if your efforts are going in the right direction or not.

Do more with social media

We suppose you have a business page on Facebook. Is it enough? No, certainly not! You need to be there, talk, make your presence VISIBLE. The more you will do with social media the more distance you cover to reach to the mind of your customer. Yes, there are millions of your potential customers out there. You need to target them effectively. If you cannot fetch time to manage your social media activities then hire an authentic company to do it for you.

Embrace negative comments on social media and take them as an opportunity

You can’t escape from criticism. It’s better to accept and deal with it. If someone posts negatively on your social media platforms then take it as an opportunity and try to communicate with the person. If you’d address any issue publically and sort it out then it will earn you a good word of mouth. Do not forget, it’s not only about the person commenting but many others observing the issue.

Let consumers be marketer of your brand

We mentioned about word of mouth above, it’s the most effective tool of marketing. You would also take the word of your friends and family serious and it would definitely put impact on your buying decisions. Do well on social media and earn lots of free brand advocates. Transparency and clear communication matter to your customers.

Get ahead of the competition by staying updated with digital trends

Digital trend is one of the things that keep changing. If you want to stay ahead of your competition then you should stay updated with digital trends. You shouldn’t delay it; today there’s a lot of information available to you that can easily be accessed and consumed. You should do it before your competitors think of it.

Update your LinkedIn profile

The way LinkedIn works is a bit different. By making a company/personal account you will automatically stay connected and be given with the most current information from the professionals around the world. Your satisfied customers can easily recommend your products or services to others. You will be way ahead of your competition with the help of these recommendations. There’s a lot more about LinkedIn, we might do a separate blog for it in future.

Revisit (Give a glance) to your email marketing Newsletters

Your email marketing Newsletter educates and persuades your clients and prospects to work with you. It can only happen if you run your email marketing campaign correctly. Revisit or have a look at your Newsletters. Are they adding any value? Would you personally like to receive such Newsletters? If yes then you’re doing it right. A good Newsletter contributes to create higher brand recall and association.

Invest in digital marketing

You may or may not be investing in traditional marketing methods but now here’s another option - digital marketing - It would make you more visible, credible and searchable online which ultimately make your business profitable.

Give importance to content remarketing

Content marketing is all together a new world. Since the rise of digital marketing and social media, the way businesses communicate with their customers has been changed. If a customer has decided to join your ‘social circle’ then it has become necessary to you to provide him with some engaging content and useful information.

Seek advice/help from Experts

We always appreciate small business owners because they take actions and make things happen. They are filled with endless energy and strength of mind to grow their own business. Nonetheless they need to connect with some industry experts. If they won’t do it, they will end up compromising on many things they planned to stay ahead of their competition.

Each of the items listed above has its own importance and majorly revolves around digital marketing. It is suggested to handover some of these responsibilities to the people who are experts, this way you can focus on your other business goals.

HOW YOUR BUSINESS CAN HELP THE LOCAL COMMUNITY?

02 Mar, 2021
Do you want to give back to your community but not sure how to do it? Here are a few ways to do it… Community Collaboration Business owners are a vital part of the communities in which they live and their work thrive. Thus, their decisions impact others in the community. A local business owner can be involved in the community. For instance, they may sponsor local little league teams, donate to cities homeless shelters, take part in community charity events or contribute to a local non-profit organization, so on and so forth. Innovation and Competition Businesses need to stand out from the crowd in order to survive and serving the community is one of the ways to do it. They must serve the needs in the community and do it better than their rivals. Having multiple small businesses all striving to be unique and better can result in a healthy maker place and well-served customer. Create Local Jobs Businesses play a very important role in creating local jobs. The benefit of local jobs is that the employees can work closer to where they live and won’t need to travel to another city or place. Businesses can also partner with and help small local businesses that can be beneficial for fellow community members who work at them. When a community has an operational commercial center, it also creates great opportunities for local people to shop at other local small businesses. They buy lunch or dinner from local restaurants, run errands on their break, and grab drinks from local bars. This keeps money rolling local and further creates a tight-knit community vibe. There are numerous ways in which brands can contribute for the wellbeing of the community. In a nutshell, our community can help our company to grow as much as a business helps the community to become stronger. All in all, we should always remember, no matter how you do it, giving back can ignite change and positive impact, and will make your company as well as your community better, smarter and stronger.

Research is The Key

By Ayesha Ahmed • 06 Mar, 2017
Writing content is a task in it self, and keeping it fresh and up to the mark is something that the content writers struggle from time to time. In this situation, you need to sit down and review some key points about your content and analyze where you can improve to get going again. Here, we will give you some tips on how to do that. Your content normally revolves around sales enablement, eBooks, white papers, and blog posts. With so many things to cover it sure does meant to get overwhelming at times. With the deadlines fast approaching, it gets even difficult to be more creative with your work since you have to get the job done quick. Bland content is not only hard for your readers to digest but also not really inspiring for you either. Research is the key. Stay updated. Keep checking out new trends and embed them in your content. That way your content stays fresh and contemporary. It’s important to keep evaluating, optimizing, and adjusting. One other problem content curators face is the monotony. Your readers get bored since you’re either repeating your content or following a certain unattractive pattern. Worry not. Alter your strategy. Look closely at your content. You might realize that it’s actually not the content but the way you structure it. Try restructuring it. Try changing the format. If you think that your content is flat, try to add some flare to it by adding infographics. That will spice it up. If your podcast is not doing as well as it should, try transcribing it into a blog or even better try adding some visual element to it to spice it up. That will surely catch the attention of your customers. Add some fun images to your blog. Make it livelier. Make it stand out and be more attractive. Add some interaction to your content. Give your audience creative content forms. That way you will keep your audience engaged. You need to keep shifting and adjusting your content strategy in order to keep it fresh and engaging for your audience. Sticking to this formula and your readers will never get bored.

Onsite Content Optimization

By Ayesha Ahmed • 15 Dec, 2016
You put in hours in putting up your website online. Your sole purpose to put it up in the digital realm is to attract visitors to it and eventually make it a hot source for lead generation. But what good is your website if the search engine doesn’t even know what it’s about and it fails to appear in the results that you would want to see it? Content optimization is the answer to this debacle. Optimize is the keyword. You’ve got to ensure that your web presence is fully optimize to leverage the best internet has on offer. But wait. Optimization just in the name of beefing up the pages in order to be more visible to that bot? Is that the real motive behind optimizing your website? If that’s the case then you must read on, this is for you. Optimization is not merely about getting it right with meta data and the web crawlers. Today, search engine bots are smarter than we think. You can’t just go about cramming X number of keywords umpteen times in a single paragraph. You content’s meta should be legible i.e. it should make sense when your website’s visitor hovers their pointer on it. The text that reads when your website’s visitor hovers their mouse over it matters, matters a lot. It matters because search engine’s web crawler is comparing it with what your competitor is putting in in their website. It orders it according to the relevancy of the content when it displays the search results. Hence, it’s imperative that you ensure your website is being handled by a professional outfit that knows the intricacies and pros and cons of the digital world. When going through the meta tags and page content for the various pages, ask yourself over and over: Does that make sense? Does the keyword belong there, or am I going out of my way to put it in there? Does this accurately describe, in an artful way, what my page or site is about? For the content modules on each page: Do they give the reader the information they need? Also, is the information clear and concise? Finally, is the content correct? So, here you go, we’ve laid down the essential basics for you to get it right when it comes to creating meaningful content on your website. Content that not only gives you more visibility on line but also ensures that authentic traffic is diverted to you digital abode.
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