When you have your own business you need to get smart about what works best and how to make that happen for you.
Smart Business Tip 1
Make Your Blog Interesting!
If you’re going to have a blog for your business then make it more than just about product announcements. Include articles and posts that are interesting to your customers as well as other bloggers. One of the big advantages of having a blog is that other bloggers will link to you when you have interesting content. So give them something worthwhile to link to rather than just news about what you’re selling. Share advice, tips and ideas with eye catching headings. Include funky graphics of either your products or just beautiful images you want to share – and remember to respect copyright.
Smart Business Tip 2
Be Social!
Get yourself a social media profile and update it regularly with news, ideas, thoughts and link to others to celebrate what they doing. Linking to other complimentary businesses and social groups is a great way to meet other people putting themselves out there just like you are as well as sharing an audience that appreciate both your businesses. Social media is much more about working together rather than just what works for you alone.
Smart Business Tip 3
Cross Promote Others!
On of the big things about online communities is the sharing of links. This is a really important area to get your head around, particularly as Google places such a high value on the quality of incoming and outgoing links from your site. If they can see (through their fancy algorithms) that your site is connecting really well with other product and industry related sites – such as fashion blogs, online women’s magazines, social media sites – then they’ll see you’re building a relationship up rather than bombarding the net with advertising. There are so many positive facets to the cross promotion, cross linking method that it will get your head spinning – it gives you the chance to build your business network, find new customers, reward existing customers with funky online sites, get caught up in the ever precious word of mouth promotions and the list goes on.
Smart Business Tip 4
Learn more!
If you don’t know much about social media, blogging, creating an ecommerce site then change it – get educated. Start reading books and articles both online and offline. Remember to respect your budget and check out the libraries in your area. Some have great books while others can transfer useful books in. Keep in mind that if they don’t have the specific book you’re seeking they probably have another book that’s really useful, even if it’s on a different subject. Have a hunt on Amazon for the best reviewed books and ask your library about them.
Smart Business Tip 5
Give yourself time to Work On the Business!
It’s really very easy to get caught up with working IN the business day in and day out but what takes the business forward is Working ON the Business. It’s the difference of letting the hours go by on all the tasks that are constantly there to do versus the entrepreneurial planning and day dreaming. Without the vision, planning and day dreaming time your business can’t move onto the next thing, you get caught up in the daily mire, the daily grind so when you do look up your competitors have left you behind and you’re struggling to make ends meet. When you work ON the business you get to step back and see things clearly and to envisage the future.
Smart Business Tip 6
Free yourself!
If you have a small business that you’re doing everything in you’ll get to the stage where you know you need to delegate but the question of how to seems rather huge! How do you afford a full time staff member? Well you don’t. You don’t need to either. There are plenty of skilled, friendly and effective people out there who only want flexible part time work because they are doing other things with their lives right now – studying, raising a family, recovering for working way too hard for way too long, looking for a change of lifestyle, caring for a treasured family member – there’s a million and one reasons why someone needs part time work rather than full time work. And even just getting 5 – 20 hours a week with someone is ideal. You can trial a new helper for the business; you can even take them on as contractors to keep the paperwork to a minimum. You can find people by asking around, putting an online ad up on a site like Gumtree (it’s free) or an ad in your local paper.
Smart Business Tip 7
Figure Out Who Does What!
Something I’ve found really useful is to write out job role descriptions. I start with the tasks and then group them and give a job title to them. From there I can figure out who does what. For me, starting with the tasks was much easier than starting with the individuals themselves – mainly because I kept being the individual that had to do everything – a bit of a control issue there. So I turned it around and made it task focused. Then you can delegate the roles to others, keeping the tasks that need your attention and freeing yourself from the administration tasks that take up your time.
Working Smarter, Not Harder
You work hard enough as it is. All driven business owners do. But to get the best results you need to work smart. So have a look at what you’re doing with your business and how you can do it smarter.
A hunt around online at the businesses you admire will show you what they’re doing and how they’re doing. Take inspiration and get your business to where you want it to be with these smart tips to get you started!