I just came across a blog directory site I hadn’t heard of before which includes a business section. I am going to make some time next week to sit and look at various blogs in that directory – I might find some great blogs or at least some inspiration for more posts and articles of my own!
Have you listed your blog in any directories to increase your exposure? Has it generated a lot of responses for you?
Yesterday, I described an email where past events were advertised – and suggested it was not a great idea!
Yet running or being involved in events such as seminars can be a very effective marketing tool. Assuming the event is well run and provides useful information, the event shows you as an expert, professional, helpful and possibly generous with your knowledge.
Obviously, in the lead up to an event you need to promote it to attract people to the event itself – not much of an event if no one turns up because they didn’t know about it!
However, you can also promote an event to market your business as well as the event – and this marketing can follow the event as well as lead up to it. Worst case, people know you run seminars and may be able to attend your next one; best case, people give you more respect and trust in you, and are more aware of your business.
Some ways you can use an event afterwards to promote your business and credibility are:
What other ways have you used or seen used for promoting events after they have happened?
A few days ago, I was reminded of the importance of tracking advertising through a story a friend told me.
The story: a company spent $60,000 or so on an advertising campaign, but didn’t implement any means of tracking the results of the ad. Meaning they have spent $60,000 and have no idea if it raised their brand awareness or brought in customers and revenue (I’m not sure which was the aim of their campaign.) So when the radio stations come back and ask if the company wants to repeat the ad, who knows if they should say yes or no…
The moral: tracking advertising is important for a number of reasons:
Even if your budget is nowhere near $60,000, tracking of advertising is a worthwhile exercise.
Don’t assume that free ads aren’t worth tracking, either. Why?
Have you used tracking with your advertising? Did you find it a useful activity, even if tedious and time consuming?
P.S. You can read more about the basics of tracking your advertising or assessing the results of tracking in my articles.
I spoke at a workshop this morning on goal setting – we worked on SMARTY Goals, business values and setting challenges.
As part of setting goals and milestones, it is important to notice the work you have done and the progress made even if you haven’t fully reached the original goal (as Melissa, wrote in her blog, aim for the moon as you’ll at least reach the stars.) Having small rewards for yourself is one way to acknowledge what you have done, which makes it easier for you to move on and do the next step, and the next, and the next…
Rewards can be anything that you gain pleasure from (booking a massage, eating a doughnut, taking time to read a book, buying a book or magazine, seeing a movie, taking your family on a picnic, sitting in a spa, and so on.) You can keep the reward to yourself, too, so don’t worry about what anyone else would think of the reward.
My guidelines for rewards are:
And don’t be afraid to share your achievements with others, either. Even small achievements can be shared and acknowledged by friends, people you network with or a coach.
How often do you reward reaching a goal? Do you give yourself acknowledgement of work you’ve done and how far you’ve come, even if it wasn’t actually a goal?
I recently read a post by Melissa about being sick and running your business and it made me smile. I think I can safely say I went beyond the call of duty for one of my clients last month, on the day Melissa wrote that post…
I spent the morning in hospital in false labour and the afternoon doing errands. By late afternoon, I was in full labour with painful contractions and received a request for an urgent client newsletter mailing. So I spent the early evening preparing and sending out an email in between major contractions – and then went back to hospital for my son’s birth!
Aside from my dedication to client’s :), managing business during personal health issues is a serious topic for business owners. Do you struggle on and hope you’ll get better but risk making yourself worse? Do you tell clients you’re sick and delay their work? Do you get help from somewhere?
As professionals, we want to fulfill promises to clients and deliver on time and to a suitable standard. As people, we need time to recover from illness and time to rest and care for ourselves. It is when these needs clash that we struggle.
The ideal is to prepare for such issues, rather than find ourselves unable to deal with it (imagine being so sick you can’t even warn clients things are running behind…) What ways have you prepared your business for your unplanned (or planned) absences?
I just came across a blog post about why you need to measure performance which seems like a good starting point for all small business owners.
It’s a good question – I mean, if you don’t measure your success in various areas of your business, how do you know you are actually succeeding? Or how will you know that there is a so-far-minor problem in one area before it turns into a major issue for you and your business?
Yes, it is important to keep on top of where you are at in all areas of business, but I liked the suggestion in this blog post that it is better to start monitoring one or two key areas now than to wait “until I have enough time” to set up measuring programs for everything important to your business.
Why start small with your measuring when the whole picture is so important?
So my question is – how often do you measure your business performance? Which area do you think most needs assessment right now?
In a traditional job setting, the difference between work and home is fairly clear and easy to see – until you start bringing work home anyway! But when you run a business or have a remote job, it can be harder to spot the difference – and harder to manage things.
Of course, the big question is HOW to manage time! I think the simplistic answer is to set boundaries to maintain control.
From talking to various people, I see two main groups of at home workers – those who get distracted from work by the need to tidy the kitchen, hang out the washing, vacuum the floors and so on, and those who work a lot and find it hard to manage much of the house stuff at all. Which group do you fit into? I have no trouble (well, generally speaking!) getting on with work but end up working too hard and letting the housework slide…
Here are some of my ideas on creating boundaries between business and home, but I’d love to hear your suggestions, too…
Sometimes it seems impossible to make those boundaries, but the reduced stress and lost time is well worth the effort. Good luck with it!
Use your words and time wisely!
Contingency planning and being prepared are important steps for a business owner – but steps that are not urgent so can easily be left behind in the day to day busyness of business and making a profit.
I was reminded of this topic today when I read an article called ‘When bad stuff happens’ – being about small business owners needing to think ahead to potential problems. And having procedures in place to cope when problems do arise.
Back in 1999, I had a contract to prepare some contingency plans for a major Australian company. We did various things, but one key task was preparing a checklist and contingency plan for the morning of 1 January 2000 – the day computers were going to fail and planes fall from the sky! The checklist included things such as ‘turn on a light switch. If it doesn’t work, try a second switch. If it still doesn’t work, look at neighbouring buildings and street lights – do they have power?’ We thought ahead and gave staff options to get all the information before emergency procedures were put into place.
So what sort of things do you need procedures for in your business? Obviously, that depends on your business, but some simple procedures you could start with are:
If you start implementing some of these plans into your business, I’d love to hear about it – although I hope it never becomes necessary to use the procedures for a negative problem (using them because you win a trip around the world is a different story!)
Use your words and time wisely!
Think about why you use the internet for business. Sure you look at the graphics and pictures, but the main activity is collecting information, right?
So, does it make sense that one of the best ways to pull people into your site is to give them information? Selling your product or service is your main business aim, of course, but if you give people information they will trust you – and they’ll stay on your site long enough to learn your name.
How can you use information to get people to visit your website?
By far the easiest way is to submit informative articles to various web sites and ezines. That doesn’t mean you submit an article about you or your business as that will bore and annoy your readers. What you have to give them is good information about something relevant to your business, something they can use and appreciate you for.
If you are a mechanic, you could submit articles explaining what fuel injected means or how to jump start an engine; a wedding planner can write about how to decide on a guest list; an accountant can explain negative gearing or claiming GST inputs; and a butcher could write about the different cuts of meat.
You also need to make sure the article is interesting and basic enough for your potential clients to understand and finish. It must be accurate and presented professionally as well, if it is to promote your business positively.
At the end of the article, you include a short bio about yourself and your business. You can see the bios I use at the end of business and health articles.
If you have a web site or email address, make sure the bio includes this information so it can be hyperlinked back to you. Thus anyone reading your article and wanting to know more or use your service can contact you instantly.
I mentioned the value of promotional articles a few weeks ago, and I will cover ways to make use of them in coming posts.
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