As well as working with startups and growing operations, I work with business owners who have been established for years, even decades. Often, these are family-owned organisations with grass-roots beginnings. They have been serving the same customers, providing the same products and making roughly the same income, year-in, year-out. Having a solid business is great.…
When you first start out in business, unless you have a bounty of funds from a generous investor, odds are it is all you.
This can be a challenging time. As well as being the expert in your chosen field, you are the sales director, the marketing manager, and the finance officer. You’re a professional plate-spinner, and as your business grows, so does your to-do list.
As a business owner or professional, recording and distributing a podcast is an excellent way to share your message with a vast audience. Participating in podcasts is also a fun and effective strategy for cross-promotion between similar businesses.
Always one to practice what I preach, I recently joined property guru Michael Yardney as a guest on his podcast.
If you Google yourself, what comes up? Is it a series of sporting results from your old soccer club? An article in the local paper from several years ago?
If you run a business, this isn’t going to cut it. It is important to have a personal website to establish yourself as a brand and make yourself easy to find online.
Many businesses put an incredible amount of time and money into their blogs. This is a great strategy (and one we use here at Business Blueprint!), but it is not right for everybody.
If you have a social media presence and you want to constantly be engaging your audience, content curation is a shortcut to sharing helpful and relevant information.
Imagine it is raining and you want to catch some water. Would you run around with a test tube trying to get hold of each individual drop?
Of course not! But this is an analogy I use when I work with business owners whose websites aren’t helping them grow their business.
Like your logo, your business slogan or tagline is one of the most important parts of your marketing. It can also be one of the hardest parts to get right.
There are so many clever slogans out there, it is funny to think that behind every one there may be hours of work.
I have always been the type to plan ahead. From a young age, I got into the habit of writing down my goals before figuring out how to achieve them. It didn’t surprise me to learn that almost all of the most successful entrepreneurs I have met do the same.
In my life, I have created some ambitious goals but recently, I was inspired to think even bigger. This happened after I visited the office of a business contact of mine. She had one on her wall a figure — 1 million dollars.
As a young kid, I was full of energy. Not knowing what else to do with me, Mum enrolled me in gymnastics when I was six years old.
This was to shape the rest of my youth, and perhaps the rest of my life. With the help of my coach, I was able to reach great heights in gymnastics, competing at the top level before retiring at age 18.
Content has been king for a long time, and it looks to stay that way. However, when you generate content in the form of articles, infographics and blogs, your next challenge is to get people to read it!
Perhaps the most important part of any content is the headline. It simply has to be written in a way which will make people want to find out more.