Are you on it?

If you’re running a business, particularly a small one, it’s easy to get so drawn into the every day operational stuff that business development takes a back seat.  This often results in fire-fighting instead of a steady planned growth!

If time is at a premium and the business depends on you, it can be difficult to fit in time working on the business rather than in it.  Families and partners tend to take a dim view of you trying to develop your business plans over the weekend or in the evening when they consider that’s ‘their’ time.  Plus, you’re probably tired after a long day and not at your sharpest to think creatively about where your business is going.

Here are a few tips that might help:

• Create a clear client profile - if you know what kind of client you want to attract, your marketing and sales activities will be much better focused.
• Tidy up your workplace.  This may sound bizarre, but a tidy working area makes everyone much more productive and improves motivation (even yours).
• Have a 15-minute daily meeting (even if it’s just you) to plan the day and identify the ‘must dos’ as well as a priority ranking for your to do list.
• Get to work 15-30 minutes earlier to work ON the business.  Block this time out in your diary.
• Put clear processes in place.  How do you deal with enquiries and/or recommendations?  Who does what?  By when?  What materials need to be sent to potential clients?  Are brochures or leaflets available?  Make sure a follow up process is included too.
• Put a list of opportunities up somewhere everyone can see it.  Use a code (letters, numbers, coloured dots) to show where potential customers are in the process of going from ‘cold’ to ‘client’.
• Even if you’re not a numbers person, review your balance sheet at least once a month.  Get your accountant to show you how to identify key figures that track your progress.  Now HMRC demand all companies to use online software to do their VAT returns, your software can produce all kinds of reports to help with this.  Decide if you’re on track and, if not, what has to change to get back on track.

These are only small things, but they can make a big difference.  They can be the difference between average and exceptional.  Go on give them a try.

Who are you?

Your LinkedIn profile is the equivalent of attending a networking meeting.  It’s your first ‘meeting’ with potential contacts so you want to make a good impression.

1: Make sure your ‘name badge’ just has your name on it - you don’t need your job title, the letters after your name or even a title like ‘Dr’ or ‘Sir’, unless you want someone to address you by your title.  If you met someone at a live networking event, how would you introduce yourself?  Dr Phillip Groves or Phil Groves?

2: Ensure your headshot is just a headshot, so people will recognise you even when you appear as a tiny avatar.  Look right into the camera and smile.  Aim for friendly and approachable - you want people to talk to you, don’t you?  Don’t frighten them off with a forbidding stare.

3: Take the time to write a summary - and it should be written in the first person.  This is your personal profile, not a biography.  Third person sounds rather pompous!  So I and me, not he and him or she and her.

Your summary is an opportunity to engage your visitor.  Think about what they will be attracted by.  Clearly this depends on what you want your summary to do.  If you’re a business owner it might promote your business, if you’re a job-hunter it might be more about your experience and projects you’ve worked on.

TIP:  You have 2000 characters to play with to write your summary.  That’s quite a bit of text so always put line spaces between the paragraphs to make it easier for people to read.

Also add headlines to re-engage people who have read some of the first paragraph and not connected with it.  Another headline after a paragraph or two may pull their eye back to the text and maybe they’ll find something more interesting to them further down.  A new headline every 2-3 (short) paragraphs is a good practice.

4: Complete your experience.  If you’re job-hunting then key skills and experience should appear here.  If you’re a business owner it’s an opportunity to give an overview of what the business offers as well as your role in its development.

5: Add value:  You can add projects, education, volunteer experience, publications and more.  The more you have on your profile, the more potential employers or clients will engage with you.

Don’t forget to add articles and updates too.  Articles don’t have to be long - but should be relevant to your professional situation - LinkedIn is business-focused.  This doesn’t mean you can’t write in a conversational style, just that you should consider what you share carefully.

If you need help making LinkedIn work for you - drop me a note.

Get attention!

People come to your website from all kinds of sources.

• Some have done a search and found you for one of the key words your site features.  
• Some have got a business card from you and gone to check you out.  
• Some have been recommended by someone else.
• Some have followed a link on social media.

The challenge is that you need to get their attention - fast.

Most people have a short attention span online.  Just watch someone flick down a website or blog post on their mobile device - they can’t read that fast, they’re picking up headlines and key words until they find something that captures their attention.

So your website needs headlines - that get the reader’s attention.  Think of your website like a newspaper.  Nobody reads a newspaper from cover to cover - most of us glance at the headline and only read the articles that capture our interest.  That’s part of the sub-editor’s job - to come up with compelling headlines that will tell the reader enough to catch their attention and draw them in.

Remember that your website has to function for two types of reader:

• The search engine’s spiders
• The human reader

The search engine spiders will be looking for key words and relevant content.  They will be reading something known as H1 tags, primarily and then the body copy related to that.

An H1 tag is simply the most prominent headline.  However, it does not need to be the biggest font size.  It’s a designation to tell the search engine - this is what this page is about.  So the H1 tag may say Services,  but it doesn’t need to say

Services

If your human reader has clicked on the Services tab, that’s where they’re expecting to be when the page loads.  What they need is something to encourage them to start reading.  That headline for the human can be an H2 tag (the next most important headline - for the search engines).  AND it can be in a bigger font than the H1 tag.

Take a dip into our treasure trove …

That way the search engine spider gets the right information - and the human being gets a headline that draws them in.

Your website headlines need to do this job on EVERY page - as you never know which page people will land on.  If they’ve searched for something that’s on one of your product or service pages, they may arrive directly on that page, without visiting the home page.

Get the headline habit!

What do you read?

It’s interesting that many people create newsletters that, if they landed in their own inbox would be deleted almost immediately!

For you to keep your readers you’ll need to know what they want and deliver something interesting - for them (not for you!)

So what kinds of things do your audience want to know?  Here are a few suggestions:

How to …

A quick outline of an activity that is within your area of expertise.  Shortcuts or clever work-arounds that will help your reader to do something either better or that they can’t/don’t do at present.  In case you think that if you tell people how, they won’t need you - don’t worry.  Most people stick to doing what’s in their comfort zone and all you’re doing is demonstrating how knowledgeable you are. Guess you they’re going to ask for help!

Case study

A story showing how one of your clients achieved measurable results from your efforts.  People love stories and as long as they get the feeling that this would also be achievable for them, it’s a fantastic way to convert non-clients to clients.

3 top tips

It doesn’t have to be three, it could be five or more, but my advice is keep it short as people will read short text, but skip anything that looks time-consuming.  Pick out your best strategies and share briefly.

Topical reassurance

Pick something that’s in the news and people are concerned about (and, no it doesn’t have to be B****t!) and explain what your company will do to ensure clients don’t suffer more than absolutely necessary.  Clearly the topic has to be relevant to your business and client-base, so this won’t work for every issue.  You can also explain new legislation and what it means in simple terms.

What’s new?

I’m not a fan of using newsletters as a platform to rave about what your company’s latest strategy is, but if you can present your news as real benefits to your clients (and, by implication, potential clients) then go for it.

*****

Style it out!

If your newsletter is in the right tone of voice people will come back to it again and again.  Ideally, the reader should feel as though you’re talking directly to them - personally.

The best email marketers (and newsletters are really email marketing) chat as though they’re talking to you.  You could write:

We’re proud to announce that we’ve just installed new gizmos to process widgets, which will raise our output from 3000 per week to 5000 per week.

Or instead, try something less formal:

The team have been trying to come up with a way to get our clients a much faster service.  It’s taken lots of brainstorming sessions and gallons of coffee (and a few doughnuts) and now everyone is excited as we’ve taken the plunge and got a whole shiny new production line!

This means we can cut days off fulfilment times - in other words you get your orders quicker - and that can’t be bad!

Which one would you prefer to read?

All joined up

Social media can take over your life.  If you have a teenager in the house you’ll have noticed their nose is permanently glued to their phone to keep up with what’s going on.  Try and get them to tidy their room, clear the table or any other chore and they almost have to be surgically removed from their mobile!

As a business owner it can be just as bad.  You know that it’s a valuable way to engage with customers and potential clients, but does that mean you have to be on it all day?

No - you just need a bit of organisation.

There are two aspects to social media - broadcast and engagement.  They’re both important too.

Broadcast

This covers the messages you want to get out to people.  It can include:

• Blogs
• Articles
• Newsletters and email campaigns
• Updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram
• Video material for social media sites and YouTube, Vimeo, etc.

You can schedule some of this and can pick up any comments or responses at any time.  Although I recommend checking all your social media platforms (and email) at least once a day.

Engagement

This is about building a community and getting to know your audience and what they want.  This does need to be done at the time - but if you train your audience, you can choose when.

This might include a scheduled Q&A session on Twitter, a Facebook live session at a scheduled time, a webinar using Zoom or GoToMeeting or one of the other online platforms.  If people get to know that you’ll be available at specific times they’ll turn up - and the easiest way to do that is to tell them!

• A sticky post on your Facebook Page saying you’ll be live on Thursdays at 5pm or Monday between 12-2pm.
• A note on your LinkedIn summary telling people where they can find you live.
• A handful of posts on Twitter counting down to you going live for Q&A (and a hashtag to make finding you easy).

It takes a bit of planning, but it is worthwhile.

Joining up the dots

When you post a blog, share the link on your social media platforms.  Use the item as the lead in your next newsletter or split it into three and create an email campaign that runs for three days - with your call to action on the end.

Make sure the subject is something that your target audience are interested in - and offer to go live on Facebook to answer any questions on a specific date/time.  Include that in the blog as a footnote too.

You might want to run a short Facebook ad campaign to promote this.

The more planning you do about what you blog about, post about, talk about, email about - the easier it will all get!