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!