Shoestring Social Media Marketing Tips

Although there are a lot of benefits to being a small business, having the time and money to come up with an epic social media marketing strategy isn’t one. But, don’t let that get you down because you can create an actional online marketing plan even on a shoestring. Here are some things to help you with that:

Be the Follower

As a small business, it’s followers you’re looking to find, but it might be a better idea, for now, to start following people. Why? Because if you start following your target audience on platforms like Twitter and Instagram, then at least some of them will start following you back. If you can then provide them with interesting content – something to make them stick around – your following will begin to grow.

Use Mannequins Not Models

If you want to market on social media, and it’s clothing that you have to sell, it can be rather expensive for you to hire models to show off your goods, which is why you might want to consider using props from the mannequin shop instead. Obviously, if you have any photogenic friends who’d be willing to throw you a bone that’s great, but when you’re starting out, mannequins are fine. When you have more money, you can start hiring the occasional model to make things a bit more dynamic.

Document Your Progress

Documenting your progress is a great way to gain followers. What I mean by this is that you should try to blog or post about the day to day goings on and ups and downs of life as a small business. This will get you more respect, and be more interesting to more people than a few promotional posts fired off willy-nilly. It’ll also help to build more respect for your brand.

Be Quick to Engage

As you start to gain followers, you will start to get comments too. It’s important if you want to make your business look good, that you reply to these comments quickly and engage with your audience on their level as much as you can. Thank people for mentioning you, answer their questions about your products and even just shoot the breeze. Do this, and you’ll look better than all of those businesses who automate their responses, or even worse, ignore their audience completely.

Get in Touch with Niche Influencers

One of the most effective ways to market your small business on a shoestring is by getting to know influencers in your niche. These are people who already have a huge audience and who talk about the same kind of things you’re selling. If you can get them to mention you in a positive light, chances are your follower numbers will soar and you’ll start selling a lot more.

Run a Contest

Running a contest or giveaway is a great way to get more people in your target audience to follow you, share your links and generally engage with you, and you don’t even have to offer anything particularly expensive for it to work. A bundle of your products or even a modest Amazon gift card will suffice.

Here’s to more social media success!

Simple Start-Up Solutions To Looking More Professional

Most online start-ups start from the comfort of a bedroom or a garage, so it makes sense that you’re on your own when you start. There’s no IT department, marketing team, swish office space to start in. As a brand-new entrepreneur, you are likely in the ‘bootstrapped’ way, where everything is on a shoestring budget, but your ideas are bigger than your wallet. This should never get in your way, though, because some of the best businesses start out being cash-strapped and idea rich.

Once you finally get yourself some traction in your industry, you need to look at how you can start cleaning things up and looking more like a professional company than looking like a person having a hobby in the spare room. Standing out in a crowded market isn’t the easiest, but even the smallest fish have to start somewhere. Making your business more professional is what is going to get you growing into the big fish you want to be one day. So, how can you make changes to get taken as seriously as you need to be?

Contact Details. Not many companies have letter-headed paper anymore, but your company emails should be blasting with your brand, your logo and your office contact details. Having a separate phone number is one way to ensure that your personal and professional lives stay separate, and if you don’t want to put your home address on your business cards, you need to look into virtual offices like Grosvenor St Pauls. People need to have some faith in your company and a home telephone number may be intercepted by someone else in the family. Make sure this doesn’t happen!

Domain Name. Your company brand is one of the most important parts of your identity as a professional business. Buying your domain name is going to get you the recognition that you need for your company going from hanging on another company, to being independent. A free domain name keeps you attached to an impersonal platform, so purchasing your own is going to mean independence!

Email. Business email addresses are far more trusted for customers than the standard Hotmail or Gmail account names. Be creative with your email addresses but don’t make them too worthy. You want to be consistent with your branding and stay professional, and an email that mentions your company name is exactly how you can get there.

About You. On your business website, your ‘about us’ page shouldn’t just be two lines. You should talk about how you started and who you are as a business, as well as what you hope to achieve. Your page is your stage to announce to people what you can do and how you plan to do it. It’s also a good place to embed links to other parts of your website.

Professionalism means different things to different people, but these steps above can give your company some credibility and make your customers put their faith in you!

Finding Fuel For Your Growth

In the life of a small business, there are loads of little milestones which are cause for celebration. Hiring an employee, getting your first building, and even making your first bit of income will all feel great. Of course, though, at a point, the milestones will become impossible to reach without some outside help. To give you an idea of what you’ll need to do, this post will be exploring some of the ways you can fuel your business’s growth.

The Business: To begin on this journey, you first have to consider the business itself, along with a couple of key factors. When you’re ready to grow but don’t have enough money to do it, it can be hard to know which areas you’ll need to improve.

• Enough Work: In a lot of cases, companies will find themselves struggling to handle the workload they are getting long before they can afford to improve it. When you’re struggling with something like this, you have to make sure that you’re getting enough to sustain another business, while also being able to afford the new space. There’s not much point in growing if you’ll collapse as the result.

• A Good Standing: Along with making sure you have enough work coming your way, it is also a very good idea to make sure that your company is regarded well by those who you’ll be asking to fund it. Having existing debt, a poor reputation and even a dirty workplace could all impact these decisions. So, you have to make sure that you’re working hard to improve them.

The Funding: Once you’re certain your business is ready to grow, you can start to look for places to find your fuel. Below, you can find some great examples of your options, though there are loads of other chances to get yourself funded in the world of business.

• Loans: Borrowing money will probably be most people’s first idea when they’re looking for funding like this. Business loans come in loads of different forms, with options to help with things like construction and product development, along with loads of other areas. This gives you loads of choice when you’re looking for finance.

• Investors: Of course, for some people, the idea of getting someone else on board with the business could be a better option. There are loads of websites out there which are dedicated to helping small businesses to find investment. To do this, you’ll need to have a company which is already making a good amount of money.

• Personal Financing: Finally, as your last funding option, you could consider using your own money to push your business onto its next stage. This is arguably the best choice you can make, as it will leave you in complete control of your company. Of course, though, this might not be your priority.

Hopefully, this post will inspire you to start working harder to find ways to fuel your business’s growth. A lot of people struggle once they reach this stage in their corporate journey. But, with the right time, effort, and knowledge, you could make it a lot easier.