Category: SEO

One of the best ways to give your business a boost at the start of its life is to host a public event. Showing your face (and your product or service) in public is a fantastic way to get some early exposure. Be it attending a trade show, visiting an exhibition or making an appearance at a local mall, make sure you’re using public events to your advantage. To give you some starting ideas here’s some handy advice.

Don’t make the mistake of showing up with nothing

Sure, you might be a startup with limited funds and a cracking idea, but there’s no point showing up to an event just to let people know you exist. It feels like a cry for recognition and more often than not it’ll backfire on you. Make sure you turn up to an event with your product in hand, samples to give out and business cards to distribute. If you turn up with just a great idea and nothing to show for it, then you’ll just be laughed at and made fun of.

Ensure your staff are well-equipped

You need to take some staff with you to help you promote your ideas and product, but you can’t make the mistake of attending without being prepared. Make sure you print out name badges for your staff so they’re easily recognisable and so your visitors can talk to them more comfortably. Ensure they have business cards to hand out and ample knowledge about your product so that they can converse with people and lure them into your business. They should also practice their communication skills if they haven’t already. Public events are fantastic networking opportunities, and it makes sense to speak to as many people as possible.

Prepare contact information

One of the common marketing mistakes people make at events is using placeholder contact information. Make sure your website design is finalised and that it as all of the relevant information about your business on its pages. Don’t neglect the importance of giving a proper contact number or email to the customers.

Produce sample products

Though it might cost a bit of money to produce samples, you need to prepare them so that you have something to hand out to the event attendees. Try to gauge interest on social media before you attend the event so you have a rough estimate of how many you need to produce. If you’re setting up your own public event at a location such as a mall or a busy street, then pick a date that matches a holiday to get the most attention. No one wants to produce samples that won’t be handed out, so it’s always better to have less and efficiently use your budget than produce too many and run out of cash.

Don’t forget to network

As the business owner, you should be the one initiating conversations with people, not waiting for them to come to you. Speak to as many people as possible and try to scout out the competition and other businesses that you could strike deals with. Get to know your surroundings and the industry and you’ll find it becomes far easier to run a business.

Isn’t the Internet great?

It’s helped many different businesses reach a lot more people who they never would have a couple of decades ago. As a result, they are able to make more leads and turn those leads into lucrative sales. It’s fair to say that the Internet has helped many companies flourish!

But is your company using the Internet to its full potential? Most businesses are already on social media and have their own website. But if these look bland and boring, there is no way they are going to help you attract any new customers. That’s why you need to vary the types of media that you use on them! Not sure which media will work best for your company? Here are some different types and how you can utilise them.

Video
It is now easier than ever to share videos. You can quickly post them to Facebook and Twitter, and you can also add them to your website layout. However, for your videos to make a big impact, you need to ensure that they are of a high quality. Lots of companies find that it really pays off to hire film companies to create some inspiring footage for them. Alternatively, if you have a very tight budget, you should be able to find some reasonably priced camera equipment if you fancy having a go at making a video yourself.

To brighten up your company website and social media accounts, you should use as many eye-catching photographs as possible. These days, you will find lots of websites that offer free stock images that you can use. However, it’s always best to use photos that you have taken yourself. That way, you can be sure that you hold full copyright and can use them however you want. Remember to add a photo to ever Facebook status or tweet that you publish, as it can help to draw people’s attention to it. A social media update that is just text can be boring and very forgettable.

The Graphic Interchange Format is more commonly referred to as a GIF. This is a moving picture and is most commonly used on social media. More often than not, they show a scene from a TV show or a movie that lasts only a few seconds. Some GIFs feature text, others do not. These are fun additions to your social media posts and can be very effective in place of a standard image. If you don’t have a photograph or video that is suitable for a specific post, I’m sure you will be able to find a GIF that can do the job. As GIFs are moving images, you will find that they attract a lot of attention to a post as they can attract a lot of attention. Not only that, though, but they make a post very shareable.

As you can see, you have lots of media to choose from. Whichever you go with will depend on the specific social media post or website page that you are adding it to!

Modern businesses can hardly call themselves modern businesses if they don’t have the right software. A lot of business owners swear by Microsoft Office suites, which works out well for many of them. But there are at least a couple of problems if you’re only going to use Microsoft Office. The first is that Microsoft Office suites are expensive – you can get most of the same functionalities from the likes of OpenOffice and Google Drive for free. The second is that you might find yourself surprisingly limited if you’re not willing to look into other software solutions!

We’re going to take a look at some of the best software solutions for many different aspects of office-based businesses.

Accounting

Don’t just assume that an accountant is going to do just fine with pencils, a calculator, and maybe a copy of Microsoft Excel! This isn’t really the most efficient way to go about the job. If you’re interested in improving efficiency for accountants, then you might want to take a look at the software that Intuit offers. QuickBooks is one of the most popular software solutions in this area of business, though some feel that there are better and cheaper solutions. Still, a free trial of QuickBooks is certainly worth investigating if you want to make your accountant’s job a little easier!

Human resources

You have an HR department, right? Sure, not every business needs one, but as soon as you start to go from a very small business to a small-to-medium-sized business, you might want to rethink your approach. Ellis Whittam provide assistance for those looking to set up such departments. On the software side, BrightHR is one of the more popular names in the field right now. The right software makes it so much easier for employees and HR workers to keep track of communications and requests. Employees can access the software in order to book days off or check how much annual leave they have remaining.

Project management

Without the right management, projects can turn into a confusing mess very quickly. Even projects that seem fairly simple at first can turn into a chaotic jumble of crossed wires and missed deadlines. Making sure everyone is on the same page, with project and task visibility at a high priority, is what you should be aiming for here. There are some free web-based solutions that you should consider; Trello is a user-friendly project management platform that is popular with both businesses and individuals.

Analytics

Without analytics, you’re not going to have a great idea of just how potent your web presence is. And, as I’m sure you’ve heard from other sources, a good web presence is essential for businesses that wish to grow their consumer base. Google Analytics is the first name that most people will suggest and, to be honest, there’s little reason for us to suggest that you should look to another solution! Love it or hate it, Google can be instrumental to the success on your website and social media platforms, so using their solutions is usually the most reliable way of improving and tracking your presence.