Ideas to continue support and business during this time

Ideas to continue support and business during this time

We may not be in the same place as this figurative storm hits us, but we are all feeling some effect of it. There’s a lot of wonderful information out there, and today I want to share how we can support small businesses and IF you’re a small business what you can do to keep pushing through this storm to come out a little more refreshed, focused, and hopefully set up to move forward successfully.

How to support small businesses from home

1- Set up appointments (if possible!) to make sure they know they’ll have work after things settle down. Get those services in the books!

2- Go leave a review. There are endless places where you can review your favorite businesses. Google, facebook, send them an email and ask where they want to be reviewed or send them directly so they can use them too! This helps their SEO (search engine optimization) and helps rankings for their videos, products and service, and podcast rankings.

3- Share their content. If you love a small businesses and owner- you cannot share enough! we’re all on our phones and computers and are constantly sharing anyway. Be sure to share those podcasts, videos, products and services and participate in their call outs to clients. It may not seem like a big deal but YOUR shares matter and could mean staying open for business because of a referral.

4- Comment and like. The more YOU do this as a consumer the more they’ll show up in your friends feeds, pages, and searches too. social media is an amazing tool and helping those SMALL businesses you love means the world to them!

5- **Purchase a gift card for future services or products they’re offering that you’ve been meaning to get. This is also a perfect time to purchase their artwork to fill up the walls you’re looking at every day!

How to market and keep working on your small business

1- Keep creating content and continue to share. Depending on what content or products you’re offering you may notice a decrease in sales and view/downloads/listens. If you are, this is normal. The best thing you can do is to take this time to just create more content so you’ll be ahead when life settles down. Listens and downloads WILL increase again when people are finding their new normal.

2- Now is a time to introduce something new or fun to participate in, people need some extra joy during this strange time. It doesn’t have to be HUGE just a small offer (it can even be a free PDF guide to whatever skill or knowledge you have) It can also be something like opening up old galleries (if you’re a photographer) to offer new product orders or something to participate in so NEW people will see your content online- since people are online more now, new people can be reached.

3- focus on newsletter numbers. We’re all on social media, but let’s face it, we don’t own those followers, but you do own your newsletter. It’s one of the most underrated tool to use to gain new business and keep clients. Think of something even small to get those numbers up to help the focus shift to your business email.

4- Reach out to other small businesses in your area and start forming some connections. You can set up virtual coffee dates, meetings, and also find ways to help one another and collaborate in the future.

5- READ. Did you really think I’d get through a blog post about improvement without this one? Nope. Brush up on skills, personal growth, get new ideas or ways to implement for your business, what’s trending and will be trending and get those creative juices flowing. this could be a great time to get a new product or vision to add OR improve on the one you have.

6- Take this time to update. Update your portfolio and website and don’t forget about google and yelp. Do some re-vamping to make sure you’re being found online and SEO research to improve all the hard work you’ve been doing. It’s part of the tasks we put off when we’re “busy” so take the time to make sure you love the details including a sign off on your email, newsletters, and social media bio. And think about adding some ads to your website or another stream of money while they click on your site. (adsense, amazon associates etc) Oh. and maybe think about updating that profile photo when you can. 5 years ago doesn’t count, book a photographer. ;)

7- Reach out to past clients Ask for reviews, posts, and shares. If you have clients that love you too, they’d be happy to!

I hope you found this helpful and give you a few ideas of how we can all support one another and use this time to our advantage to work on a few things for business too!

Keep Shining