12 Things All Businesses
Should be Doing in 2015
As it turns out, the best way to run a successful business is not to focus on what you want, but on what your clients want. Your employee’s needs should even come before your own at times. Keeping those two sets of people happy is the key to making sure your business lives a long and fruitful life. Do these 12 things and you’ll notice a positive improvement very soon:
1) Engaging on Social Media
Social media is one of the biggest and best marketing techniques out there at the moment. This gives you a chance to engage with your audience, find out more about them, get feedback, and more. There are so many benefits from creating social profiles, that it deserves a post all of its own. And there will be posts like that all over the place. But here, we’ll summarize. Here’s how you can use social media to your advantage:
- Pick your platforms carefully. Assess where you’re most likely to find your target audience.
- Only have as many platforms as you can manage.
- Consider hiring a social media
- Post relevant information in a consistent brand voice.
- Do not sell too hard. You’re supposed to be engaging, and selling is only going to put people off.
- Fill out your social profiles properly.
- Post consistently at peak times for each individual platform.
2) Creating Infographics
Infographics are pretty little pieces of artwork put together by a designer. The idea is that they contain little stats and tidbits of information, meant to be easily digestible in a good looking format. Readers will often take in information better this way, and it looks nice on your site. It’s very shareable, so it’s perfect for showing off on social media. You could even ask blogs to share it.
3) Hosting Competitions
Hosting a good competition is a fabulous way to get more exposure, shares, and traffic. You could host a competition for a holiday, or for no reason at all. Whatever the reason, make sure you spread the world and get as many people involved as possible. Come up with a unique way to enter; for example, you could ask for entries to be hand-drawn pictures of a pet. The best picture wins a bag of dog food. I’d hope your competition would be more exciting than that though; that’s just an example.
4) Blogging
Blogging is a tool that many businesses are finding useful. Not only will having a blog increase your SEO rankings, you’ll have a stronger web presence and get more traffic. You might get people coming to you and only you for advice, or for funny stories. If you have a knack for writing, blogging is a must. If you don’t have much of a knack, you could use grammar checkers to help you. Here’s the key to blogging if you’re going to do it properly:
- Post regularly.
- Only ever post about things you care about.
- Use a consistent and engaging tone.
- Get a little personal and tell your audience things about you.
- Give tips and expert advice.
5) Vlogging
Video blogging, or vlogging, is the next big thing. It’s one of the biggest 2015 business trends. Rather than writing your experiences and giving tips that way, you make a video of them instead. You can then upload to a video sharing site like Youtube or Keek. Make your videos short, informative, and shareable.
6) Mobile Marketing
More and more people are using mobile devices each day to search the web for things they want. If you’re not paying attention to your mobile marketing, you are missing out on a load of traffic and conversions. Think of it like this; you’re browsing on your iPad for something you need. You find a site and click on it, only to realize it isn’t responsive. You can’t read the text, it’s difficult to scroll, and you can’t be bothered. You click off that site and make a mental note not to use it again. This happens every day. Be smart and have a responsive site or app aimed at people who use mobile devices to search. These stats should convince you that it’s the right thing to do.
7) Team Building
Team building ensures that your staff are all working together well. Remember earlier when we talked about how important your staff are? This is one way to make sure they’re all on the same page. Team building helps them to build relationships and understand one another better. It’s also a lot of fun, which can help to keep their morale high.
8) Performance Reviews
Performance reviews help to let your staff know where they’re at. How are they doing? What do you expect from them? What can they improve on? What are they great at? This is key to helping them understand how they can do better and what they can continue to do well. Show them you care and appreciate them by setting up a rewards system for hard workers.
9) Website Updates
If you have a website, that isn’t enough alone. You need to update it to keep it fresh and exciting. More people will come back to it if you update it as often as you can. If you don’t, people might assume you don’t want to bother.
10) Email Marketing
Some say email marketing is dead, but if you do it right you can still get a ton of click throughs and conversions. Keep yourself in the forefront of your customer’s minds with a strong email marketing strategy
11) SEO
SEO isn’t going anywhere anytime soon either. Your site needs optimization onsite and offsite to make sure it comes up for relevant search terms in the search engines. Otherwise, how will people know you’re there waiting to work with them?
12) PPC (Pay per click)
PPC can work in harmony with SEO, despite what some uneducated people say. Use them together to get the best results.
