Starting your business can be a daunting process and you find yourself in unchartered waters. What do you need do to become a registered business? How will you invoice your clients? And then how do you find those clients to begin with?
I’m coming up for my 3 year Business Anniversary this November and it has been a wonderful journey but I didn’t start getting leads until about a month of advertising and trying to get my name out there. Let me tell you it won’t happen right away it may take several months but it will happen.
My first client I signed up a month after launching my business and he found my advertisement through Gumtree. Never under estimate the power of free advertising on sites like Gumtree, True Local, Hot Frog, Locanto and other free sites. Doing a Google search and typing ‘free advertising sites’ in is a great place to start. Also when you place your advertisement on these sites I found that you increase your chances of being found in a Google search too providing you use the right keywords.
Now it took a further 4 months to get my second client. In the space of that 4 months I thought I was doing everything possible however it wasn’t until I launched my website that I got my second client. It wasn’t by simply launching my website that I got this lead it was the name of my business and the keywords used for my SEO that enabled me to be one of the listings on the first page when he did a Google search. Two and a half years later and I am still working with this client.
Your website doesn’t need to cost you an arm and a leg or even be professionally built (however if you can afford it great go for it!), but just having an online presence by way of a website will help you build trust with your customers. They can see who you are and what you do. When you think about it anyone can open a Facebook page and say they are running a business but by adding a website to the mix you are showing them you are the real deal.
Fast Forward to the present and I have found that networking is the best tool for growing your business. Join your local chamber of commerce, mine is the Wanneroo Business Association attend networking events and coffee catch ups get to know the local businesses in your area. They may not have a need for your services now but that doesn’t mean they won’t in the future and by getting to know them you are always at the forefront of their mind. Another networking platform to look at is Meetup.com on here you can find heaps of local networking events that you can attend.
If you don’t know the power of social media then you need to get started. With so many people using smart phones, tablets and computers you need to be on social media. You don’t need to sign up for every platform just the ones you know will work for you. Personally I would recommend Facebook and LinkedIn for any small business as they are both great online networking platforms.
Within Facebook you have the power to promote and educate your followers by posting content to your Business Facebook page. Try to follow the 80/20 rule which is 80% valuable content that your followers would want to see against 20% self promotion.
Join some of the Business community groups and promote your business to the local market however like your facebook page choose the optimal times to post. That being when people wake up early morning, lunch time, dinner time and when people are usually sitting on the couch relaxing. For an indication check your Facebook Page insights and see when your followers are most online.
Both networking groups on Facebook and LinkedIn are valuable as you can share you blog posts, tips and tricks and allow people to get to know you online. If they can see that you are adding value to the groups and get to know you and your work ethic you are half way there.
I’m hoping by sharing my experience that other start ups can get some valuable information from here to help them promote, educate and grow their customers.
With so many changes happening in Facebook land and new features popping up everywhere it can be hard to keep track. This is a recent guest blog post I wrote listing 5 facebook hacks that you can use for your business.
If you would like to be kept in the loop and be notified of my latest blog posts make sure to like my Facebook page and you can also follow me on Twitter, Google+ & LinkedIn.
Having flowing relevant content to post to your social media can be hard to find and take up valuable time that you could be spending doing something else. That’s why Feedly & Pocket are my favourite content curation tools when managing my clients and my own social media.
Feedly & Pocket Are A Content Curators Godsend.
Once you have both programs set up to your liking you can expect to spend at least 2 hours a week curating content, depending on how many posts you want to send out.
Both of these programs are free to use and although you can pay to upgrade the free versions give you more than enough to work with. As with most programs these days they come with an App so you can access them on your phone or tablet making finding, saving and sharing articles easier.
With Feedly the free version allows you to have
Up to 100 feeds
Organize feeds into easy-to-read collections (up to 3 collections)
Save the best stories into boards (up to 3 boards)
Is available on Mobile and desktop
Share to Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook
This is a screenshot of what Feedly’s dashboard looks like.
Down the Left hand side you can see the different feeds that I want to monitor and you can organize them into folders. To view the most recent content you have the option to view the content ‘today’ and can also save them to read later, however you can’t add any tags. You can also notice that on my toolbar I have the Pocket extension downloaded in Chrome, this in a fantastic little icon especially when you are surfing the web and want to tag/save something just click on this and it will be saved to Pocket.
Pocket also gives you recommended articles based on what you have previously saved. Although both these programs are similar Pocket is as the name suggests more for storing your content as it allows you to add multiple tags and lists, which is especially great if you are managing more than one business.
This is a screenshot of Pocket, there are a couple of different views for your list but this is my preferred view.
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts Social Media Marketing has grown over the last few years and in order to join other businesses in this day and age you need to make your presence known online, and it’s about having that steady flow of content to keep your followers engaged. Hopefully by sharing these little gems with you, you can be on your way to managing your Social Media more effectively and getting noticed more online.
If you would like some assistance setting up your social media accounts and also these fantastic programs you can reach me at tammy@tlbadminsupport.com.au.
Facebook lists are a great way to connect with your contacts on a more personal level. The way I see it your Facebook business page is a great way of sharing useful content and updates on your business and then you have your personal Facebook page.
By posting informative useful content regularly to your account your connections are regularly thinking about you.
Your Business Facebook page is a great way to highlight your business news, sharing useful content like blogs and handy tips and tricks. It’s also a fantastic way to add a bit of personality and show your followers what you’re about. This could be in the form of motivational quotes, funny memes, videos and the list goes on.
For those that want to build and strengthen their relationships with acquaintances whether they have met the person at a networking event or they are a client. Another way to do this is by adding them as friends on your personal Facebook page. You’re probably thinking I don’t want them to see all my family and baby photo’s, well there’s a way around that.
Here’s how
Find the person you want to add and send a friend request
Once that request is sent and accepted go to your personal page and find that contact in your friends list.
Once you’ve found them then hover over the grey box that says ‘friends’ beside their profile picture.
A dropdown list will appear where you can choose a list to add them to.
Tip: have a list named acquaintances & restricted Acquaintance List – People who you might want to share less with Restricted List – Friends who can only see posts and profile info you make public
This way when you want to post using your personal profile page you can choose who to share with whether it’s just your acquaintances, your friends or to the public.
When you want to view the news feed for your acquaintances or any other list then you can do this by going to your main timeline page where you can see your news feed.
Go to ‘Explore’ on the left hand side and then click on ‘Friends List’, this will display all your lists and from here you can click on the list to view that particular news feed.
I hope this has given you a few tips and an a better way to manage your contacts/friends on Facebook.
