Time is short, you are busy working in your business and what is the point in writing a blog? Let me explain why it is worth making the effort.

A question I am regularly asked is how long should my blog post be?

To be picked up by the search engines such as Google your blog needs to be around 300 words but if you have a lot of content to share then a 2500 word blog will rank higher by the search engines.

For maximum reach you should aim to put out a blog at least once a week but if that is just too much then the key is to be consistent – put out regular blogs – even if it is only once a month but release it on the internet on the same day at the same time each month – so that your readers will come to expect it.  You may choose to put out your blog on the first Monday of the month at 11am or the last Friday at 3pm but BE CONSISTENT.

So you’ve created your blog, added it to your website, but what do you do now to make the most of your efforts?

Take a paragraph from your blog and share it with your email list with a link to your full blog article, thereby taking your readers to your website. Once on your website your visitors may choose to find out more about the services you offer.

Create 10-20 tweets from content within your blog (to include a link to your blog) which you can share throughout the following month.

Re-create your blog as a LinkedIn article and ask your connections a question at the end to start a conversation.

Create smaller posts for Facebook from content within your blog and again link back to the blog on your website.

Record a short video introducing the key points from your blog and again take listeners to your website to read more.

If you have created a YouTube account, then upload your short video to YouTube to engage with your YouTube followers.

Upload the short video you have created on your Iphone to your Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn groups.

Create some great graphics related to the blog to share on your Instagram Account. Add the graphics to Instagram with key #hashtags so that people can find your content.

Finally, if you are really feeling creative, turn your blog into an eBook, promote it on your social media channels and grow your email list in exchange for the full content.

​There you go – so you have spent time creating your blog. There is so much you can do with it to promote your business. Good luck – and happy blogging.

Do you know who your target audience is? If not, then you could be spending a lot of time targeting the wrong people. So how do you know who your ideal customer is and how do you then attract that customer?

The goal is to paint a picture of who your ideal customer is. You’ll likely have other types of customers, but focus on the ones that you enjoy working with, and who you want more of:

• Who is my ideal customer in terms of age, gender, education, location?
• What other sorts of products do they buy that relate to mine?
• If you’re B2B, what role does your customer have in their company?
• Where do they get their information about brands? Online? Print? Television? Friends?
• How did they find your company?
• What’s important to them?
• What do they think of the value of your product or service?  You don’t know – just ask. People love to help.

Then review your brand message. What you say about your products or services will either compel or repel your "perfect customers". What is unique about you? What makes you different from your competitors? That is why I encourage my clients to clarify their message before we start on their website design. social media marketing or e-newsletters.

​Once you've gone through the exercise of identifying your perfect customer, you need to find them. To do so, you should explore where the conversations are taking place. Where are your potential customers discussing their issues and problems? Where are they looking for solutions?

Where you might find your perfect customers

Search engines like Google use keywords to attract customers and to search for customer problems which you may have the answer to. For example, if you are a florist, you need to search for phrases such as “How do I keep my wedding bouquet fresh?" Then, comment on discussions that are happening within those search results.

Set up internet alerts. You can use web alerts to get notified when new content appears relating to your key words

Industry magazines, blogs, or forums. Find out which are the most popular & active communities in your industry and find ways to add value into those relevant conversations. (Find these through internet searches, trade shows or social media referrals) Customers trying to find an answer to their problems will be found in these places.

Facebook. Search Facebook to find relevant business pages. For example, if you are a florist, search for pages that discuss holidays, weddings and other similar life events.

Twitter hashtag conversations. Search for popular hashtags to identify relevant conversations. Using the florist again you might use #Sayitwithflowers. Once you find the conversations, you can offer expert advice to meet new prospects.

LinkedIn groups. Search for industry-related groups that your company can join and become part of those conversations. For example, as a commercial florist, you can join a hotel décor, interior design, or venue discussion group. Again, offer advice, tips and expert insights, but don't overtly sell your product or service.

Instagram for the florist!  Set up your account and start to post images of you buying and creating your bouquets. You might also create short videos explaining the types of flowers you are using and why - adding to your expertise. 

Just starting out
Offer free advice – do some free work until the paid work starts to come in.
Keep your day job – don’t give up until you have at least 6 months living expenses in the bank.
Keep your costs low – don’t buy what you don’t need. Think like a business owner not a consumer.

Positioning
Position your business right. Too many businesses offer the same service. To succeed you need to offer a visibly different service:  You can be more upmarket, more accessible, be more of an expert, work mainly in certain niches or offer a different pricing structure.

Do a survey

• Send a survey to potential clients. Ask them about their interests, needs or problems. Understand their needs. This will help you formulate your product or service and help you pitch it right.

Promotional Material

• Business cards – always have them available to hand out.
• Printed leaflets – leave them in key places where your target audience visit. I only suggest spending money on printed materials if your target customers are more likely to respond to printed material as opposed to online marketing. 
• Postcards – add a colourful image on one side and message on the reverse. People don’t tend to bin postcards.

Networking

• Contact friends, colleagues and acquaintances  - tell them what you do. Ask for referrals and provide incentives. (Offer a gift or voucher to anyone who provides referrals).
• Join networking groups in your area and speak if you are given the opportunity.
• Find out where your target market goes and go there too.
• Ask your suppliers for advice. Ask them how you might improve. Ask them what your competitors do.

On-line Marketing

• Develop a website
• Sign up to social media platforms such as Facebook / Twitter / Instagram / Linked In but don't overstretch yourself. Find out which social media platforms your customers are on.
• Promote your website and services through online “relevant” directories
• Produce a FREE monthly e-newsletter and encourage people to sign up to it via your website and social media channels.

 
Events

• Give a free talk on an interesting topic relevant to the service you provide. Ensure that everyone who attends go away with details of your service.
• Offer your services as a speaker to local organisations

Advertising

• Advertise locally – parish or community magazines are cheaper than local newspapers and glossy magazine (but only if that is where your target audience is).
• Place your postcards in shop windows.
• Yellow pages online – place your free ad.
• Sign up to online directories – often free.

PR

• Get a launch story in your local paper and get a newsworthy angle.
• After the launch continue to issue good news stories in the form of blogs on your website which you can share on your social media accounts.
• Offer to write a regular feature for a magazine or website where your target customers frequent.
• Offer a competition to readers
• Offer your services as an expert to your local radio station

Exhibitions

• Take a trade stand and tell visitors about your product or service
• Visit an exhibition and leave business cards with people you may be able to do business with but don't annoy the exhibitors by overstaying your welcome - they are there to do business, not listen to you promoting your business!

Special Offers

• Offer a half price of free initial consultation for first time clients or offer a free gift.
• Make it easy for people to buy. Offer a free trial period.
• Add time limited offers. Say, offer only available until (date)
• Offer a FREE report – which will show you are an expert in your field
• Make it easy for people to buy.

I hope that is enough to get you started and if you need help with any of the above then please get in touch.

​Do you often say there are not enough hours in the day? Do you often wonder where the time has gone? Do you regularly think that you have achieved very little in your working day?  By making a few small changes you can greatly change the way you work and how much you can achieve in a day.

​There are lots of things that you can do to help improve your productivity but these 10 top tips are a good starting point:
​

1. Focus on the number of minutes in the day. There are 1,440 minutes in a day, so use them productively.
2. Set daily priorities – identify your most important tasks and focus on them completely for 2 hours at the start of the day.
3. Don’t use “To do lists” - schedule everything in your online calendar.
4. Make time for dinner with the family – schedule it in your diary/online calendar!
5. Use a notebook – clear your mind of detail – and then add the “to do’s” to your online calendar
6. Only check your email/social media accounts three times a day – schedule times throughout the day to read and respond to email.
7. Avoid meetings at all cost – only hold meetings if they are really needed and keep them short. 
8. Say “no” to almost everything – say no if it is outside your core area of work.
9. Follow the 80/20 rule – 80% of outcomes come from 20% of activities – so identify the 20% and ignore the rest.
10. Delegate or outsource almost everything – identify your key strengths, utilise them and outsource the rest to someone like Sunflower VA!

If you need help in your business to allow you to be more productive with your business Marketing then please get in touch with Sunflower VA.

​If you are in the design and development stage of your new website, there are a few key things to consider:

1. Ensure that the website you build is desktop and mobile friendly as more than 70% of website visitors now come directly from mobile!
2. Before you start creating your website, it is a good idea to create a diagram that shows the structure of your website - including the proposed content, navigation and layout of your webpages.
3. ​Decide on your colour theme, fonts, graphics and page layouts and ensure they are simple, and consistent throughout your website. 
4. You need to ensure your site to easy for visitors to navigate around and as user-friendly as possible.  Don't make users navigate through too many layers of your website to find the information they want.
5. Ensure that your pages load as fast as possible – visitors don’t wait for slow loading pages. Simple steps can be taken to ensure your pages load faster, including ensuring that your images are optimised for web and ensuring that all your links work.  Images taken on your mobile phone must be optimised for the web before adding them to your website.
6. Writing for the web is very different from writing for print.  People only skim read on the internet and spend less than 15 seconds on your website, so make sure you give them everything they are looking for in as few words as possible.
7. When adding links to your website ensure they work. Broken links show visitors and search engines such as Google that a site is not maintained and your search engine rankings will begin to fall.
8. Avoid using “click here” links, instead make the link clear by saying something like - Find out more about our user-friendly websites. The visitor then knows what they will find when clicking on the link.
9. The Equality Act 2010 makes it illegal for a website provider to discriminate against a disabled person by refusing to provide a service that is generally available. There are some simple adjustments you can make to your website to make it easier for disabled people to use including attaching a text description (alt tags) to every image and link on the site. This means that blind users, who rely on a browser that reads out the contents of the webpage, can hear a description of what an image is and where a link will take them.
10. Your website is your "online marketing brochure" so make sure you add your contact details. Some people prefer to pick up the phone, others prefer to email and some like to fill in a form – so offer a number of ways for visitors to get in touch with you.
11. Finally, ensure that you get someone to check the spelling on your website before you set it live. Even the best people can add “adn” instead of “and”.  People do judge websites and businesses by the quality of their spelling.

​If you would like help in building your website or online marketing brochure then please get in touch with Sunflower Creative