We are in the era of entrepreneurs. After the credit crunch in 2009 we all understood that jobs for life don’t exist and that if that’s what you are after you will have to create it. Yes, it requires a lot of work but the satisfaction is priceless.
With such a list of things to do you will need to take some shortcuts. Here are three tools that, used in the right way, will help you getting leads and potential customers. And these are… (drumroll…) a blog, a newsletter and social networks!
1. Blog
It takes time, but with practice you’ll get faster and better. What the blog is going to help with is giving value to your business while you build your brand. Fresh content keeps readers coming back to your site. Of course, you need to make sure your posts are relevant to your target market and that they are very good. I’ll give you an example:
If you were an accountant, you could write tips on ‘How to get your tax return done?’ or ‘How to budget for the year’. These are subjects that wouldn’t be difficult to come up with as it’s what you do as an accountant. If you wrote them to be engaging to people who are not accountants it would create trust by showing that you know what you are talking about.
It’s important that you post content regularly so people know when to come back. Most website content manager systems will have a tool to schedule your posts… use it! – Tweet this
2. Newsletter
A newsletter will bring traffic to your website. If your blog is good and interesting people will want to sign up, so they don’t miss any of your posts.
But eh! Don’t use this to spam them and try to sell, because they will unsubscribe and you will lose their trust. Closing a sale is more effective on a website than in a newsletter so use this selling tool wisely.
There are a lot of great systems that you can use to prepare and schedule your email campaigns. Make sure the one you use has some analytics so you can check what works. I use Mailchimp, which is easy to use and free (for up to 2000 subscribers). – Tweet this
3. Social media
Social networks… the famous thing that everybody is in and everybody talks about. Well, social networks can be your friends or waste your time, so you need to be clever when you use them. Don’t be in all of them! Be where your target market is – for example, target younger people on Snapchat and Facebook or target business people on Linkedin.
Spend no more than a couple of hours programming your social campaigns and then 10 minutes a day to reply and take part in the community. There are plenty of tools to manage and schedule your social campaigns: Hootsuite or Buffer are a couple of the popular ones. – Tweet this
Conclusion
You will put lots of work into it. But if you organise yourself, practice and test what works you will become more effective at it. Now it’s your turn… just be creative and have fun!
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