Are you operating your business month-to-month, even year-to-year, without a plan?
We’re all so busy – too busy, if you ask me. When business is good, we’re so busy filling orders that there’s little time left for anything else. When business is not so good, there’s an urgency to do something, almost anything to bring in new customers. Sound familiar?
It doesn’t have to be feast or famine.
But you won’t fix the problem in 30-minute sound bites. You’re going to need to set aside some time to go deeper, to ask and answer some fundamental questions once again or for the first time, before creating a plan that will direct you through 2012 and beyond.
Questions like:
Why are you in business? For most of us, there’s a much bigger reason than just ‘making a living.’ In fact, if ‘making a living’ is the only reason you’re in business, that’s mindset leads directly to poverty. So what’s your why?
What goals have you set for your business 10 years down the road? Five years? Three years? and for 2012?
Who is your ideal customer? Are you serving that market now? Why or why not?
- What does your ideal customer want?
- How are you serving your current customer base?
- Are you even reaching your ideal customer base?
- How can you do a better job of meeting their needs?
- How can you improve what you offer them?
Do you have a marketing budget?
If you don’t, you’re not serious about growing your business. Effective marketing requires an investment of time, expertise, and money. Leave any one of those items out of the equation and it’s just not going to work. Far too many business owners try throwing money or time at their marketing, but you can spend an awful lot on marketing that takes you nowhere, or spend all your time going in the wrong direction.
Expertise without time or money is just as damaging. You have to be able to implement what you’ve learned, and that often requires additional expense. It can get real frustrating real fast trying to master intelligent marketing practices for your particular business.
Be honest – we’ve all been there.
You need to start somewhere. Setting up a budget will help you get started and show you where the holes are.
Buyer Beware
You’re no doubt getting several calls each week from companies offering to improve your website’s rank on Google. You’re hearing about getting your business on Facebook and Twitter, on television, in local directories, and from companies like Groupon and Living Social. You’re getting calls from big companies and from freelancers – offering everything from full-page phone book ads, websites, and videos to website optimization so your site shows up in local search. It may all sound pretty good. How do you know who to trust? How do you know which you need?
First, return to the basics – to those questions about your why, your goals, and your ideal customer.
Then you listen – to your market AND to those people offering to sell you services. Are they asking ANY of the right questions? If they’ve skipped right on over to how to get your site listed as #1 on Google, they’ve tipped their hand. After all, anybody can get a site listed #1 on Google for something!
Frankly, I’m tired of Internet marketers preying on small businesses. There is no one-size fits all solution – and (SURPRISE!) it’s not all about your website rank. It’s time to look at your business, your goals, and your marketing holistically. Now open a new Google doc or grab a pencil and paper, turn off the distractions, and let the 2012 planning begin in earnest.
I thought I was simplifying my month-to-month tasks and eliminating the dreaded end-of-year tax preparation burden, but have been humbled to learn that what I didn’t know could fill volumes. In fact, it’s felt a bit like drinking from a fire hose. The insight from a professional looking in from outside our business, even in these early stages, has made a dramatic impact on how we conduct business. Without a doubt, this will help us to be far more profitable in 2012. How exciting!
As we draw nearer the end of the year, it’s a good time to review our core business principles. Are you on track to accomplish this year’s operational and marketing goals? Are you doing what you intended to do? Are you growing, or barely hanging on?
As we honed in on our ‘why’ we got excited all over again. It’s re-energized our business. It’ll do the same for you.
Content is so important to your online efforts. It’s a mountain to tackle, though. There are so many places to continually update, it can seem like a daunting task. Even when you love to write, it’s not always easy to conjure up the passion necessary to crank out quality work.
From an SEO perspective, if you want Google and the other search engines to rank your site high for your chosen keywords, your site needs to supply a steady flow of fresh, quality content related to those keywords.
Our client, Green Light Sign Solutions, specializes in energy-efficient 
SEO Link Building 101
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How To Recognize Comment Spam
Do you know how to recognize comments you should keep versus comment spam? I’ve noticed recently that some of our clients are confused about what should be deleted. Some discard everything without a second thought, some simply ignore them until they have a zillion piled up.
I don’t understand why anyone thinks comment spam benefits an online effort. Black hat SEOers are another comment irritation. They don’t understand link strategy, and they make reputable companies look foolish to each other. When my name and website are going to be visible to another company website I’m leaving comments on, I don’t want my comment to sound ignorant, use poor grammar, or be downright illiterate. I want to leave a comment that might generate a reply.
I seriously doubt many businesses have any idea that the SEO company they hired for back link generation made them look ridiculous to other companies, instead of reaching out to them!
Here’s a cheat sheet to refer to. Some are obvious, some … not so much. If you find out your SEO company is doing anything like this using your website URL, I suggest you fire them immediately.
Go ahead and delete comments that have any of these 10 attributes:
Many times the spam is done so well, you won’t even notice it until you approve it, only to find seven more just like it the next day. Some spammers will use slightly different web-based email accounts but post the same comment under different names to different posts.
Following these links can open you up to security issues like viruses or worms. Even when they don’t, checking a link wastes your time when you find a spammy website or shopping page for a product you don’t want your name associated with.
High spam counts don’t mean you’re doing a bad job with your blog. It actually means that you’re being found online, though not by the company you’d like to keep. Be patient, learn how to recognize comments that should get deleted, and share your posts on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, and Posterous to get in front of the audience you do want. I hope this helps!
What spammy comments do you find most annoying? Do you use tools to limit the spam that shows up on your website? Share them with us!
Photo Credit: somaya on Flickr made available through a Creative Commons License.