3 New Year’s Resolutions for Your Business
It’s a new year, which means a fresh start for you and your business. As you head into the first quarter, it’s crucial to understand new industry trends, and build a strategy and corresponding list of action items—resolutions. Here’s a small list of business resolutions we’ve created to help guide you into 2017 success.
1. Get known for what you do
Nowadays, maintaining a personal brand is the norm in a variety of fields, which also enhances the visibility of your company’s product/service.
Find ways to position yourself as a voice of knowledge in your industry. One idea is to pitch a conference talk. Doing so at least once a quarter is terrific for boosting brand awareness. If speaking at a conference is too intimidating to start with, consider attending a conference and networking. Likewise, participating in meetup groups is a great way to practice giving talks as well as networking. You can find pertinent local meetup groups on Meetup.com.
Another idea is to be a guest blogger. Choose relevant industry blogs from non-competitors to contact and pitch a story to. Building relationships with industry influencers—like bloggers—will help you raise brand awareness.
Also ensure that your social media profiles are up-to-date and active. Twitter and LinkedIn are particularly strong networks for building your personal brand. If your product/service is design-related, take advantage of Instagram’s ever rising popularity.
2. Refresh your online presence
Take a look at your company website and ask yourself if you can make any improvements to it. Not sure where to begin? Start with its design. In 2017, the trends of minimalism, hero images, responsive design, and interactivity appear to be going strong.
Importantly, ensure your user experience is optimized. This is especially pertinent if you sell anything online; the customer journey must be as intuitive as possible. Having an outsider’s perspective on this aspect of your company website is essential. Ask your friends and family to navigate through your website as though they were a customer then get their feedback: did anything confuse them?
Keep your website copy as simple as possible; rely instead on visual language, like badges. In keeping with the trend of whitespace, ensure that your text obeys a narrow character limit. Keep headlines under 30 characters and subheaders around 80 characters. Your call to action (CTA) buttons should feature a word that directly captures what the button does, nothing fancy. Examples of tried and true CTA texts are: Add to cart, Get started, Login, Learn more, etc.
In need of a whole new website? Squarespace lets you easily build a website with a modern UI.
These same approaches apply to your social media pages and blog. Update your content consistently and make sure that you have an accessible presence as these channels are often used for customer inquiries.
Lastly, be mindful of search engine optimization. SEO SiteCheckup is a great service to receive a full evaluation of your website.
3. Go tech
Technology reigns supreme as the ultimate way to better your business in the New Year. However, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by all the available options. For a start, take a look at our list of 10 Amazing Free Tools to Grow Your Business.
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