There’s so much stuff to do when you run your own business, and some of it takes more time than you anticipated when you started. You love what you do, and you want to get on with doing it – and sometimes the boring stuff can often get pushed to the bottom of the pile. I realised just how many things there are to keep on top of when I saw a post this week from my local business colleague, Ann Little:
- Keep finances in order and tax returns submitted on time
- Keep your website up to date
- Write a regular blog
- Post and engage on social media
- Send out email marketing campaigns
- Plan for your business and implement those plans
- Review and renew subscriptions and policies
- Be able to take time off!
Ann’s a Virtual Executive Assistant through her business, Silver Lining Services, and takes the pressure off a lot of business owners by managing many day-to-day maintenance tasks on their behalf. The power of outsourcing is a big draw for her customers, and for a lot of mine, too – so I thought I’d mention some of the jobs that I can do on your behalf, that you may not have thought of!
A Novel Networking Pitch
Be Brief, Be Memorable – the golden rules of network pitching. But it’s really difficult to come up with different things to say, especially if you do a lot of it! So why not mix things up with a poem? I can honestly say I remember everybody who’s been bold enough to present their pitch in verse (and one has even been known to sing). I love creating pitch poems for clients – all you need to send me is a few key points about your business you want to include, and any particular words in your strapline or website that you feel are important. Singing when you present it is optional, of course – but you’re guaranteed to be memorable.
Emails
Keeping in regular touch with your past, present and future clients can be a time-consuming task, especially if you want to send different information to each group – but give me a few bullet points or a short phone conversation, and I can cover that off on your behalf. We’ll agree the schedule you want, and then all it takes is a five minute chat each month about that month’s theme, and I create the contents: in your voice, just as if you’d written it yourself. I then send it back to you (or over to Ann, if you’ve wisely chosen to use her services!) and off it goes; so a job that may have taken an afternoon’s effort is done and dusted for you.
Blog Masterplan
Blogging is one of the best things you can do for your business. There are SO MANY benefits of having a regular and engaging blog on your own website (find out more here). It’s probably not a surprise that I blog – you’re here on mine, after all – but as well as writing your posts for you, I can help you find the inspiration for them, too. Planning what you’re going to write can be one of the most daunting things about managing your blog, and it’s one of the main reasons why it ends up at the bottom of the to-do list. My planning sessions will give you a different perspective on what your customers want to read, and may even produce some ideas that had never occurred before – and you’ll leave with a full 12 months of blog posts, all planned out for creation. You can have full planning and blog writing service from me, or just a 12 month post plan to take away and breathe into life for yourself – the choice is yours.
Three ways I can free up some time for you – and you also get the words your business needs, written in your voice, and talking to your ideal customer. Win win win!
