Even though it’s expensive, legally protecting your new business from disasters and positioning it for success is one of the most important things you can do when getting started. If you neglect the legal issues upfront, it will only be more painful and more expensive when everything blows up in the future. However, since most startup and small business owners don’t have tons of cash lying around to pay lawyers with, this week’s video shares a few quick hacks to help you save on startup legal fees:
Marketing partnerships are a great way for business owners to amplify their marketing reach without creating much extra work or expense. The basic idea is to find another business whose customers are the same as yours but that offers a complementary – not competing – product or service. Then you team up and both help promote the other to all of your customers.
This tactic can be hugely successfully without too much effort, so check out the video below to learn how to implement it:
Because social media only costs in time and not in clear, clean dollars, the ROI is a little more slippery and many business owners don’t bother to track if their social media strategies are succeeding or not. But time is money, so you need to know if you’re wasting it or spending it wisely. To make sure you know whether or not your social media efforts are time well spent, here are a few basic ways to track if your social media efforts are being successful or if you need to reevaluate:
The point of all of these metrics is to make you aware of what is and is not working so that you can adjust your strategy. Remember, this is about taking a step back so you can improve your strategy, i.e. work on your business instead of just working in your business.
Google+ hasn’t always gotten much respect as a key social media channel for business promotion, but that’s changing. Google+ is growing rapidly and provides some extra benefits that some of the other big players don’t. It’s also one of my top traffic referrers, so I recommend that anyone not already using it for their business at least give it a try.
Not only is Google+ a property of the largest search engine in the world, Google (duh), but also it has a great interface and isn’t completely overrun with spammers yet so you can still get some great interaction from other users pretty easily. Google+ is similar to Facebook in that you can create both a personal profile and a company page, so if you want to promote your business you should get started by creating both.
Check out the video below to learn more about why and how you should be using Google+ to help promote your business.
Every entrepreneur needs to assess the pros and cons of each potential marketing avenue and not every social media platform is right for every business. However, if you haven’t checked out Google+ yet, you’re missing out. The SEO benefits as well as the level of engagement you can generate from other users make it a platform that all entrepreneurs should at least try out before deciding if it’s right for them.
Everyone has excuses for why they can’t or shouldn’t get stuff done to build their business and these excused keep you from creating the business that you want. If you’re sick of letting these excuses cause your business to remain stagnant, check out this week’s video where I give you my tricks for squashing the top 3 excuses I hear entrepreneurs make: I don’t have time, I don’t know how, and I don’t have money.
What are your top excuses that threaten to keep you from moving forward with your business and what are the tricks you use to squash them?
