Becky's Bytes: Celebrate the upcoming National Small Business Week

 

More than half of all Americans either own or work for a small business, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration. The Administration's annual National Small Business Week is April 30 to May 6 to recognize that we create two out of every three new U.S. jobs. It's our chance to talk up each other, and sharpen our own skills. Here are five ideas to improve the value we offer to all consumers.

1) Use Small Business Week as an excuse to learn about the trends, technology and marketing tactics that can help take your small business to the next level. Enroll in an online seminar, or a live and local one. Tech is a game changer, and an ever-changing game. So is marketing. Even if you just refreshed your skills with a seminar or meeting last year, that was 365 days of innovation ago.

2) Look at your recent tax filing. Did you pay too much? Did you plan too little? Taxes – property, personal, and/or payroll – are predictable aggravations for any small business owner. If you found April 18 or the last year-end to be particularly stressful, your accountant has helpful suggestions. So does your office professional.

3) Outsource what you can. The timing of Small Business Week couldn't be better to evaluate where you stand as a business. You're one third of the way through the year. How much of that four months have you spent actually doing what you set out to do? If you spent a quarter of your time chasing invoices or selecting insurance or managing payroll or marketing, any of these can be outsourced so you'll spend 100 percent of your time on your trade, rather than 75 percent.

4) Attend one event or open house, or create your own. The SBA has a list of events at the link above. Local Chambers of Commerce hold 'Business After Five' events. I personally know of one that very week at Yerkes Observatory on Geneva Lake. If there isn't an event in your town, consider hosting your own open house or networking get-together for your local peers. It can be hard to step away from the daily demands of running a small business—use Small Business Week as an excuse to take a little break and connect with fellow small business owners.

5) Join a Chamber or service organization. Never underestimate the powerful networking possibilities that exist in Rotary, Kiwanis, Lions, The U.S. Junior Chamber (Jaycees) or a local Chamber of Commerce. Sorry if I missed one: It wasn't an intentional slight. Each group puts you elbow-to-elbow with possible customers and provides an undeniable measure of community goodwill.

Image by Paulus Rusyanto, used with permission.

Be authoritative without being an author

One of the classiest – and most cost-effective – promotional tactics for small businesses is content marketing. Being the one the news reporter calls for a quote takes reputation and a fair amount of luck (or a whopper of a public relations budget). Blogging ranks second only to getting tabbed as the ‘expert’ quoted in a news piece.

First things first: Becky’s Bytes is a blog and this piece is a blog as well. Also known as a post. Or an article. The word comes from web log, which is too long of a moniker in our digital age, so techies yanked out the ‘we’ and a space. From my own experience, space and ‘we’ are things you’ll want to keep IN a blog: If people see too many words and not enough space around them, they won’t read it… and if you make it all about you, they won’t read it either.

Creating and maintaining your reputation and putting it out there on the internet and social media offers two advantages getting to be the news reporter’s go-to source however.

1)      Blogging is nearly immediate! A well-written article can ‘go live’ as quickly as you can post it – or as quickly as your website manager can get to it if you are using a service provider. Let’s say you’re in the auto-repair business. A hail storm sweeps through our area. You can have an article about auto finish restoration on social media and the internet before the storm is over.

2)      Blogging is inexpensive. You need a platform, which can be as simple as a Facebook page. Those are still free. There are other resources more effective and more visible to search engines, too. Blogger (by Google) is one of many no- or low-cost blog platforms.

The caveat here is that it can be very costly when done poorly. If you don’t craft your message with keywords that get your business noticed, the value of the time/money put into blogging is wasted. If you’re not a good wordsmith or are prone to typos and grammar missteps, the result is a turn-off for potential customers looking for your expertise. The best landscaper in town could put out a sloppy blog and down goes Frazier… and not the tree. Cutting and pasting may help you look good, but it’s illegal. Hitting ‘send’ instead of ‘delete’ has tanked more relationships – business or otherwise – than we ever consider. Why? Because the internet IS permanent.

This brings me back to the first of Becky’sBytes on outsourcing. You know what you’re doing in your profession: Find someone you trust if blogging isn’t your strength. Your reputation and your next set of clients depend on it.

Photo: Melpomene, used with permission.