Happy New Year! Hope 2019 is treating you really well so far and that you’re fully energised and ticking off that to-do list at a rate of knots! It’s also totally fine if you’re not (like me – thanks cold and pregnancy!).

I wanted my first blog post of this year to be something helpful for all us business owners out there so I want to talk about getting your marketing in order and what you can be doing to make that happen. A lot of my clients and people I know who run their own businesses feel overwhelmed when it comes to their marketing and that it’s almost a full-time job to do (which it definitely can be) so abandon it all together. Please don’t do that – there are small bits you can do to ensure you still have a presence and people know about you and your wonderful business and that gives you important free time for thinking and relaxing!

Here are my tips of what you can be doing that doesn’t take hours!

Focus on one social media platform 

Rather than spreading yourself too thin trying to have presence on all social media avenues, pick one that you feel is the main one where your customers are and stick to it. For me, Instagram is my focus and I try to do that well and focussing on one means you can interact and engage a lot more. If you can, schedule your content too. I am good and bad at doing this! When I do it, I’m super smug seeing my posts just ‘happen’ throughout the week. When I don’t, not so much!

Prepare a content strategy

For those of you that write regular blogs and newsletters, it’s definitely worth taking time to brainstorm ideas of topics in line with seasonal and current issues. This saves a lot of staring at the wall time and can feel a lot more structured. It also allows you not to miss any key opportunities of topics that are trending that are relevant to your business. For your newsletter, if you are featuring latest blog posts, this leaves you with not a huge amount of new content to create – as you can have the same ‘about you,’ ‘how to work with me’ sections which makes compiling your newsletter less time consuming.

Follow a certain amount of accounts a day

Dedicate some time every day (maybe the first half an hour in the morning) to grow your social account by following more people. And where you can, engage, leave and comment and interact. This will really help you grow your followers and get to know like-minded business owners. The time you might spend aimlessly scrolling through social media could be spent doing this.

Plan your diary 

Sounds obvious but plan in everything – and that includes your personal stuff like going to the gym or going for a run. Get everything in the diary and it will be clear what time you have free and make sure you keep it that way. White diary space is your friend.

Hope this helps and of course, if you need any help with your marketing please give me a call or drop me a line.