At our lunch March 3rd we presented some of the important changes that facebook has made that makes it so much easier to promote your business on FB as well as the mysterious QR codes.
Our February lunch was a big hit. I couldn't believe the response we got from our over 25 attendees.
I spent a lot of time going keywords, their importance, how to evaluate them, where to use them etc. And of course integrating them into blogs. Why ? To increase your business through improved profiles and exposure. This was the most interactive lunch we have had although I was worried it would confuse more people than it helped. I posted the presentation on my LinkedIn profile. Come on over, connect with me if you know me...and check it out. We didn't have a Power Point presentation at this month's luncheon but we did talk about an important subject.
Capitalizing on your strengths and minimizing your weaknesses. So many business owners expend a tonne of energy on activities that are important but that they either hate to do or are just not that good at. When you look at the ROI (return on investment) for these activities it is really low. Why? Because the effort it takes to do something you love and you are good at is so much less than for something you just don't want to do. A business friend of mine is a clear example of this. She hates data entry of any kind. To get her to enter the information from a business card into any kind of system would take time and energy. She will find a million things that need to be done before doing the data entry. So it almost never gets done and if it does it is almost too late. There is always guilt and frustration associated with these types of tasks. On the other hand meeting people and helping them resolve their business issues is a joy for her so it is something she does often and she feels great after. She is a prime candidate for outsourcing any data entry tasks. And guess what! There are people out there who LOVE data entry. So who do you think will get it done better and faster? People always worry about the costs of outsourcing especially for minor tasks that shouldn't take long and don't require a lot of skill. But think about it this way...if you love what you are really good at, probably what your business is about, you will use that time, lets say 2 hours, moving you and your company forward. If on the other hand you try to spend 2 hours doing something that drags you down...well you have an opportunity cost. The cost of not moving forward. On the other hand if it costs you 10-20 $ for someone else to do the work, you feel good because you know it will get done well and quickly AND you didn't have to do it PLUS you will have the time you would have taken to do what you are great at. So think about it and then do it. Get someone else to do what you don't like to do or what you don't do well. You might have done something that will make you hundreds of dollars in the same amount of time. Here are some things to consider when outsourcing. What do you do that you don't like to do ? What do you do that you focus's on your weaknesses ? Many of our clients find that what holds them back are their mundane marketing and customer relationship tasks. Consider outsourcing ! What do people typically outsource:
Consider Outsourcing the following:
Also : We had the opportunity to present to the Montreal Independent Consulting Group on October 6th, 2010. While Pat and I are members of the group and see everyone every month we were very happy to see how warmly our presentation was received. Now it never is as good when you look at the slides because hey, we don't put all the information into the slides because that would make for a boring presentation but at least you can get a taste of it here. June 10th, 4B Strategies did a quick presentation to our luncheon group about Social Media Myths. We had a great time at Towne Hall. The food was great. The energy was amazing and everyone liked the presentation. In summary we need to remember that anything worth doing is worth doing right !! Start with the objective and goals, work out what you like to do and are likely to do, calculate the costs in time and dollars, do tests to assess effectiveness and try to have fun ! This presentation was made to a group of SBCI members on May 13th 2010. The objective was to remind entrepreneurs that taking time to think about who your clients are will make the job of marketing their products or services much easier and therefore much less expensive. The better you understand your market the more effectively you will be able to target your clients and get business. |