5 Quick Steps to Get Results for Your Small Business

As small business owners, we don't have the resources in time or money to waste. You didn't start your business wanting it to fall apart. To help you, here are 5 ways we've gotten results for our own small business quickly. While we can' guarantee the same results for you, they are based on sound business principles that have proven successful repeatedly. Plus, they may help you as well as they helped us.

1. Build Your Brand Through Blogging

There are several ways to build your brand. Obviously, we believe that blogging is one of them. It helps you connect with your target audience. It helps improve search rankings. It's nearly free. It's time-consuming, sure. But, it also forces you to stay up to date with what's going on in your market, and what matters to your customers.

Ashley Lipman for Lobster Digital Media has some helpful guidance on how to blog better.

2. Get Over Review Phobia

Second, reviews can really help. Reviews help establish your reputation and help build credibility. Websites like Yelp and Google show customers what they need to know about your company. It matters to get results that help your small business grow.

We know that it's tough to ask for a review. Even we still struggle to ask for honest feedback. But, we found Jason Yormark's NetBlaze post to be helpful.

3. Social Listening

Finally, we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about Social media and social listening. Yes, social media is a crowded morass where you need to shout to be heard, but if you are smart about social the importance of the insight. ''listening, you can find what your customers care about, resulting in success for your small business In our posts about marketing content, we speak about the importance of the insight.  Smart social listening can improve your chances of being heard since you will be speaking about what your customers care about.

4. Cultivate Influencers

Why do big brands, like Pepsi, use celebrities? They want to tap into that celebrity's fans. Simple. We can't afford celebrities, but we all have a micro-influencer we know. It's about building relationships and seeing how you might be able to help each other.

On the smallest scale, it's your local business community providing referrals for each other, getting everyone the results they want. On a larger scale, TopRank Marketing outlines some good suggestions.

5. Don't Screw Up the Sale

You might scoff at this, but it's not always common sense to everyone. Have you ever forgotten to follow-up with a client within a few hours? Maybe, been just a little too pushy and turned someone off? Perhaps, you just sold too much and didn't listen? If you've done any other these things, you likely screwed up the sale. If you want more detail, we recommend you read SmallBiz Tech's post.

For the Results You Can't Guarantee, Bring Your Small Business to Us

If you want to get results quickly for your business, these 5 ways are a good place to start. There any many others, and we've found these to be the most helpful to us. If you want to learn more or if you think your small business needs more targeted tips, that's where we can step in and help.