The life of an entrepreneur isn’t always nonstop. There’s a natural ebb and flow to the business world, and sometimes the pace slows down a bit. If you’re experiencing some extra time with no immediate pressing tasks, don’t just sit back. There are a number of ways you can take advantage of slow business to get ahead. Check out these business building tasks below to get started.
Improve Productivity
- Craft a template for a repeated task. Make a style guide for a blog post, write a social media schedule, draft up answers to commonly asked customer service questions, anything you do often in your business. You’ll save yourself time in the future by being able to quickly refer to these documents. No need to reinvent the wheel each time!
- Ruthlessly go through files. Delete or archive everything you can. Clutter is psychologically draining and makes us less productive, so tidying things up can help make you more efficient.
- Clean up your inbox. Unsubscribe from everything you can to save your future self from reading mediocre emails.
- Pair down the number of people your business follows on social media. See if any accounts have been deactivated or no longer serve your needs. Unfollow them to declutter your newsfeed and ensure you’re only seeing posts you want to interact with, saving you time when you’re working on social media engagement.
Strengthen Client Relationships
- Surprise a client. Send them a handwritten note, a small self-care gift like a coffee gift card, a little something to show you value them and appreciate your relationship. It’s a little gesture that can go a long way in building the relationship.
Improve Your Website
- Use a[infusionsoft_on_click_intent optin_id=optin_2] SEO checklist[/infusionsoft_on_click_intent] to edit every blog post. Go through every blog post and make sure it’s optimized for SEO. The little tweaks can really help your visibility online.
- Test everything on your website. Click on every link, view every video, make sure everything looks and runs great. Remove or update any outdated content. Here are 5 web design mistakes you might be making.
- Run your website through a website grader. There maybe be simple fixes to improve your website that you’re not even aware of. There are many website graders out there that can easily pinpoint what needs adjusting.
Gain New Perspectives
- Check in with what your competition is doing. Your competition can be a great source for new ideas (that’s one of the many reasons why we recommend your marketing strategy includes competition monitoring). See what they’re doing that you should emulate, or what they’re lacking that you can really push.
- Develop or strengthen a skill. There are many online classes you can take to become a better entrepreneur, from SEO optimization to email marketing. Pick one and study it.
- Look into industry trends and research. Find out which tactics and strategies are emerging that your business should jump on board with. See which tactics just aren’t worth the investment that your business should stop using. Dive into the research and analysis to make sure your company is up-to-date with the latest insight.
Evaluate Your Efforts
- Check in with your business goals. Refresh your memory on your business goals, and see if you’re on track to accomplishing them. Make adjustments to your efforts as needed and celebrate your progress (and if you haven’t made them yet, check out this free planning guide).
Build Up Your Content
- Design evergreen images. Create images you can use often on social media, from images about your services to inspirational quotes.
- Ask customers for testimonials. Get new quotes to use on your site. Turn quotes into images to use on social media. Testimonials can be a powerful persuasion tool for a potential customer on the edge of buying a product or service.
- Brainstorm some awesome blog posts. If you have a business blog, you’ll always need content (and if you don’t have a blog, you’re missing out on so many benefits). Try these strategies to brainstorm killer topics.
- Create a bank of evergreen social media posts. You’ll always need social media posts, and there’s many types you can write now to use later. Make a bank of posts of each service and blog post. You’ll be able to pull from it next time you schedule social media.
Go Outside the Norm
- Try a new tactic. Try out an unconventional approach and see if it impacts your quality (like writing a blog post using a Speech to Text tool).
One final way to take advantage of a business lull…identify what business tasks can be outsourced to a virtual assistant! Maybe there are tasks that need to be done, but don’t need to be done by you or an employee (like addressing envelopes or scheduling appointments). Or maybe there are tasks you need specialized help for (like social media marketing). A virtual assistant can handle these while saving you money, since your business is not paying for the VA’s office supplies, health insurance, or sick days. Examine your business tasks and see which ones you want to get off your plate (so you can focus on running your business), then check out our services page or shoot us an email to discuss how we can help!