5 Ways to Improve Your Business During Coronavirus + Down-Time | Epoch Co+
If you are going stir-crazy during this quarantine phase of coronavirus, you are definitely not alone! If you find you have extra time and motivation during this COVID-19 pandemic, then we have some suggestions to help you make the most of this time and come out of this a better person and business. While none of us have control on what this virus is doing to our world, there ARE things we CAN control. There are things we can do NOW to help our business THRIVE during this season of life, and not just this season, in down-time in general. I urge you to look for the things you can change and control in life, and focus your VALUABLE time and energy on those things. If you need a little kick-start or inspo to add to your to-do list, here are some things we have been doing during our down-time.
Clean up your Pinterest Account
Make sure your Pinterest boards are relevant to your website, or target client.
Put your top traffic driving boards at the top (seasonal or niche boards)
Update their cover photos
hide any irrelevant boards (not delete) - you know, all those personal boards that have nothing to do with your business or target client? Switch those babies to private.
Are your board names straightforward? Type a keyword into the Pinterest search bar and Pinterest will help you determine relating words
Now be careful with changing your board names if you have them linked anywhere - if you change the board name, you will need to go revise those links to make sure they didn’t “break” with the board name change.
Rearrange pins in your top boards - the ones that are top traffic drivers (to YOUR website), to the top of the board.
check if your pins take you to accurate content - focus on your own personal pins to your website
Get creative with your pins and try to re-think your pins for your website. We love using Canva to create Pins.
Create New Systems + Flows
Is there anything in your business that is taking you too long? Any repetitive emails you could turn into templates? Clients asking the same questions that you could draft a blog or e-doc for? Look into those new softwares, workflows and systems now so you can implement them and have them running when business picks back up.
Tailwind has revolutionized our pinning game! How many times have I seen people stating Pinterest drives traffic to their website and thought it was a complete waste of time…after giving Tailwind a trial run, I finally understand what people were talking about. Not only did it help drive traffic to our website, we saw our bounce rate drastically decrease! Our referral link lets you try it for one month free!
Honeybook is one we love for from inquiries, on-boarding, keeping communication in one cohesive thread, and off-boarding clients. Our abilities to template our emails, workflows, brochures, services, contracts and more streamline our every day tasks, and make it easier for assistants to implement workflows I have created. They also implemented a new scheduling feature that makes scheduling client calls and emails even easier for both the client and our team! We love their on-boarding process and their customer service. Their concierge helped us create all our contracts and gave us a live tour of the software to make sure we could ask any questions. Get 50% off when you use our referral link!
Business Refresh
Review your Google Analytics and see what is working for you and what is not. Are there pages that are loading slowly? Can you compress images? Is there a blog post that is working really well for you? Can you create similar spin-off content?
Are your website photos + portfolios updated?
Update your accolade/review page
Have you been wanting to re-brand? Redesign that logo? Update your website copy? Now is the time!
Are your packages and marketing materials up to date? Give them a refresh or complete overhaul!
Marketing + Networking
We are in a few virtual meetings each week, see if there are any virtual coffee dates going on in your network. If not, try starting your own using Zoom or Google Hangouts! Just because we are quarantined does not mean you can’t network or engage with each other!
Any relevant weddings you could work on submitting for publication? Bridals? Engagements? Utilize a software like Two Bright Lights
Looking to streamline your Instagram game for free? One of our favorite apps for planning is called Preview
Education
Have you been wanting to learn a new trade? A new marketing technique? Facebook Ads? Instagram advertising? SEO? There is an unlimited sea of educational resources out there for you to take advantage of and elevate your business to the next level.
Here are some great educational resources we love to utilize:
Jenna Kutcher - if you haven’t heard of the Goal Digger Podcast, you need to stop what you are doing and go check this talented lady out! She provides an insane amount of FREE knowledge on her podcast. If you want to take your education a step further, you can hop over to her website courses for some deeper education when it comes to marketing, email lists, starting a podcast and more.
The Wedding Biz Podcast - I adore this podcast because of the insight his podcast provides into the various fields of the event industry, and how they can be applied across the board. I have learned some of my best converting marketing and sales techniques by purely listening to this podcast!
Sage Wedding Pros - They provide some great information via their email lists, but they also have an online education website - a great one to consider is their Money Flow - Let’s face it, as creatives, we normally aren’t “numbers” people. If you are being hit financially during this time, now is the best time to better understand your numbers and prepare yourself for the future. After all, you want this to be a career, not a hobby, right?
Amy Porterfield - She also has a great podcast for marketing. She is not directly related to the creative industry, but she has a lot of topics and tools that can be directly applied to our industry!
Jessica Zimmerman - As an event planner + floral designer, she has a fantastic “Know Your Numbers” course which unfortunately is not live at the time of writing this, but she has other great options and some freebies you can grab off her site.
Mentors - If you have not invested in a mentor, I highly recommend looking in to one! Find someone who is where you hope to be in 5 years, reach out to them regarding being a mentor - this is the best time to ask those hard questions and help evaluate where you stand in the industry currently and what money-mindset you need to have to move forward once this pandemic finally passes. Let’s face it, this isn’t the first pandemic and won’t be the last. And while we may not have another any time soon, there will always be various hardships in life that you need to be prepared for. Mentors can let you know what they have experience and how they learned from those so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
What you choose to focus your time and energy on when times are slower will help define your business and future success. Try taking a look at how you spend each 24 hour day, what chunks of time are you spending on various things? Social Media, TV, Eating, Sleeping, Working…how would you like those time blocks to change and be more productive? I hope this list was helpful for you and gives you some actionable tips during this pandemic that allows you to intentionally spend this time.
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