10 tips for improving any business

 

1. Tweet every day

The rule with Twitter is little and often. Tweeting several times a day ensures your message gets seen by a wide variety of readers. Don’t be too repetitive, try to find an interesting and unique way to present yourself. Engage with industry leaders and retweet their useful content and ask them to retweet yours.

2. Provide useful content

Blogs are a great way to provide useful content for your target audience. This allows you to give your company a personal touch and can be more engaging than a corporate website. Utilise the expertise, skills and knowledge from your team and get them writing guest posts. Have one person in charge who can copy-edit and improve the layout, grammar, punctuation etc. Most readers will stop reading at the first typo. The aim is to make your blog the go to place for information about your industry.

3. Attend industry networking events

Social media is great, but there’s no substitute to meeting people face to face. Send your most personable, engaging employees to industry networking events regularly. Try to do this weekly if possible. Get some professional business cards made (which can be done very cheaply) and talk passionately about your best projects to potential customers or clients.

4. Thoroughly plan every project

It’s amazing how many businesses fail to properly plan projects or tasks. So many businesses don’t communicate properly between departments, which leaves people unsure what they need to do. You need people to feel confident asking for more guidance, rather than staying quiet and confused. Create proper proposals for every project and run through them with everyone involved to ensure everyone knows the process.

5. Give after care to every client

This is often overlooked. Many companies carry out the project and then forget about a client as soon as their cheque clears. Big mistake. Repeat business is the easiest business to get and you’d be amazed how many companies pass up the chance at this. A quick, friendly call to the client to check that they’re happy with everything goes a long way to prove that you care.

6. Know you’re not the finished article

Keep learning from every project, meeting and pitch. The people who are the best at pitching for instance, are the people who have thoroughly practised and through self-analysis have gradually improved to where they are now.

7. Stop using clichéd management speak

Think outside the box. Moving forward. Game-changer… Just stop it! It doesn’t impress anyone and it makes you seem vacuous and pretentious. George Orwell was a brilliant writer, and this was largely because he didn’t show off his vocabulary needlessly. He wrote dynamic prose that propelled the story forward constantly. No words were extraneous. People in business need to learn this lesson, and cut out those empty, corporate phrases that you think make you sound like a knowledgeable professional. They don’t. Say what you mean as simply and quickly as possible and your customers will thank you for it.

8. Get to know your team personally

Most Managers like to maintain a professional distance from their employees. Whilst this is usually a good idea, if you don’t know your team well, then how can you maximise on the skills they possess. I’m not advising you to add everyone on Facebook, or invite them to your innermost family moments. But if you really get to know your team through informal social activities, you’d be amazed at which people are skilled and knowledgeable in writing, public speaking, organising etc. Know when you have an aspiring writer in your team and tailor their role to harness their skills. You will get more out of each employee this way, and they’ll be more motivated, happy, productive and ultimately more profitable for your company in the long-term.

9. Install fun incentives

Reward employees for their hard work. It doesn’t have to be in huge commission payments, or shares in the company. First and foremost most people want to feel appreciated and to enjoy their time at work. Try setting up employee of the week and letting the winner leave an hour early on Friday. Or a million other inexpensive incentives. These can really keep your team happy and motivated.

10. Comment on other company blogs

We want you to comment or tweet us with your idea on how to improve your company. Whether you’re a CEO or a newly appointed intern, everyone has ideas, and the best ones can come from anyone. Comment below or Tweet us @CollabMedia1 with your suggestion and we will be re-posting the blog with the best suggestion included. Get in touch.

Please share this post below if you enjoyed it.