Small Business Tips
3 New Year’s Resolutions Entrepreneurs Should Make for 2017
The New Year is nearly upon us! While you’re (hopefully) enjoying plenty of holiday sales, it’s important to think beyond this year’s profits and focus on how you can continue and even improve on your success in 2017. With that in mind, here are three resolutions that every entrepreneur should make for the coming year.
Make your business more efficient
Efficiency can be measured in a number of different ways when it comes to small businesses and all of them are important. In fact your customer service, profitability, and employee morale can all be affected positively or negatively depending on how efficient your processes are. Now is a great time to take a closer look at your business, see what changes can be made, and create a more detailed plan for fixing them.
One of the first areas you’ll want to explore is communication — how you communicate with your employees, vendors, and customers. Are important details getting dropped along the way? You’ll also want to evaluate how organized you are and consider that there might be faster or better ways of doing things. Lastly do a check up on the equipment and technologies you utilize on a daily basis. Could they be due for an upgrade in 2017? Chances are, in at least one of these areas, you’ll find room for improvement.
Up your digital marketing game
Right now, how would a potential customer discover your business? This is a question that entrepreneurs need to consistently ask themselves. Additionally, with new technologies and tools being introduced regularly, keeping up is practically a job in and of itself.
Obviously one of the biggest tools that entrepreneurs have had at their disposal for the past several years now has been social media. However, even if you think you know the best way to use these platforms, they are constantly evolving and you could be behind without even knowing it. If you’ve been using the same social strategy for a while now, you might want to brush up and ensure that your current tactics are still effective.
Similarly mobile marketing and search engine optimization are both massively important in today’s world. Even if you can’t afford to bring on a professional to handle both for you, you should at least try to learn the basics and implement them right away. You also might want to consider other free outlets for promoting your business, some of which will also help with SEO and reaching mobile audiences.
Do a better job of reaching out to your community
While fancy technology is great, don’t forget that your business should have a human touch as well. After all that’s part of what makes local businesses so special. Think of ways that you can raise your profile in your neighborhood and give back to the community in 2017. Ultimately doing so could earn you more loyal fans than any piece of viral content ever would.
No matter how successful your 2016 was, you can help make 2017 even better. Keep in mind that, while resolutions are great, they will take planning and effort to actually pull off. So take the time to really think about how your small business can improve its efficiency, marketing, and community outreach so that you can have a very happy New Year.
