Let’s face it: running a business in 2017 is very different to how running a business was thirty years ago. Thirty years ago, the internet didn’t even exist (or at least not as how we know it today). Companies had to rely on much more old-school tactics for self-promotion and for bringing in the sales – things like face to face pitching and advertisements in local publications. While these methods are still used today, they are used as a secondary tool, run alongside other, more modern techniques. The online world has indeed revolutionized business, but it has also made things a lot more complicated, especially for startups and other small companies. There is quite simply so much international competition, and thanks to the web, business never sleeps. As nice as it would be to leave the office at 5 pm sharp every day and not have to deal with work until the following morning, this is a rare reality in business nowadays. Of course, if you run your business alone you are already in a difficult position, as you cannot physically be around all the time to deal with customer queries/promotion. Therefore, you will need to engage some interesting ways to keep your business running 24/7.
Scheduling posts
Twitter, Facebook, your company website…. most online platforms have a built-in scheduling feature available, or can at least recommend an external one to use (such as Tweetdeck). If you know you are not going to be around for a couple of days, don’t simply leave your business to fester while you’re gone; schedule everything ahead of time. This also takes a lot of the pressure off you to be glued to your company’s social media profiles when you should be putting your energy into something else.
Backing everything up
It’s every business owner’s nightmare. But when something goes wrong at head office, you need to spring into action to get the issue sorted as soon as possible. Not only that, however, but you need to make sure that the rest of your business doesn’t suffer as a result of sorting out this issue. You could lose whole days to a mislaid piece of data. or a malfunctioning file, so always make sure you have everything saved on bulk flash drives. That way you can ensure that if something does go wrong, you don’t need to spend hours sorting it out at the expense of the rest of your work.
Getting extra staff
This may seem a little old-school for those of us who have been working alone for so long. But ultimately, as amazing as technology is, it does have its limits. There are still some things that only people can do, so you may want to think about hiring some evening staff, or phone staff who are based overseas. This way you can ensure that if a client has a query, there is always a real person on the end of the phone who will be able to speak to them and help.