Here’s is the Part 2 of my last article on the benefits of writing blogs and articles for your business. So we’ve figured the why, now we do the how.

Business writing can feel daunting, but anyone with a basic grasp of grammar and syntax can write a half-decent article, but capturing readers’ interests with good website content can be really challenging. Most visitors on your website will only need a few seconds before what they do next – stay or go.

Good website writing is the key to beating these odds, but if you’re not a natural writer, knowing what type of content to write is the most challenging. So here’s some suggestions:

1. Tips and tricks 

A reader’s attention span is generally short, so one of the best things that you can do is write something short and simple. Queue – tips and tricks.

This piece of easily-digestible, actionable advice to readers. It’s a winning combination that’s usually the meat and potatoes of most on business blogs (i.e. “How to XYZ”, “A Guide to XYZ”, “5 Email Marketing Tips”) to great effect. This type of the content is usually a great base for all you first time writers. What’s especially great about this type of content is that it can be easily reused and recycled on social media or your email marketing.

2. Customer and in-depth product reviews

There’s no getting away from it: online reviews are crucial to small businesses. Think about it – how many times have you skipped straight to the reviews section of a website to find out if a product is worth buying? or simply skipping pass a product all together that either has no reviews or have less than 3 stars?

This type of blog is a way for you to hype you and your business up. Also, this type of article blog is easy as half the content has already been written for you! A great template to start with is:

• A high quality picture of the product or service
• The name and shop link for that product or service
• The reviews made by your customers (3-4 should be your aim)
• A little blurb from you, explaining the product USPs, the origin, and how it is a solution for your customer

3. Industry-specific guides

Without a doubt, the best way to draw visitors into a business blog is to give them valuable information. And since one of the overarching goals of a business blog is to demonstrate expertise in the field in which the business focuses, a great way to do that is to create industry-specific guides. This type of business blog content walks consumers through a particular product or service they’d commonly encounter in the target industry – even if it’s one the business itself doesn’t offer.

A great way to create these guides is to interview an expert – experts on this topic are all around you. Instead of trying to become experts in 2 hours of Googling, find a colleague, a mentor, even your friendly competitor and let their voice, thoughts, and ideas shine through. They may know the pain points better than you, they may have different solutions and a fresh point of view. If well written enough, it will act as permanent touchstone (i.e. customer bookmarking this page and visiting it every time as a point of reference).

So, there you go, there’s not secret in writing a good blog for your business. Pick a content type, have spellcheck on and write something that YOU would want to read. 

 With that said, it’s time to get to blogging!

About the Author:

Amy Miocevich is an Australian author of Very Good Marketing, director of her company Lumos Marketing and a mum. Amy has a plethora of business knowledge and experience helping individuals across all industries over her professional career. She has a deep and innate passion to help small businesses achieve their Big Hairy Audacious Goals, whatever they may be. When Amy isn’t busy working or waking up at 5 am to run, she is probably eating ramen or wanting to eat ramen. Say hi to Amy at amy@lumosmarketing.com.au.

One of the most common questions I get when I meet new clients, is how can they make their website stand out from the rest? How can they attract a visitor? How can I become a millionaire?

Answer: Content Marketing. To be more specific – blogs and articles.

Writing isn’t the most exciting thing for most people, particularly if you’re a business owner. However, producing high-quality content is a phenomenal marketing tool to differentiate and stand out from your competitors or larger corporations. 

Still not convinced? Well, here are some of the benefits of blogging for your business:

1. Drive traffic and inbound links to your website

Google loves content, especially frequently updated content, and if you want to get people to your site, it’s important to provide content that people want to see. What does that mean? Think of it like social media, every day, week, month there is a new trending topic, there’s a new pop culture meme, political and economical fluctuations.

Although not everything trending may have a clear connection to your business, it’s important to stay relevant and current. For example, The Reserve Bank of Australia recently announced an increase in interest rates, there have been frequent news cycles about predicted postage and shipping issues as the holiday season begins.

Maybe both you and your entire business model are based locally, however, this would be a great opportunity to write an article about the financial health and volatility of your particular industry and how because of XYZ your business and supply chain will not be affected.

Now, ask yourself this – how many pages do you have for your products and services on your website? Probably not a lot.

But writing a blog can add new and relevant content virtually every day. Every additional page of content you put out is another new entry point/landing page for your website.

2. Educate your customers and establish your business as an expert or market leader

If your business is not in the business of Instagram or Tik Tok, I would make an educated guess that your customers and potential customers will be seeking information and credibility.

During this prospecting stage (strangers and visitors), they’re wanting to know more about yout knowledge of your products and services, your place in the market and your industry. This is a chance for you to educate your customer, about your industry, your products and how they can solve a problem they didn’t even know they had.

Having these blogs and article pieces will not only help these prospects enter the sales funnel but see you as an expert and builds a trusting relationship.

“Establishing authority” is not a vanity metric as concrete as traffic and leads, but it’s pretty powerful stuff. Do not neglect the power an in-depth, well written post clearing up a confused cuistomer’s question holds. Usually, once you’ve helped someone they tend to come back to you and usually bring their friends too. 

3. Great for SEO and your page ranking on Google

Yes, I know you’re probably sick of me bringing up SEO. But SEO. SEO is going to get you to the first page on Google, SEO is going to be the reason why your visitor will pick you instead of your competitors.

When writing a blog post for your website, Google will send more traffic to your business and website versus on any other platform i.e LinkedIn, Instagram, or Youtube.

BUT – only if you’re using proper SEO practices and the content is high value. How does Google know if your article gets a front page A+ or a just passing C grade on page 10? Well,  Google calculates the value of a blog article by measuring how many other websites are linking to the article’s page. The more pages that link to an article, the higher its PageRank and thus the higher google deems it in search rankings.

So what are you waiting for? Not a writer? That’s alright that’s why marketing agencies exist! So why not contact your local, friendly marketing agency today and get blogging!

About the Author:

Amy Miocevich is an Australian author of Very Good Marketing, director of her company Lumos Marketing and a mum. Amy has a plethora of business knowledge and experience helping individuals across all industries over her professional career. She has a deep and innate passion to help small businesses achieve their Big Hairy Audacious Goals, whatever they may be. When Amy isn’t busy working or waking up at 5 am to run, she is probably eating ramen or wanting to eat ramen. Say hi to Amy at amy@lumosmarketing.com.au.

If you didn’t read my last article, a hybrid work model is a golden ticket for a successful business and satisfied employees.

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted many companies to allow their employees to work from home more often. In fact, some companies find that remote working and employees with a home office have been a great success. Now that things are slowly returning to normal, many businesses are entering a new phase of the pandemic known as the hybrid workforce.

If my last article didn’t already convince you, here are some of the benefits of having this hybrid work model:

1. Increased Productivity and Happy Employees

There’s no doubt that employees working from home run into some challenges around feeling bored, lonely or out of sync with their colleagues.

That’s why hybrid work is the best of both worlds. It combines the improved productivity of remote workers with the superior in-person collaboration and communication of physical office spaces.

The hybrid workplace allows employees to be more accountable and responsible. Employees are more confident and independent when they have less to manage. They give their best, are more accountable and have a greater awareness of their responsibilities. As a result, it increases productivity levels and employee engagement.

2. Better Work-Life Balance = Better Mental Health

Working from home eliminated a lot of the stressors that came with a more traditional model of work, such as the stress of commuting or the pressure of putting in more time in the office to meet deadlines. It also allowed employees to explore more opportunities to improve their health and wellness because of this new flexibility.

Giving employees the autonomy to cycle through working in the office with others or working alone introduces a better work-life fit for employees that have a preference for either type of work, and ultimately, better prospects for an improved work-life balance and mental health outcomes.

3. Lowering Your Operation Costs

Organizations can now use remote working to replace the need to be physically present at work. Remote working reduces operating expenses and means that companies don’t have to spend extra money on physical offices.

Although employees will still occasionally work onsite, hybrid workplaces allow for remote work. As a result, organizations will be able to save money and reduce their commute time.

Who doesn’t love saving money?

Hybrid working is the future, offering businesses a way to cut costs, employees the chance to balance their career and personal life better, and the opportunity to reduce the carbon footprint of the business in the process.

The transition to hybrid working has largely been led by necessity as a result of the pandemic, and by the changing demands of workers, but there’s no reason why this way of working can’t also offer other positives in the process.

About the Author:

Amy Miocevich is an Australian author of Very Good Marketing, director of her company Lumos Marketing and a mum. Amy has a plethora of business knowledge and experience helping individuals across all industries over her professional career. She has a deep and innate passion to help small businesses achieve their Big Hairy Audacious Goals, whatever they may be. When Amy isn’t busy working or waking up at 5 am to run, she is probably eating ramen or wanting to eat ramen. Say hi to Amy at amy@lumosmarketing.com.au.

Increasing inflation, the lingering after-effects of a pandemic, massive disruptions to shipping and factory operations. All these factors (plus more!) have made burnout and employee disengagement at an all-time high, at every age in every industry. 

Maybe you’ve noticed the lack of connectedness within your business or the weak and monotonous work culture that has somehow permeated your business.

Not only does this create overall low morale, low-profit margins but makes keeping your best people. When things gets tough, people will always reasses and look at everything with a fine tooth comb and take a look at what is important if they are happy. And you want your people to understand that they are important to you and your business.

Here are some ways to convey that message loud and clear:

1. Flexibility is the key

Gone are the 9-5 days, of sitting in a physical office. COVID-19 has changed the way most employers and employees think about work. On top of a pretty horrible pandemic, people have prioritise spending time with loved ones and having a good work-life balance.

If your company is able to offer this flexibility to employees (ahem, office workers), not only will this increase employee satisfaction but the hybrid approach still goes a long way in improving employee satisfaction, and therefore, retention.

Work flexibility is now shown to be one of the top things potential employees look for when applying for a company or a deciding factor when choosing one company over the other.

Some 60 percent of all employees prefer a mixture of in-office and remote work. Consider giving employees the flexibility to choose their split in a bid to retain them.

2. Give your employees more learning and development opportunities

After quitting a boss, usually, the next reason people tend to leave their company is stagnation or they see the difficulty of moving up or the lack of opportunities to grow at all.

Upskilling particularly in an area that serves employees better at work is beneficial for both team members and employers. Not only does the business benefit from extra skills and knowledge, but employees also are rewarded for it, be that through recognition or salary increases.

So think long-term for every employee. When hiring someone new or looking at your current role call employees always ensure that every employee in the company has a fair career progression opportunity based on their performance.

3. Employee benefits and perks they actually want

Many companies treat employee perks as something to tick off their job advertisement checklist. As soon as their new team member is onboarded, perks are the last thing they want to think about. That comes at a detriment to your retention.

Flexible schedules, parental leave, sick leave, and remote work are now not so much perks, as they are expectations and your policies and practices need to keep pace.

Wellness programs that include stress management and fitness are popular as is anything that promotes a healthy balance between work and home life. Stay connected to your employees’ needs and expectations and adjust your workplace for maximum engagement and morale.

Your people make up your business. Remember to show your employees appreciation and care; that’s the only way they’ll do the same.

About the Author:

Amy Miocevich is an Australian author of Very Good Marketing, director of her company Lumos Marketing and a mum. Amy has a plethora of business knowledge and experience helping individuals across all industries over her professional career. She has a deep and innate passion to help small businesses achieve their Big Hairy Audacious Goals, whatever they may be. When Amy isn’t busy working or waking up at 5 am to run, she is probably eating ramen or wanting to eat ramen. Say hi to Amy at amy@lumosmarketing.com.au.

“Here’s my two-week notice.” “I’m retiring” “I’m moving away!”

Familiar phrases business owners of all caliber (unfortunately) are used to hearing.

Life happens and people come and go, that’s natural and inevitable. This means your business should be equipped and designed to handle when life does happens, because it always does.

So imagine this: A beloved long-term employee is finally retiring, they have always been a star employee and knows your business almost as well as you do. This employee’s tenure and wealth of knowledge is undoubtedly the combination of the employee’s merits and your leadership. But what happens now?

Instead of celebrating a well-deserved retirement, you’re scrambling to figure out how the show will go on. What you need to do is get the encyclopedia living in this employee’s head into the hands of all of your employees.

Cue – implementing a knowledge transfer system!

So…what is knowledge transfer?

Knowledge transfer is an imperative and necessary part of any successful, well-oiled business. It is the process of transitioning critical information between different employees — like passing a torch. The senior members of your team share their insights and practical knowledge within the organisation so nothing is ever lost.

Knowledge transfer is the answer to all your worries. Want to go on holiday without worrying if your business is okay? Knowledge transfer.  What is the proper safety protocol when handling an incident? Knowledge transfer. Where’s the closest coffee shop? Knowledge transfer.

Keep knowledge consistent across your company, meaning everyone works together more efficiently.

An effective knowledge transfer system means that if your employees never have to worry about many grey areas when approaching any tasks or duties and that less experienced team members will have access to the valuable insight of seasoned experts, whether they get to mentor them or not. To streamline the process and lessen the chance of miscommunication, always try to make knowledge consistent. This can be done via refresher training of the company’s SOPs, visual aids (in person or online) or easy access to the company’s intranet that contains this knowledge.

Encourage knowledge sharing.

Ideally, knowledge sharing is already a part of your company culture. If that is not the case, it is your responsibility or your appointed GM to create a safe space for sharing and collaborating.

Encourage everyone to share what they know with one another by making it a company-wide expectation.

You can do so by making space for employees to share knowledge through:

• Team or department meetings.
• Emails. 
• Designated channels of communication. 
• A good old-fashioned suggestion box.

There’s no harm in offering incentives for sharing knowledge or proposing ideas! If employees stand to gain from sharing their knowledge with others, they’re more likely to do so.

Encouraging your employees to share knowledge is great, but it’s not authentic unless leaders model the behavior as well.

Make documenting knowledge a regular part of your business practices.

One of the biggest challenges of knowledge sharing is implementing a formal system for documenting that knowledge. Making knowledge transfer a part of your business practices is the best way to ensure information is never lost.

One way to get in the habit of documenting what’s important is by creating a knowledge base that all employees can access. This includes a company wiki, where your company can organize company knowledge, policies, and SOPs in one platform.

There are many tools you can use to make documenting knowledge easy (we use Notion!).

Losing someone valuable shouldn’t put a full stop to your operations.

Putting formal systems in place ensures that knowledge transfer happens while they’re still around, allowing you to avoid those sticky situations.

About the Author:

Amy Miocevich is an Australian author of Very Good Marketing, director of her company Lumos Marketing and a mum. Amy has a plethora of business knowledge and experience helping individuals across all industries over her professional career. She has a deep and innate passion to help small businesses achieve their Big Hairy Audacious Goals, whatever they may be. When Amy isn’t busy working or waking up at 5 am to run, she is probably eating ramen or wanting to eat ramen. Say hi to Amy at amy@lumosmarketing.com.au.

Imagine this: You have a small business and you still have time for yourself. Well, you don’t have to imagine it if you systemize your business. 

Whether you’re an entrepreneur that’s just starting out or a long-time business owner hoping to scale successfully, you need to systematize key areas of your business to support a ton of growth.

But why systematize your business? Well, growing your business and taking it to the next level can be done sustainably — or chaotically! 

If done chaotically, growth is unstable and doesn’t provide consistency, making for unhappy customers and employees. Often, a business that has grown without putting systems in place will be wildly inconsistent with its success — and that can be discouraging to everyone involved in the company. 

But if done sustainably (by systemizing your business for stable growth), it can provide long-lasting gains and continuous and consistent success. So, developing systems for your company is crucial to building a firm foundation for future, steady growth.

1. Determine which process documentation platform to use.

Your business processes must be accessible to all, easy to understand, and simple to follow. This means you’ll need something more versatile and robust than a Word document, physical binder, or webinar to record your business’ processes.

The best way to set up and store your business systems is to use a documentation platform. Here are the four things to look for in any process documentation platform:

1. Accessibility: Meaning, that your entire team can use the platform.
2. Simplicity: Learning how to use the platform shouldn’t take hours upon hours.
3. Supports all media types: You should be able to document processes using video, audio, written checklists, and even image files. Your chosen platform must support any necessary documentation format.
4. Permissions: Your team needs access to vital systems, but there may be additional documentation that is for certain “eyes only.” Your platform should allow you to determine which employees access what procedures and documentation.

2. Document existing systems.

Now that you have a place to store your systems, it’s time to document them. 

Determine the best format to use by documenting a few systems of your own and sharing the completed processes and procedures with your team. They can tell you what’s missing and help you determine the most appropriate documentation methods for your business. 

Then, make sure you delegate your documentation to the appropriate departments so they can capture the on-the-ground knowledge needed to get things done in a particular area. (Spoiler alert: you’ll find the most important departments in the next section.) 

3. Find holes that haven’t been systematized.

Run through the systems that you and your teams documented. Are there holes in your systems? Meaning, are there inconsistencies in any of these systems? Or, are there specific actions that each team member performs differently?

These are usually found in areas where your teams are having the most trouble — or where you consistently have to jump in to put out fires.

4. Build systems to fill any holes.

It can be tricky to document areas where one team member does things one way, and another performs completely different actions to solve the same problem.

In my years of experience as a business consultant, I’ve found the best way to determine the right business system for these types of actions. And that is: get every team member performing the work in one room and have them hash out the most effective process together.  

Here are some questions you can ask your team members:

What has worked best to handle this (job, issue, area)?

What was the result when you did it that way?

Why did that work?

Could it have been done in another way to get a more favorable outcome?

Once you’ve found the most successful actions from these questions, have the team document the process they’ve chosen. Then, have them run through it and see if their way works in practice. If it doesn’t, determine what steps are missing and add them in. After that, run through the system repeatedly until every aspect of the problem and/or job runs smoothly 

5. Perform a run-through.

Now that you have all areas in a department or business systematized, it’s time to test those systems. That starts with running through each process and procedure to ensure they work and are accessible.

During a run-through, some systems will start another process in a separate department. These systems must trigger the processes you’ve set up in that separate department. For example, the end of the sales process will start the scheduling or fulfillment process. Business systems often interact with each other so that interaction also needs to be tested.

Systemizing your business means putting yourself on the path to running the most successful business you can.

It gives your employees the space they need to breathe, while letting you take a step back (and maybe some much-needed time off) as the business processes take care of themselves.

About the Author:

Amy Miocevich is an Australian author of Very Good Marketing, director of her company Lumos Marketing and a mum. Amy has a plethora of business knowledge and experience helping individuals across all industries over her professional career. She has a deep and innate passion to help small businesses achieve their Big Hairy Audacious Goals, whatever they may be. When Amy isn’t busy working or waking up at 5 am to run, she is probably eating ramen or wanting to eat ramen. Say hi to Amy at amy@lumosmarketing.com.au.

Information overload is inevitable for your business – whether a customer or an employee. No one will know your business like you do and we tend to forget that (and that’s okay!)

Let’s add into the mix that everyone has different learning styles. Some people learn better watching a chef cook on TV, whereas others need to cook themselves to truly learn and understand the recipe.

And if you’re a business owner or leader, that means some employees will learn a process with a few verbal instructions and there will be some that need that extra it of support, hand-holding and repeating yourselves once, twice, a hundred times. You know the ones.

Sit back for a moment and imagine what it would be like if every task in your company was completed the same way, by every employee, every time. (Relax — we’re not referencing some dystopian factory of human automatons.)

Let’s imagine a perfect world – your business should be able to run smoothly without you. Every task done by every employee is completed the exact same way. Well, you don’t really have to imagine if you create a set of standard operating procedures (SOPs) for your business and team.

SOPs are a set of clearly written step-by-step instructions for a specific, complex routine business task. They help your employees take the guesswork out of the equation by breaking down how to perform a task with instructions on what to do and how to do it.

Yes, it does take a good chunk of time to create SOPs. They don’t yield immediate results but think of it as something you want to get out of the way ASAP. Just like doing your laundry, you COULD leave it for tomorrow but by next week you’ve got a menacing pile in the corner you don’t want to make eye contact with, instead of the pair of socks from Monday.

Not convinced about doing laundry or SOPs? Here’s a couple reasons why you should:

1. Your employees will know their role in your business and expectations that come with it.

Whether your employee has been then for 3 months or 3 years, everyone in your business should be on the same page. Especially with the operational procedures and preferences – from safety to dealing with an unhappy customer, SOPs will set the precedent for how employees can perform their job effectively and efficiently.

SOPs provide a checklist of sorts for your employee to understand what’s expected of them and the steps to complete their job successfully. This will help streamline their workflow and in turn waste less company time (and money) and through repeated follow-throughs, your employee will increase efficiency. Allowing you to dedicate their time to support your business in other ways.

Not only that, it gives your employees a sense of independence and autonomy as SOPs will reduce the time for them to seek approval and guidance from you or other senior employees. With an SOP, they’ll have a step-by-step guide that they can refer to at any time.

2. Increase your business’ consistency and efficiency.

A diverse team is always a great thing for a business. The mixpot of experiences and ideas are the foundations of great innovations and collaboration projects.

However, with a diverse team comes with a diverse skill set, approach and result for tasks and processes. Though overall a mixed team will always yield a positive outcome, in the case of customer expectations and quality’s sake, when delivering a product or a service, you need things done the same way every time.

When providing a clear how-to to everyone in the company, the outcomes tend to be more predictable and reliable. Consistency will improve the customer experience and boosts quality assurance.

Customer experience aside, there are also things you must consider such as safety and compliance. Human error is inevitable, but given a detailed SOP will reduce the chance in any given process.

Though nothing can always be perfect, all the time, providing true and tested procedures will create a safer environment for everyone.

While there’s always a possibility that something can go wrong, a clear and tested set of SOPs can, generally speaking, make a process safer. Of course, this assumes the SOPs are always up-to-date and as clear as possible.

3. Identify your business’ bottlenecks and measure employee performance

The beauty of standardisation is that you can find what’s out of place, what’s not working or a different outcome as occurred pretty quickly.

In this case, you can decide if this approach is innovative or redundant. This will either reaffirm or reject that your SOPs are of the best quality they can be.

For performance measures, creating a guide of steps and expectations (i.e. core competencies) it’ll become easier for you to assess your employees’ performance and identify gaps that need filling. This will allow you the opportunity to build on your employees’ abilities or even uncover underutilised skill sets. This creates a supportive environment, where your employees feel like it’s okay to make a mistake as long as they grow from it. This sense of accountability will cultivate trust between you and your employee.

Accountability allows others to rely on each other, like meeting deadlines, doing the assigned task and feeling comfortable enough to approach a co-worker or manager for help.

4. Saves time and money during employee training.

Streamlining is everything for a small business, or really any business. You’ve got a great service or product but if you’re not efficient, then the former doesn’t matter much.

SOPs will help counter the unpredictability of a business. Let’s say you hire an employee in March (a slow season), you’re able to take extra time to answer any lingering questions and let them slowly transition into the business. Great. Good for them.

But what about the employee you hire in mid-November? Where you don’t even have time to show them the toilet because you’re too busy with customer leads (yay!) and requests. It’s easy to leave them and let them sink or swim. Typically, that scenario can go one of two ways. They somehow get the hang of it enough to create a mediocre output but not great or they quit. Both options aren’t that great.

When there is a set of SOPs available in one place, it makes sure employee training and management are efficient and cost-effective. You are essentially creating a library of resources, that can act as an encyclopedia for your business. Not only for new employees but for long-term employees in need of new training for updated procedures.

Never again will you need to sacrifice time, money or quality for the purpose of the training.
This accessibility creates transparency that can make a new employee’s training experience a positive one, setting them up for success in the long run. And that can help your established employees achieve consistency faster, perform better, and step into their autonomy by knowing what’s expected of them – whilst preventing organisational failures.

Remember: As your company grows, technology changes and time passes – it is important to always let your SOPs reflect that. Make sure they are maintained and up to date.

Here are a few of the most common maintenance issues you’ll want to keep in mind when you create and maintain a set of SOPs:

• Lacking history such as annotating the SOPs with the correct version number and date to show the trajectory of procedural changes.
• Absence of procedural changes.
• Missing page numbers and other helpful visual cues and formatting.
• Failure to include a summary of changes from one version of the SOPs to the next.
• Failure to provide easy access to employees.

About the Author:

Amy Miocevich is an Australian author of Very Good Marketing, director of her company Lumos Marketing and a mum. Amy has a plethora of business knowledge and experience helping individuals across all industries over her professional career. She has a deep and innate passion to help small businesses achieve their Big Hairy Audacious Goals, whatever they may be. When Amy isn’t busy working or waking up at 5 am to run, she is probably eating ramen or wanting to eat ramen. Say hi to Amy at amy@lumosmarketing.com.au.

SEO seems the most common marketing jargon that gets thrown around by marketing-experts and novices alike. But what really is it? Or more important what can it do for YOUR business. 

There is so much moving parts in a business, particularly a small business. Let’s be honest, if Bob hasn’t paid the invoice and your supplier has some shipping issues, SEO marketing is the last of your worries.

It is already intimidating for small business owners to navigate marketing. Here’s the basics so you know the ABCs of SEOs.

What is SEO?
It stands for Search Engine Optimisation. To break it down even more ‘Search Engine’ essentially refers to Google (or any other search engine you use) and the ‘Optimisation’ really refers to the ranking in which your website appears on Google.

For example, if you were to search ‘soft drink’, Woolworths is one of the first results that show up = Good SEO. But if, I go on the 5th page of search results I see The Reject Shop = Not great SEO. There are some caveats such as local SEO, authority sites etc. But on a surface level that is essentially what SEO refers to.

Below are some of the basic and essential things you need to know to improve your SEO:

1. Do keyword research and use it on your website

Setting up your website and managing it already feels like a passion project. It’s a hub to showcase your products and services, this is your first step.

Now it’s time for keyword research. Try to think of it as hashtags but higher-level. Hashtags allow people browsing filter for specific information and content. It is a bridging point to help your business be found by the right people.

When doing keyword research, ideally you will need to do one for each page. It is imperative you truly understand how potential customers are searching for businesses like yours. Knowing the phrases and keywords they are searching for while looking for your product or service, you can then integrate this into your site.

There are 2 main ways you can do this: 1) brainstorming the words yourself or 2) using an online analytics tool to help you decide which keywords to focus on.

Using the keywords in your URL is most important, and should also feature in the page title, meta title, and sprinkled throughout your web’s content every 100-150 words.

2. Know where your customers look for content 

Cater your SEO for your market. Though it seems more beneficial to cast a big net in the ocean and hope for the best, it would be better for the fisherman to check the weather, use the right bait and go at the right time to catch 20 red snappers instead of getting a lot of blowfishes and seaweed with maybe 1 or 2 snappers. 

Depending on what kind of business you have will determine your approach. For example, if you’re a brick-and-mortar store that sells mountain bikes and bike accessories, the majority of your customers are probably not checking TikTok or Instagram accounts to decide to buy from you or not. 

They’re probably looking at your Google reviews, online forums or blog from a local online bike enthusiast. Then local SEO should be the priority. If you’re an e-commerce website, then think a little bigger. 

When you know what content resonates with your customers – whether it’s a TikTok video or a long-form review on someone’s blog – you win customers by creating content that establishes you as an expert in regard to your products and services. 

Content is one of Google’s top three ranking factors and time has shown again and again that customers are hungry for information. Show your customers just why they should choose you.

3. Remember Google ranks the pages, not websites

So what does that mean? Google focuses more on the individual pages of your websites than your overall website. Again, if you’re short for time, the best bang for your buck is optimising individual pages with great detail versus broadly doing it across your website.

Yes, it is tedious. And yes it is an ongoing process. And yes, you CAN pay an SEO expert or an agency to do paid traffic with Google AdWords, Facebook ads, etc., but once you stop paying, the traffic stops (and you’re probably short of hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars. Money that could be well spent somewhere else).

A little help never hurt anybody, traffic is indeed part of Google’s algorithm to help rank your website, but know that good help is hard to find and most of the help is pretty pricey.

Much like a gym membership, SEO is a long-term investment strategy for you and your business. The truth is very few small business owners do it (or care), but small fixes and minimal time effort can still contribute to a positive impact. Much like going to the gym, you might hop on a bike for 10 minutes at a 3 resistance, but you’re still doing much better than the guy whose on his couch eating Maccas. With time and consistency, you might not even realise until a year later your pants are a little lose and your jaws looking a little bit sharper. 

Like the old saying goes, good things come to those who wait. It can take several months to see the fruits of your labor, but the end results will speak for themselves.

About the Author:

Amy Miocevich is an Australian author of Very Good Marketing, director of her company Lumos Marketing and a mum. Amy has a plethora of business knowledge and experience helping individuals across all industries over her professional career. She has a deep and innate passion to help small businesses achieve their Big Hairy Audacious Goals, whatever they may be. When Amy isn’t busy working or waking up at 5 am to run, she is probably eating ramen or wanting to eat ramen. Say hi to Amy at amy@lumosmarketing.com.au.

Managing social media can be overwhelming, to say the least. There are a ton of moving parts. But – there is no denying in a post-COVID 2022 world, that it is something most small businesses need to think about.

With every hindrance and nuance that comes with social media also comes with a plethora of reasons why it’s great: 

• It can create an emotional connection with customers and establish customer loyalty. 
• Social media creates social proof credibility in consumers’ minds, especially if your target demographic is on the younger end of the spectrum.
• It will elevate your company, making a name for themselves in the industry.
• Promoting your business will help raise awareness (leads) which will eventuate to increased sales.
• Social media is one of the (if not the most) inexpensive way to reach audiences who may not be familiar with the company or product that they offer.

So what now? If you want to be successful in social media then you need to do more than just publish your content and hope that people will see it. In order to leverage your social platforms there are few things that you can do: 

1. Content plan

The basis of any good social media content is having a solid content plan. In your content plan you should decide on a few key things:

• Posting frequency – how often you want to post to each platform (1-3 times a week)
• Original content vs Curated content – decide at what balance you would like to make original content and content that is reshared from users of your product/services or other similar businesses to you
• Content Pillars – When discussing the social media platforms with my clients we set ‘content pillars’ (about 4-5) as a bare minimum and make sure our content adheres to one of these pillars. This also acts as a guide you can continuously refer to when you are stuck on what to post.

For example, a business that sells health food items targeted toward individuals who want to lose weight or those that want new foods to supplement their healthy lifestyle. Their content pillars may be:

• Education – Content that highlights the health benefits of the products, ingredient highlights
• User-generated content – Before/after weight loss photos of customers, customers eating/using their products
• Product – Professional photography of products, showcasing new products
• Memes/pop culture – Making graphics of products based on trending topics or memes

2. Create a Scheduled Content Calendar

You should be at least a week ahead of your social media posts and have 2-3 posts a week if possible. A content calendar will give you a high-level view of all your business branding or ‘aesthetic’. Essentially the first impression potential and current customers have.

Once you’ve developed a content calendar, take advantage of inexpensive (even free) tools out there such as Planoly or Later. These tools make it easy to schedule content so if you only have a few hours a week to devote to social media, you can schedule all content for that week and not have to think about it again.

3. Schedule in Bulk

Scheduling content in bulk will save you a lot of time, I suggest doing it in a month’s increment. A solid 1-2 hours is sufficient enough to schedule your content, try blocking off the same time every 2 weeks or on a monthly basis.

4. Hashtag Strategy

Creating a document (or even on your Notes app) containing relevant hashtags for your business is an easy way to expand your reach beyond just your immediate followers. By using hashtags you can start to tap into and engage with new conversations on social media. Hashtags allow social media sites and users to categorise content, in addition to making your social posts more discoverable.

I recommend having 4-5 categories with at least 10-15 hashtags under each. For example: You are posting a picture of customer using your product or service you would have a category for “Product” and under it will be things such as #smallbusiness #perthisok #supportlocal. If you post a quote and have a category for “Quotes” you would have hashtags such as #motivationmonday #inspiration etc.

Having these hashtags on hand will save you a lot of time as you can simply copy and paste for each appropriate post category.

5. Visuals!

We humans are visual creatures, and social media is a reflection of that. However, finding images that are high quality and adhere to your business’s image can be tough. But more often than not, it’s often the most important aspect of creating good social content. Don’t have the money to shell out on Photoshop? No problem. At Lumos Marketing we absolutely LOVE Canva – an absolute god-sent, especially for small business owners who are a little be design-impaired. Social media is built on the basis of first impressions and the best way to do that is to create an aesthetically appealing and cohesive feed.

Below are examples of curated Instagram feeds from Keep Keto and Brightside Coffee and how from a quick glance give an impression of an enjoyable and enticing aesthetic, on top of it following a reoccurring theme of specific posts and content types.

No matter the size (big or small) or stage (stating out or a veteran) your business is in, the digital landscape – particularly social media – shows no means of slowing down. Your social media presents an effective way to boost your leads and convert them into customers. The digital world is your oyster! 

About the Author:

Amy Miocevich is an Australian author of Very Good Marketing, director of her company Lumos Marketing and a mum. Amy has a plethora of business knowledge and experience helping individuals across all industries over her professional career. She has a deep and innate passion to help small businesses achieve their Big Hairy Audacious Goals, whatever they may be. When Amy isn’t busy working or waking up at 5 am to run, she is probably eating ramen or wanting to eat ramen. Say hi to Amy at amy@lumosmarketing.com.au.

Email marketing can help you foster better customer relationships and increase sales at an affordable cost.

In 2021, it was reported that email users (or those who had email) exceeded 4 billion, with the predicted user growth rate to be 3% or around 100 million more each year in 2022.

Interesting right? Well here’s a summary of other email marketing statistics for 2021-2022:

• 89% of email marketers use newsletters.
• More emails were opened on mobile (37%) than on desktop (30%).
• Nearly 47% of email users open commercial messages via Gmail.
• Marketers send the most emails (22.2%) on Thursday.
• The ideal weekly limit is up to 5 emails.
• There’s a 5% higher chance for inbox placement after 12 pm.
• Personalised emails have a 29% higher open rate.
• The unsubscribe rate was higher in Australian emails.
• Australians read food-related emails 2x the global average.
• Email marketing is still the second most efficient way to gain new customers.

Well, what does that mean for you and your business?

A few things.

Living in a post-COVID world, technology, trends, and best practices have changed tenfold. Keep reading on how you can maintain best practices for your email marketing for 2022 based on the latest statistics.

Statistic 1: The average open rate (OR) in Australia is 20.6%

What does it mean: The % of subscribers on your mailing list who received your email and opened it.

Best practices to improve your open rate (OR):

• Comply with email spam regulations
  • Make sure the email includes sender name, email and has an unsubscribe link or it may be marked as junk mail. 
• Have a compelling/subject line
  • Use humour, emojis, ask a question, personalising with recipient’s name when possible.
• Always fill your email’s preheader text for the email preview
  • Write a little blurb for what’s to come or what the email contains.
• Use email analytics and find optimal day/time to send your content
  • Utilise your email automation tool and look at analytics to see when your clients are the most active.

Statistic 2: The average click-to-open rate (CTOR) in Australia is 14.8%

What does it mean: Your CTOR is calculated based on who opened your email and then went on to click a link in the email.

For example: If you sent 100 people an email but only 50 people opened it. Of those 50 people, 15 clicked on the link in your email. Your CTOR would be 30%.

Best practices to improve your click-to-open rate (CTOR):

• Make it simple and use only 1 or 2 call-to-actions
  • When you’re asking your reader to do 1000001 things, they’ll do none of them.
• Make your email short and sweet
  • If you want to speak more deeply about a certain topic, direct them to a blog post on LinkedIn or your website.
• Use strong visuals over long-bodied text to convey your message
  • Your readers will get the gist faster and maintain their attention span.
• Optimise your email for mobile
  • Always make sure the email reads well across multiple devices. 47% of people of all people across demographics use a mobile application for checking their email.  

Statistic 3: The average bounce rate in Australia is 1%

What does this mean: The bounce rate measures the percentage of how often your emails get “bounced” back to you. This could be because the email address provided was fake, the address isn’t active anymore, the recipient’s inbox is full, or their server hasn’t loaded.

Note: A ‘hard’ bounce rate is permanent like a fake address. A ‘soft’ bounce rate is temporary that can be solved like a server problem.

Best practices to improve your bounce rate:

• Double opt-in
  • When customers subscribe to your emails you can ask for a double opt-in such as a follow-up email to confirm or verify their email before they get added to your mailing list.
• Use reputable email marketing platforms and business email 
  • Sending mass emails from a Gmail or Yahoo account will get you zapped by spam filters.
• Take inventory and regularly review your email list
  • Do a sweep of your mailing list regularly and check to see which email addresses are a repeat problem and manually remove them.

Statistic 4: The average unsubscribe rate in Australia is 0.20%

What does this mean: How many people are opting out of your emails

Best practices to improve your unsubscribe rate:

• Limit your emails 
  • Make sure you are not bombarding your customers (2 emails a week max).
• Not enough emails
  • You are not sending enough and they forget about your business – then you show up again and they view you as a random annoyance
• Set the expectations and be upfront
  • It doesn’t line up with the expectations they had when subscribing. Always be clear from the start when they first join your mailing list, what content is coming their way and how often
• Ask for feedback when they unsubscribe
  • To explore more why people are unsubscribing, ask for feedback through a quick survey to pinpoint any issues

Below is a table to show you some useful email benchmarks by industry from Campaign Monitor:

About the Author:

Amy Miocevich is an Australian author of Very Good Marketing, director of her company Lumos Marketing and a mum. Amy has a plethora of business knowledge and experience helping individuals across all industries over her professional career. She has a deep and innate passion to help small businesses achieve their Big Hairy Audacious Goals, whatever they may be. When Amy isn’t busy working or waking up at 5 am to run, she is probably eating ramen or wanting to eat ramen. Say hi to Amy at amy@lumosmarketing.com.au.