With so much PR and marketing advice floating around online, it’s important that you stick to the most essential information.
Focusing on “the essential” can bring peace of mind—and can help you develop your business.
Business growth is not necessarily about getting more of everything. Instead, think of it as focusing your efforts to get more meaningful results.
Here are five ways to boost your business online:
1. Step up your social media game.
When marketers want to improve their brand’s presence online, they usually look to add a channel to their repertoire.
Although starting a Pinterest account seems productive, there’s little point in investing your time and energy into a channel that you don’t enjoy using or don’t know enough about.
Instead, dedicate more time to the platforms you already use.
If you’re actively sharing on Facebook but not using Facebook groups or ads, make those your next steps. If you’re tweeting a lot, but aren’t using buffer to automate your tweets and reach users across multiple time zones, you’re probably not maximizing your engagement.
If you’re using Pinterest but aren’t seeing results, your next step could be taking a free Pinterest course or maybe a workshop at your local library or community college.
2. Repurpose your content.
This approach is beneficial if you’re overextended on a project or short on time.
When you write a series of blog posts, you can repurpose some of them as free opt-ins for white papers or parts of an e-newsletter.
RELATED: Free guide: 10 ways to improve your writing today. Download now.
If you’re creative, you probably don’t want to use old content everywhere, but you should feel free to reuse your best work when you’re in a time crunch.
To start, ask yourself strategic questions such as, “Can I turn this series into something I can sell?” or, “How can I use this important piece of content in my welcome emails?”
The right questions can bring countless opportunities.
3. Package your services.
If you run a client-based business, you know the challenges of bringing in sustainable income. Luckily, there are ways to turn the famine into feast.
I recently talked with a woman who runs a copywriting business. She’s creative, but she struggles to get new business. I advised her to package her services, which means not to give clients an hourly rate of services but, instead, to offer “bundles.”
You shouldn’t just put your services on your website and hope clients will find them. A better approach—as suggested in a recent webinar—is launching your services as you would launch a product. Try debuting a series of blog posts or emails as a way to introduce yourself to a new opportunity.
4. Streamline your processes.
So, what can you streamline? Start with your social media strategy, your sales channels or your list-building and networking.
Here’s how I streamlined my list-building process so it gets me a dozen new subscribers every day.
Most people find me on Twitter, where they can also find a link to my website. Once they’re on my website, the home page sends them to any of three places:The Blueprint, my blog and the free guide. If they go to The Blueprint, they’ll be directed to my coaching page. If they read my blog posts, there will be a link to my opt-in offer (free goodies for creative rebels), and if they go to the free guide, they’ll see a sales page with a sign-up.
Every step of that process has a next step. You can achieve this by anticipating a potential client’s needs.
Many prospective clients will visit your “About me” before committing to an opinion. Make sure to introduce yourself in a way that makes them want to know more.
5. Invest in your business.
If you don’t reinvest some of the money you make, your business probably won’t grow. The marketing and PR climate is very competitive, and it’s important to come up with ways to stand out.
I reinvest 50 percent of whatever I make on outsourcing tasks that I can’t do alone, or on improving something in my business that lacks.
For example, you can budget for social media tools (Buffer, Edgar, Tailwind), email marketing ( Mailchimp or Convertkit), improving your website’s look (Squarespace), building your mailing list (LeadPages), and podcasting and webinars (microphone and webcam). You could also hire a virtual or physical assistant.
As online entrepreneurs, we can’t just be creative and rebellious; we must also be savvy. It’s important to be strategic with your investments.
Violeta Nedkova is a writer, coach and entrepreneur. Connect with her on Twitter . A version of this article originally appeared on her blog.