In 2020, many of us digital creators got very busy at first as many small businesses rushed to get online or improve their outdated online presence since all their customers would be stuck at home for a while. Who knows what the future holds but even with areas that have lifted restrictions how can you plan to not just thrive now but thrive if anything like this happens again?
A one-woman creative agency is happy to provide creative services to many brands worldwide. Operating out of Wausau, Wisconsin, and Houghton, Michigan; Unglitch.io is tired of boring design, outdated websites, and terrible marketing that wastes clients’ money. Unglitch.io also helps create and build brands that have a dream of one day becoming a publicly traded company and whose goal cements itself as their professional brand launches. Jacquelyn Tolksdorf, founder and creative guru at Unglitch.io shares her tips on how to grow your business both post-pandemic and in case there are any other disasters that hit our society.
Where is your website?Â
Don’t have a website! Start there! It’s 2021! People who rely on just Facebook and feel they don’t need a website are risking the bulk of their audience when customers can’t google your industry in your area to find you. You need to be found online. A beautiful website that matches your brand’s glowing vibe is a sign you are a professional business. Not someone struggling and only using Facebook to give your customers and potential customers info about your business.Â
Start selling onlineÂ
Have a website? Great! Adding eCommerce is a great way to continue making money during or post-pandemic. You know your niche. What can you sell online to match it? Are you an esthetician? Buy wholesale on Faire and build up your online shop with unique products that not everyone is selling! Are you a florist!? Start making Build Your Own Floral Arrangement Kits to mail to customers at home. You can figure out how to craft these DIY kits no matter what niche you are like a baker, pizzeria, and more! Make it easy-as-pie for someone to hop on your website and buy whatever you want to sell!
Grow your SEOÂ
A beautiful website and killer inventory for your online store mean absolutely nothing if no one can find it. In this day in age, every website needs an equal amount, if not more work done on its Search Engine Optimization than web development. On-page SEO, Technical SEO, Local SEO, and Off-Site SEO are the four pillars of this industry, and hiring a specialist to check off all the required tasks to please Google is crucial.
Assess your social media Â
Social media is great, but what happens when people aren’t on Facebook as much anymore or if Instagram makes a giant change (example: July’s new update for Instagram and their recent push to have users do video over still images. You can still do just images for your Instagram grid, the algorithm will just eventually bury it.). For the time being use social media to your advantage and use it often. Don’t like going on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and other ones? They all have a great purpose as a tool for promotion. Either get posting or hire a professional to run your page!
Overcome & adaptÂ
Now the first four were all technical things you need for your business. To really be successful at any time, we need to be able to go into life with the confidence that low times aren’t going to overwhelm us. We need to know that no matter what challenges we face, we’re going to be okay in the end. That’s the sort of confidence that drives the most successful people forward in everything that they do. No matter if it’s during a pandemic or post-pandemic we need to keep this in mind. Of course, to get to that state of mind, we need to adopt strategies.Â
Interestingly, when you follow this line of reasoning to its conclusion, you discover that to thrive in business isn’t actually the money or the prestige that comes after years of hard work. It’s actually having the mental fortitude to go through the process of all the hard stuff in the first place. Business leaders are perhaps the most successful at all because they are able to find ways to manage their suffering and enjoy their lives at the same time. They can tolerate a high level of pain without allowing it to get to them on a fundamental level. Ask any business owner who has run their business for more than 10 years and they will say it was a rollercoaster but worth the ride.
