5 Easy Steps to Revamp or Start Your Business (+ a free printable!)
Let me start by saying that I’m NOT one of those people saying, “You have to make the most of this quarantine. Be productive. Learn a new language. Reorganize your house. Try a new hobby. Plant a garden.” etc etc etc. If you need to use this time to rest and recharge… I FEEL YA. If those ideas seem like fun, then by all means learn French and plant herbs in your backyard. There is no right way or wrong way to spend your time during a global pandemic. Unless of course you’re not washing your hands and you’re not social distancing…then yeah, you’re doin’ it wrong.
What I AM saying is…if you DO feel like being productive and starting/revamping your own biz— do it!! Nothing like a global crisis to make you realize what you actually want to pursue in life, right??
Taking the leap to start (or refresh) your business can seem daunting even in the most ideal of circumstances. There are so many things to consider and it can be overwhelming. The tips I’m about to lay out can be done whenever you have free time on your hands — whether that’s right now, three months from now, or next year.
1) STEP ONE: DEFINE YOUR BRAND — This is the most important part! Whether you’re starting a completely new business, or revamping an existing one, you need to have a vision of what you want. Things like your logo and brand colors are important, but dive deeper! What’s your brand mission? Who’s your ideal client? What services are you offering? Answering questions like this will ensure that you’re creating a brand that not only looks good, but also speaks to your goals. To make it easier, I created a FREE Branding Roadmap + Checklist that you can download HERE.
2) STEP TWO: CREATE A LOT OF NEW CONTENT — This step will help with all the rest of the steps in this post :) I’ve been trying to take advantage of this as much as I can while in quarantine! You’ll need content for your website, Instagram, email newsletters, blog posts..the list goes on! Once your business is up and running it can be hard to make time for creating content, so I like to take a bunch of pictures in one day. You can take pictures of your products, of your workspace, little corners of your home, food + drink pics, and lots and lots of selfies for those #fridayintroductions ;).
3) STEP THREE: CREATE (OR UPDATE) YOUR WEBSITE —Having your own website instantly legitimizes your business. However, if your website isn’t great..it can actually hurt you more than it can help you. So make sure you set up a site that is easy to navigate and looks good. If you’re not sure where to start — I personally love using Squarespace! It’s super easy to use and I love that I can get my domain name and website plan all in one place. Recently I’ve been building out more and more websites for my branding clients and I forgot how much I love it!
But I know that web design can be really overwhelming and downright frustrating at times. So if you want to DIY your website but you need a little help, I have the perfect resource for you! Erica at Big Cat Creative makes the CUTEST Squarespace templates for an incredible price. Custom web design is totally worth it in my opinion…but it can cost you thousands of dollars which can be tough to swing when you’re just started out. Big Cat Creative’s DIY templates are only $150. Yeah, UH-mazing. I seriously cannot recommend these templates enough for DIY business owners! The process is so easy and Erica gives you an easy-to-follow video tutorial for every single step of the way. Check out all her awesome templates HERE.
4) STEP FOUR: LEVEL UP YOUR INSTA GAME — Instagram is probably the first thing someone looks at when they hear of a new brand. Here are some areas you can focus on when Instagramming for your business:
• Make sure your account is set to ‘business’ instead of ‘personal’ (duh, lol)
• Your bio: make sure to include a little bit about you/your biz, your location, your website, and your email. Use bullet points/emojis so its easier to read.
• Your feed: a cohesive feed is always a plus! It can be hard to get the hang of curating an aesthetic feed but I use Planoly to help me plan and automatically post my pics!
• Your highlight stories: these are a great way to be show your personality, be informative (think: FAQ highlight), showcase your product/best-sellers, and more! Make sure your highlight covers are consistent (i.e.: all photos or all icons or all solid color, etc)
• Be active: make sure you’re utilizing allll of Insta; post on your feed, IG stories, Reels, and IGTV. This one is really hard! I struggle myself with showing up on IGTV, Reels, and stories, but I’m workin’ on it!
5) STEP FIVE: CREATE SOME FREEBIES FOR YOUR AUDIENCE — Have you ever heard of the 80/20 rule? Basically, 80% of your content should be SERVING your audience and only 20% should be SELLING to your audience. You can ‘serve’ your audience by educating them, entertaining them, or giving them some useful freebies! Hey, remember when I plugged one of my freebies in step one? Some ideas for freebies can be: worksheets, recipes, tutorials, downloads, cute wallpapers, the list goes on! Extra points if your freebie relates to your business. For example, I specialize in branding and logo design, so my Branding Roadmap + Checklist freebie relates to that aspect of my business. You can also use freebies to build your email newsletter list, but that’s a topic for another day.
I hope this post was helpful! I know it can be so so scary to rebrand or start from scratch! Obviously there is a LOT more that goes into a business, but I wanted to focus on “easy” things you can start doing right now in your free time. If you tackle these steps, your brand will be lookin’ good and you’ll be motivated to tackle all the rest on your biz to-do list!