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10 Ways To Work From Home, Digitally!

At the time of writing this article, the entire world is going into isolation and social distancing to fight off a global pandemic. People are concerned about more than their health, everyone is watching the economy very closely. Places of social gathering are being asked to close their doors. And if you’re a restaurant, salon, hotel, spa, or shop owner, you’re very concerned about your business and employees who rely on it. 

While many programs will be put in place to protect the economy it may be time to start thinking about how your current business model operates and what opportunities you might be missing to diversify those operations and still meet demand. Also now is a great time to start thinking about your digital doorway. 

It’s becoming more common to see people working from home within the administrative verticals of business. But for most business owners, operating a small, medium or large business from home isn’t the norm for you. As society continues to change, so are the ways we conduct business. If it looks like you’re about to have some time off work, look on the bright side – maybe it’s time to tackle that list of things you know you have been putting off.   

 So how do we do that? With shutdowns of restaurants, salons, hotels, shops, events and conventions – making money for your business has probably become more difficult or will be in the future. The point of this blog is to inform our audience on how to manage your business, virtually as much as you can.  This can mean taking care of your digital doorway by writing blogs, implementing industry-leading SEO techniques, educating your audience, building your community, or adopting e-commerce options. 

As digital marketers, it’s our job to enlighten every small, medium, or large business owner; supervisor, or manager, with opportunities for growth that are easy, lucrative & safe. Continue reading if you want to discover 10 things you can do while working from home!

10. Write More Articles

If you’re wondering what you can do at home for your business, consider blogging. Blog articles are great for on-site SEO purposes and can be very beneficial to your brand. If you’re in an industry that has recently stopped all business due to the COVID-19 outbreak, you can pass the time by writing down how you feel on relevant topics in your industry. Use this opportunity to educate your audience and set your brand up for success by curating blogs which build trust, authority, and can compete with other leading brands in your industry.

A little bit of down time might be exactly what you need right now to dig deep into that creative mind of yours and share with the world that which you are passionate about. Blogging doesn’t need to be a solo project either. If some of your staff are on paid leave, commission them to get on board and start creating content that they are passionate about.

Blogging - a great way to work from home

9. Sell Online

If this time doesn’t make you rethink your business ecommerce strategy as an owner, then maybe you should rethink again. With the constant need of products and services around the world, ecommerce sites like amazon & ebay are running out of supplies; superstores such as walmart are no longer taking delivery orders. So what’s there to do when you can’t shop in stores? Well we tend to shop online. But, when big brands like Amazon or Walmart fall short, what is the world to do but to go where the products are. With platforms like woocommerce and shopify, any business owner can turn their brick & mortar store into a booming ecommerce website. Monetizing your services is never a bad thing, and if you can sell them online – even better. Adding an ecommerce option to your business will not only help you gain more revenue, your products or services can be offered to not only locals in your community, but everyone around the world. Ecommerce isn’t the only alternative option to making money, email us here to get more advice.

And now is a better time than ever to think local. Ecommerce doesn’t have to be a global endeavour. You can still support your community with online options as long as you can institute a sensible means of distribution. Local distribution is always the most affordable and if your business has survived this long with brick and mortar local customers, it certainly could survive with local online distribution.

8. Catch up on Organization

As a business owner, manager, or supervisor, keeping everything together under stressful times can be in fact, equally stressful. During a typical work week, managing finances, responsibilities, delegating tasks & overseeing employees is very time-consuming. It’s natural to overlook the smallest things, so use this downtime to organize your business. From your website to your books, take this opportunity and organize all your upcoming tasks; create a content calendar or go over & revise your business plan. Highlight critical areas that need attention, revise your emergency operation plan or finances for the future. Even organizing your workstation, deleting unnecessary files and defragmenting your computer is a start to a more organized workflow.

Organize your office

7. Work on your Visibility

Search Engine Optimization for your business should never be overlooked. Many business owners don’t understand what search engine optimization is and therefore do not do it. These business owners won’t see the damage until they type their business into search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing. When they realize that their website is on the 23rd page, some may wonder, is the internet broken? No, that’s your brand not having good SEO practices. Doesn’t matter if you have a great aesthetic, big audience, or super services/products. If your digital doorway isn’t optimized for search engines, no one will come in. 

One of the biggest reasons we are so successful selling SEO as a service here at Center Stage Social is because it’s very time consuming. We spend a lot of man hours with our partners producing the many deliverables in the strategy. But with a little bit of down time and an internet connection you can jump on youtube and start learning about SEO. What you will find is that it is very exciting to see what components go into increasing your visibility online. This knowledge may even help think of creative ways in your day to incorporate content into your strategy. Make sure your website is keyword enriched, optimized for search engines and voice search, and has all the proper seo techniques implemented among your website.

6. Reputation Management

Let’s say you own a restaurant, and the service that day from an employee wasn’t that great. When a client leaves a bad review and it’s left as such, the issue could never be resolved and the review remains negative.

Reputation management isn’t about erasing negative reviews, it’s about listing and responding to the voice of your customers. It’s about personal growth. 

This is important for any business because people love reviews and a bad review speaks volumes, especially when it’s left unanswered. Silence is your admission of guilt when it comes to your online reputation. 

 Reputation management can be easy for business owners to do, if handled the right away. Remember, the client is always right, however sometimes, that can be a tough pill to swallow. Not everyone can deal with a crisis, moreover, that’s why there’s systems put in place to handle an irate customer. If your business isn’t equipped with any crisis management plan – this is the perfect time to create one.  Reputation management isn’t just about responding to a negative review, it’s also about building relationships with current & prospective customers, building trust among your audience, and making sure their needs are met. Doing this will not only maintain your great reputation but keep your clients and your wallet happy. To learn how to respond to a bad review, click here.

Managing your business reputation online

5. Learn

Whatever industry you may be in, furthering your education is never a bad thing – We can never learn too much. If you’re working from home and find yourself looking for something to do, try discovering topics related to your field and implement what you learned into your business model. As digital marketers, our world is forever evolving, so we’re constantly learning new techniques and skills in order to make our clients happy & our services premier. As business owners, it’s our responsibility to give our clientele a safe, fun, efficient service or product. 

If you have a small business or deal with consumers personally, it’s just as pertinent that you perfect your craft. For instance, if you own a hair salon, you can use this time at home to discover new styling techniques, environmentally friendly hair products, etc. The possibilities are endless, but it’s common to find little time to go back to school, take a night course, or even watch a YouTube tutorial.

4.Email Marketing

Many business owners fail when it comes to email marketing. Now’s the time to set up email campaigns to inform your clients on things going on within your business. Top brands like Walmart, and Nike send out thousands of emails a year to inform customers on deals, brand news, special offers and more. This is the perfect reason why you should be utilizing email marketing techniques in your business’s digital marketing plan. Marketing automation platforms and services like: mautic and powertic.com, can make email campaigns and data collection easy for any business owner of any size. If you ever wondered how these big businesses are sending mass emails, it’s marketing automation.

3. Inform

Teaching your skills to current and prospective customers can elevate your brand as an authority in your industry. If you own a niche business like a permanent makeup salon, you can teach your skills to anyone in the world, online! You can even monetize these courses so you can make money all year long. Simple YouTube tutorials are great for brand awareness, SEO, and will help your website rank higher on google. Make graphics that are evergreen, which can be shared on social media platforms like instagram, facebook, or twitter . Not only will you be informing your audience on your services, products, skills, etc.; your business will remain relevant on digital platforms while you are working from home.

Become an instructor or teach a skill while working from home

2. Vlogging

Video blogging may sound similar to number 3 on our list, however it’s a category of it’s own for a reason. Vlogging or Video blogging can be for anyone, business owner, manager, employee, or even a brand ambassador. Topics for vlogging can be about anything you want and can be on any social platform likeYouTube, snapchat or tiktok. Talking about your personal life or things that are happening in your business is great for vlog content – it can be stretched out over a period of time and can attract new clientele. Vlogging not only can up your brand, it can build trust between you and your audience.

1 . Call Us!

If you need figuring out to maneuver from your home office, feel free to give us a call @ 613-869 2587, Or Email us at info@centerstagesocial.com. We can help you digitally assess your business and determine what you can do to improve your digital doorway. Let us help you figure out how to operate your brand virtually – for free. Sign up here to receive a FREE DIGITAL MARKETING PLAN!