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Can you grow your business during the coronavirus pandemic?

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How to grow your business during the coronavirus outbreak

How to grow your business during the coronavirus outbreak

I know, talking about growing your business during this crushing coronavirus outbreak may seem a bit inappropriate.

The reality is, we all need to make a living, at least those who can.

We are all looking into a long spell of economic downturn coupled with a humanitarian crisis that hasn’t been seen for at least a century.

Hence, all the more reason to keep at least some parts of the economy moving and maintaining the cash flow.

This Green Entrepreneur blog post lists 7 strategies that can help you grow a business, or rather, a new business during the coronavirus pandemic.

Every challenge brings a collection of opportunities with it, and so has the current coronavirus pandemic.

With most of the businesses coming to a halt, you have time to focus on content marketing and expand your presence on the Internet. It will help you reach out to the existing market, however much it exists, and it will also give you a headway when the world gets on its feet.

The above blog post lists the following things you can do to grow your business while you maintain social distancing and remain confined to your home.

Enhance your content marketing effort

You may like to read Is content writing and publishing same as content marketing?

The good thing about content marketing is that content can be produced and published digitally. You don’t have to invest in raw material. All the tools that you need to publish useful content are already there with you.

You want to publish videos? You can use your mobile phone.

You want to publish podcasts? Even these can be done using your mobile phone or a standard microphone attached to your computer or laptop.

Want to publish blog posts? You can write them yourself or you can hire a content writer or a blog writer.

Content marketing helps you in normal days and it also helps you in these testing times.

Businesses haven’t disappeared. They are just recuperating, or they are functioning in a different manner. You have to reach out to them and content marketing is the best way to do so.

Work at improving your SEO

In the regular hubbub of doing business content marketing and SEO often take a backseat. This is a good time to focus on improving your search engine rankings and increase your search visibility.

You may like to read 10 SEO content writing tips for your small business

The benefits of SEO come from many factors. As mentioned above, your search visibility improves. You get more targeted traffic. Your conversion rate improves. You get more back links because a greater number of people can find your content. You get more content to share through your newsletter.

There are various tools available that can help you figure out what sort of content you should publish to improve your SEO.

Invest in social media marketing

Facebook has nearly 2.45 billion monthly active users. At the time of the Covid-19 crisis, more people are logging on to Facebook to keep up with their loved ones and even to interact with their colleagues.

You may like to read 5 ways to make your content social media friendly

The same goes with other social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter.

Millions of your customers might be there. If you have never advertised on social media and social networking platforms, perhaps, now is the right time.

Be regular with email marketing

You may also like to read Email marketing dos and don’ts during the Covid-19 pandemic

Email marketing needs to be a bit different during a pandemic. Ideally it should be different always, in the sense that instead of continuously pushing your products and services in front of people, you must add value to their inboxes.

Keep in touch with your subscribers. Send them good information about how they can keep themselves safe. If you feel that a bit of information can help them work better during their confinement, share it with them. The key is, provide value. They are going to remember you for that.

Aside from these actions, I would also suggest you spend more time on LinkedIn if you’re providing B2B services, like I do. Almost all my content writing and online copywriting clients come from the B2B segment.

After content marketing, definitely focus on networking

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I was just reading this blog post on how Facebook threatened to shut down a business due to a simple misunderstanding. I don’t have complete information on the issue and I don’t even know whether the threat from Facebook was justified or not. Basing one’s business on a particular entity is like walking on a shaky ground that can give in any day, any time.

Depending on search engines is like depending on rains

Just think how many businesses were destroyed when Google suddenly decided to change its ranking algorithm. Websites, blogs and webpages that used to come on the first page for certain search terms were suddenly, within a few minutes, were relegated to as far away as 35th page. The problem is not with Google (to an extent it is, but that’s another subject), the problem is with businesses that solely depend on Google.

Search engines are important, no denying that, but they are not the only means of getting traffic to your website or blog. There are many instances when Google blocked particular websites but they still attracted lots of traffic simply because of the goodwill and networking they had established prior to being blocked.

I’m not saying that you totally ignore the search engines because millions of people use search engines to find what they are looking for and it can be highly profitable if they can find you easily. So do invest a considerable amount of time improving your search engine rankings not just for Google, but for every contemporary search engines. But don’t just stop there.

Things you can do to reduce your dependence on search engines

Please keep in mind that the steps listed below are not something that you can achieve in a few days or even in a few weeks. Formulate a strategy for at least a year. The key is not how much you do, it is how persistently you do. You can assign different tasks to different days of the week and then stick to that routine. Once you have formulated a routine, don’t think much unless “thinking” is really crucial to what you intend to achieve. Excessive thinking leads to procrastination and indecision. Just keep on working.

  • Spread your presence evenly. Routinely write for other websites and blogs. This is not just good for your search engine rankings it will also boost your direct traffic and help you come in touch with more and more people.
  • Build your mailing list. This is something I have been planning to do for a very long time but haven’t gotten to it. This is VERY important. A major source of your business can come from your mailing list. A mailing list is not just useful for learning email marketing campaigns; it also helps you keep in touch with your prospective clients.
  • Interact on other online forums. Join related forums. Leave comments on blogs. Participate in discussions on places like Quora.
  • Be more active on social media. This doesn’t require much explanation. Be regular on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn – basically wherever your target audience spends its social media time.
  • Keep in touch with your clients. Whether you’re working with them right now or not, always keep the channel of communication flowing. If they have previously worked with you and if they were happy with your work, sooner or later they are going to require more work. There are many businesses who generate almost 40% of their revenue off their existing clients and customers.

Why it pays to have your own business

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The more I read about the economy the more relieved I feel for having my own business. Hasn’t the economic downturn affected my online writing business? Sure it has, but I’m not worried about losing my job. I just need to market more, I just need to put more relevant content on my website, and I’m already doing this and it is already showing positive results. In fact, although I won’t say it’s good that it happened, the economic downturn has been a blessing in disguise. I realized it was not possible to survive within the current format of my work. I needed to expand.

A good thing about doing business online is that if your business is low, have more traffic to your website. Does more traffic mean more business? Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t; it depends on the type of traffic you are able to generate. Even if you are getting one query per week (actually, this happened 4-5 months ago), it shows there’s some business out there you can get. For instance, if 30 unique visitors per day get you one query per week, 60 unique visitors surely must get more, and so should 90 or 100 visitors per day. What about 200 visitors per day? Am I building castles in the wind? I certainly am if I’m generating random traffic for my website. I have to increase targeted traffic, not just any traffic.

My website’s conversion rate is quite good, for me, as an individual freelance content writer. Even with 30 unique visitors per day I was managing (still do sometimes) 1 query per day. Agreed, not every query turns into business, but for me, even if 2 queries turn into business every week, I was quite happy and satisfied. Of course these days I’ve managed to generate more queries because I’m regularly outsourcing my work. I’m getting more queries because I’m increasing my traffic.

In order to survive in tough economic condition, I had to rethink the way I was promoting my business, turning in the assignments, and taking care of the generic infrastructure. I was already spending good 10-12 hours on my business, and just couldn’t afford to put in more hours given my singing practice and the needs of my family. Whatever I had to do, I had to do within these hours. In order to maximize my potential I had to do more of what I was good at and do less of what I was taking longer to finish.

Ironically, the biggest hurdle on my way to increasing my business was my work. What the heck are you talking about? you must be thinking, aren’t you here to do work? Sure I am and I definitely want more work. But the problem was, I was doing work almost all the time and there was no time left for promotion, marketing, brand building and networking: all these activities are needed to not only increase your business, but also to get more decent, high-paying projects.

Although I’m a good writer, I’m also good at getting work, at convincing people to give me work. As I mentioned above, I’ve been making a decent living by just getting 30 unique visitors to my website every day. But this is not a good way of working. I’ve been active on the Internet, first as a web designer and developer and then as a content writer and copywriter for almost 9 years now and people hardly know me. I haven’t able to create even one marginally successful blog, and I started blogging when people used to manually add pages to their manually-managed blogs and hardly 200 people knew what the strange-sounding word meant. In order to increase my workflow, and change my freelance work into a proper business, I decided to change all this.

These days I’m focusing more on getting work. I’m increasing my search engine traffic, I’m adding content to my website with greater speed and regularity, I’m trying to improve the quality of content on my website and I’m becoming more socially active on the Internet by interacting on social networking websites and blogs. And the work? Fortunately, I’ve found some really good writers; in fact, some of them write better than me. I’m not outsourcing 100% work yet, but if they continue to write high-quality stuff I might soon. Getting other writers has also given me an opportunity to take on assignments I wouldn’t touch previously: lesser paying assignments from Asia, especially from India.

All this happened because I owned my work, my business and I was free to make changes my business needed first, to survive the economic downturn, and second, to grow. I’ve achieved the first thing – surviving – and now I’m focusing on the second. What are you doing to survive and thrive?