8Nov
Evaluating the Potency of Your Business Idea

Entrepreneurial minds are perpetually buzzing with ideas. As exciting as each new idea can feel, the reality is, not every one of them will translate into a successful business. So, how do you discern the wheat from the chaff? This blog post lays out seven key points to evaluate whether your business idea holds potential.

1. Solving a Real Problem

The most successful businesses often address existing pain points for customers. Does your idea solve a problem? If yes, is it a problem that a significant number of people face, and are they willing to pay for a solution?

2. Market Research

Thoroughly researching your market is crucial. Understand your potential customers, their needs, and the competitors who are already addressing similar problems. This will give you a clear sense of demand and competition, crucial factors that influence the viability of your venture.

3. Unique Value Proposition

This is where you focus on what makes your idea stand out from competitors. Do you offer better quality, lower prices, faster delivery, excellent customer service, or a differentiated product/service? This unique selling proposition often becomes the backbone of your brand.

4. Profitability

At the end of the day, your business needs to make money. Consider cost factors, prospective pricing, and the profit margin. Conduct a simple break-even analysis: How many units of your product or service do you need to sell to cover costs? If the volume seems achievable, that’s a good sign.

5. Scalability

Your idea may look great on a small scale, but can it grow? Depending on your intentions, it’s essential to consider if your business model could eventually cater to a larger customer base or other markets without a detrimental impact on efficiency or costs.

6. Business Model

How will you make money? A solid business model outlines how your business will generate revenue and become profitable. Whether it’s a subscription model, freemium, e-commerce, or direct sales, ensure the model aligns seamlessly with your product or service.

7. Passion and Expertise

Lastly, are you passionate about your business idea? Running a business requires resilience and tenacity, and your passion is often the fuel you’ll need when the going gets tough. Moreover, expertise in your chosen business sector greatly improves the chance of success.

Testing your business idea against these parameters provides a strong indicator of its potential for success. Remember, however, that even the most promising ideas require a well thought out business plan, a robust marketing strategy, and effective execution to succeed. Business ideas are unique and challenging and require a lot of introspection and analysis. But, taking the time to evaluate your idea thoroughly can save you precious time, money, and effort in the long run. Not every idea will pass this test, but that’s okay! The key is to remain resilient, learn from any setbacks, and keep exploring until you find your winning idea. Fast-growing startups are indeed born from potent ideas backed up by solid execution and an unrelenting passion for success.

3May
Tips and Tools for Social Media

Tips and tools for social media. While building up your content will require time and money, you can produce high-quality material with a smartphone and a few simple tools and tips. The main advantage of using social media is that it’s an inexpensive method of raising brand exposure.

Additionally, you might be able to reach your target audience on social media for a lot less money than you would with targeted advertisements.

Social media can be used to achieve a variety of goals, including brand development, credibility building, word-of-mouth marketing, and tightening ties with current clients. Alternatively, you may merely want to use social media to direct visitors to your website, where they may end up becoming paying clients. Remember to communicate with your followers on social media in addition to posting. If someone shows interest in your brand, be there, engage, and interact. Below are some tips and tools for social media success.

Be consistent.

Being consistent is the best thing you can do as a small business when you first start using social media. Too frequently, brands lose faith if they don’t start seeing results right away. Social media growth might be gradual, but like with other things, if you are persistent, you will see benefits. This entails regularly publishing content of a high caliber (at least once a week). There are several reasons why you do this.

The first is that you want users to have a clear understanding of your brand when they do land on your profile. Users will quickly lose interest and leave if your website contains little to no content. For scattered posts, the same is true.

You can share a story on social media. Users will understand what to expect from your page, what your voice is like, and what you have to offer when consistency and coherence are given priority. And in doing so, you’ll draw in your target segment.

Add variety to your content.

There is so much possibility for experimentation and creativity on social media. All too often, businesses adopt a single successful strategy.

Social media is continuously changing and evolving. Due to the addition of new features and shifting user habits on various platforms, what worked yesterday might not work today.

Keeping this in mind, experiment as much as you can with content types. For instance, you can only post videos on TikTok. On Facebook, though, you have the choice to go live, post pictures, run polls, and more.

For small businesses, the simplest approach for them to build their audience and grow their following is to create educational and/or compelling material.

We are not saying that small businesses should limit themselves to these two forms of content. They ought to experiment with all their content in order to determine what their audience prefers. However, this can be a good place to start.

Here are some suggestions to get you going:

Customer spotlights

How-to’s

Behind the scenes

Trends (viral sounds and dances)

Product features

Q&As

Facts about your industry

Quality over quantity.

This is true for both the platforms you use and the content you post. While posting frequently on social media is welcomed from a content standpoint, there is a catch. Your posts must all add value. If it doesn’t fit that description, think about a different tactic, such as sharing user-generated content or reposting brand-related content from a non-competitor.

Platforms.

A small business may not have the time or money to maintain an account on every social media network. Concentrate on one to three platforms that have the demographics of your target audience, and then move forward from there.

27Mar
3 Considerations When Planning to Sell Your Business

3 important considerations when planning to sell your business. It’s common knowledge when business owners reach retirement age that they lack a workable exit strategy. This is a step-by-step guide to help you get your company ready for sale while steering clear of any possible pitfalls. When getting ready to sell your company, bear these three points in mind.

Depending on the owner, this may entail selling to a third party or passing the business on to the next generation of the family.

The good news is that you can manage the financial aspects of exiting. Especially, if you want to sell and must find a buyer for your business. Many owners wait to deal with this issue until they are ready to move forward. Often, this causes one to feel stuck. It is not uncommon for the search for the ideal buyer to take three to five years. It’s important to keep in mind that, regardless of a company’s worth, the selling process can take a while. Here are three strategies to start planning your exit in order to do so on your terms:

1. Establish a timeline in advance.

The best time to decide how and when to sell your business is when you’re at the top of your game and not when you’re starting to slow down. Most business owners are most likely in their early 50s. They are not yet ready to retire but have plenty of experience to get the job done.

Having a timeframe will help you make decisions in the interim and give the sale a clear structure.

2. Specify who the buyer is.

A crucial part of preparing your business for sale involves finding a possible buyer. As was previously mentioned, this is a lengthy process that should involve thoroughly vetting prospective purchasers to see if their values, objectives, and ideas for the performance and culture of the company coincide with yours. This is a drawn-out process that needs to be carefully considered. In this manner, you may guarantee that the business is run in your style even after your departure. (This still applies if you’re giving the reins to a close friend or family member.)

3. Consider the how carefully.

Once you have found your buyer, it is critical to think about how the deal will be financed. One possibility is that your buyer has enough cash on hand or bank financing to buy your company entirely, which is fantastic! However, another possibility is that the buyer lacks enough capital (either owned or borrowed) to finance the deal in a single transaction. Instead, you will complete an installment sale in which you agree to the buyer’s repeated payments to you.

These three steps can help you proceed in a way that assures you obtain the best financial result. This result can be good for yourself and for future generations of your family. Preparation is key to success, regardless of the path you choose, the value of your company, or the timing of your exit.

Furthermore, allowing yourself more time to get ready can lessen the emotional toll of departing. When the time comes, it will therefore feel less unexpected and more like a seamless transition into a joyful and carefree life after becoming a business owner.

13Dec
Strategies for Working with Influencers

Working with an influencer is a good strategy to expose more people to your business. Utilizing their unique viewpoint, you may ask them to share with their audience their impressions on your product or service. Approaching an influencer about endorsing your good or service can be frightening if you don’t know where to start. Below we have outlined strategies that can help small and medium-sized businesses adopt the best methods for working with influencers.

Transmit a clear offer

To get things going, make a very specific offer so the influencer can decide whether it might be something that works for them and that they are willing to endorse. Make sure to specify the types of posts you want (Stories, TikTok, etc.), the payment amount, the time frame for posting, and the scope of work. Although it will undoubtedly change from there, having a solid starting point makes the process much simpler and will allow the influencer to quickly decide if this is something they are interested in.

Include influencers on your social media pages

On your Instagram and other social media, highlight the work of influencers in your industry. This fulfills a variety of functions. First, folks who follow the influencers may stumble upon you because you connect to their favorite individuals or companies. Then, it’s possible that those same followers will start following you too! Lastly, your support for their brands can even spur well-known influencers to reach out to you to discuss future collaborations.

Allow for creative freedom

Give the influencer you’ve chosen some creative flexibility to carry out your campaign. Since influencers have knowledge from prior experiences, it is generally preferable to have a two-way collaboration when working with them. Certainly, it’s important to offer them a thorough explanation of your ideas, but after that, give them some creative freedom. By doing this, the content you create is distinctive and simultaneously appealing to both of your audiences. Consider it in this manner. You selected this influencer because you enjoy the content they produced. Keep in mind that they are the ones that know their audience the best and what content will appeal to them. Let them provide artistic guidance and asset suggestions.

Set reasonable goals and help

One thing you should remember if you want to work with influencers is that they won’t be able to do everything. You also need to put in some work. Make sure that you’re setting the right expectations for the influencer you are working with. It is important that you supply the appropriate tools ( product samples, information, etc.) to ensure that your product or service is accurately portrayed.

Before approaching an influencer, do some homework. Research them, learn what they like, the people they follow, their areas of interest, and the reasons they enjoy those things. Then, ensure that your brand is appropriately represented in that environment, so that when the influencer posts about it on social media, customers will get an authentic portrayal of what your brand stands for.

Finally, create trust with your influencer from the start so that when they post about your company, it doesn’t feel like simply another paid post, it feels natural and true.

List your deliverables, campaign objectives, hashtags, and tags

Give the influencers you’re working with a one-pager that includes all the information they’ll need for the campaign, such as brand handles, campaign hashtags, the objectives to keep in mind, photo specifications, and brand story, to set them up for success. When shooting and producing the content, it makes their job seamless.

To save costs, collaborate with other brands

By splitting the cost of influencers with partner brands, small businesses can cut spending. When you cohost events, competitions, and influencer outings with other businesses, your company has exposure to even more extensive marketing opportunities than it would ordinarily have. By selecting non-competitor brands, you may still make use of all the collaboration’s advantages without giving up any potential market share.

If you can, pay immediately and on time

Influencers share terrifying tales about companies that are slow to pay or, worse yet, just disappear altogether. Although it’s not always simple to maintain control, it’s crucial to go above and above to ensure timely payment and clear communication about when it will be made. Pay earlier than anticipated as a bonus.

Collaborations with influencers can benefit your company greatly. You can increase brand awareness, foster brand trust, and increase sales by collaborating in meaningful ways.

Use the most effective influencer collaboration strategies now that you are aware of them.

29Nov
Building an Advisory Board

Building an advisory board is an overlooked tool that is very beneficial to a business. It consists of a hand-selected group of advisors that believe in your leadership and are there for the sole purpose of providing strategic advice for your business. They are aligned with your culture and mission and are committed to your success. However, forming the perfect advisory board for you may take quite a bit of planning in order to see a strong return on investment. Do not worry though, that is why we are here to help and give you guidelines before you build your own advisory board!

Know who you are and what you stand for

Complete your Values, Mission, Vision, and Strategic Plan first. You must know what you stand for, why you exist, and where you are going. You must be able to articulate this to any prospective board member. Think about creating an advisory board composed of people who have already achieved what you are trying to achieve so that you can learn from both their successes and their mistakes. In addition, you must be able to share your target customer profiles and your competitive landscape.

Goals/plan

Create a set of objectives you want your company to reach. By outlining your goals, it allows you to select members that help you reach these objectives. This also sets expectations for your advisory board members. It gives them an idea of what their role and purpose will be while serving on your advisory board. By creating these expectations, it allows you to get exactly what your company needs. The wrong advisors will be a waste of time and money and can potentially lead you down the wrong path.

Choosing the right people

Diversify

After outlining what expertise you and your start-up may lack, it is time to start looking for the right people. Selecting the right advisors is just as important as selecting the right employees. Each person should bring a different background, that way your advisory board will be able to cover every area and offer different perspectives. For example, cybersecurity is now a critical addition to any board. Typically, you want to aim for a small group ranging from no more than 4 people. If you choose carefully then a small group of people will suffice. The smaller the better since it will make for easier communication between you and your members.

Term of Membership

It is often difficult to recruit advisory board members: it is always more difficult to terminate their membership. Advisory board members tend to get comfortable with their positions and take initiative to remove them as personal criticism. Therefore, it may be useful to appoint members to a specific term (one, two, or three years) so that an active step has to be taken to renew membership, rather than to withdraw it going forward. This issue might be particularly important when an advisory board is first being established.

Mentors

Members of an advisory board are composed of people who truly care about the success of you and your company. They have no legal obligation or equity in the business, they act only as your mentor and their main goal is to give you advice. With that being said, you will want to seek people you know within your professional network. This way they will be more willing to mentor you. However, be careful in choosing friends or family, as they may not always give you the most honest advice. Not to mention having friends or family on your advisory board may result in conflict/relationship issues that you will want to avoid. You need people who will be brutally honest and willing to challenge your ideas in order to bring different perspectives to the table.

While reaching out to people within your professional network may be easier, you should also aim to seek people outside your network. Finding members of higher stature might be more difficult but extremely beneficial for your company. They will add credibility and this will play an important role when your start-up is in the early stages of funding. It will give your company some traction, which is crucial in the development of any start-up. Not only will it add credibility but also it can expand your professional network and form contacts that can be very useful in the long term.

How to find mentors

At ProMontreal entrepreneurs, we offer a mentorship program where anyone part of the Jewish community can apply and we will connect you with the perfect mentor for you. Over the years, we have connected with successful entrepreneurs and lawyers who are eager to see start-ups succeed. If you check out our mentors on our website, you will find a list of them on the page already.

Compensation

It is important to remember that the people on the advisory board have no equity in the company and are merely there to guide you because they want to see your company succeed. In the early stages of your business venture, it’s a good idea to reward them with dinners, entertainment, etc. It does not need to be a lot but still something to demonstrate your gratitude for their help. As your company progresses, then you will want to think about higher compensation, maybe even a salary but that is all entirely up to you.

You may not have all the expertise in any business venture you dive into but that is normal. Advisory boards can be helpful and fulfilling, or they can be a waste of time. In the end, you get out of them what you put into their creation, development, and operation. That being said, there are many tools to help you realize your vision so do not be afraid to take the risk.

29Sep
How Small Businesses Can Promote Themselves on TikTok

How Small Businesses Can Promote Themselves on TikTok. You might be wondering if an additional social media page is necessary for your small business and if promoting your business on Tiktok can help. TikTok appears to be more of a platform for funny lip-sync videos than a place to market products and services. However, there is a lot of opportunity for small businesses and new brands to use TikTok to reach their target audience in a fun and creative way.

Let’s go over some ideas and examples for the material you may share on TikTok to help promote your small business.

Videos of daily activities.

Firstly, posting videos of your company’s daily operations is a great way to start. These videos show visitors how work is done there. If you take this recommendation, you should create a DVD that details your company’s typical activities and focuses on the tasks that are considered to be the most vital. As a result, this will help your customers understand what it’s really like to be a small business owner.

Highlight your staff.

Employee spotlighting gives your brand a face and showcases the people behind your products and services. Can each member of your team make a video introducing themselves? Or are you a family-owned company? Give your customers a chance to meet the individuals that run your company.

Inform your audience.

On TikTok, you can provide material to your audience that educates them about your industry or expertise. If you’re committed to learning and helping others, you’ll gain credibility, and people will return to you for your honesty.

Share content that reflects your brand.

Essentially, content that demonstrates a brand or business’s values performs best on social media and has the third-highest ROI. In addition, customers are more aware than they have ever been of the charitable organizations that the companies they favor provide financial support for. As a direct result of this increased awareness, customers factor in this information when making decisions about what goods and services to acquire from those businesses.

Considering this, demonstrating your brand’s values on TikTok is an effective way to engage your audience. Thus, people who share your beliefs will take note, and you may be able to convert them into clients.

Idea.

Was there a particular event or circumstance that inspired you to develop the concept for your business? How did you think about your little business?

Production process.

Demonstrate to customers the process of making your products. It shows your commitment to creating value by displaying the time, effort, and attention you put into your work.

Product How-To

Have an excellent procedure for producing your products? With the help of a brief instructional video, show your customers the process of making your goods and services.

Answer Questions

Above all, a great way to engage your audience and develop relationships is by responding to questions. For instance, you can use TikTok’s built-in Q&A function or make videos that answer customer questions.

Protip: use this as a means of understanding the issues clients are having with your business. Particularly, if the same questions are coming up, you may need to update your FAQ page or add new information to your website.

Demo’s

Lastly, small businesses can utilize video to teach customers how to use their items properly.

The video suggestions above are all great tips on how small businesses can promote themselves on TikTok.

19Jan
How to sell as a Founder

Even though you have a great product, it WON’T sell itself. Every founder will have to sell their product at the very early stages and often times don’t have the skills or practice to do so. It is not an easy task, and it is the most crucial part for every company. What’s the point of putting your blood sweat and tears into a product you can’t even sell. So next time you’re negotiating with your first few customers , remember these 10 tips to make sure you close every deal.

TIP #1: Be Passionate

It should be a given that you are passionate about your product otherwise you might be in the wrong business. Share this passion with your clients, nobody is going to trust a product that its own founder is not passionate about, you will lose clients immediately. Show them how much you care about believe in this product and you’ll gain their trust.

TIP #2: Get to know the customer

Closing a deal is more than pitching your product; it is about connecting with your customer and getting to know them and their needs. Build relationships before sales, people are more inclined to buy from people they like. A Linkedin study shows that a salesperson who creates connections with their customers create 45% more opportunities. Ask the right questions and have conversations try to find things you can relate to such as hobbies, sports, kids whatever it might be. Be viewed as a person who is genuine and wants to help rather than just sell. They might not need your product but if they like you they will want to support you.

TIP #3: Don’t oversell

Creating trust and being transparent is super important with your customers. If you break their trust then you’re building a bad reputation for you and your company. Creating a good reputation is especially important for companies in the early stages of their business. Now the worst thing you can do is make promises you can’t keep. Do not commit to things you can’t deliver, its dishonest and will break the immediate trust you have with a customer.

BE TRUSTWORTHY

TIP #4: Learn from others

Get ahead of the competition. Check out what your competitors are doing to sell their products, what’s working, and not working with their customers, use this as leverage. Explore products that you might buy and see what those companies are doing. Do your research and learn from other peoples mistakes or other peoples wins.

TIP #5: Improve your pitch

Giving a great pitch is key in a startup. It is not something that comes easy, it takes a lot of practice to master it. Practice it repeatedly until you can amaze your audience. However, don’t focus solely on pitching a presentation, remember to connect with your customer as well.

TIP #6: Persevere

Do NOT give up easily and do not take no for answer! Follow up with your customers without being too pushy.

TIP #7: Know you will not close all deals

Do not be too hard on yourself if you don’t close the deals, it’s going to happen. It’s important to not let that get you down and to keep pushing through it. Do not give up easily just because you lose a few deals it’s all part of the process and you’ll only learn from your mistakes.

TIP #8: Referring to competitors

As mentioned, being trustworthy and transparent is key with new customers. Refer to your competitors and show your customer how your product is so much better than the rest. Do not be afraid to highlight how you’re company differs and even if your price point is a bit more than the competition, stick by your products worth.

TIP #9: Fire bad customers

Talk to the right people, and don’t waste your time and energy in customers who have no use or interest for your product. Focus on the target market and find the right people to sell to. Spend your time with prospects who are ready to buy your solution.

TIP #10: Celebrate the wins!

Celebrate every new customer! It’s easy to get too ingrained in the daily grind of sales and building a company and forget to celebrate the wins. Celebrate every win with your co-founders and your team.

15Dec
How to use Social Media Data

A great way to build a top-notch marketing plan is to use social media data. It’s not just about of a few items being shared and crossing your fingers that it works. You will need to formulate a well-thought-out social media content plan to grow your brand. Here are some tips that will support you on your way.

Set Goals

Firstly, you need to come up with a set of goals that you would like to achieve for your company. This will be the basis of creating a marketing strategy that aligns with your goals. As tempting as it is to imitate a business that is comparable to yours, you need your own marketing plan as everyone’s business goals are different.

For example, say you are running a sustainable cosmetics business. Perhaps someone like you wanted to increase Facebook’s brand recognition by concentrating on a vegan audience. And in their target, they succeeded! So, you do the same thing. But, there is a small problem you didn’t think about, there is beeswax in your products. The vegan community then shuns you for selling a non-vegan product. And to top it off, you get a negative reputation for misinformation. This is why creating your own goals will help you plan a better strategy. Just remember to be specific and tailor your objectives.

The wonderful part about setting goals is that it will help you decide what your values are. Values may get a little bit lost when setting up a brand. So, this is a perfect chance to go back to the origins and see why the organization was set up.

Creating your own objectives will encourage you to prepare a better approach. A major part of setting goals is that it will assist you in deciding what your values are. Values seem to be really, well, respected on social media, so look at why you set the company up in the first place.

Know Your Audience

A big part of boosting your content is to sell it to the right audience. This links in with planning your goals and staying on-brand, too. It’s not just a waste of time to try to share the content with everyone and anyone, but it is also a waste of money as you will not have any returns on your investment. For example, if you make and sell aquarium decorations there would be no point in making a video of an aquarium featuring your decorations in it and then posting it to a page dedicated to dog care.

Just because it’s related to pets, doesn’t make it relevant.

The first step is to research your audience and know them inside out. Collect as much qualitative data as possible. Join many groups that discuss the thing you are selling. It doesn’t matter what type of product you sell, there are many suppliers out there. No matter how niche your product is, there will be some sort of group relating to this. Facebook marketplace is the perfect place to start.

Knowing your audience inside out will help you create content across the board. Whether you are writing a blogpost, social media posts, or even something else entirely, it is important to stay on-brand for your content.

Analyze Content

Now you need to see if your marketing strategy put in place is working, and if its not working tweak your strategy. Examine what content is working best at engaging your audience. A lot of analytical tools are available and free to use, like on Facebook for example you can track the number of people interacting with your content and track its performance. Using a forum for social media management and digital asset management (DAM) helps you to look at back-end specifics. This is a perfect opportunity to check if the results are consistent with your objectives. You can also take this chance to follow individuals that are important to you who share your content.

Engage and Respond to your Audience

People love to feel connected, that’s the whole point of social media. Engage and respond to your audience, it will allow them to build a connection with your brand. This is also an easy way to get customer feedback right away. Listen to what they have to say, its an opportunity, if necessary, to build a great customer service experience.

Develop your Brands Tone of Voice

Like we said before building a connection with your audience is key and developing a voice for your brand is also key. To develop a tone of voice for your brand, you need to analyze your target market and see what will resonate with them the most. Once your set on that, addressing situations and sharing content is your way of establishing a voice for the brand. For instance, claim you are a brand of vintage fashion and share to an upcycling blog. Here, you see the points that people engage with and get the chance to promote your brand. A strong tactic is to address situations for the chance to resolve their frustration and look trustworthy to an audience of thousands. If someone writes a comment, answer it, even if it is a negative one.

Use a Content Calendar or Sharing Platform

Use one platform to share all your content to all your social media platforms, it will make things a lot easier and save you a lot of time. Since Facebook and Instagram are now connected, they have built in publishing tools that allow you to schedule your posts for both platforms simultaneously. You can schedule when posts go out and this will help you keep your social medias active without worrying everyday to make a posts. This will also leave more room for you to analyze your audience engagement with the posts and keep an eye out on current events and developments in relevance and e-commerce.

From setting goals to engaging, there are many ways to use social media and the data you get from it, to boost content. Just be aware that content will not be a success on all platforms. That’s because each site is designed for different audiences. If there is content that isn’t being shared as much, try changing the language, picture, or title. Small changes can make a huge difference.

Remember, marketing for your brand is more than just creating content, its about engaging with your audience and building connections with them. Social media is a great place to do this and if you follow these tips you’ll be able to leverage this.

9Sep
Financial Mistakes to Avoid for Every Startup

Financial management is a challenge for many small business owners. As a business founder, it is your duty to ensure that your company grows and thrives in the most efficient manner possible. However, if you’re not cautious, you may wind up making expensive errors. A recent study shows that in the first year 4% of Canadian businesses fail and that percentage rises to 30% in the fifth year. In Canada, 7000 businesses go bankrupt every year. A lot of different factors lead to this failure but poor financial planning is one of the main causes.

A lot may go wrong, from capitalization problems to budgeting to incorrect accounting procedures. Whether the company is just getting started or has already made it through the first few years, sound financial management is essential.

To avoid financial catastrophe, stay away from the following frequent blunders:

1. Separating personal and business accounts

Many entrepreneurs will fail to open separate business accounts and use their personal accounts. When first starting it out, it may seem easier to just work from your personal accounts, however this will become difficult to maintain your business budget and expenses. It’s important to create separate accounts so you can effectively monitor your businesses finances.

2. Poor tracking expenses

At the early stages of a startup, there may not be that much capital to invest for growth, however it’s important to keep track of every expense. You need to have a control of debt to avoid digging yourself into a debt hole that’ll sink your business.

3. Sticking to a Budget

This is the most crucial part of financial management. It will allow you to not spend more than what’s coming in. Sticking to a budget will protect your businesses sustainability and it’s a good way at addressing resources.

4. Business Credit

In todays world, credit score means everything. Having a bad credit score will impact your financial management tremendously. For a business, a bad credit score will cause a lot of difficulties to obtain loans which is imperative for a business growth. Not only is maintaining a good business credit important, but personal credit will also still have an impact on your business. For startups, since the business is still small creditors will look at personal credit scores of the shareholders and determine if they will grant the credit. A bad credit score ruins your credibility in terms of your financial management which is not a good look for a startups founder.

Different types of business credit:

Business credit card
Seasonal commercial loans
Term loans
Installment Loans
Business Line of Credit
Business Taxes

A lot of founders tend to be confused about business taxes. When first starting out, you should seek professional help in order to avoid any mistakes. A small mistake can end up becoming costly to your company and you don’t want that at the early stages of your business. Make sure to file your taxes on time, monitor due dates and regulations.

These small mistakes can easily slip under the radar but will end up costing you big time. So be sure to stay away from these common mistakes to keep your small business a float for a long time!

9Jun
What to Post on Instagram

Instagram is now just as popular as Facebook is in terms of social media platforms. Just when you thought you finally mastered creating content for Facebook, there’s now Instagram to take into consideration. Different strategies are used when marketing through Instagram since there’s different features and tools available. If you’re completely lost on how to create content for your brand on Instagram or running out of creative ideas to post don’t worry we got you covered! We’ll give you some inspiration for content you can post to keep your audience engaged and active to raise your brand awareness.

Tutorial posts or videos

Post videos on how your product works. This can be in any form depending on the company, it can be a tutorial or it can simply demonstrate how the product is used to really get the full benefits of it!

Motivate audience with quotes

Posting quotes is highly engaging as its something everyone can relate to. Everybody can use a bit of motivation or inspiration, can’t ever get enough of these. What’s great about quotes is that you can quote just about anyone. This can be famous/notable people, or it can be people in your team, testimonials, customers etc. Pick quotes that are relevant to your brand and to your followers. You can create graphics that match your brands theme. Quote images are also more likely to go viral. If you create nice graphics, your followers might share them and this can reach out to a larger audience!

Promote blog posts

If your company has a blog page on their website, use the content to post on your Instagram! You can create visuals for them by using quotes or captions from the blogs. This is an easy way to create content to match your brand, and generate traffic on your website!

Repost Content/Brand collaborations

Its important to keep your Instagram active and to keep your audience engaged. Sometimes it becomes too time consuming to constantly create graphics or content to post. Reposting content is the easiest thing you can do. All you need to do is share it to your story! Find content that is relevant to your brand and relates to your audience values.

If you collaborate with other brands, this is another great way to generate content to repost on your story. This is also an easy way to reach out to a larger audience and you can share each others content. Choose brands that can relate to your brand and to your audience, otherwise you might lose some of your followers if you repost content they’re not interested in.

Poll the audience/ Questions

Another way to keep your Instagram active is by creating polls and asking questions through your stories. This is a great way to get advice from your users/audience. It engages them and you can get peoples opinions on how to improve your products. You can create polls on developing ideas for new products or maybe to get ideas for events the audience might like. However, it doesn’t have to be related to your products it can be just about anything to start a conversation and engage your followers. People love to share their ideas and this allows them to easily interact with the brand and stay connected. You can also answer questions and share the answers on your story. This can be used as a real time FAQ.

Show behind the scenes

Show snippets of some behind the scene work that goes into making your product. People love seeing how much work goes into creating products. Be fun/creative with this! You can show off your team and the people involved at making your awesome products. This not only interests them, but will engage your followers to see your company as more than just a brand or business, it’ll humanize it. Like we said before, people love to stay connected!

Instagram is a great tool to create brand awareness and promote your product. Its becoming increasingly popular, especially with influencer marketing on the rise. It’s rally easy to get started and if you use it right, it can be great for your company! Remember people love to stay connected, that is why everyone is obsessed with social media. Create content that will allow your followers to connect with your brand and engage them.