A plethora of small business owners are weekend warriors. Especially, the ones who have 9 to 5’s during the week, plus other priorities that need to be handled. On the bright side, the four things you will do this weekend to help your small business, will bring a change that you have never seen before.
Clean Up Your Email
My business emails are down to zero every night before I shut down for the day. This is something I implemented awhile ago. It also helps that not many people have these email addresses. This is not the case for every business. The weekend is the perfect time to spend a couple of hours to solely focus on cleaning up your email.
- Sort
- Delete
- Purge
- Unroll Me
- VIP List
The breakdowns above can help you drastically. I have a preferred email sender list in my inbox with Go Daddy. These people’s emails are denoted with stars. It ranges from my lawyer, accountant, clients, and a couple close business friends. Simplifying your email preferences can do so many things for you. Clearing clutter mainly. In addition to that, spending the weekend on your email will help you see emails from clients or customers that might have fallen through the cracks.
Update Your Email Signature
What does your company’s current email signature look like? This is something I have been working on with my in-town clients. Make the littlest detail cohesive to your brand. Your email signature needs to include:
- Salutation
- Name
- Phone Number
- Website
- Social Media Icons – links to your actual pages
Bonus content to include you can add:
- Confidentiality Disclaimer – if applies
- Links
If you’re a product based business, you can link to press and popular products. Bloggers should link to press and popular post. Service based business will link to press and popular post. I am going to be honest, everyone does not need a confidentiality disclaimer in their emails. My lawyer yes, my mom emailing me, not so much.
All these elements bring together a cohesive brand, even in something as simple as your email signature.
Write Thank You Cards
This is one of my favorite things to do. I love sending my followers, friends, supporters, and people I admire thank you cards via snail mail. We have become a technology driven world, but I will always LOVE receiving physical mail. It truly brings a smile to my face that someone took the time out of their day, to sit and write me a heartfelt message. Take an hour out this Saturday to write a couple of people; bonus if you throw in a $5 Starbucks gift card and pick (1) customer, (1), supporter, (1) friend, and (1) person you admire. Trust me, they will smile. My favorite place to buy thank you cards is Marshalls. You can get a box of 15 or 20 cards for less than $5, most of the time.
Step Up Social Media & Blogging
Let this weekend be the time you really excel at creating & scheduling your blog post, as well as, kick butt by automating your social media. This is something I hammer into my clients. All it takes is 2 hours a week, sometimes. It’s better to be proactive than reactive. Sit there, write it all out, and schedule it. I have all of July’s articles written. They were actually written mid June, and then I scheduled the content to be pushed out via Hootsuite. Programs like Buffer allow you to even schedule your Pinterest pins. So there are no excuses.
This weekend if you do these simple task, I am sure you will see a change for the better in your business. Even people clicking links in your email signature brings traffic to your website or blog. Knowing that all of my blog post and social media’s are on a schedule brings so much freedom to me as a small business owner. I have yet to find someone I completely trust running my channels. Until I find that connection, I will allot two hours of my time on the weekend toward scheduling post for the following week.
