 Looking to refresh your business plan in the new year, that's what we're talking about today on The Journey. It's the new year, you're probably thinking about resolutions, but typically with resolutions, you're thinking about, okay, how can I improve myself? But what about your business? Yeah, and there is no time like the presence to really create a new year's resolution, right? It could be January, it could be February, it could be July, it could be whatever time of the year, like now is the time to set your sights on your future and on your business. Yeah, so here are our top five business plans for small local businesses. So step number one, refresh your social media pages. Your customers are absolutely on social media, so you should be too. You should always be on your A game. I mean, 77% of consumers have social media profiles. Yeah, and that's nearly three billion people on social media. So that means that social media is impacting people's buying decisions. And if you're not upping your game on social media, you're gonna lose. So Nealey, you know how the saying goes, new year, new me. I'm gonna change it to new year, new pages. Upload some new photos to your social media sites, as well as those review sites as well. Yelp, Google, make sure you're uploading some new refreshed images. Yeah, and it's also nice to take a look back on what you've done this past year. I know not a lot of businesses do this, but check out the analytics from some of those social media profiles. Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook all have analytics. So you can see what were your top posts, what were your most engaged posts, what do your followers actually like? So you can replicate that in the new year and start duplicating some of that content. And the posts that don't do that well, maybe stop doing or tweak or adjust. That way you're putting out the best content forward. Also, make sure you're updating all of your business information, like your phone number, address, hours. There's nothing worse than some old hours that aren't accurate anymore. Yeah, you don't wanna have someone try to come to your shop or your location and you be closed because it's 6 p.m. and you closed at 5 p.m. They're never gonna be your customer ever again because essentially you've lied to them at that point. So you wanna make sure all of your information is accurate. Step number two, renovate your website. Think of this as your virtual storefront. You would update your window in front of your store so update your website as well. Yeah, so refresh those contact pages, maybe add some of your new colors. Maybe add some of the photos you've taken this past year. Just make it something fresh that now if a visitor comes to your site, it's not the same old site they've seen the past year. Now there's something new to look forward to. Also, don't forget to make sure that your website is mobile friendly. That is imperative. There's nothing worse than trying to look at a website on your phone nowadays. And it just doesn't work right. It's not formatted correctly. I'm hitting the back button and not going there anymore. Yeah, and another good point is to also make sure that your site is secure. Now Google's made a lot of changes same with Firefox, Safari and Explorer to where if your site doesn't have an SSL certificate, it shows not secure in the address bar to the everyday user. They go to a site that shows not secure, they're leaving. It's pretty inexpensive to get that SSL. There's also malware tools you can add to your site and firewalls just to make sure your site is protected. Because the last thing you wanna do is hurt your brand to where it can't recover. Yeah, no one wants to spend money with a not secure website. Tip number three is so underutilized that we had to tell you about it in this episode. And that is to utilize email marketing. Now a lot of businesses don't do this. They think email marketing is dead. They're all going to social, but it is still relevant. You wanna make it a goal this year to add some sort of lead generation on your website. Whether it's a subscribe to get a discount, maybe it's an ebook, PDF, checklist, whatever it is, start collecting people's email addresses so you can continue the conversation and build that loyalty and build that loyalty and build that loyalty with your followers where they'll be more likely to buy from you. Yeah, there are a ton of different ways that you can collect email addresses from your loyal customers. As you mentioned, a widget on your website or you can even post on your social media platforms. You know, hey, thanks so much. Be sure to sign up for our emails as well. That way your customers are opting into these emails and you can really leverage that. Yeah, and I know open rate is always concerned with email marketing even if they're not opening your email, they're still seeing your headline and their business in their inbox, right? So that's just keeping your business top of mind. And a cool thing about having those email addresses, especially when you go to maybe market on Facebook ads is you could import their email addresses into Facebook and then Facebook can go and find other people just like them that you can market to and it just opens you up to so many opportunities. So email marketing is not dead. You have to use it in the new year. Number four, remember your neighbors. There are tons of different small local businesses in your community and by reconnecting with them you can actually use that as a huge resource to both of you. Yeah, I know. So I do WordPress design and development, my own. So I actually do this quite often. I'll reach out and partner with businesses that compliment my services but don't offer the same services I do and vice versa. So like I do a lot with graphic design companies where they'll send me WordPress design work and I send them graphic work and it's just a two-way street. So if you can find someone in your community that would really compliment your business or even just a referral system, it works out tremendously. So let's talk about a couple of ways you can actually partner with that community and one of them is to just attend local events or maybe even sponsor them with your business. Yeah, you could go to a street fair or even just swap business cards, right? So you would display their business card at your register and vice versa. Yeah, there's a local coffee shop in Arizona called Coffee Rush and one thing that cool that they do is they have a section in their store where you can put your business card or business pamphlet for free and you can do it with any business. So they would like to really partner with local business of the community and partner with them there. Our last suggestion is save time by creating a content calendar. So the holidays can be really hectic, there's a lot going on. The more efficient you can be with your time, the better. So you can actually start saving some more time by planning out your social media strategy, your marketing strategy with an online content calendar. Yeah, and that content calendar will basically have all your posts for the month and I recommend doing this month by month, otherwise it's just way too overwhelming. Plan out a couple of hours to create all the content for the month so you're not always feeling like you're always on Instagram, always posting. You do it then and then you set it on autopilot. There are a couple of tools to actually let you do that too and for free. So if you use Twitter, there's tweetdeck.twitter.com lets you create and schedule out your Twitter posts. And then for Facebook and Instagram, there's Facebook Creator Studio. So this is kind of newer for Instagram but you can actually schedule your posts and Instagram as far out as you'd like and then also post to Facebook at the same time. So it kind of kills two birds with one stone with that free tool. And if you're someone that likes to do this with a pen and paper, you can absolutely do that and plan out your entire month and just go digitally do it later. I don't like to have like a little hard copy so I really know what's happening if it's on my phone, it'll get lost. That hard copy is nice there on my desk. Well, we hope this helped you and your business. Be sure to like and comment down below. Hey, subscribe to our channel and ring that bell is episodes first. This is The Journey. We'll see you next time.