It’s that time of year when we find ourselves contemplating our shortcomings and using the New Year as an excuse to change our ways and better our lives.  When it comes to personal resolutions, it is said that finding love, losing weight, living healthy and traveling usually top the list.

Why not also use this time of year wisely and make resolutions for your Business?   Be sure to include action items for each goal so that you are able to “chunk it down” to manageable and measurable tasks. Here is my list of 5 things that every business should be doing.

If you’re not already doing them, use 2012 as the year when you will launch these initiatives and make them an essential part of your business:

1.  Develop your Social Media and Inbound Marketing Program

The social web is here, whether you like it or not. It is changing perceptions about businesses, giving individuals powerful voices of change and impact (for better or worse), and it is compelling businesses to change their mindset about how they get their message out to the target audience relevant to their business.

Shorter attention spans, information overload, the abundance of mobile technology, and our need for instant, personalized information means that the social web has massive power to connect people, to share relevant information faster, and to make irrelevant the “cast a wide net” approach we’ve used for everything from customer service to marketing to PR to recruiting for the last several decades

Instead, we can be refined – targeted – find smaller audiences that are much more likely to care about what we’re doing instead of settling for single-digit conversion rates on our outreach activities. We can locate our customers and learn what services they require or we can showcase our services in a manner that attracts the niche audience to our business.

You cannot begin to create a strategy for success with social media sites until you understand what each and every site is, how it functions, and what it could do for you.   Zentrepreneur’s Social Media and Inbound Marketing consulting provides you this insight and energy, which makes it possible for you to create a personalized technique for good results employing all factors of social media for an all-encompassing approach to marketing and lead generation.  Send me an email to request our 2012 Social Media consulting packages and start getting social!

2.  Develop Operational Efficiency

The key to a successful business is efficient systems.  If your business does not have processes in place, you’re likely wasting a lot of time repeating the same tasks or worse undertaking tasks that can easily be delegated.  Zentrepreneur offers a one day coaching program to give you all the training and tools you need to build and maintain efficient systems.

3.  Keep your Networking Efforts on Target

It’s not about how many business cards you collect or how many connections you have on LinkedIN.  Networking is about building and nurturing relationships.  Be targeted in your networking and create a set of tools that enable you to follow up and nurture the connections you’re making.  Ask me how.

4.  Write/Update your Business Plan

There’s the financial business plan with projections and charts and excel spreadsheets.  And then, there is the Operational Business Plan which is your company’s business plan that will be an evolving document that is referred to and updated weekly (if not daily).  It includes goal setting, vision boarding, SWOT analysis and a lot more.  Check out my video here on the Business Plan that every business must have!  Start working on your plan and if you need help along the way, we’re here to help!

5.  Treat your staff well; Treat your customers better!

Someone said, “If there’s anything worse than training your staff and then losing them, it’s not training your staff and then keeping them”.  I could not agree more!  Treat your staff well.  Train them on their tasks, recognize and reward their achievements, have regular social events with your team.

The same is true for your customers. Put yourself in their shoes and always try and anticipate their needs even before they ask for it.  Make Customer Satisfaction your top priority and always try and exceed their expectations.

If you do all this, I promise you – you will enjoy the Success and Prosperity that you so rightly deserve!

Wish you a wonderful 2012.

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