Taking Your Business Online and Creative Content Ideas

This week’s podcast is all about taking your business online. I thought this would be a good topic for two reasons; Firstly, where we are right now during this pandemic means a lot of people can’t do their everyday business. Secondly, I think a lot of people are realising that they need a bigger presence online, whether they sell online or not. We will be covering the key things you need to be doing to have an online business. KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCASTIf you can take your business online, it is a good way to keep income coming in during this time.If you can’t take your business online, can you teach it?Even if you can’t make money from your business right now, you can still create content.Keep people engaged on your social media platforms and stay on their radar.Give people something that they need right now through your marketing.You need to set up an online presence where people can find you (If you don’t already).There are lots of options for creating an online presence, including social media, website, landing page, sales page or a checkout page.You need to be consistent with your content.If you have the energy, use this time to get the things you never normally get chance to done or have been putting off.Content ideas – Blog Posts, Social Media Posts, Record Podcasts/Videos.Your customers/clients will come back when this is all over but they do need your help doing it themselves right now.Giving free advice/hints and tips will keep you in front of your audience ready for when you are up and running again.You need to be building your email list from today! Check out my previous episodes on building your email list using a lead magnet.You will need some kind of system to help you deliver your online business.If you offer something that can make a difference or solve a problem to your customers/clients and charged for it before then of course you should be charging for it during this time.Giving something away for free doesn’t always do you or the person receiving it a massive favour – when there is no investment, they are not invested.If you give someone something for free, they will never want to pay for it!You can tweak and change your offer during this time – such as a discounted rate or a shortened time offer.Think about coming from serving, not selling. If you have something out there that can make a difference and solve a problem, it is not wrong to try to sell it.We need to keep the economy moving right now.Ideas of how to make money right now - Sell tickets to a raffle for your services when things are back to normal, start a waitlist for your clients – ask for a deposit to secure your place, sell a product.THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…Just because you can’t work in your business as normal right now, does not mean you need to stop marketing and earning an income. This isn’t going to last forever, so we just need to adapt the best we can right now to do what is best for our businesses and come out the other side of all of this!HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISSCan you take your offline business online? - 03:00Ideas for businesses that can’t be taken online - 05:16Setting up your online presence - 07:58Content Ideas - 09:04Building your email list - 11:55Technology - 13:30Should I sell right now? - 15:29Ideas of things you can do to make money right now - 22:21Transcript below Hello and a really warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? How are you managing still during this time? So as I'm recording this, we have been in lockdown about four, this is our fourth week and I have to say like I started off absolutely fine because I worked from home all the time. I'm very used to being in the house a lot. As I've said before and on previous episodes I would like go days and days and not leave the house and not even realise. But I think there's something obviously very different. And if you didn't catch last week's episode, episode 113 do go check that out with Mary Hyatt cause we talk about how to manage during these times. But I think there's something very, very different about having everybody else here. And yesterday I think it was the first day that I really felt like I needed to get out of the house.I needed to get some of my own space because it was just getting all a little bit too much. So, but other than that I, I'm doing all right. I think I'm doing fine. I'm still cracking on with work, got lots to do in fact feel busier than ever, which is kind of odd but enjoying it all, which is good. So, uh, happy I've got that. Keep me focused, which is nice. So this week I wanted to share with you an episode about taking your business online because last week I did two live masterclasses, lots and lots of people attended. It was really good fun and basically talked through, Hey, you could take your business online now this is coming from kind of two places. Place. Number one is very much to do with where we are right now in the world during this virus and the fact that we're locked down and people can't do that everyday business and place number two is the fact of, actually for me, I love my online business.I love the fact that I have this online business. So I think what's happening in the world right now is people are readdressing whether they can continue with their business or not, should they be going online? Should they be do something else or should they just have a bigger presence whether they sell online or not, should they just have a bigger presence in that part of the world and make sure they're making the most of it. Can you take your offline business online? So that's what I want to talk to you about today. I want to talk to you about how to get your business online if it's not already and the key things you need to be doing to have an online business. Okay. So let's start with the very thing. Now, if you are going to be taking a business online, I am assuming you have one of a couple of things.Either you have a product and service or service that you currently sell offline or you have been doing in person or selling virus shop or high street shops, something like that. So that you want to take that business online or you have a business idea that you are at the stage of, could I do this online? So I'm assuming you're in one of those two places. So the first thing I ask you is if you're sat there listening to this going, I need to make money right now, I need to do something straight away. I want to ask you if you took your offline business, the thing that you can no longer do at this time, can you just do it online? So I'm talking about things like if you offer yoga in a studio, can you do yoga from a video call into people's homes?If you are a coach and you normally coach in person, can you coach via zoom or video call and have a great example of a lady that is in my Academy and she teaches or she holds classes, sort of play activity classes for children and babies and normally she gets them all in a room together and they do yoga and they do a sign language and they sing and they play with instruments. And obviously when all this started she had to stop doing the in person stuff. And I have to say, she blows me away. I watch her social media and she's onscreen with all these babies in their own homes and they've obviously um, you know, got it sorted so they can watch what she's doing and she can see them and she is projecting the energy that she would have in person through the TV. Ideas for businesses that can’t be taken online And from what I can see on her social media, she's doing an amazing job and all these moms and parents that signed up to do these classes are still continuing to do them. And she's still continuing to bring in money during this time. Even though you think you would take a look at what she does and think there's no way on this earth that she can do that online and maybe she won't want to continue that when all this is over. And that's absolutely fine. It's just a case of if you can, can you take it online to continue to keep bringing in money. So if you can't take it online, so let's say you're sat there and you are a Airbnb or something where actually it's impossible for you to take that business online. So for instance, another example is having my nails done or having my hair done.You can't take that business online. So my next question for you is, can you teach it? Now you might not want to teach it, that might not be the thing that you want to do, but right now if you're sat there thinking, I need to make money, then maybe that is the thing you need to do, whether it's a moneymaking exercise or whether it's just a content keeping in touch. And I just want to touch on that for a minute actually. So I'm a big fan of still trying to make money through this time because quite honestly my mortgage supplier is a big fan of being paid and so is the electricity and so is all the other things you pay for. So these bills are still coming out of my account so I need to still keep adding money. So I will touch on whether you should be selling it this time or how you could deal with that at this time later on.However, right now I just want to touch on the fact of even if you can't make money doing the thing you do and you don't want to suddenly try and teach online because you know you don't want to have to sort the payment processor stuff out and all that and you have no intention of carrying it on when...