Essential Guides In Running A Small Business
Inspiration and Wednesday Wisdom for women entrepreneurs, female business owners and small businesses
The guide that shows you what others only tell you,” caught my attention. It was printed on the DK Eyewitness Travel 2018 London edition my son sent me for Mother’s Day. It’s a beautiful, descriptive travel guide to a new city I will visit in ten days. Inside were 400 pages of suggestions, maps, inspirational venues, historical museums and beautiful parks to visit. Since my son knows we’re traveling to Paris too, I received the same guide in the Paris edition.
Over the past week I started sharing the Women TIES 32 PR Tool Document (aka guide) to members on our private Facebook group. Each day I focus on one marketing benefit they can use throughout the year to elevate their name and give their company exposure to brand their name and increase marketing opportunities. I never considered the document a “guide” until I received my travel books. Similar to the travel guide, the posts should motivate members and direct them to services they might have forgotten about to use freely as paid associates.
Although our document is not as fancy or nearly as colorful as the travel guide, it does have a similar mission in highlighting the best of services we offer members to encourage them to visit our website more often to update their profile, hire another woman, utilize our 13 year marketing platform to advertise or channel them through the list of social media marketing links they can use to share news. No, we don’t have photo of Big Ben within our documents but we do have sites to remember.
When I worked as an employee in higher education for nine years before becoming an entrepreneur, staff were given “guides” to educate us on human resource policies. We also created “guides” for our sixty member alumni association board of directors to utilize as they governed. Although most woman owned businesses are relatively small and might not warrant such guides, perhaps creating a point of services for your customers would be helpful for them.
Today’s Wednesday Wisdom is to provoke the thought of whether you need to create or update any guides in your business? Do your customers always ask for a list of services and prices? If so, why not print them in a guide format. If you have a small number of employees or essential vendors, can they refer to a document to give useful employment, privacy or corporate policies to follow? If not, one summer day might be the perfect day to work at home and produce one. Have you updated your corporate business plan yet this year? If not, consider doing so since it is an essential tool to leading you forward on your business “trip.”
Your “guide” doesn’t have to be a glossy, 400 page descriptive with beautiful photos and glossaries; it can be a simple, logical and important document needed to run your company better and inform potential customers and current employees.
Women TIES 