If you're a business owner you know the importance of building
up your business. It can be very easy to get caught up in the
trap of working in your business instead of working on it. Most
of the time there are a lot of issues that demand your
attention. The smart owner or manager figures out quickly how to
outsource help to deal with those issues thus allowing himself
to focus on growth. So why do we need to build? Some of the most
productive people are builders. I am not always talking about
business owner either. When you think about it the aspect is
covered widely in just about any role in life. When you buy a
new home you start transforming it into a home by slowly adding
your personal touches. This is a form of building.
There are some people who are really good at building and some
that are not. The businesses that show steady growth have
someone at the helm that is focused on growth. Being creative
definitely helps in this area since you can branch out in
different areas to grow your business. People that focus on
growth always have a plan in their mind and are always looking
for ways to tweak their plan.
Some of my growth plans are somewhat unorthodox, or at least I
am told. I like to use current events to stimulate ideas. I read
the news page on the internet; I read the paper to get ideas. I
read lots of articles on the internet to stimulate ideas on more
articles that I would like to see written or write myself.
Always the theme is "how will this help me?"
Of course every internet business knows that probably the
greatest way to grow your business is to get links to your
website. Getting links and building up hype about your site
makes you more of an authority in the eyes of Google. It matters
a lot what Google thinks and thus getting links is a high value
activity.
But back to building, here is how I do it. I look at links as
the goal and sit down each week and build a game plan. I ask
myself what I would think a good week would be and build some
goals around that. If you do that every week, then every month,
soon you will have a habit pattern of building your business.
This is exactly where you want to be. The next hurdle is
embracing the idea that you need to spend some money to attain
your goals of growth. The great thing about the Internet is that
for every dollar you will get something in return for it. If you
take an ad out in a local paper, you may acquire some new
business if your target market reads your ad and needs your
service. In the internet world, that ad or link or article is
online forever (mostly) that reference you built or paid for, is
going to work for you a very long time. This makes building more
exciting. You do not have to always rely on timing and wondering
if your target audience is going to find you, they will
eventually. When you build up that effort over time, it's going
to serve you in the long run. It's like an investment that pays
long term dividends.
Tony Scorch: He is a contributing editor to Do it
Yourself Manufacturing which is a research site for people
looking to start a new E-commerce website or business. You can
find it at http://www.diymanufacturing.com
