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Showing posts from 2018

Marketing Your Small Business (Part 1)

Welcome back to Write Away, the blog for small business owners, freelancers and anybody who is thinking of starting a business and jumping into self-employment. Today we’re going to look at marketing – a key area to enable the small business owner to get their name out there, attract new customers, and begin to build the brand, whether that be the brand of “you”, if you are a freelancer, or your business’ brand. Marketing can be quite daunting for a new small business, but there are a huge number of resources available across the web to help you establish, and carry out, your own marketing strategy, regardless of your budget (If any!). Here are a selection of the better tips I’ve come across, to help you get started: Create, and refine, your elevator pitch An elevator pitch is the term used when considering what you would say, to a complete stranger, in a lift, when they ask “So what is it you do?” – it should be succinct, last maybe eight seconds, with the objecti

The Start Up Course

Welcome back to Write Away, the blog for small business owners, freelancers and anybody who is thinking of starting a business and jumping into self-employment. Today I’m giving you a heads up on a free e:mail course, created by Enterprise Nation, a fantastic small business support organisation, whom I’ve blogged about before. The idea is that, over the course of seven days, you get daily inspiration and direction to assist and support you on your journey into starting up a business. Day 1 covers your idea and the all-important business plan Day 2 will delve into the administration associated with setting up a company Day 3 will tackle how to raise money and managing the money you may have available Day 4 focuses on building a web presence for your new business Day 5 looks at marketing your business and generating sales Day 6 discusses how to become an expert in your field and pitching to the press Day 7 looks at how to scale up your business

5 "Must-have" apps for Freelancers

Hey there, and welcome back to Write Away, the blog for small business owners, freelancers and anybody who is thinking of starting a business and jumping into self-employment. Today we are looking at some tools that can help small business owners with 1001 things on their to do list, and as a freelancer myself, I know from first hand experience, how useful some of these can be. So, without further ado, lets delve into the list: 1.        Evernote Quite simply a fantastic tool for keeping all of your notes, clippings, photos, PDF’s and even audio recordings in one, easily accessible place. You can create separate notebooks if you have different projects, products, customers or even stories to keep track of. It automatically syncs to the cloud when you save anything, allowing you to update or capture information on the go, and access it from a number of devices. The basic (free) version is fantastic, there is also a premium version (obviously!) that gives more stora

Overcoming Obstacles and Setbacks

Hello, and welcome back to Write Away, the blog for small business owners, freelancers and anybody who is thinking of jumping into self-employment. Firstly, to regular readers, apologies it’s been a while – after some time away recovering from an op. we’re back with, what you will hopefully find to be, some valuable tips and resources for anyone in the small business arena. Today we look at something that anyone who has ever started a business (or eve thought about it) will have come face to face with – obstacles and setbacks. In a recent article for the “This is Money” website, Richard Reed, one of the founders of successful start-up Innocent Drinks commented, on starting a business: “There are a 1,000 riddles you are trying to work through” These can range from fundamental, game-changing problems such as raising money to get your business off the ground, to smaller, seemingly less important issues such as trading structure or name etc. But, you can be sure ther