Category: business

How “Reopening” Too Early Could Be Worse for Small Businesses

While nearly 80% of the country supports ongoing shutdown measures related to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a growing minority of U.S. citizens and small business owners that want to open up shop. No one will say that this process has been well-managed or easy. Every business is facing significant difficulties as a result of the pandemic. However, reopening your business too early could be worse for small businesses and employees.

Just because the government says it’s time to reopen, it doesn’t mean that you’ll have customers running through your door. The threat is still real, even if people choose to downplay it. Customers may have lost their own jobs and tighten their purse strings as a result. You cannot force customers to come to visit your restaurant or shop no matter how many air purifiers and hand sanitizer stations you invest in. If you don’t have customers, you don’t make money.

Businesses have costs, regardless of whether there are sales. Rent, electricity, water, internet, employees, supply costs, food costs, and more. Some of these expenses business owners have to pay regardless of being open, while others you can avoid.

Let’s say a restaurant decides to reopen its dine-in service, re-hire its furloughed employees, and take some precautions, such as operating at 50% capacity and wearing surgical masks (that do not stop the spread of COVID-19).

The restaurant has to buy food and pay employees, even if there aren’t any customers. There needs to be a certain amount of perishable inventory purchased, even if restaurants choose to only offer limited menus to mitigate some of this. Food will need to be thrown away and replaced if customers don’t order it. Staying shut while there isn’t demand reduces these costs.

Most restaurants operate at narrow margins, like other types of businesses. In some restaurants, this is only 10% to 30%, depending on food costs. Could a restaurant survive financially operating at  50% capacity and be profitable or pay staff and vendors? (Filling 50% of seats isn’t likely, anyway).

Employees in the restaurant industry largely earn money on tips. If they don’t receive tips because there aren’t customers, owners must pay them the difference up until their pay equals the minimum wage. This means that the wait staff is putting their own life at risk for very little money. In many cases, they will no longer receive unemployment if their employer opens up again. While this is great for the government paying these benefits, it isn’t best for employees or employers, who will use up more of their cash reserves and potentially go out of business as a result.

Also, what legal problems might your company face if someone actually catches COVID-19 at your business? A customer who believed in your marketed safety measures gets sick and dies, with your business being the only one they visited. Or a cluster appears from dozens of customers who visited the same day.

What happens if an employee you force to work gets sick and dies? What kind of legal action might their family take against your company? Could you survive that?

There’s this way people choose to cope by dismissing their own risk level. “I’m healthy,” they say, “so I won’t die.” Some healthy people die, too. The cases aren’t (yet) as high as were possible because more than 90% of the U.S. populace was ordered to stay home. Another problem is the instant gratification. People don’t see the immediate result of their actions, as you may not show symptoms until 2 weeks later.

No one is expecting you to stay alone, closed for business for 18 months until researchers develop and manufacture an effective vaccine for mass-distribution or enough people to survive the disease to develop herd immunity.  However, we don’t have the infrastructure in place yet for testing and mitigation yet (led by a poor government response, in part).

It will take time for businesses to get back to “normal.” The concept of normal may never be the same again. Yet, businesses will survive.

We are not the first to go through a pandemic and we will not be the last. Hopefully, we can learn what we can from this situation to protect our businesses and lives during the next one.

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P.S. All hope isn’t lost. There are still things that companies can do to survive this period. Some ideas:

  • Update your website
  • Invest in SEO
  • Schedule an obscene amount of social media posts
  • Invest in marketing
  • Pivot to new and/or digital offerings

If your company needs help updating website content, writing blog posts or press releases, or other forms of content marketing, email us at info@triassicmedia.com. We would love to help you.

Why You Get What You Pay for in Recruitment

It can be tempting to try to recruit new employees yourself through online job listing websites or choosing the least expensive recruitment company that you can find. However, this tactic can often backfire, leading to more lost productivity and frustration than if you simply hire the right recruitment agency to start. Here are just some of the reasons why you get what you pay for when hiring a recruitment agency.

Lost in Online Job Search Databases

If your company simply relies on posting available job opportunities on popular job listing websites, your company’s posting will be one of tens of thousands of similar offerings by your competitors. As a result, job seekers will only spend a few seconds reading through all of the opportunities to make a decision on which jobs they’d like to apply for or may even go directly to a respected recruiting agency. Your company’s postings can easily get lost or ignored on these types of websites.

Too Many Unqualified Candidates

Without a reliable recruiting agency to weed through and test job candidates, your company will be forced to waste time trying to find the best candidate in a giant stack of CVs. Many of these candidates won’t have the skills or experience that you’re looking for. An experienced recruiting agency can look through these for you, pre-screen candidates, and save you time by only matching you with what you’re looking for.

Expensive Bad Hires

New hires can be extremely expensive. Not only does your company lose productivity when trying to hire and train them, but if you end up needing to replace them within a short period, you won’t be able to recoup your costs. Consider the value of an experienced recruitment company over the expense of a bad hire.

If your company needs to hire, evaluate your existing hiring processes. Make sure that you have the systems in place to protect your company from bad hires and to find the best candidates. For most companies, regardless of size, it makes the most sense to hire a great recruiting company to do much of the legwork.

Getting Tired of Your New Business? 5 Sources of Inspiration That’ll Rekindle Your Love

Keeping your business alive and well takes a lot of energy, effort, and planning. It’s quite frankly exhausting! When you feel that you’re at your wit’s end and that you don’t want to work on your new business anymore, turn to these 10 sources of inspiration to rekindle the love you have for your new business.

1. Talk to Happy Customers

It’s easy to focus on the negative, but at the heart of your business, you provide benefit to your customers. Make it a point to talk to them about their experience with your company. Learn why they love your company and what it does for them. You may be surprised at what you find.

2. Take the Day Off

Nobody can continue to work forever. If you’re feeling especially disillusioned, take off an entire day from working. The world will not implode because you took off 24 hours, we promise.

3. Imagine Going Back to a Day Job

A wise business comrade once reminded me that when you work for someone else, you’re making them money. When you work for yourself, you’re making that profit for yourself. Imagine going back to a day job and what that would be like. It may seem that it would seem easier, but there was a reason you decided to open your business and skip the 9 to 5. Remember why.

4. Invest in Business Training

Whether an ebook, an online course, or an in-person workshop, invest in business training to give yourself a new perspective of your business. It may inspire you to make changes or to deploy new growth strategies.

5. Find a Quality Outsource Provider

When you feel overwhelmed, you might just have too much to do so you separate yourself from your business. Find a quality outsource provider, like the Triassic Media Group, to take over some tasks you don’t need to do yourself. We’ll take care of your marketing, content writing, and website maintenance needs so you have more time for other things.

Crowdfunding Campaigns

Part Four: How to Write Copy for a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign

What you write for your crowdfunding campaign has a lot to do with its success. Nobody wants to support some shoddy cause. Here are some ways to have your crowdfunding campaign’s copy stand out.

Invest Time in Great Writing (Headlines + Body Copy)

While word-of-mouth advertising is important to your success, your written copy will be the most widespread communication method. Crowdfunding platforms, commercials, and most other forms of advertising use written copy to convey information. The writing you have done to promote your cause needs to be high-quality. Most people cannot write on the level needed to create effective, high-quality written copy. Invest in finding and hiring someone to do your written copy who has the experience and the skills to do the best job possible.

This is especially true for your crowdfunding platform and other online channels. They have the potential to reach people around the world and convince them to donate without ever talking to you. You want your headlines and body copy to be the highest quality that you can get to ensure your success.

Describe Exactly What the Money Covers

One of the best ways to ensure that people will donate to your campaign is to tell them exactly what their contributions will do. People don’t donate to problems, they invest in your solutions. You have to explain to them how your solution works and how their donations can help you develop it. Many organizations do this by providing a detailed description of their operations detailing what the organization is doing and how it channels donations to facilitate it. If you can show donors how their efforts will help you solve a problem, they are more likely to donate to your cause.

Use Excellent Photos in the Campaign, Reminder Emails, and Social Media

Next to your written copy, your imagery is the strongest method of communication. People often connect more with pictures than they do with written text. So, you want to use powerful and descriptive photos in your marketing efforts. One good picture can be the difference between a successful campaign and a failing campaign.

Social media and reminder emails are great ways of disseminating information through pictures. Social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter are exceptional methods of distributing pictures with text that can get donors’ attention. Take advantage of your social media platforms to grow support for you cause by periodically sending updates with eye-catching pictures to get people involved.

How to Promote Your Cause on Social Media

Social media is great for promoting your cause, but there is a right way and a wrong way to go about it. You want to focus on providing images and text that can draw a viewer in with a positive mindset. You also want to do it in channels with appropriate context. Sending pictures that are off-putting and negatively provocative in the middle of an Instagram feed for funny memes is the wrong context for your advertisements. Instead, focus on using imagery that gets people interested in a positive way in the channels that your target market uses. Tailor your content to your audience so that you are drawing more people in rather than scaring them away.

At Triassic Media Group, we love writing crowdfunding campaigns. Email us at info@triassicmedia.com for a custom quote for your project.

How to Answer Common Questions to Improve Your SEO Rankings

When people use a search engine like Google or Bing, they are very often looking for an answer to a question they have. Maybe they’re discussing the net worth of Taylor Swift with friends and want to prove they knew the right answer. Perhaps they want to know the prices and reviews of a new restaurant in town. People use search results to answer common questions. Once you identify what common questions exist in your market, you can use this information to improve your website’s SEO.

Determine What Your Product or Service Solves

Your business solves a problem. When users search for an answer to this problem, you want your solution to show up. For instance, a wood flooring company sells and installs floors. Homeowners will look for more information on how to install flooring online to see what the process entails. The prospective customer will look up “how to install wood floors” using a search engine. This is the problem the wood flooring company solves. Ideally, the wood floor company’s website should be optimized so that search engines list it as an answer.

All companies solve at least one problem. In many cases, companies solve many problems. Each of these should be incorporated into your SEO plan. For example, a hair salon offers a wide range of services to different kinds of customers. They create updos for proms and weddings, as well as stylish cuts for men. These customers find the company’s website differently. Each of these should be considered and included in different ways, such as “how to find the perfect prom hairstyle,” “how to pick a stylish haircut for men,” and “how to find wedding hairstyles.”

Create Content Highlighting Answers

After you realize what problem your company solves, you need to create content highlighting these search terms. For the wood flooring company, they should create a blog post or other resource that lets prospective customers know how to install wood floors, making sure to use that verbiage. They should list all the tools homeowners would need to do a professional quality job, knowing most homeowners won’t have the tools, the time, or the desire to complete the project themselves once they understand all that is involved.

It’s important to position your product or service as the answer. The blog post about installing a wood floor should provide high-quality answers and alternatives, such as DIY, hiring a wood flooring company, and perhaps a handyman. Provide prospective customers with the pros and cons of each choice. A handyman might be cheaper, but lacks the expertise needed and doesn’t carry the same kind of liability insurance. The wood flooring company may cost a little more, but the job is done right the first time without any hassle. By creating honest and helpful information, you can increase your search engine traffic, distribute highly shareable content, and grow brand awareness.

Add a FAQs Page to Your Website

If they’re certain questions customers routinely ask, put up a well-rounded website page of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). This page helps customers outside of SEO by providing them with a centralized location to have their questions answered. It also can help generate search engine traffic if users search for answers to their common questions. Just remember to keep the answers short. Nobody wants to read an entire blog post worth of content when they need a quick answer. Remember that FAQs might use many different keywords on a page, which is ineffective. Use FAQ page in conjunction with other efforts.

When you understand what your target market wants, it is much easier to create SEO strategies that work. By answering relevant questions through your website, you can increase search engine traffic.

Easy Marketing Strategies for Great Results

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Business owners are busy enough without adding complicated marketing schemes on top of everything else. Sometimes you just want to invest in easy marketing strategies that work. These are our favorite marketing strategies that are easy and simply work.

Email Newsletters

You get email addresses for current customers and prospects. You send them an email a month that passively reminds them you exist. If you’re lucky, they forward it to friends (new potential customers). There’s a reason most companies still do this.

Blog Posts

Blog posts do three things:

  1. Establish that you’re credible and know what you’re doing.
  2. Generate traffic through search results.
  3. Show customers you’re still actively working your business.

Social Media Campaigns

Triassic Media Group has a complicated relationship with social media platforms. Facebook can be a way to distribute shareable content, advertise special deals, and engage with your customers. However, most of your followers won’t see your content, it quickly moves out of your feed to become obsolete, and has a very low ROI (which is very important to us). We think social media is a good complementary strategy. It should be a part of a larger strategy, not the entire strategy.

If you don’t want to waste another single minute writing your own blog posts, social media campaigns, or email newsletters, contact Triassic Media Group for a custom quote.

Office Closure Due to Hurricane Matthew

Our office will be closed due to Hurricane Matthew scheduled to impact Florida starting tonight. We are currently scheduled to re-open on Monday, October 10th, 2016 at 9:30am EST. If this changes, we’ll post an update on our social media accounts and on our website.

Stay safe out there and avoid taking risks with your life, as the governor so eloquently said.

3 Tools to Make Content Marketing Easier

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Unless content marketing is your job, odds are good that you have to try to fit updating your social media platforms and blogs around your other responsibilities. It’s easy to let your content become out of date. Here are 3 great tools you can use to make your content marketing efforts easier.

Schedule Social Media Posts with Social Pilot

If your company markets on multiple social media platforms, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, you’ll waste time if you try to schedule posts using the social media platform itself. Instead, invest in a tool like Social Pilot to schedule posts across all of these different platforms at once. You don’t necessarily want to post the same exact thing at the same time on every platform. However, sometimes it makes sense to share something on multiple platforms.

Make Sure Your Grammar’s On Point with Grammarly

If you write your own posts, invest in a tool like Grammarly. It’s better than normal spellcheckers and lets you know where your writing can be improved. There’s a free edition that points out problems with contextual spelling and grammar. For around $100 a year, you can get the premium edition that lets you know about advanced grammar issues in your posts.

Check on SEO Performance with Yoast

The goal of most business blogs is to generate traffic, engagement, and increased readership. To accomplish this, the post should be written with search engine optimization (SEO) techniques in mind. Yoast is a free WordPress plug-in you can install to see how you can improve your own SEO. It gives you pointers on keyword density and tactics you can use to help with SEO.

Always remember that marketing tools aren’t infallible. You want to still write stellar content that engages with your readers. If you need help with that, email us at info@triassicmedia.com and we’d be happy to help.

The #1 Business Mistake You’re Making

Even if you think you’re doing everything right to grow your business, there’s one mistake most businesses make and don’t even think about it. They don’t return emails. Whether they’re unsolicited emails or offers you’re not interested in, ignoring emails can make you seem less than professional. Plus, you’ll miss out on potential opportunities.

Why We Ignore Emails

As business owners, you get so many emails it’s hard to manage them all. In some cases, you may get hundreds of emails. Many business owners only respond to emails they feel are urgent or from contacts they already have. Others intend to respond to an email, only to forget about it.

Consequences of Ignoring Emails

When you don’t respond to an email, there are several things that might happen unintentionally. First, you overlook the amount of time the sender took to write that email to you. Maybe they want to buy your product or service, or would, if you responded. Maybe they could solve an issue you’ve been dealing with for awhile.

If someone came to your business’s door, you’d talk to them and not completely ignore them. You never know where you’ll see the person again. Maybe Jose Smith emails you and you ignore it. When you need something from Jose Smith’s company, he might ignore you or fail to give you a great deal.

Your New Email Policy

You want to preserve possible business relationships into the future, so it’s critical you don’t outright ignore emails. You want to be professional. Here is a new email policy worth considering:

Don’t:

  • Respond to newsletters or automated campaigns that have an “Unsubscribe” button.
  • Lash out at unsolicited emails. Don’t let your negativity be in writing.

Do:

  • Respond to emails that don’t have an “Unsubscribe” button, even if you’re not interested.
  • Create a template to quickly respond to these emails to express that you’re not interested, politely.
  • Use the opportunity to market your business. You never know who might need your services and when. They started the conversation, so it’s not unsolicited.

Here’s a version of our template we use to take advantage of the contact opportunity:

Hi there,

Thanks for taking the opportunity to contact the Triassic Media Group, where businesses get the professional copywriting and marketing services they need at a fair and flat price.

While I appreciate your reaching out, I don’t think your proposal is a great fit for our company at this time. I’ll definitely keep your information on file in case I ever need this or someone needs a referral to a company like yours. I’d love to send relevant work your way. We’re all in this together, right? 

If you or someone you know ever needs copywriting services, have them check out our website at: http://www.triassicmedia.com. We’d love to help.

I hope you have a great day.

Thanks!

The Writing and Editing Team at Triassic Media

If you need help crafting your own email response, contact us at info@triassicmedia.com. We’d love to hear your ideas and help you with all of your content writing needs.