LinkedIn always goes a bit quiet over Christmas, with many of us closing for business until New Year. When we all reopened for business, however, Get Ahead hit the ground running and we were pleased to see our first posts of the year getting good traction. Our social media managers are always encouraging Get Ahead clients to be consistent in their posts and we’ve seen for ourselves that it works in practice. In this blog, we look at why it works and how to achieve it for your business.
(more…)Category: Marketing
In March 2020, the world turned upside down. Britain went into lockdown for the first time, many people became home workers, and parents became homework supervisors. We clapped for the NHS on Thursday nights and “hero” became a buzzword. Some businesses were ready; others were not. Across the business world, we all reached out to each other with moral support and a lot of forgiveness. But nearly a year later, what signals should businesses give? Is Corona Kindness still relevant content for blogs and social media? Or is it time to embrace the new normal?
Let’s take a closer look.
(more…)If you follow Get Ahead on social media, you’ll know how much we love it – LinkedIn in particular is an important way we network with clients. Social media has something for everyone – it can be as pre-planned or spontaneous as you need it to be, and plays a big part in many marketing strategies. However, it’s vital to put some thought into the way you use social media in order to interact with your customers and drive conversions.
Here are some of the mistakes our social media managers have spotted small businesses making recently:
(more…)Many of us will have made new year’s resolutions. Whether or not yours was to manage your time better, good time management will enable us to take more exercise, eat more healthily, be less stressed and generally achieve whatever we resolved to do!
Good time management also helps productivity – you can do more in a well-planned hour than you can in a chaotic afternoon. Good time management can even keep you motivated, and support a good work/life balance. Above all, it’s important in these trying times, with more of us working from home and juggling work and family.
Here are our top tips:
(more…)Here are four points that are on our January checklist – we hope they’re on yours too!
Thanks to the pandemic, we are all using Zoom and online meeting platforms far more than we used to. There are many applications for online meetings that we’d never thought of until this year, and holding networking events online is one of them. While many of us prefer real-life networking, we have also seen the advantages of online networking – not having to travel makes networking more cost-effective, and we are also able to attend events that are outside our usual patch. You never know – even when the working world returns to normal, we might carry on networking online.
(more…)A virtual assistant (VA) can be useful for a small business at any time of year, but especially so over Christmas, when things get busy and people start taking time off for the holidays. Get Ahead VA’s franchisees know how much their VAs are needed during the festive season, and they offer a wide range of services to help out local businesses at this time. Here are 5 key ways that hiring a VA can make a difference to your business this Christmas.
(more…)Our West Yorkshire franchise has recently had a number of requests for support with landing pages and newsletter automation. Landing pages are great for increasing conversions, and newsletters are a great communication tool. Best of all, once your automation is set up, it’s easy for you, your team or your virtual assistant to run email marketing campaigns without having to start from scratch each time.
In this blog, we look more at landing pages and automated newsletters, and how virtual assistants can help you.
(more…)This year, 27th November will be Black Friday, one of the biggest days for sales and shopping in the pre-Christmas calendar. For many businesses, this is one of the most important days of the year, and that may be especially true this year due to the economic slump caused by the global pandemic.
But for service-based and B2B businesses, the question of whether to run a promotion for Black Friday is a tricky one. Can you run an effective campaign if you don’t sell physical products? What might a B2B business offer instead? If you’re pondering these questions right now, let us inspire you with a few ideas about how to run a Black Friday promotion for a B2B business.
(more…)It’s safe to say that, for most people, this year hasn’t exactly gone to plan – perhaps you started 2020 with big dreams of finally starting your own business, only to have to put those dreams aside in order to make it through the crisis. But the pandemic doesn’t have to stop your entrepreneurial aspirations forever. In fact, opening a franchise could get you back on track sooner than you think.
There are all sorts of fantastic benefits to opening a franchise, but today we’re looking at four key advantages that could make this a great career move for you, even in all the upheaval of 2020.
1. Build a business
Starting a new business always comes with some risk, and this is especially true now, when markets are changing quickly and unexpectedly all the time. Against this backdrop of uncertainty, opening a franchise brings with it extra security and reassurance – you will benefit from starting a business within an established and proven brand, and you will have the support of other franchisees to help you through those difficult early months. A franchise allows you to open a business, but not alone.
2. Work for yourself
Many people have had to rethink how they work over the last few months, from finding a new office space, to adapting to new regulations, to having to leave a previous job. Although these things can be extremely stressful, they also provide an opportunity to take a serious look at your working life and see if you are in a position to make a more long-term change. You must weigh up your options carefully, but these new circumstances may be just the push you need to finally pursue the dream of being your own boss.
3. Manage your own time
One of the greatest benefits of running a business is that you have the freedom to manage your own time. This is more important than ever when life is unpredictable and you never know when you might need to help out a relative or do some last-minute childcare. Running your own business allows you to be flexible – you can take on extra work when you have the time, or prioritise your other commitments if you need to.
4. Work remotely
Almost all of us have had to adjust to remote working this year, and you may have discovered that you really like it – the freedom to build your work around your family life, the flexibility of the working hours, and the peace and quiet of having an office all to yourself. If this sounds like you, then starting a franchise could mean you can benefit from the home-working lifestyle for a long time to come!
If you’re interested in running a virtual assistant agency, providing administrative and business support to small businesses in your area, then the Get Ahead VA franchise opportunity could be perfect for you! Contact us on 01483 332 220. We’d be happy to talk to you about your next big career move!