Category: Small business

Writing press releases is a key part of PR.

Get your releases right and they’ll be published far and wide, but get them wrong, and they a) won’t generate the coverage that they deserve or b) you were hoping for.

It’s not possible to write all of your press releases in exactly the same way, but there are best practice techniques you can follow, like these:

1: THINK ABOUT HOW THINGS LOOK

Before we focus on the writing side of things, there’s just one small, but crucial thing I wanted to flag that has the potential to really impact how your press releases perform, and that’s how they’re presented.

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Here at Get Ahead VA our team includes experts in a wide variety of fields.  From Accounting to Admin, Hootsuite to Holiday cover, Email Marketing to Excel, our VAs can add value to many aspects of your business.  In our Expert Showcase series our team deliver some of this expertise to you, with a series of ‘How to’ guides to help you get the best bang for your buck in your business.

In this guide one of our virtual assistants Melanie talks about how you can organise, plan and track almost anything using an online tool called Airtable. (more…)

The media appears to be full of headlines talking about the gig economy at the moment.  The topic even featured in election campaigning last week, with political parties talking about zero-hours contracts and other employment related issues.  But what exactly is the gig economy and does it matter?

The gig economy is a way of working that is based on people having temporary jobs or doing separate pieces of work, each paid separately, rather than working for an employer. Source: Cambridge Dictionary

The gig economy is another form of freelancing or self-employment.  The gig economy phrase was coined to highlight the fact that people get paid for each ‘gig’ they complete.  This is in contrast to a standard employment contract – whether permanent or temporary, which would usually be based on a number of hours worked.  Famous examples of the gig economy include food deliveries for companies such as Deliveroo, taxi drivers for companies such as Uber, couriers and even independent contractors such as plumbers, in the recent employment case affecting Pimlico Plumbers.

Flexibility or exploitation?

On the one hand, the gig economy like other forms of freelancing and self-employment usually offers greater flexibility.  People can choose to work as and when they have time available, rather than being tied to a regular hours arrangement.  However it does mean that gig workers are not classed as employees, so they have no rights when it comes to things like holiday pay, sick pay or maternity pay.

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LinkedIn Pulse is a self-publishing platform.  This means that you can write articles or blog posts and rather than publishing them just on your own blog or website, you can publish them on LinkedIn.

Access to a worldwide audience

The immediate benefits are obvious.  For your own website or blog the audience will be limited to your website users – or possibly your social media or email database audience if you publicise it using these means.  However, publish an article on LinkedIn Pulse and potentially you can hit the millions of users worldwide currently registered on Linkedin – and even those without Linkedin accounts.

Publishing on LinkedIn Pulse can also benefit your SEO, providing good quality links back to your own website.  Your Pulse posts are listed on your profile, so publishing regularly can improve the appearance of your profile, as well as your influence within the Linkedin network.

So if the benefits are obvious, how do I get started?

Pulse used to be a standalone news aggregator app which LinkedIn purchased in 2013.  It has now been fully integrated into the LinkedIn desktop, so you may even be using it without realising it.  Every time you choose to click on the box ‘Write an article’ as opposed to simply sharing an update, you are publishing on LinkedIn.

The key steps to posting your first article are as follows: (more…)

Franchising can be a great way to grow your business.  It can enable you to expand your geographical reach as well as your penetration of key markets.  It is a well-known model used all over the world by smaller companies as well as larger scale multinationals such as McDonald’s, Clarks shoes, Interlink Express and Toni & Guy. 

Franchising is also a fast-growing industry, with the latest bfa/Natwest Franchise survey revealing an industry worth £15.1bn in the UK, three times the size that it was 20 years ago.  44,200 franchise outlets employ 621,000 people, an increase of 70% over the last 10 years.

What is franchising?

Business format franchising is the granting of a license by one person (the franchisor) to another (the franchisee), which entitles the franchisee to own and operate their own business under the brand, systems and proven business model of the franchisor.” British Franchise Association

A variety of different industries lend themselves to a franchising model, but it isn’t for everyone.  Managing a group of franchisees is completely different to running your business – and one can certainly distract from the other if not handled properly.  If you think franchising might be right for your business, then here are our five top tips to ensure your franchising journey is a success:

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We all have a vision in our heads of an angel – the being that came to bring messages of good news and great joy in the nativity story – or the little girl dressed in white with her fluffy halo on her head in the school play.  But how does that work in a business context?   What is a business angel?

“An angel investor is a high net worth individual who makes use of their personal disposable finance and makes their own decision about making the investment.” UK Business Angels Association

A business angel is someone (or a group of people) who decides to invest their money in other businesses.  It is described as equity finance, as the angel would usually take shares in your company in return for the finance they are providing.  In contrast to other forms of lending, angels will usually wish to volunteer their expertise as well as their money, helping you to achieve your objectives and them to achieve a return on their investment.  One of the most famous groups of angel investors is of course the BBC Show Dragon’s Den.

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Historically, finding funding for your business was a fairly straightforward business.  You asked the bank, or you saved up enough money yourself.  But in our digital, virtual age, there are far more funding sources on offer.  Of course, the bank (or building society) is still an option, but it isn’t suitable for everyone.  There are friends and family, who can be a fantastic support for your business – both financially and emotionally.  Then come other options such as angel investors or crowdfunding.

“Crowdfunding is a way of raising finance by asking a large number of people each for a small amount of money.” UK Crowdfunding Association

Sometimes referred to as crowd sourcing or peer to peer lending, crowdfunding is the opposite of traditional lending.  Instead of asking a few people (such as a bank) for a larger sum of money, you break it down and ask for a larger number of people to invest a little.  This makes your investment much more accessible for everyday people, not just major investors with big sums of money.

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Here at Get Ahead VA our team includes experts in a wide variety of fields.  From Accounting to Admin, Hootsuite to Holiday cover, Email Marketing to Excel, our VAs can add value to many aspects of your business.  In our Expert Showcase series our team deliver some of this expertise to you, with a series of ‘How to’ guides to help you get the best bang for your buck in your business.

In this guide one of our marketing and social media management specialists Jenny talks about how you can use icons to boost the visual impact of your marketing – both on and offline:

As consumers, we are bombarded with marketing messages every day.  Our phones receive marketing emails, texts and even calls wherever we are.  As soon as we log into our social media accounts we are bombarded with sponsored posts and ‘suggested’ updates.  Our brains are firmly on overload.

So as a business, how do you cut through all that clutter and ensure that your marketing messages do get through?

Graphic design can be a really effective tool, providing visual impact.  Icons are an important part of the designer’s toolkit which can add an identity to your marketing messages and bring them together to reinforce their impact.

An icon is a small picture that represents a topic, information category or programme.

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Here at Get Ahead VA our team includes experts in a wide variety of fields.  From Accounting to Admin, Hootsuite to Holiday cover, Email Marketing to Excel, our VAs can add value to many aspects of your business.  In this Expert Showcase series our team deliver some of this expertise to you, with ‘How to’ guides to help you get the best bang for your buck in your business.

In this guide one of our digital marketing specialists Carrie talks about how you can get started with your first email marketing campaign to grow your business:

As a small business money for investing in marketing is always tight.  Every penny is scrutinised and potentially one straight out of your back pocket.  But the good news is that there are lots of free tools that can help you market your business effectively.  Mail Chimp is one example of a free tool which is simple and easy to use and can get your started with communicating with your customers by email.

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It is just 3 weeks to go until the Self Assessment deadline so if you haven’t already got your tax return sorted, now is the time.  Under current tax rules, if you run your own business and are registered self-employed you may need to submit a tax return online, along with other people who are required to file returns such as those whose annual income is over £100,000 per year, who have Capital Gains Tax to pay, who live abroad or who are trustees.  The deadline for filing online is Tuesday 31st January and there are fines to pay for every single day that you file late – however good your excuse is!

For some of you this might be an easy task.  Your accountants may already have everything in hand, you may have already set the money aside to pay the tax owed and you are simply waiting to press the ‘go’ button.  For others this might be the first time you have had to do it – or the annual panic. (more…)