5 Ways to Keep Your Business Growing

Running a small business requires effort, time, money and many other things. You also need to take advantage of the plethora of tools that exist in order to succeed. Some of these tools are tangible and some are concepts that will strengthen you and your business. Here are five ways to keep your business growing.

Focus on flexibility

While it may feel like a challenge it’s in your best interest to keep a flexible mindset. A business that has flexibility is better equipped to navigate through hard times than one that is more rigid. Flexible small business owners who are ready to adapt know they have to accommodate to changes in the industry. Focus on staying malleable; you always need to be open to making changes and implementing improvements.

Use business cards

Don’t underestimate the power of high quality business cards! Business cards still matter. In a world where everything is digital, handing out business cards is one way to make a genuine connection and offer a great first impression of your brand. The best news? You can even make your own business cards using Microsoft Word making this a very lucrative method of direct marketing.

Develop a brand voice

In order to really strengthen your brand, you need to develop a voice. A compelling and original voice almost acts as a magnet, making customers come back time and again. It will help you build an engaged community of fans who listen to your every word, leading to a community that grows as your fans share your posts.

Blogging is a great way to show your voice. If you need blog topic ideas, that’s okay. Everyone runs into a wall sometimes. To get inspiration, focus on images, turn to past highly successful posts and elaborate on the topic and write how-to posts.

Use social media

Everyone knows social media is an incredibly powerful tool when used correctly. You can use it to promote your business. It will also give you powerful insight when you practice social listening. You will find out what your customers are saying about you, learn more about their behavior, determine trends and keywords that appeal to your target market, and boost your customer service skills. Social media is hands down one of the top customer engagement strategies available to small business owners today.

Give back to the community

If you want to attract new business, build brand awareness right in your community. You can sponsor a little league team or participate in a local community event such as a 5K walk or run and raise your business profile. Do what you can to make sure people know you and what you stand for – forging personal relationships and gaining credibility is what will take your small business to the next level.

Growing your small business will be an ongoing pursuit that requires innovation and hustle. Keep an open mind and use these tools to ensure your business will continue to attract new customers and retain your current ones.

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What techniques have your small business used to continue to grow?


Source: www.business2community.com

ABOUT WNFP
Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP) is a business organization focused on providing our members and guests with an extraordinary networking experience, bringing business professionals together for the sole purpose of generating new relationships and developing new business opportunities. Not a member, learn how you can become a member and join this awesome group of professionals to connect and grow your business.

Stay Connected with WNFP!

Successful Networking Is All About Having the Right Energy

There are three things that set any business person apart from the rest of the pack.

1. The energy she carries. 
2. The situational knowledge she has.
3. How she leverages relationship capital, not only of herself but of others.

Many young professionals have a shortage of experience or situational knowledge; they also lack a huge network of relationship capital. Having this capital is all a variable of time, nothing else. But, by putting an effort into networking, anyone can accelerate her success.

This is where the energy that you carry comes into play. Relationship capital is an immensely valuable part of business success. And one of the best ways to build this asset is to put your energy, intention and attention on networking. Energy makes it, quote-unquote "network," meaning the energy that you carry is what makes your connections work.

Energetic first steps

The first step when you have identified an event, a place or a situation where you can network is simply to put yourself into the right frame of mind. First, think of yourself as an equal. You mustn't think of yourself as separate, inferior or even superior. Don't fall victim to your ego! Envision yourself on a level playing field.

If you don't have the right energy before you step into a networking or connection situation, then you must shift your energy. I can't tell you how many times that I've entered a room of my own family where I've felt separate, inferior or superior. And it always tends to make situations worse. This is why we must first have our energy aligned and be connected as one. You must feel like you belong, especially if you're younger and you don't have many relationships that you can leverage. If you don't carry the right energy when networking, you will not be very successful.

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Bring your value

When you walk into a room, you want people to feel and know that you provide value, and can be of service. Also that you're radically humble and can ask for help. I want the energy that I carry to utilize the 100/20 Rule: Everyone who speaks with me or meets me knows that I'm giving much more value than I'm asking for.

Networking will be easier if you have a simplified approach to your interactions or connections. Once you have the right energy, make sure you maintain eye contact, smile and always have at least one question to ask.

Second, that emotion

When formulating your question, remember that people "buy" on emotion for logical reasons. Therefore, it's a good idea to connect emotionally. Emotion is energy in motion. There are numerous ways to establish an emotional connection from the outset. You can share a passion for a sports team, for the place where you grew up or the community you serve. If you both have children, you can talk about their school activities. Or anything that's important to you, and in common with the other person.

Finally, when networking, be "more interested than interesting." Simply put: Find out what they know, rather than showing off what you know.

A key part of networking is making sure you have a simple system in place to keep track of the people you meet. That way you can easily keep in touch with them and deepen your emotional connection.

Exchange contact numbers on the spot by having them call your mobile phone with theirs. In the same day you meet them, send an invitation to connect on LinkedIn. At home, or in your office, do not file business cards alphabetically. Rather, put them in order of importance -- or strongest influence -- or in the order of generating most to least ROI. And keep them in plain sight on your desk as a reminder to follow up.

Remember when putting together your system: The universe loves simple.

Making new relationships ... indirectly

One of the best ways to build new relationships is a bit counterintuitive in that you do not interact directly. I learned this from my mentor, Leigh Steinberg, when we were recruiting athletes at his sports agency. We utilized spheres of influence. In other words, we leveraged the connection someone else had to the people we wanted to meet. It's an organic and authentic way to meet an important person you can't just pick up the phone and call.

What many people fail to realize is that having an individual who's more than one degree of separation from your target prospect can be more effective than you actually pitching your target. This is because now you have an unbiased, credible referral source who is aligned with your vision.

Network and thrive

When you can effectively connect without the ego's need of being separate, inferior or superior, you leverage more than just your situational knowledge, you include others' as well. Not only can your relationship capital, and that of your mentors, help to accelerate your networking (and career) but utilizing the spheres of influence can, too. Most importantly, make a point to connect emotionally, then develop a process or system to continue to connect to those people emotionally. For example, if you connected on both of your kids' school activities, you can check in once in a while to inquire about their progress.

When you effectively connect to others and provide value, you can easily connect to what inspires both of you. If you bring the right energy to your networking and connect to goodness, you'll exponentially experience more success and happiness.

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Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com
Image Credit: Hero Images | Getty Images



ABOUT WNFP
Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP) is a business organization focused on providing our members and guests with an extraordinary networking experience, bringing business professionals together for the sole purpose of generating new relationships and developing new business opportunities. Not a member, learn how you can become a member and join this awesome group of professionals to connect and grow your business.

Stay Connected with WNFP!

How to Spotlight Your Growing Business on Social Media

Is there a way to ensure your business will take off on social media? Unfortunately, there are no definite answers. However, we do have some quick tips to make sure your company can start off on the right track. Here’s some helpful advice for using four popular social media platforms to promote your business.

1. Instagram—According to Hootsuite, there are a few ways to keep this image-based platform fresh and compelling to your audience.

• Make your company’s logo noticeable and easy to see
• Set goals for growth
• Create a theme for the posts you intend to share
• Follow a schedule that is planned out in advance
• Stay creative
• Keep these tips, as well as more outlined in the Hootsuite article, in mind as you promote your company’s Instagram presence.

2. Twitter—Building up your Twitter page takes a lot of work, but this platform is one of the largest in the world. Post Planner has a lot of helpful tips on how to create a Twitter presence that will grow your company.

• Use Twitter cards
• Have a detailed plan on how to gain followers
• Include compelling hashtags that draw the audience you want.
• There are many more tips that can help grow your Twitter page. in the Post Planner article

3. Facebook—The original social media platform. Beyond the quick photo or short Tweet, this is the space where you can get your company’s message across. These tips from Entrepreneur can help you on your way to building this platform.

• Promote your Facebook page across all of your other channels
• Publish factual and helpful content for your audience to benefit from (think to yourself: what value am I providing through this update?)
• Keep track of your engagement to make changes on or improve your strategy
• If you want to learn even more about growing your company’s Facebook, check out on of our articles for additional advice.

4. LinkedIn—Known as the social media platform for professionals. This way of connecting with users is slightly different than the other platforms as it shifts the tone—your tone on this site should change with it. This article by Inc. shares helpful tips for you to boost your LinkedIn engagement.

• Keep all of your photos professional. This isn’t the place to post casual updates—though your Instagram or Facebook pages could be!
• Make sure your endorsements on LinkedIn reflect what you want them to. You don’t want unrelated skills cluttering up your profile
• When connecting with others, make it personal. Use their names and cater to who they are—don’t let your wording become generic or overused
• Besides these points, we also have some advice that will help you generate more traffic on your LinkedIn page in

Social media is such an important part of connecting with potential leads, and we want you to have the best running start you can.

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Source: https://www.business2community.com
Image Credit: N/A



ABOUT WNFP
Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP) is a business organization focused on providing our members and guests with an extraordinary networking experience, bringing business professionals together for the sole purpose of generating new relationships and developing new business opportunities. Not a member, learn how you can become a member and join this awesome group of professionals to connect and grow your business.

Stay Connected with WNFP!

[VIDEO] 3 Simple Things You Can Do to Grow Your Business

After talking to hundreds of entrepreneurs and business owners, like financial advisors, real estate agents, mortgage brokers, business coaches, startup founders and more, Entrepreneur Network partner Greg Rollet has identified three simple things you can do to get more clients.

Now, these three things are not an exhaustive list, and there are a million different ways you can achieve them. But, they are at least a starting point you can use to develop your business and get more clients. For example, Rollett advises that you need to have a plan for your media.

This can take form in different ways. You might provide editorial content, meant to entertain readers and grow your audience. Or, you could create advertising, which would hopefully drive that audience toward an action -- particularly making a purchase or investing in you.

But, that's just one decision. You also need to decide on whether you want to make written media, photos or videos. Do you want it to be a digital media or something physical? Should it be long or short and what are your goals for the project?

This isn't about a one-size-fits-all solution -- each business will have different media needs. But, media is vital if you want to grow your business, because in the end, it's just a medium you can use for your message.

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Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com


ABOUT WNFP
Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP) is a business organization focused on providing our members and guests with an extraordinary networking experience, bringing business professionals together for the sole purpose of generating new relationships and developing new business opportunities. Not a member, learn how you can become a member and join this awesome group of professionals to connect and grow your business.

Stay Connected with WNFP!

How Consciously are you Growing Your Business?

When it comes to building a business, if you wake up one morning and you realize that you don't like the business you've built, it's probably because it was built passively as opposed to consciously.

For me, life has been much more about figuring out what I don't want as opposed to being crystal clear about what I do want. I think this is normal for most of us. Once we've figured out what we don't want we can get on with the job of making the things we do want into a reality.

So what's my point? If you aren't clear about what you want in your business, you will simply get what you end up with. And that should be a concern. It all comes down to making very conscious decisions and setting clear intent.

Over the years I've learned to be better at making conscious decisions about pretty much every aspect of my business (and my life I might add) including:

• What type of customers do I want to attract and work with?
• What type of customers do I want to avoid at all costs?
• What type of projects do I want to attract?
• What type of projects do I want to avoid at all costs?
• How much money do I want to make?
• What poverty actions am I going to stop?
• What I will do and what I won't do for money - my moral compass.
• What type of people do I want in my life?
• What type of people don't I want in my life?
• What do I want people to say about me and my reputation?

I define these in absolute detail, write them down and carry them with me in a folder that I review pretty much every day, whenever I get a quiet moment or two. This is what gives them real power and what keeps me on track.

What is the end result? I have shaped a life by making conscious declarations. All of them have become reality. Am I still working on certain things? Absolutely. And I am sure I will be until the day I die but I've learned that setting clear intent helps make my goals a reality.

I use this method when I am struggling to make a decision or a call of some kind. I figure out what I don't want and what I do want - and generally, the decision-making process becomes a whole lot easier.

Going through life in a passive way generally gives us a life we don't want. Make conscious decisions about every part of your life and you might be surprised (and a little amazed) at what you get.

Source: https://www.inc.com/
Image Credit: Getty Images


ABOUT WNFP
Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP) is a business organization focused on providing our members and guests with an extraordinary networking experience, bringing business professionals together for the sole purpose of generating new relationships and developing new business opportunities. Not a member, learn how you can become a member and join this awesome group of professionals to connect and grow your business.

Stay Connected with WNFP!