Why not make your hobby a business?
If you’re someone who has a hobby, you’ve probably thought about monetizing your work before. Your hobby could be art, like painting or photography. You could be someone who builds furniture, or makes pottery. Maybe you sew or knit in your free time. Do you play intramural sports or go to the gym? If you haven’t yet started to monetize your hobby, generating an extra income source from something you’re already doing could be an easy and fun way to help save extra money.
If you haven’t started monetizing your hobby yet, maybe you’re thinking that making a business out of what you do would take the fun out of it. That could be the case if you created unrealistic expectations for yourself, or added unnecessary pressure onto yourself. You can avoid this by thinking of your hobby business as a side project. If the business isn’t your main source of revenue, and you only work on it when you want to, you’ll likely avoid burnout and resentment of your hobby.
By starting your hobby business small and scaling it to the capacity that you can manage, you can keep the fun aspects of your hobby, whether it be creativity or stress release, and give yourself a new revenue source.
You can monetize your hobby in several different ways. If you’re a painter, selling on Etsy is extremely easy. If you build furniture or make pottery, Squarespace is a great tool to build a beautiful shoppable gallery. If you like to thrift, you can re-sell your best finds on platforms like Depop. If you have a specific skill, like cooking or another trade, you can sell your time by using Square Appointments.
The great thing about keeping a side project of something that you are passionate about, is that you can scale your side project to become your main job over time. If you’re an artist, it has never been easier to sell your work passively online while working a day job. If you’re a chef, but can’t open a restaurant yet, you can sell dinners on social media to an online dinner club.
The digital tools of today make is to that if you have ever considered a creative pursuit as a business for yourself, it is now the easiest it has ever been in history for that to be possible for people. You don’t need to wait for a gallery to display your work, you don’t need to save up money for a retail space, you don’t need to wait for someone to tell you to start. If you have a goal in mind, or want to try to make something for yourself, it is now entirely possible to build something from what you love to do.
You don’t need to sign to a label
It costs $15 a year to release music on all of the digital streaming platforms that the majority of people use to listen to music. For fifteen dollars a year, you as an artist can release as much music as you want to on Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, Soundcloud, or wherever people generally get their music from. Musicians no longer need a label to release music, and with modern day music publishing services, you can monetize your own music, cutting out a label’s take.
Labels perform a multitude of functions, like touring and merchandise operations, but more and more, these tasks can be performed or automated by a musician with little effort. A band website can be made with Squarespace, and a basic merchandise store can be made in about an hour, that prints and ships band merch automatically, with services like Printify. Tours can be booked over email after some research, or booked at publicly available spaces. Entire label marketing departments would not be able to reach audiences as well as digital marketing tools like Meta, TikTok and Google advertising.
Thinking about music as a business, without a label, means incorporating as a business on a service like LegalZoom. Opening a business checking and savings account is another necessary step. Changing your social media profiles for your music from personal accounts to business accounts is needed to be able to create ads on social platforms like Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. You can even press your own vinyl.
Not needing a label doesn’t mean that you need to become focused on business and lose sight of the joy of art. Not needing a label means utilizing modern tools, and creating your own business infrastructure to create your music at your own pace, without someone taking a percent of your earnings.
Once you’ve put in the work to be able to schedule a release on digital streaming platforms like Apple Music, you can then create your own social media promotions that link to that music. The ads are the same whoever is buying them, whether it be you or the label. You can target your exact audience with a link to stream your music, or target an ad for show tickets and merch to your fans. Anything that a label would do for you, you can now do for yourself, with the added benefit of learning how to build your own music business along the way.
Not needing a label isn’t failing or not getting success as a commercial musician. Not needing a label is betting on yourself as a musician, and choosing to sign yourself the day you decide to self release your own music. Having control over your artistic output means that you get to start from the beginning and work towards what you want to achieve, yourself. Along the way you learn how to get better, and have a direct connection to your how the music business works. You don’t have to split your earnings, and no label executive can tell you what to do with your creative output. Why not sign yourself today?
Start somewhere, anywhere
Focusing on developing the perfect idea, the perfect product, the most successful business, the greatest work of art, something that will last forever with infinite profit is not a helpful thing to focus on. If you are working on starting a business or creating something new, you really just need to start somewhere, anywhere within your ability, and start today. It is impossible to craft the perfect idea or the best business plan ever, and keeping that as a threshold to pass before beginning is only holding you back.
As articulated more simply by co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn and partner at the venture capital firm Greylock Partners, Reid Hoffman, “if you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.”
This statement rings true for almost any business or creative pursuit you may be thinking about beginning. If you want to open an online art store, starting to publish daily sketches on Instagram or TikTok for free and opening a web store for cheap is going to get you a better chance at success than obsessing over creating your perfect first group of listings to no audience. If you want to make movies, fixating on developing the perfect script is not going to get you closer to your goals rather than collaborating with other like minded creatives in your area on unscripted short films.
Of course this is not to discount craft, time and dedication to a business or creative pursuit. If your business is deeply technical, then maybe starting today means figuring out what permit you need and making the plan to file for it. If you are making a fine wine, or growing specialty foods then don’t be casual with your craft. Maybe then begin to build your online brand in parallel, instead of after, so you have a built-in audience to launch to.
You just need to start. Figure out what you want to do, imagine your endpoint, but also think of the steps to get there. What is the smallest step you could take today to start to walk towards your goal? Once you begin to think of your goals as destinations to reach instead of something that needs to be have already been arrived to, you can begin to make your way.
Sabbatical programs increase employee retention
Do you have employees that work hard, overtime when needed, and that you would never want to lose if you could avoid it? If you don’t already offer a sabbatical program for your employees, it may be a great thing to consider offering as a benefit. This benefit gives your full time employees much needed time off that they may not get otherwise. This time off can have strong mental health benefits and otherwise for employees, while also giving your business the benefit of increased employee retention.
In other words: by giving your employees the ability to schedule as little as two weeks off as a benefit, you’ll give your employees a mental boost and they will be less likely to quit. This can be a benefit that employees earn after a certain amount of time employed at your company, or offered at hiring as a recruiting strategy. This sabbatical program can be paid or unpaid, it all depends on your business.
“Stress derails our focus and memory while relaxation and time off leads to better memory, ability to focus, and boosts creativity. Taking days off work can give employees the mental break they need to stay productive at work. In fact, 84% of managers reported employees’ increased productivity after a break,” as explained by Total Brain.
Linkedin further explains the benefits to businesses by reporting that, “a sabbatical program can improve a company’s employer brand and boost retention. Employees at Clif Bars, the California-based energy bar company, always rank the sabbatical among their most important perks. Which helps explain why turnover at the company is less than 3%.”
Sabbatical programs can be symbiotic to both businesses and employees. Offering employees the ability to schedule a break will help you attract top talent, keep them happy, and ultimately retain them. Customize the program to your business. Offer a week at hiring, and another day every year of employment, or just two weeks at hiring. Turnover and training new employees can be costly, so why not invest in your business' greatest asset, the people you employ?
Automate your business savings for rainy days
If you haven’t started saving your business income yet, that wouldn’t be too hard to believe. Running a business can be a cash intensive process, banking has historically been a cumbersome industry to engage with, and there are only so many hours within the day. However, having no business savings can be a dangerous position for your business to operate from.
If an emergency happens, and you don’t have business savings, you may have to dip into personal savings or even worse, rely on potentially high interest credit to tide you over. Simply put: without savings, your business is at risk. By automatically saving, you’re building up a capital for your business to use in emergencies or when you have something you’d like to invest in.
Luckily, banking has evolved a bit since the completely paper and in-person days of not that long ago, and opening a business savings account can be done from your laptop or phone, within an hour. You don’t have to wait for your bank to be open or schedule a time to meet with a banker, you can now just sign up on Square or open a savings account from your mobile debit account.
If you’re a Square user for invoices or otherwise, something that you really should be using is Square Balance. This is effectively a high interest savings account that can exist within your Square account. If you invoice customers with Square or use Square Register, you can automate a percentage of all transactions to be saved to your Balance. Square Balance pays out a APY of .5%, which is far and away a better interest rate than most (if not all) in-person retail banks.
By saving a flat percentage of all your business transactions using Square Balance, you’re building a reserve of capital for your business over time that can be accessed whenever your business needs it. If you transact a large amount of small ticket individual orders as a coffee shop or retail store, it may make sense to only save a small percentage and let that build up for a few months. If you transact larger amounts less frequently using Square Invoices, automatically saving a larger percentage may be a good strategy to develop savings.
If you don’t use Square for invoices, use another online payment processor, or use a different digital POS, you may not have automated savings natively. Check with your payment processor to see if they offer savings, and if those savings can be automated. Worst comes to worse, whatever bank you use for your business savings will have some sort of automated savings program, likely based on time.
Developing savings for your business can be a safety net in emergencies, or a reserve of capital to deploy for growing your business and increasing sales. Saving as much as you can will never be a bad investment, as it will always be money that can be withdrawn if needed. Saving money isn’t like other investments that lose and gain value over time, it is a relatively stable fund of money that is available to your business whenever it is needed. Save as much as you can, and maybe even a little more, because that money can be withdrawn again. What payment processor do you use for your business?
Fox River Forest Preserve - Port Barrington, Illinois (July 2021)
"Situated along a peaceful stretch of the Fox River, the site’s natural areas include rolling topography, oak savannas and high-quality wetlands that support several native species and offer habitat protection for diverse wildlife.
In some sections of the preserve, the hilly landscape is typical of southern Wisconsin’s Kettle Moraine area. Unique to the site is a large rookery, home to great blue herons and egrets, and a fen that supports two state-listed plant species."
Linktree gives you a link for all of your links
A business with a modern online presence will likely have more than one link that represents what they do. Businesses currently operating will likely have a website, a few different social media accounts on different social media platforms, a feature article in a local newspaper and an appearance on a local YouTuber’s local business tour vlog that all represent your business in different ways, still featuring your business. All of these links exist separately online and you may only list your website in a social media bio. Linktree is a service that solves for this problem, as it gives you a single www. link that will direct someone to any number of different places your business might appear online.
More specifically, Linktree gives you a homepage online where you can list various links that you want to point to. You can also collect donations, embed streaming service pages and sell products on this webpage. You get a customizable www.linktr.ee/[example] link that directs to a simple webpage that lists these content vertically in an easy to use menu. You will be able to change the order of this list, and enable and disable buttons in real time from Linktree’s website. You also get analytics on the links so that you know what’s performing and what doesn’t need to be listed.
If you only have a website and an Instagram page, you can still get benefit from Linktree because you can link to different pages on your website. You can link to a specific campaign that you’re running, link to your shop, link to a list of bestsellers and also link to a page that lets people subscribe to your newsletter.
If you’re an artist or musician and don’t even have a website yourself, Linktree can still be helpful to you because you can either link to your music on different streaming services while linking to an online store where people can buy your latest concert tickets and merch; or link to your latest appearances at a local gallery, link to your newsletter and link to a local boutique that sells a collaboration that you made with them. You just have to have links to point to that are relevant to what you do.
Linking out to several different sources that represent your business, brand or organization gives your customers, donors or patrons more of what you do to engage with. Instead of linking to just your website’s homepage, you can now optimize your social media profiles to be a central hub for all of your work online. Instead of hoping that whoever clicks on your link ends up where you want them to, you can refer them to several different places that you operate, potentially driving an increase in sale or desired outcomes.
This is a simple trick that can have an immediate, and potentially outsized benefit. Linktree isn’t limited to just a social media bio use case, you can use it in your posting online, essentially becoming a supercharged link shortener like bit.ly. Put your Linktree link in your social media posting, and now each post becomes a directory for everything that you do online, curated by you. Businesses, nonprofits, festivals, really anyone can benefit from using Linktree or a similar service. What are 3-5 links that you would want to use for your business?
Reach out to local media for free awareness
Reaching out to local media is one of the easiest ways to get quick exposure for something that you may want to promote. Local newspapers, blogs and even influencers are always looking for new things to cover. If you or your business has something to announce, then reaching out to a local media outlet is a great way to get your announcement in front of a relevant local audience quickly, and at low cost. Even if you don’t have something specific to promote, you can just reach out to local media outlets to see if a lifestyle article could be written about your company, or let them know that you’re available to be quoted for other pieces.
If you do have something specific that you’d like to promote, like a new product or service launch, then writing up a press release is a good first step to consider. Your press release doesn’t have to be long at all, and really just needs to drive home the point of the press release. If you are announcing a new product, describe the product and its benefit to customers. If you are announcing an event, give an event description along with lineup of who will be at the event if you have vendors. Give enough information that a reporter or blogger can write an article of their own about, pulling quotes from your press release, but don’t go so overboard that the reporter or blogger gets overwhelmed reading it.
A good start for a press release is around 5 paragraphs, or longer if your announcement warrants it. Introduce the announcement, describe a few aspects of the announcement, then conclude the announcement with a summary. Write a headline at the top of your release. Write your business’ name, your contact name and any relevant contact information at the bottom of your release. List links at the bottom if necessary. Once you have your press release written, save it as a .pdf so you can attach it to emails. Saving as a .pdf is important because not everyone uses Microsoft Word or Pages. It is best to use the universal file type, .pdf, which can be opened on all devices.
After writing your press release, figure out an image to go along with it. Not every outlet you send your press release to will use your image, but providing an image will strengthen your press releases chances at coverage. Choose an image that represents your announcement and is neutral in tone. As you’ll be sending your release to different outlets, try to not pick an image that would fit one outlet really well and another one not. For example, you could provide an image that an outlet could turn into an attention getting graphic, but sending that attention getting graphic to all outlets may hurt your chances at wide coverage.
Once you have your press release ready to go, research a few local outlets that may cover it. In a city this will be easy, as there are newspapers, alt weeklies, social media outlets galore, etc. in a rural area or smaller town, this may take a little more time. Most areas have some sort of local newspaper and social media outlet. For Chicago, you may consider the Daily Herald and @choosechicago. If there is a local influencer that has a large local following, sending them your press release works too. Sending your press release to as many relevant outlets as possible will increase your chance at coverage.
Reaching out to local media is a generally free, always great way to get quick media coverage local to your area. Starting out trying to get the attention of larger, national news publications is a daunting task, unless you know someone who works at a large media company. Reaching out to local, smaller media helps you build brand credibility and awareness. Once you get a lot of local media, your business may just start to get organic coverage without you even having to try. Start with a press release, get your business out there and see what happens. What will you announce?
Google Ads put you at the top of search results
Google Search is the product that the majority of anyone you need to reach is using to find information, and using Google Ads helps you rank at the very top of any search results on Google. This means that when a potential customer, client or donor searches for something on Google, a link to your website will be at the top of a search result relevant to your goals. When your website may rank on page 2 or page 20 on Google normally, you can then skyrocket to the first result.
According to Hubspot, “it’s estimated Google processes approximately 63,000 search queries every second, translating to 5.6 billion searches per day and approximately 2 trillion global searches per year. The average person conducts between three and four searches each day.” People use Google when they’re researching things to buy or what services may be available nearby, and Google Ads puts your website at the top of those searches.
Google lets you define exactly who to reach, defined by location and keywords. You can find people searching “caterer near me” if you own a catering business, "software engineer jobs” if you are hiring, or “birthday gift ideas” if you sell a giftable product or run an e-commerce store. Think of what keywords describe your business, and only pay when someone clicks through to your website.
Keywords are simply words that describe what your business does or what your goals are. If you were a lawyer, you would potentially put, “lawyers near me,” “patent attorney,” or “intellectual property attorney” as your keywords and add to the list or subtract as you see how those keywords perform. With those keywords, your website would show up whenever someone in your defined location searches those phrases, and Google will report back to you how much those keywords cost per click on average, helping you determine what keywords you want to advertise on.
Pay per click advertising on Google is a much easier and cheaper marketing strategy than social media ads and can be much quicker to see results from than organic strategies like SEO. Pay per click advertising with Google Ads lets you find the exact people who are searching for topics relevant to your goals, in the locations that you operate in, at the budget that you set, and that’s it. Once you find your keywords, you can sit back and adjust your advertising budget as results come in.
If you have a specific date in mind where you’d want to see results from a Google Ad campaign, it would benefit you to start it a few days beforehand. Google Ads take a while to ramp up, and you won’t see updates on ad results for a few days after the campaign starts. Don’t think that your ad isn’t running, as Google shows your ad to a very limited group of people, monitors the feedback, extrapolates, then shows the ad to another group of people informed by the data. Google is figuring out what your ad means and who to show it to. A campaign can take months to really find exactly who to show your ads to. When you start seeing better performance, that means Google may have found a better audience, and you should increase spend.
Google Ads are cheaper than social media ads because they’re pay-per-click. Social media ads generally mean that you’re paying to put your ad in the feeds of social media users, hoping they’ll click, giving you a cost-per-click. The difference is, Google charges you when someone clicks through to your website, and the average Facebook ad is charging you just to show an ad to a targeted group of people.
Google Ads are perfect for businesses that sell online, or businesses that need to collect leads of a specific type in a specific location. They’re even better because you only have to pay when someone clicks. If the value of a new customer to your business is a high monetary value, like if you’re a lawyer or car dealership, spending a little bit of money on Google Ads could potentially mean tens of thousands of dollars in profit from one single click. Google Ads are a great maitenence level marketing strategy, as you can set your budget and keep it running for as long as you see results. What keywords describe your business?
What it means when plants go dormant for winter
One of the most breathtaking aspects of plant life is the seasonal cycle of growth in spring and summer, and dormancy in fall and winter. Observing a perennial plant as it appears throughout the year is a beautiful reminder of life itself, simple evidence of growth and change. Early in spring, tiny green buds appear on wooded stems that will grow to join a shrub’s full growth in summer. These leaves eventually change color, die off, and the stems that sustain such vibrant life go back to the dormancy of winter—only to repeat again the next spring. This cycle is obvious to see, but to track it over the course of a year is a captivating experience to behold. What does it mean when a plant goes dormant though and how to plants know when to ‘wake?’
In our climate, growing zone 5b, perennial plants and trees go dormant in cold months in order to protect themselves from the harsh freezes of winter time. This means that growth is halted, and these plants essentially can be considered to be asleep. This phenomenon helps plants conserve energy for the next growing season, as if they kept trying to grow in the cold of winter, they would be expending precious energy that would be wasted when the cold kills off new growth. Dormancy lets plants stay in a static state, until the environment surrounding them is more accommodating to growth.
There are two stages of dormancy that plants undergo to prepare them for winter, and to help them know when to wake up. Endo-dormancy occurs first within a plant, triggered by the shorter and colder days of late fall. As explained by Michigan State Univeristy, “as the plant enters endo-dormancy, it tracks chilling units to track the passage of the winter. Chilling units are hours of time spent above freezing. The number of hours required for chilling varies for different plants from less than 500 to 1,500 hours or more.” Continuing, “if warm weather occurs before the plant completes its chilling requirement, no growth occurs. Chilling and endo-dormancy normally prevent plants from beginning growth during warm spells in the middle of the winter.”
Once the winter is beginning to wane, eco-dormancy kicks in, and endo-dormancy is done. Michigan State University explains this as, “after chilling is completed the plants are no longer in endo-dormancy. They are now in eco-dormancy. The plants are dormant only because of cold or cool weather. Warmer temperatures into the mid-40s will cause them to begin growth. Once the plants start to grow, they lose the ability to readjust to colder temperatures.” As the temperatures begin to slowly rise in springtime, a plant’s growth will mirror that progression towards warmer days. A plant’s growth will start slow in spring, and as days begin to become warmer and warmer, plants will grow faster and faster. This change is so subtle, that a plant’s growth will get started before you can even observe it, as growth begins from the inside of the plant.
Before you know it, the winter is over and the frosty mornings of spring foreshadow the dew of a summer’s dawn chorus. Your plants are awake again and a new year is here. Dormancy is a spectacular skill that perennial plants in our climate are able to undergo with practically no help from anything other than their natural habitat. As the winter months approach, take the time to observe the changes in your plants. Take stock of what seems to be cold hardy, and figure out what works best for your landscape. Even though there isn’t growth in the winter, and plants go dormant, there is still beauty to behold in natural phenomenon.
A simple guide to fall cleanup
Winter is just around the corner and mornings are now marked by the frost of cold months, meaning that it’s time to start thinking about your fall cleanup. If you haven’t already completed your cleanup, don’t worry, there’s still time to prep your landscape for overwintering, and still time to ensure that your plant material will be as vibrant and healthy as possible next year. Fall cleanups are a simple task that goes a long way to protect your landscape, and can be broken up over the course of several days if you can’t get to it all at once. Below are a few tips for what to focus on when cleaning up your yard.
Leaves off of the lawn, or raking up your tree’s fallen leavesis probably the most recognizable part of a fall cleanup. Raking leaves into piles, for jumping into, composting or otherwise, is probably one of the more iconic fall time images to imagine. Depending on the size of your lawn, this task can be done in a day, or over the course of the fall as different kinds of trees drop their leaves at different times. However you decide to rake up your leaves, just know that this is essential not only for aesthetic purposes, but for the health of your lawn and landscape as a whole. Un-raked leaves give moisture a place to still, shielded from the sun. An abundance of moisture, that isn’t evaporating, under organic material, creates ideal conditions for mold. Mold is not something that you want in your landscape, lawn or plant beds, so be sure to rake up leaves before they have much time to build up. Do a little raking here and there until there are no more leaves to drop, and you’ll keep ahead of any mold spores.
Cutting back perennials optimizes your plants to grow healthily next year, helps them conserve energy during the winter and minimizes the potential for your plants to get infected with disease. Not all perennials need to be cut back, and all can technically be left to winter without being cut back. Even still, perennials like grasses, hostas, irises and hydrangea paniculata/arborescens will all benefit from a fall trim. As explained by PennState Extension, “cut back hostas and remove all their leaves from the ground as soon as the frost takes them. Dead hosta leaves harbor slug eggs that will hatch and ruin next year's greenery.” Take your time with cutting back perennials, as energy is transferred from the stems and leaves of the perennial to the root system, for overwinter storage, during fall.
Cutting back perennials too early will stunt this transfer of energy. As explained by PennState Extension, “Don't be in a hurry to rush outside and cut plants back. Unless the plant is diseased or infected, wait until several hard frosts have killed back the tops. In the spring, the plant sends up energy from its roots to produce beautiful foliage and blooms. Allow the roots time to reclaim that energy from the dying plant, keeping it strong for re-emergence in the spring.”
For perennials that you can leave for winter, without cutting back, think of what will add interest to your winter landscape, what will provide food for birds/animals, and what can provide shelter for birds/animals. Echinacea, or coneflowers, can be left for winter, as their seeds provide food for birds, and can provide shelter in the snow. Similarly, Rudbeckia (black eyed susans) and oxeye sunflower will provide feed for overwintering animals and birds. Large, structural grasses can be left until spring, as they will provide protection to birds, insects and animals that need it.
Prune summer perennial shrubs, or anything that blooms before Mother’s Day. Don’t cut them all the way back, but by giving them a slight trim before winter, you’ll be cleaning them up and optimizing them for best growth early next year. Look for dead growth, uneven growth or diseased growth. If there are still dead blooms on these shrubs, feel free to cut them off and add them to your compost pile. Again, you aren’t cutting these back like you would a hosta (all the way to the ground), but more so cleaning them up for next spring’s growth.
Start with these three tasks and your landscape will be more than prepared for the winter months. Break the tasks up into a few weekends, and you should be able to tackle a task as you find free time. Everything doesn’t have to get done all at once on the same day. Rake your lawn as needed until leaves stop falling, cut back the perennials that really need it (hostas, irises, plox, hydrangea, etc), and prep early growth shrubs for spring next year. A fall cleanup shouldn’t stress you out, and completing yours over a few weekends will give you ample time to take stock of your lawn and what it needs for next year.
Can your business offer a subscription?
More and more, subscriptions are becoming a common way to pay for products and services. Generally tech enabled; streaming service subscriptions, subscription services for basic goods like razors and toothbrushes, free shipping subscription clubs, newsletter and podcast subscriptions, monthly clothing subscriptions, gaming and e-sports subscriptions, creator subscriptions, food of the month subscriptions, coffee of the month subscriptions, wine of the month subscriptions, Amazon Web Services, reoccurring donations, subscriptions, subscriptions, subscriptions. There’s a lot of subscriptions, and there’s a reason for it! Subscriptions are a fantastic way to keep customers engaged with your business and offer them the flexibility of being able to cancel their membership at any time.
It may be hard to remember, but the primary way of making money on Apple’s App Store, a $64 billion business, used to be selling access to an app as a one time purchase. It was only in 2011, when Apple started offering subscriptions for apps on the App Store, four years after the iPhone was announced. Back in the early days of the App Store, developers would usually sell their apps for 99 cents, or more if the app was a professional grade app or premium service. This was great at the time, as it was a new way for software developers to monetize their work, and a brand new way for consumers to find and buy apps for their cellphones. As smartphone adoption became the mainstream, app stores became common and subscriptions became standard, Apple’s App Store and others like it became platforms that enabled whole new industries that created billion and trillion dollar companies.
If you sell an expensive product or service, can you turn that price tag into smaller monthly payments? Photoshop used to be an extremely cost prohibitive software for people to use, or let alone buy to see if they like graphic design. Because of this, graphic design was much more expensive and difficult to find people with experience. As more people started using computers, and Adobe introduced a new monthly subscription plan, more people are now able to download creative software, and figure out if that’s a skill that they’d like to learn.
Software isn’t the only business that is going to a subscription model. Panera Bread, known for bread bowls, bagels and baked goods is now offering customers a coffee subscription plan. For the cost of a couple cups of coffee a month, subscribers can get unlimited coffee. This keeps those customers coming back for their coffee in the morning, where they now may now buy a breakfast sandwich. That customer may now go to Panera for lunch now too, because of the free coffee refill. Subscriptions can be any part of your business that keeps your customers engaged with your business.
Most website platforms that offer commerce tools also offer a subscription plan for businesses to create. You can get creative with what you offer, like a surprise of the month club, or use a subscription to collaborate with a local nonprofit, like a book of the month club for a local coffee shop. If you’re a yoga studio, can you offer a subscription to unlimited classes, or virtual classes? If your business has an expertise, then maybe you can create a paid newsletter for information and advice on your domain. What will your subscription be?
Customer reviews are worth offering a discount
Positive customer feed show that the people who purchase from your business care enough to share their experience in a review that can be seen by others who may be potential customers. If you’re lucky enough to get a large amount of positive reviews, then that shows a lot of credibility to people when making purchase decisions, which can result in better sales and traffic to your website, store or socials. Reviews are a simple thing that can be invested into, if you have a base of happy customers or sell a product that people like. You can offer a percentage off, a coupon code, free shipping, or whatever else is relevant to your business as an incentive to get customer reviews. The small investment of a one-time discount code can pay long term dividends if the review is positive, as it will stay on your social media or webstore indefinitely.
If you’re selling on a platform like Etsy, Ebay or Poshmark, reviews is a built in product, and an indicator to that platforms algorithm of where to place your product listings in search. Because of this, you also have a direct financial incentive to get more positive reviews for your product listings, as more positive listings means that your listings show up higher in search results, making sales more likely. Once a potential customer gets to your product listing, having a lot of positive reviews is an indicator that you sell a quality item, worth a customer spending money on. Two identical listings, one with reviews and one without, a potential customer is more likely to purchase from the listing that has the social proof of a review.
Reviews work so well that even average reviews are more powerful than a product listing with no reviews. According to Qualtrics, “93% of customers read online reviews before buying a product.” People read reviews, and products that have reviews make potential customers feel more familiar with what they may potentially purchase. Having no reviews gives a potential customer no feedback about what they want to buy, and gives them nothing to expect from the purchase. Investing in reviews is an investment in a potential customer’s experience with your product’s listing, similar to in store merchandising.
It is also important to be responsive to your reviews. Thank positive reviewers, and help resolve negative reviews. You don’t have to respond to everything (though that will be a big boost to customer engagement), but try to give thanks to positive feedback and stay on top of any problems that arise. According to GatherUp, “Businesses that don't reply to any reviews earn 9% less revenue than average. Businesses that reply to their reviews at least 25% of the time average 35% more revenue.” Continuing, “75% of businesses don't respond to any of their reviews.” This means that by just responding to the most immediate reviews, you’ll be more responsive than 75% of businesses online.
Customer reviews can be repurposed to be social media posts as well. You can anonymize the quote, or ask customers if they’re fine with you sharing their review. Quotes can be made into graphics, and these graphics can be posted onto social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Be creative with your reviews, and show off the best of what people say.
Reviews are important for businesses, brands and organizations. Businesses tell potential customers what to expect when they spend with you, and help businesses build credibility in their location and industry. Reviews are important for all businesses, but are critical for online only businesses. Directly ask your customers and following via social media or a sign at your cash register. Offer a discount or deal for people who review your business. Your investment doesn’t have to be a large amount of money, but the return you should see will be multiples of that amount. Reviews give life to your business, it’s almost like a potential customer walking into your business on it’s best day, just by reading. Who are your best customers?
Facebook is down, or a time to consider other channels
All of Facebook is currently offline. That means that Facebook.com, the Facebook app, Instagram, Whatsapp, and all of Facebook’s tools are offline, and can’t be accessed by Facebook’s users. Facebook’s work product, Workplaces is even offline. Facebook is effectively wiped from the internet right now, which never happens, as Facebook can effectively (in some ways) be considered the Internet. Whoever is dealing with this at Facebook has a big job to complete right now. Depending on how much your business, brand or organization relies on Facebook products, today may be a crisis. Luckily, Facebook is down for everyone, and another silver lining is that this can be an opportunity to consider other channels to reach your customers.
Are you too dependent on social media? Social media is a fantastic way to reach your customers and potential new ones, but if you rely on direct response social media advertising (pay per click), you can start to think of social media ads as a tax on your profit. If social media advertising is your #1 way of reaching customers, then maybe find a few other channels that are organic and cheaper. What is a halt to all of social media other than a time to notice a halt to your ad spend?
If you get all of your traffic from paid social media, try blogging more, or posting more engaging content on your social media. Blogging will create webpages for search engines to index, creating a landing page for potential customers’ search queries. If you advertise on social media, you can cut that spend by posting more engaging content that gains more reach. Try posting more video, or following a trend on TikTok. Consider posting information about your products or services onto YouTube.
Singularly focusing on social media blocks you off from whole other worlds of potential customers. Some people don’t use social media, some people only use it sparingly. Try other ways of reaching people. If you’re spending on social media ads, try taking some of that spend and allocate it to paid search ads. All of Facebook is down today, and while it will probably come back, take the prompt to consider how you’d reach your customers during the next social media blackout.
Don’t have time to blog? Aggregate!
Blogging is a fantastic way to develop a presence online. Blogging gives your customers, audience, followers, donors and readers something to read that can inform them about your brand identity. Blogs can be used to publish information, lifestyle content, pure entertainment, art, embedded videos or podcasts, or really any other form of media can be made into a blog. Blogs are the building blocks of a website, and as such websites with a lot of blog posts are generally ranked higher in search results. Blog posts can also be posted onto social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Reddit, bringing readers and potential customers into your website through published content.
Blogging is great for businesses. Pretty much the only downside to blogging is actually taking the time to blog. Blogging is writing, and writing can be a grind if you aren’t already a good writer or really enjoy the process of writing. Blogging for people who don’t like to write can be a lot of staring at a computer screen without typing, frustration, and procrastination. Blogging means that you have to think up a bunch of different random ideas that are related to your business, brand or organization, then think up 250-1000 words on a subject. Then you have to find images that go along with what you just wrote, while also being on brand for your organization. Blogging is great, unless you don’t like to write or don’t have the time to sit down and write.
The good news is that if you don’t want to blog, or don’t have the time to write, you can still gain some of the benefits of blogging for your business. Services like Google News don’t actually publish anything. They aggregate links and curate content. You still think of Google News as a news source, as it “publishes” a list of algorithmically curated news (that pulls a short excerpt from the article), much similarly to an actual newspaper.
Your business, brand or organization can do this same content aggregation with social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. You can even quote from articles to incorporate into a video or image post for Instagram, YouTube or TikTok. By acting as a curator by aggregating content, you can still inform your customers and following of topics relevant to your operations and gain domain credibility. The only thing different than blogging, is that when someone clicks on a link that you aggregate, the reader will go to a news site instead of your own website.
If you absolutely have no time at all to blog, or absolutely do not want to publish blog posts, then aggregation can be the next best thing for your business, brand or organization. You can still aggregate content on your social media accounts (or website by embedding), and still build your brand. Aggregation keeps you in conversation with your audience, and if blogging isn’t a possibility, it’s easy to start. Figure out what topics relate to your business and start Googling for some links. What does your business do?
Square Card Reader enables simple card transactions for entrepreneurs
Credit and debit card processing can be a daunting task to setup, until you find a solution like Square’s Card Reader. You may already be aware of Square’s headphone jack reader, the small white square that fits into a smartphone’s 3.5mm headphone jack. As smartphone companies updated their phones to get rid of the 3.5mm headphone back, and as card issuers introduced chip cards, Square has also introduced a brand new chip card + contactless payment reader. Still reasonably priced, Square can now get you ready to accept chip cards, contactless payments (like Apple Pay), and regular swipe cards—within a few hours.
Square charges a small fee per transaction, with no monthly retainer fees. For businesses with under $250,000 a year in transactions, each transaction with the card reader costs 2.6% + 10 cents. That means a transaction of $10 would cost you $0.36 to process with Square. You can carry your reader around with you wherever you go, and if you sell a service, then you can effectively pitch what you sell anywhere you get cell service. If your business scales above that $250,000 threshold, Square will negotiate an individual rate for your business.
The contactless and chip payment Square Reader costs $49.00, shipped free from Square or available in-store at retailers like Target and Walmart. The swipe Square Reader (the headphone jack reader) is free for your first reader, and $10 for a replacement. The contactless and chip reader comes with a headphone jack reader for free.
Square Reader connects to your phone or tablet with Bluetooth, and is seamless to connect. Once you create your Square account, download the Square app, and connect your reader simply through the Settings menu. As long as your smartphone has Bluetooth on, the Square app will automatically detect the reader, and begin pairing if the reader is in paring mode. Square’s website has an easy guide to help you get started.
Square also has an invoices product which lets you create and send invoices to customers, with the same account as the one you use with your Square Reader. Square Invoices gives your business the ability to sell products and services when you aren’t physically with your customer, like at a farmer’s market or art fair. Invoices are great for billing hours for a service that you provide, or a large wholesale order for a B2B client. Since Invoices is a part of the broader Square platform, all of your transactions will appear on a general transactions report, showing you how much business you get from each channel that you operate in.
Posting video boosts engagement on social media
To give your business, brand or organization an engagement boost on social media, incorporate more video into your posting schedule. Social media algorithms on Facebook and Instagram prefer video, popular platforms like YouTube and TikTok are video based, and people generally are starting to prefer interacting with video posts rather than photos, images, graphics and text posts. As a viewer, video is easy to engage with. Information is presented to a viewer in a passive, information rich way, instead of a text post where someone has to read text to engage with the post, without any other visual or auditory elements. Posting video will give your customers and followers something easy to engage with that can be dense with information.
The Verge reports that, “Instagram is no longer a photo sharing app, according to Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram.” Furthermore, “Mosseri said the company is looking to lean into entertainment and video after seeing the success of competitors like TikTok and YouTube.” Because social media companies and algorithms are beginning to prefer to promote video over static posts, posting more video means that you will gain more reach with your posts.
Facebook is also now promoting Reels from Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, on the main Facebook app because of how well video performs on social media platforms. As stated by Facebook in a press release, “with the ability to create reels and have their Instagram reels suggested to people on Facebook, creators — whether they’re just starting out or already have a large following — will have more ways to express themselves, grow their communities and reach new audiences.”
This holds true in a survey of marketers reported on by Oberlo that states, “video marketers get 66% more qualified leads per year,” that “video marketers achieve a 54% increase in brand awareness,” and that “93% of marketers say they’ve landed a new customer thanks to a video on social media.” When social media algorithms promote your content to a wider reach of people, that means that your content has a greater opportunity to reach more people than you could have by just posting static images. This can be thought of as a boost to your business, brand or organization’s lead generation strategy, because your top-of-funnel social media posting will reach more potential customers.
People also turn to video for information when they are making purchasing decisions. According to Oberlo, "most people (96 percent of them, to be exact) turn to videos to learn more about a particular product and/or service.” These can be product reviews, unboxing videos, informative videos released by a company on how to use a product, or even just someone checking to see if a business, brand or organization is taking the time to publish content that is worth spending money on. Given two similar products, when researching, a potential customer will likely choose a product that is sold by a company that publishes informative, quality, video about that product, rather than a product sold by a company that doesn’t post at all.
Now that your content is reaching more potential customers or followers, pay attention to your analytics and figure out what works best for your operations. Are you seeing an overwhelming increase of traffic to your socials and website? Double down on whatever you’re posting, and see if that results in a further increase in traffic. Are there certain themes that people seem to be reacting more strongly to? Are people engaging with your commerce related posts more or less than your informational and entertainment posts? Figure out what those who follow your social media accounts like and start to incorporate more of that into your posting schedule. Don’t only do what the analytics says all the time, or pigeonhole yourself into one specific post. Experiment, iterate, learn and keep your content evolving along side your brand, business or organization.
With these benefits to posting video content in mind, marketing in general is shifting to video. To keep up with the latest effective marketing strategies, it would be a good bet to try posting at least a little bit more video than you are now, if you aren’t already. According to Oberlo, “87% of marketing professionals use video as a marketing tool” in 2019. Almost 90% of marketers are using video as a tool to reach their client’s audiences because it is a tool that has proven effective. Video gets more reach, grabs the attention of someone scrolling a newsfeed better than images or text, and people like engaging with media rich posts, such as video. Continuing, “88% of video marketers are satisfied with the ROI [return on investment] of their video marketing efforts on social media.”
Your video content absolutely doesn’t have to be professional, cinema level, production value. Video can be text over video, a clip of someone speaking directly to the camera, or a short clip of something interesting happening nearby to where you operate. If you don’t post any video yet, try a video Instagram Story or Facebook Story. These go away after 24 hours, so you can figure out what works before you post on your profile. If you’re already making Instagram Reels and posting on TikTok, then try posting longer form on YouTube. Video isn’t going anywhere, and is projected to only grow as a share of content posted online. Posting more video will likely reward your business, brand or organization, and posting regular high quality videos should go a long way to bringing in new business and brand awareness. What will your first video be?
A festival can be anything
When you think of a festival, you may start begin visualizing thousands of people congregating outdoors in a major city to listen to the popular music of a given era, sponsored by Unilever’s latest macro-trend based offering. You may think of your town farmer’s market, soundtracked by a local band and catered by non-franchise food trucks. You may even recall Red Bull’s month long multi-venue music festival that sold several cans of Red Bull sometime during the 2010’s. Festivals can be completely virtual, like Fortnite collaborating with Marshmello, who according to Google is an “American DJ” and not a marshmallow (Confectionery), or the livestream of Condé Nast owned Pitchfork Music Festival. Is a popup event a festival? It is if you want it to be. Find some other businesses, brands or organizations, a location, and start collaborating on a festival of your very own.
Festivals are a fantastic way to build community and learn more about the businesses, brands and organizations in your community. No individual entity exists in a community alone, so collaborating on events is a great way to meet other business owners and community leaders, as well as offer your own community something fun and interesting to do. Your festival or event should be about community building, with the goal of having a positive impact. By providing your community a well planned event, with aspects of entertainment, information, commerce, and resources represented, your event can eventually become something regular (weekly, monthly, yearly, etc.) that people in your area look forward to and benefit from. If the event is a success, attendees will be more likely to remember your business, brand or organization.
You can create opportunity for entrepreneurs who are getting started on a new business or nonprofits who may not have the budget to do a lot of advertising. These are great aspects to planning events and booking vendors, because working together and collaborating is generally good for business. If you have a retail storefront, then working with a startup caterer for a mini popup food festival on one weekend day during your slow season may bring in more business for your storefront, while also providing a new business an opportunity to gain exposure to more new clientele. This is a win win, as the caterer isn’t a direct competitor to something like a boutique or retail store, and the storefront owner can get more foot traffic during a slow time.
Collaborating with nonprofits on events and festivals is another great addition, similar to collaborating with entrepreneurs. Nonprofits generally don’t have the budget to advertise a lot, especially if they are local specific. This is a problem, because nonprofits are generally good for a community, and more people should probably know about what they do and how to get involved. Baseline, if you’re having event the easiest thing you can do is to collect food, clothes, personal hygiene items, etc. from attendees to donate to your local food pantry. You can also think about your event’s activities and think of if a nonprofit could be a sponsor. Are you going to start inviting local musicians to play sets at your coffee shop? You could donate a percentage of drink sales from a specific menu item to a local music nonprofit and put their info materials on your counter. A collaboration doesn’t have to be too big of a deal or take much effort. If you can just get info about a local nonprofit in front of your customers for a day, that may start to make a difference over time.
Your festival can also be online and offline at once. According to Forbes, hybrid events are beneficial because “professionals can still go in person to network, interact physically with vendor booths and products and enjoy the atmosphere. On the other hand, people who cannot attend in-person or do not want to go in-person can still experience and access the event using their computer, phone or tablet. Furthermore, hybrid events allow companies to reap the benefits of both in-person events and virtual events.”
Your festival doesn’t have to follow what you think of when you think of big music festivals or state fairs. A festival can be anything as long as people show up. Free yourself to think of what you could plan within the parameters you have and get creative. Don’t get hung up on if you can’t get 5 food trucks to show up at your shop, what is something else that could be similar? You can’t find a musical act on short notice? You can find a good loudspeaker for just about what would be fair to pay a band for a day. Start where you can, and iterate as you plan more events. Learn from what works, and more importantly what doesn’t. A festival can be anything, what would yours be?
Collaborate with local nonprofits to build community
Collaborating with local nonprofits is an easy way to build community around your business, brand or organization, while also giving back and helping a local nonprofit support your area. Depending on what your organization does, you can collaborate with nonprofits in many different ways. If you operate a restaurant, you can run a fundraising campaign where you donate a percentage of sales on a given day to a nonprofit in your area. If you provide a service, like graphic design, you can donate your services to a local nonprofit. Event the smallest collaborations can make a big difference. If you run a boutique, you can keep a jar and info card next to your cash register for donations, if you have a storefront or community board, you can let nonprofits put leaflets up to advertise their campaigns and events.
Figure out a nonprofit that resonates with what your business does. If you have a tutoring business, then you could start a college scholarship for local students. If you’re a local grocery store, specialty food store, or coffee shop, you can donate extra food to a food bank, or a percentage of monthly sales. Basically every business, brand or organization has something that can be thematically tied to a nonprofit, or at the very least, is located somewhere, and collaborating with your local government or rotary club can be just as impactful.
Working with a nonprofit or local government group means that you’re doing a good thing that helps benefit your community. This is just a baseline good thing to do, that many people already do. When your community thrives, your business, brand or organization thrives as well, and by becoming an active contributor to benefit, you become even more of a stakeholder in your community.
Collaborating with nonprofits or local government groups at its most immediate, gives both you and the group that you’re collaborating with a campaign to promote, other than your business or their group. If you start a trash cleanup walking group in collaboration with your local park district and conservation nonprofit, then the three of your organizations now lead a regularly meeting group that promotes your organizations while also benefiting your locality’s green walking spaces.
When figuring out what to do and who to collaborate with, it’s important to keep in mind what your organization stands for, and to only pitch collaborations that really speak to what your business, brand or organization actually does. This way, you can avoid confusing collaborations, or seeming like you’re only interested in the collaboration to benefit yourself. The best collaborations are symbiotic, and benefit everyone involved. Make sure the organizations you choose to pitch align with your work, and that you can provide real value. Don’t be a nuisance, and if you get no’s for your pitches, learn from any given feedback and try the next organization.
If done successfully, working with local nonprofits or government organizations helps generate positive affinity towards your business, brand or organization. A long running collaboration between your business, brand or organization can potentially even become a real changemaker in your local community, bringing positive change. You don’t have to start with a big collaboration with a state-level nonprofit. You can really just start with a tip jar at the counter of your boutique store that is donated to your county homeless shelter. Small changes make all the difference, and if it helps your company and the organization you’re working with, why not try something?
How offline and online advertising work together
Digital advertising is a powerful and efficient tool that can be used to reach the exact audience that is relevant to your business, brand or organization, making it easy to find potential new customers. Online platforms like Facebook, Google, and other social media companies collect data shared on their platforms and combine it with other data sources that they purchase, giving them ample information to create profiles on their users about what people are interested in. These platforms then make this information available to advertisers, who can then create ads that will show in the newsfeeds of people who may be interested in what they are advertising. Online advertising is a great tool because you can keep your advertising budget solely for people who might actually be interested in your business, brand or organization, and only spend when someone actually sees an ad.
Offline advertising is almost anything else that isn’t online advertising. Billboards, leaflets, traditional media, business cards, t-shirts, car wraps, etc. are all examples of offline advertising. Offline advertising is great because at its best it can be easy and highly visible, with good return. Printing out 100 leaflets for an event is cheap to do, and putting them on local community boards or the windows of coffee shops and boutiques can be a low cost way to get your event’s ad in front of a lot of people, quickly. Keeping business cards on you at all times and if, “what do you do?” ever comes up (or if you’re just good at networking), is a zero effort offline marketing tactic that can have long term payoff, if you ever meet a potential customer or client.
Each advertising channel has its own unique set of benefits and pitfalls. Advertising on Instagram Stories is an excellent way to get your content in front of a wealth of people, but if your business isn’t prepared for that traffic or if you target to the wrong audience, you’ll waste a lot of money quickly. If you rely solely on leafletting, but never actually get around to researching where to place your leaflets, or don’t go around pinning and taping up your printouts, then that channel becomes useless. Ideally, you find a few different channels to advertise through, and by using a blend of strategies, the benefits and detractions of the channels can even themselves out.
When you pick a few different marketing and advertising channels that are both online and offline, you can get the benefits of both, and use the channels in some interesting ways. Notably, you can blend the visibility of offline advertising with the hyper-specific targeting of online advertising to create a symbiotic boost to both marketing channels. If you make leaflets for something that you’re trying to advertise, then only target your online ads to the newsfeeds of people in the specific areas that you leafletted, then the chances of someone remembering your ad or business goes up. If someone sees your ad at a local coffee shop, then is served an ad of the same graphic through their social media newsfeed, that means there are two points in time where someone would be hypothetically seeing your ad. The second time they see the ad, they will likely remember the first one, and that will add to the chances of them remembering your ad.
The offline/online strategy is really helpful, because you can be extremely specific in your ads relative to the location that they exist in. You can reference something that only local residents may get in an offline context, then run that same ad online, keeping your business, brand or organization in mind. This makes your ads more effective, meaning that they will be cheaper to run, meaning that it will cost less money to achieve your advertising goals. Offline/online helps you reach exactly who you need to reach online, while also creating the broad visibility of offline advertising.
Offline/online can be used by both local businesses, brands or organizations, but it can also be used by large companies that have a wide range of markets they serve. As a small local business, all you have to do is keep your messaging consistent and utilize both online and offline channels. As a larger company in many locations, all you have to do is find a primary goal for your advertising, then personalize it for a local audience. This is how Chicagoans get advertisements from multinational conglomerates that speak of the city being windy, or how New Yorkers get ads from the same big companies that make puns about large apples or pizza. A great thing about offline/online is that it can be utilized in any sized market. Messaging can get even more specific the less people in a given area, so you don’t have to focus on big cities to try this strategy.
Some social media advertising channels will even let you type in a list of addresses where you offline ads are, and they’ll send an online ad to anyone who has visited your retail location (or where you leaflets are), meaning that you can reach only the people that you need to if you’re running a super specific advertisement. If you’re advertising for your coffee shop, what’s something that a customer leaving your shop might remember? Reference it in an online ad, inviting them back to your retail location. It’ll feel personalized, because it’s directly referencing a customer experience, and they’ll be more likely to visit your shop again.
By combining offline and online advertising, businesses, brands or organizations can get the best of both strategies and avoid the pitfalls of solely relying on one way to advertise to people. Utilizing offline advertising in addition to online marketing strategies, you create multiple different opportunities to reach a potential customer, making the chance that they remember your business, brand or organization much greater. By trying different strategies and learning from what does and doesn’t work, you’ll increase the efficacy of your advertising and also save some money while you’re at it. Because you can reference a local area with online, then follow up online, your ads will be more effective. How would you mix online and offline advertising? What channels will you utilize?