A job title you probably would not have heard of a decade ago is a social media manager, but nowadays they are quite common. A social media manager takes responsibility for your business’s pages, accounts or profiles and posts relevant and interesting information while helping to spread the word about your business and increase the number of people following or liking the information.

If you employ a good social media manager you can expect the work to be of a professional quality with accurate spellings and information. The information that is shared should be factual and relevant, as otherwise it could give your business a bad name or reputation. Any complaints or queries directed to the accounts should be dealt with in a professional and courteous manner – many big businesses have hit the headlines in recent years for particularly witty responses, and going viral is a brilliant way of having your information reach a greater number of people.

A social media manager may take on the work for you permanently, or may set you up a system that means you can do it yourself with as little hassle or confusion as possible. It depends upon your budget as to which is the best option, but being able to meet with a social media manager and get a feel for what they do may be beneficial.

The majority of businesses now have a website where customers can find out more about the company and the products. A growing number of companies also have eCommerce sites, a platform for selling products and achieving more sales for the business. This is a very good idea if the products you sell can easily be transported to customers and they can buy them easily online without having to contact you first.

Talk to a web designer about setting up an eCommerce site for you. They will be able to talk you through the process and give you an idea of how much it will cost for your business. You should be able to negotiate a fair price for an eCommerce site very easily. Tell the designer about your products so they have a full understanding of what you sell and how an eCommerce site will fit into your business model.

Once you have a new website, the work does not stop there! You will still need to carry out regular maintenance work to keep things ticking over. This could include:

• Updating company information, especially if you show members of staff on your website. Make sure the details you have are accurate and relevant.
• Keeping product information and prices up to date, especially if you have an eCommerce website.
• Creating new landing pages for areas that you want to target.
• Adding new pages as the business expands, to show new services or give additional information.
• Keeping your design modern and attractive.
• Ensuring security is tight and your website is well protected.

It might be worth working with a professional to help you manage your website properly. They will be used to offering continuous website improvement to you, helping you to keep your site up to date and market it effectively on the internet.

Online security is always in the minds of our customers. With the recent large cyber-attacks on massive firms of banks and service providers of late, it is no wonder that many customers are dubious about giving their details out and allowing them to be stored online.

Data protection needs to be undertaken seriously and as a business owner, you need to ensure that you not only compile to the minimum standards but also try to exceed these.

One comprise can cause you to lose potentially millions of customers and have a knock on affect for years to com. CRM software is often used to store sensitive data about a customer such as names, address, phone numbers and even account details. If using a CRM system then you need to ensure that it is secure and that you are storing your data in the correct way. Certain data may need to be encrypted so if it does fall in to the wrong hands, it is not able to be deciphered.

The market is flooded with marketing software that you can buy or lease that promises to increase your sales or improve your business. Finding out if the software is worthwhile investing in can be tricky as you cannot take just take the word of the sales person trying to sell it to you. You need to invest some of your own time looking into reviews and ideally factual figures to see how well the software works and if it is going to do what you need it to.

When searching for reviews, be dubious to believe all that you read on the software companies own site or linked sites such as Facebook, Google Plus etc as these can have been fabricated, instead try and find a third party impartial site.

Always ask for a free trial of software before you commit to it to see how it works and if you are not happy with the trial then do not be scared to ask for more time.