​Many of the small business owners that I meet with each week are experiencing success in their business and ready to grow. But they don’t know exactly where to start or how to plan for growth. Let’s face it, a lot of business owners became entrepreneurs because they were good at what they do in their field. That doesn’t necessarily make them good at business strategy, sales or marketing. For this post, I have pulled together several articles on the subject of small business growth to share with my fellow business owners. I hope you learn from the material as much as I did while doing the research!

This first article is a slide deck that will walk you through the fundamentals of growing your business in a very easy to understand process. Save the deck for future reference!

Growth Strategies for Your Small Business
(Presentation by Femi Olaiyafemi of Redwood Consulting was originally posted on Linked In Slide Share.
http://www.slideshare.net/folaiya/business-growth-strategies

The next article breaks things down into logical steps. I like it when I can follow a map. This article does a great job of pointing out some actionable steps you may or may not be thinking of.

http://www.inc.com/guides/small-business-growth-strategies.html

Plan your work – work you plan. Who hasn’t heard that phrase? As with anything worth doing, if you have a game plan, you are much more likely to succeed. This article is a great illustration of a business growth strategy plan by one of the best strategists I follow.

Planning Your Growth

https://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/small-business-growth-planning/
(Written by John Jantsch, CEO and founder of Duct Tape Marketing Consultants)

One of my mentors once told me that I had no shortage of great ideas and then proceeded to ask me to choose 2 -3 to focus on for the next 90 days. I have never forgotten the lesson. The best of the best still need to focus if they are going to be successful. This article points out some compelling arguments for deciding on a couple of great ideas at a time.

Is It Time to Ask Elon Musk If He is Doing Too Much?
“Are you keeping count? At one and the same time, Musk is trying to get us to Mars by 2025, create vacuum-powered transport up and down the West Coast, help Mark Zuckerberg put a satellite in space to wire some of the poorest areas of Africa, make safer autonomous cars, build a ginormous battery factory, and purchase a struggling green-tech company he helped launch.
These are worthy endeavors, every single one of them. And it's beyond commendable that Musk is throwing his considerable genius into the fight against global warming, an effort that too few billionaires have joined. But even the incomparable Steve Jobs ran only two major companies at a time.”
 
http://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/its-time-to-ask-is-elon-musk-trying-to-do-too-much.html

(Written by Minda Setlin, of the Geek Gap. Posted on Inc.com)

One of the overriding themes in any management strategy is focus – keep it narrow, don’t try to do too much. Some of the greatest business minds and most successful entrepreneurs of all time have found their greatest success in singular-minded focus. The following article points to the example of the challenges of trying to do too much at once. Don’t let your growth plans go up in flames. Get a mentor or hire a consultant you can trust (Like maybe Sales Up Solutions and Yours Truly…) and get focused on the most important next steps for your business. Then work your plan and get excited about what is to come!

​For years we have been talking about using content to promote your brand online. Relevant content is one of the best ways to show your customers and prospects that you are an authority in your field and should be a key element in your overall marketing strategy. Whether you are a realtor showing potential buyers that you know the mortgage process with articles about getting approved for your first home loan or a mechanic sharing information about the attributes of several types of tire tread, giving your online visitors information that they need, at a time they need it, is a great way to get attention and start the process of getting your next customers to “know, like and trust” you.

But getting the information posted is not the golden ticket. Once you have an interesting mix of content being posted consistently on your social media sites as well as your website, you need your readers to do more than just read the posts, you need them to engage! Engagement is when your page visitors share or re-tweet your post, click through to the links you include, make comments that will be seen by their fans, respond to your call to action or actually contact you to buy your product or learn more about it. Getting social media browsers/followers engaged can be a challenge. Here are some tips that might help you get your fans responding to the great content that you are providing through your online pages:

1. Post good content more than once.
Social media is a fast paced environment. Facebook and Twitter don’t show everyone everything so your post might not get to all of your followers. And even if it does, they might miss it in their feeds. So when you post something really good, re-post several times over the course of a day or more. This will increase the odds for the content to be seen.

2. Pin a post to the top of your feed.
If you are fortunate enough to have regular visitors to your site or if you are promoting your site through a campaign, pin a great post to the top position to ensure that the visitor sees a provocative post as soon as they arrive. You can unpin after a time so it doesn’t become boring but pinning is a great way to hold something in priority position.