5 Free ways to help your business

Hi everyone, it’s been a little while since I did a blog, so I thought it was about time I changed that. So here are my Top 5 Free ways to help your business be seen.

A bit of context in case you’re reading thing in the future. This post was written during the lockdown for Covid 19. There are so many people whose whole businesses have changed or had to stop over the last few weeks. 

 Google my Business

 This is a free place to add a listing for your business. In the past, a lot of small business owners who worked from home were put off using it because it listed your full address – but since GDPR you don’t need to do that no on the listing. You will need to register the address and get a postcard sent to the address, but when it goes live you can set it so that it only shows your town and county.

 It’s important to list on there because

  1.  It gives you another chance at appearing in the search results. More opportunity to be seen online.
  2.  It’s another chance to tell Google about your business. There are so many “parts of Google” analytics, Adwords, youtube, search console. They can all talk together to give more information so use them – As a certain big Supermarket says “Every little helps”. 
  3.  If you add a link your website and your booking page then it’s a few more links to your site ( which is good for SEO especially being on Google as well.) – and if you use the post feature, then you can get even more but not just to the home page use posts to link to blogs and landing pages).

 Ask for Reviews

 Once your Google my business listing is live – ask for reviews – not just on Google (although this is brilliant) but your website, Facebook, yell.com etc anywhere you can get them – Google can and sometimes will link reviews from other sources – on Pippas Web it lists my Facebook and my google links. Then you can use the reviews as post content/social proof on your social media.

 Blog Commenting

 Do you read a lot of other peoples blog posts around your business or learning skills for your business? Then leave comments on these blogs – Not spammy comments like “great blog” but write comments that add value – ask questions, give your own examples. Blogs often reward you with a link to your site (or to a profile with a link to your site) but also other readers may see your comment and want to see more about what you’re saying. These links aren’t the most amazing quality links, but if you’re reading the blogs anyway there’s no harm adding the comment.

 While we’re on the topic of blogs – do your write one for your business? They’re a great way to drive traffic to your site – it gives people a reason to leave Facebook and check out your site. Check out my other posts for 7 Reasons Why Small Business Owners Should Blog And What should I include in a blog?

 Free courses

There are lots of free courses around to learn more detail about using a specific platform – some are big group events others are done on your own at any time via email. Check out Pinterest and Facebook (although once you start signing up to these courses all your sponsored ad’s will suddenly become full of them.) These free courses are usually and “introduction” to entice you to sign up to a bigger course that you would need to pay for.   

 Or try Udemy.com they have a wide range of free and paid-for courses for hundreds of topics.

 Social Media features.

 Use the features from the social media account you use for example Live video streaming on Facebook or Instagram, Groups on Facebook etc. Try something new – I recently started going live Facebook – it’s still scary but to be honest it does get a lot of views too.

Pick one or more of 5 Free ways to help your business ideas above to do this week. Comment below and let me know how you get on.

 PS.
If you haven’t already why not check out my E-book “How to get your business seen online in 2020” with even more tips in, you can get it when you sign up to my newsletter.

Avatar for Pippa Haines Pippas Web

I am Pippa and I have run Pippas Web - web design for small businesses for 13 years. I help small business owners find their bit of cyberspace. I provide the technical know-how, so they can get back to running their business. If you like what I write in my blogs, you can sign up to my newsletter for more tips straight to your door. All list members get a copy of "How to get your business seen online in 2021".