The COVID disruption has brought about a less-discussed problem – the increasing anxiety of needing to do more work, wanting to use the time wisely, and managing emotions in a time of uncertainty and chaos.
How many people do you know who said “At least I’ll have time to work out now that I’m home all day” and subsequently haven’t done so much as a pushup?
As frustrating as it may feel, this sensation is to be expected for the situation at hand. So don’t over commit to what you want to accomplish, and don’t add unnecessary stress to your day.
But if you can carve out 20 minutes of time each day, you can add some great value to your business, and add a personal sense of accomplishment to boot.
- Update your GMB profile. If you haven’t set up or claimed your Google My Business profile, then check out this quick guide. If you already have one set up, you can use these ideas to optimize your profile and maximize your chance at getting found in local searches.
- Set up a free Buffer account and schedule 5 posts to your LinkedIn feed for the next week. The hardest part about maintaining an effective social media presence is consistency and constantly thinking of new topics to discuss. This can be addressed by taking a chunk of time, one day a week, and pre-scheduling posts for the next 5-7 days. There are plenty of tools out there, but we find that Buffer allows you good flexibility (as well as integration with Instagram) and they have a free option for up to three social profiles.
- Review your website metrics YoY. Everybody’s website visits are down. That’s not a surprise. But as a business owner, it would behoove you to review your metrics from February 1 to today, and compare that to the same time last year. You’ll be able to start seeing trends in terms of how your website traffic affects your profitability.
- Answer a question on Quora. Quora is a great resource for consumers, but more importantly, it is a channel that you can use to display your expertise in a given field. By building a consistent presence on Quora, your name will be associated with a knowledgeable expert in a field, and increase your qualified leads, as well as converting more potential referrals.
- Send a handwritten note to your past clients. When was the last time you received a handwritten note? Chances are, you remember it. Why? Email is effective for quickly getting a piece of information to another party. But nobody (except you, of course!) writes notes by hand. It’s a cheap, quick way to humanize your business with your clients and keep you top of mind.
- Write a blog post about your industry. Every business in every sector of every industry is going through unrivaled change and uncertainty. This is a good time for you to discuss what your particular industry looks like; what are the challenges today? What will you likely be facing tomorrow? And most importantly, how are you as a business addressing these issues?
- Write up a case study. When discretionary spending declines, your competitors are going to fiercely inch their way into your back yard. What your potential customers want to see is your direct experience addressing their unique problem, and how you successfully resolved the issue. Write up a detailed case study to show, not tell, how you helped people in a similar situation.
- Bonus. We wrote up a much longer post about how to intelligently and aggressively trim your marketing budget during a recession. It’s free to check out – you can find it here.
Of course, there’s much more you can do for free during this quarantine to add additional bits of value to your business. Leave a comment below to let us know what else you’re doing!
