As we start to move in to the warmer weather, the smell of spring is in the air. Daffodils are everywhere and if you’re anything like me, spring cleaning is on your mind.
I don’t mean around the house, lol, I mean in your business!
I find spring is a good time to take a look at your business and refine, organise and if possible, simplify your systems and processes.
Website refresh
Having just done a massive website refresh myself, I suggest you use the time to make sure everything is up to date on your website. Are you images current and up to date and represent your brand or do they need changing up? Check that all the links are working, it may seem a simple thing, but if you don’t check them and they are broken, you may be missing out on potential clients.
Workflow updates
Do you find that you are doing the same tasks over and over again?
Write down everything you do and set up a workflow and automate them. This will save you time and as we all know time is money. One thing ive done is write responses to common emails that I get and save them as signatures. So instead of writing practically the same email over and over again, I hit a button and its all done. I can then tweak it as needed.
Clean your desktop screen
I’m guilty of having a messy screen, I create stuff and then save it to my desktop instead of filling it away. Within a few months my desktop is a mess and needs a good tidy.
Organise your inbox
I’m sure I’m not alone in signing up for free things then get bombarded with emails, most of which is spam. Take the time to go though your inbox and unsubscribe then delete the emails you don’t need. You can always create new folders within your inbox to sort you emails in to, like personal, accounts, clients, free stuff.
Documents refresh
Have you been sending out the same documents for years? Time to actually give them a once over and just make sure its still all up to date.
Accounts
I’m always surprised at the amount of people who leave doing their accounts until the last minuet. Make time at least once a quarter to sit down and update your accounts. Trust me when I say, it will make life so much easier when its approaching tax deadline.
Back up, Back up, back up
As a photographer, I’m a bit anal about backing up. I back up my client photos almost every day and my documents every week. Computers are great, but they do have a tendency to blow up just when you least expect it. Make sure you do it on a regular basis.
Marketing plan
Take a look back at last quarter and see what marketing has worked and what hasn’t, see what can be tweaked. Take a look at what Marketing you are doing and what other things you can try. Don’t forget, just because it didn’t work 2 years ago doesn’t mean it wont work this time. Give it another try.
Passwords and security
You need passwords for everything these days. Internet browsers can be good at automatically remembering our passwords, but we’ve all experienced that time when we’ve been logged out and we cant remember the password, So make a note, somewhere secure of your passwords so they are always to hand if you need them.
Also, its good practice to update your passwords every quarter, just in case any have been leaked.
