For many small businesses, email marketing is all about promotions and sales. But the most successful businesses know that an email list is more than just a sales tool—it’s a way to build relationships, create trust, and foster a sense of community without the concerns of a platform shutdown. 

By shifting your focus from transactions to connections, you can turn one-time customers into long-term brand advocates. 

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​If you’re like most businesspeople, finding ways to get names on your emailing list can be exhausting. We all want tons of fans and followers. There’s value behind a list of people who are interested in what you offer. Most businesses start their list with people they know. But if you want to turn your email list into marketing gold, you need to get strangers (who will become potential customers) interested in you. That’s no easy task.
 
It’s the kind of activity that most of us avoid because the thought of it seems so overwhelming.

​Content helps you connect, right? It gives insights into your business, your personality, and your culture. But boy, can it be draining. And as awesome as AI is there are only so many times you can ask it for blog ideas for the exact same audience before it starts to sound the same.
 
So where do you get new content ideas and inspiration to attract and retain customers? And how do you keep your content fresh and relevant? Let’s dig into some sources and strategies to generate, curate, and hybridize content for your blog posts, articles, videos, and social media. 

​Social media is becoming more and more frustrating, right? If you have used it to connect with your audience for ten years or so, you undoubtedly have seen crazy changes in your reach. If you’re new to the social media for business scene, reaching 2% of your audience probably feels pretty normal.
 
But if you’re not reaching your audience, how are they going to know who you are and all the wonderful things your business can bring them?
 
When it comes to building a loyal following, there are several things you can do. Ultimately, reach is still dependent on the platform’s algorithm, but every social media channel claims to respond to value. To reach more people, you need them to see you as providing valuable content they want to interact with. Here’s how you can start doing that.  

​Okay, so this might not be a “secret” weapon, but email marketing can help extend the push to shop small that began on Small Business Saturday. These types of gentle reminders can keep customers buying from you all season (and all year) long. You just need a couple of great ideas, an email marketing tool (like MailChimp or Constant Contact), and of course an email list.

​If you spend any time speaking with copywriters or website writers, they will tell you a lot of businesses understand the importance of an effective About Us page on their website. As there’s been a lot of information written about telling your business story over the last decade and how customers want to do business with people they know, like and trust, many realize the value. You likely know that the About Page has the potential to become one of the most heavily visited pages on your website.
 
However, that’s where most businesses miss an opportunity.
 
They stop at the About Us page. Their business story never moves beyond it. But for the story to be believable, understood, and remembered—and thus effective—it has to spring off the About Us page and into these other places. 
 

​If there's one thing 2020 has shown us, it's how to bolster our communication skills. We've had cause for a lot of really difficult conversations with our customers. Nobody ever wants to give bad news but 2020 seems like the year we have to keep reiterating and sharpening our communication skills with difficult messages.
 
But if you feel like you've had challenge after challenge and you're still wondering the best way to deliver those difficult messages, let's take a look at a few tactics you might use.