In this post, you’ll learn 101 ideas for moving your business online. 

101 Ideas For Moving Your Business Online

BookOm Livestream Yoga Pilates Classes

Click on any of the “101 move your business online” tips to reveal the steps…

 Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. I only recommend products that I use.

The covid pandemic has seen a seismic shift in shopping habits. People are now expecting to purchase everything online. Even when the lockdowns stop, the “buying online habit” will stick. So, it’s crucial to move your business online. Selling online is the new normal. So, to stay competitive, you’ll need to open your mind to selling online, and offering new services online.

Every small business including life coaches, business consultants, beauty salons, hairdressers, therapists, house cleaners, personal trainers will benefit from moving online. 

Due to Covid, people are buying everything online, so don’t worry if there is an online audience for your services. There will be, and there’ll be more people than you imagined because you’ll open your services to a worldwide audience. 

Use the tips below to give you inspiration to move your business online. 

If you decide to use WordPress, purchase a theme versus getting a free theme. I used to design websites for a living, but I quit doing that when it was possible to purchase really good themes for less than £70.  Google “Best WordPress themes” and pick the one you like the look of. Most of my sites use the Divi theme.

I also like using the Astra theme

The other benefit of purchasing a WordPress theme is that you’ll get free support, which is invaluable. You’ll be able to send an email to the support and get an answer back within 24 hours. 

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If you want to use WordPress Different hosting companies offer different plans suitable for small to large websites. This affects the cost of your hosting. If you are just getting started, then I recommend using Bluehost. They are one of the largest hosting companies in the world and an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider. Depending on what deals they have, you can get a domain name and hosting for under £4 per month. That’s amazing value for money.

Whether you’re looking to create a website, blog, or online store, Bluehost can get you started with a hosting plan tailored to your specific needs.

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When you move your business online, there will be a lot to do, and you could feel a bit overwhelmed. 

Good Enough Mantra

The number one cause of procrastination is the dreaded “perfectionism” streak that lies within us all.

If you want to become successful online, repeat this mantra over and over and over again. 

“Good enough is good enough.”  

Get the “task” done, and move on to the next one. 

You can always come back to a task a tweak it later. Your site just only needs to be good enough to start making money. 

The key to tricking procrastination into stop bothering you is to do a “good enough” job.

Don’t obsess over tiny details, or try to figure everything out before you make a start. You’ll figure stuff out during the process of “doing”. 

Time for a real life example

When I get an idea for a blog post, like this one (101 ideas for moving your business online), I started with the “ideas” I knew a lot about, then went Googling for ideas.

I didn’t have a clue which tips I’d be adding until I wrote the tip down. That tip would usually lead me onto another idea for a tip. The first tip I wrote about was “purchase a WordPress theme instead of getting a free one”. When I completed that tip, it was obvious that people needed a tip on which “hosting provider” to get.

Each tip lead me to another tip. It was an organic, easy system to follow.

My Perfectionist Brother

My brother on the other hand, who is an out of control perfectionist, would have spent hours creating a list of 101 tips before he wrote his first tip. He almost certainly wouldn’t even start writing the post because he’d get distracted by something else.  

Use Trello 

When you do feel like procrastinating, but your ideas into your Trello until you’re ready to take action. For example, if the idea for this post came to me while I was working on another project, I’d add it to my Trello. Though, I’ve discovered that as soon as I get an idea for something, I take an immediate action step.

Immediate Action Step

When I got the idea for this post, I immediately duplicated a previous post (using my “duplicate post” plugin), rewrote the title, found an appropriate royalty free feature image on Pexels.com, and wrote the first tip.

That process only took me 25 minutes!

If I was a perfectionist, like my brother, I would have ummed and ahhed for hours over what tips to write, and never got out of the planning stage. 

The First Step Has Magic In It

The magic of taking a “first step” has been known about for thousands of years, but I think Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said it best.

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it; Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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There’s a Finish photographer called Arno Minkkinen who came up with something called the “Helsinki Bus Station Theory”. It just might change your life. At the very least it will help you in your quest to move your business online. 

If you haven’t heard of this theory, I’ll explain it to you now in my own words…

Imagine the scene. You’re standing at a bus station. It’s a bus station like any other one, except hopefully one with environmentally-friendly electric buses (though that’s not crucial for the theory).  

There are two dozen platforms, from each of which several different bus lines depart. Thereafter, for a mile or more, all the lines leaving from any of the platforms take the same route out of the city, making identical stops.

Each bus stop represents one year in the life of a  “business person”.  You pick a business – maybe you focus on selling antique reproductions because your dad is antiques dealer (that’s the first business I started up) – and set off on the “Selling Antiques Reproductions” bus. Three stops later (represents 3 years), you’ve built a reasonably successful business selling antique reproductions on eBay. You put an eBay listing up one day selling a large oil painting of the Battle Of Trafalgar, and within the listing you add a link to another eBay listing that sells the first eBook you’ve ever written called “The Battle Of Trafalgar In Pictures”.  You unexpectedly sell quite a few of the eBooks, so you get off the “Selling Antique Reproductions” bus, and grab a cab back to the station and get on the “eBook creator” bus, and start travelling down that life path. Three years later, something similar happens. This goes on all your business life: always starting something new every few years. What’s the answer? “It’s simple. Stay on the bus! 

A little way farther on, the way Minkkinen tells it, Helsinki’s bus routes diverge, plunging off on idiosyncratic journeys to very different destinations. That’s when the business person finds their uniqueness and passion.  

There are two reasons this metaphor is so compelling. One is how it draws a picture in your mind of how important “persistence” is:  that in the first months or years of any worthwhile endeavour, you’re still fumbling around in the dark finding what it is you’re meant to be focusing on.

The moral of the theory is that sometimes it takes more guts to keep trudging down a pre-trodden path, to the originality that lies just beyond the fourth or fifth bus stop (4th or 5th year of your business). 

Stay on the bus! 

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If you’re using WordPress, and want to make sure your customers can email you, you’ll need a good contact form plugin. Even if you’re purchased a WordPress theme like Divi that has its own contact form, I recommend getting using WPForms Lite. It is the free version of the very popular WPForms plugin that’s trusted by over 1 million websites. Once your business has grown, you can upgrade to WPForms Pro to create more advanced forms like surveys, polls, payment forms, etc.

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If you’re using WordPress, and want to make sure your customers can email you, you’ll need a good contact form plugin. Even if you’re purchased a WordPress theme like Divi that has its own contact form, I recommend getting using WPForms Lite.

Once you’ve got a contact form set up, it’s crucial that you “follow up quickly”. 

Countless research shows that follow-up time greatly improves the odds of the prospect becoming a customer.  When I see an email come in, I drop everything I’m doing and answer it. That may be a little obsessive. It’s good enough to answer within 24 hours. 

If you use BookOm, your customer will be automatically sent a “thank you” email and also a “reminder” email.

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Word of mouth is the best marketing method ever invented! The good news is that you get word of mouth for your business when you move it online, by using testimonials.  

Take me for example.

One of my businesses provides online yoga lesson planning software for yoga teachers. If you click here, you’ll be taken to a page on my GeorgeWatts.org site where I have lots of testimonials. Try to get an image from your customer to use within the testimonial, and their website address (if they have one). Doing this builds credibility for the testimonials. 

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I use the Divi theme on most of my websites. If you have a service that you think suits having as a “donation”, then you’ll want to read their accept PayPal donations with WooCommerce on your WordPress site post. 

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If you haven’t got a website yet, I recommend using WordPress and getting a paid theme (not a free one). I use the Divi theme for most of my sites.

Once you’ve got a site, it’s a very good idea to add a blog page and start creating blog posts on it. On most WordPress themes, like the Divi theme, the posts will automatically appear on your blog page when you publish them. 

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If you haven’t got a website yet, I recommend using WordPress and getting a paid theme (not a free one). I use the Divi theme for most of my sites.

Once you’ve got a site, it’s a very good idea to add a blog page and start creating blog posts on it. On most WordPress themes, like the Divi theme, the posts will automatically appear on your blog page when you publish them. 

Once you’ve added a blog page to your site, the next step is to start writing blog posts that you think your target market will find useful.

As you’re writing your posts, ideas for the “blog categories” will start coming to you. For example, when I started writing this post, I realized that I need a new “blog category” called “Go Online”. On the side of the post is the category section that allows you to quickly add a new category.  That’s the organic way of doing it. The inorganic way of doing it is to set up your “blog categories” first. 

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If you haven’t got a website yet, I recommend using WordPress and getting a paid theme (not a free one). I use the Divi theme from Elegantthemes.com for most of my sites.

Once you’ve got a site, it’s a very good idea to start creating blog posts on it.

I highly recommend you create a few EPIC blog posts on the site. By EPIC, I mean very long content posts like this one. I could have written a blog post called “Top 10 Ways To Move Your Business Online” and that would have done reasonably well at getting clicks to my site. But the secret to getting lots of traffic is to create blog posts that are so valuable, so useful and so EPIC to your target market that Google will rank the post very high on the first page (ideally in the number one spot). 

Your aim should be to make the post a resource that your target market will keep coming back to over and over again. 

Study after study after study shows that “long content posts” vastly outperform “short content posts” when it comes to ranking on Google.

I’ve been blogging since 2009. My GeorgeWatts.org site has over 400 posts. They’re not all EPIC posts. That would take far too long. The more long content posts you have, however, the better. But even if you only have 3 or 4 long content posts, that’s almost certainly better than most of your competitors, who will be either not be blogging or only creating “short content posts”. 

Below are examples of “long content posts” that I’ve written on my websites to give you some inspiration for you to do your own…

This post: This post is a long-content post. It has 101 ways to moving your business online. 

17 types of yoga classes: That post took me 35 hours to create! It will attract lots of yoga teacher trainees who are one of my target markets for BookOm and the Yoga Lesson Planner I sell on GeorgeWatts.org. Having been a blogger for over a decade, I’m fully aware that just one EPIC blog post usually brings in tens of thousands of visitors over the years. So, the 35-hour investment in creating this EPIC post will almost certainly pay off over the years. And even if it didn’t, I enjoyed creating the post because I’m passionate about Yoga. If you’re not passionate about your business, creating a post that takes 35 hours would never cross your mind. And that’s one of the reasons why people who aren’t passionate about their business rarely succeed in the long run. Only someone oozing passion would whittle away 35 hours of their life on an EPIC post! When a visitor reads a blog post that is obviously EPIC a silent voice in their mind says something like this: “Holy shit! This guy has created an EPIC post. It’s awesome! He must have spent countless hours creating it. He absolutely must be an expert on the subject, so I’m gonna read more of his posts, and buy his stuff.”  

501 yoga teacher services to boost your income: this post is very valuable for yoga teachers. By helping yoga teachers create more services, they are more likely to want a booking system, and as I’ve provided them such valuable information in the post, they are more likely to go with my BookOm booking system, than one of my competitors.  

101 Yoga Asana Symbols: Reveal A Hidden Language To Your Yoga Students: This post is very useful for yoga teachers. 

101 Yoga Lesson Planning Ideas: This post is very useful for yoga teachers. 

101 Perfect Poses For A Peak Pose Themed Yoga Class: This post is very useful for yoga teachers. 

Conclusion 

As you can probably tell, my secret is to include “101” or “501” in the title of the post. That forces me to write an EPIC post. 

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After you’ve added several posts to your site, you might like the idea of getting the “0 position on Google”.

Position 0, also known as a Google Featured Snippet is the top organic ranking for a specific search. Google has devised a method known as a Featured Snippet, where they select what they consider the best result for a question that is searched on.

The best way to get a “0 ranking” is with Paragraph Snippets. 

Paragraph snippets are usually in the form of short answers to questions.

For example, each of the 101 tips on this post answers the question posed by the post which is “how to move your business online”.  And each of the 101 tips is essentially a “paragraph”, so it has a good chance of getting to the “0 position”.  

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Content is still king, but these days it’s also important that the post looks nice.

For example, in this post, I’ve used an FAQ module (also known as an accordion module) to present the 101 tips. Users can quickly scroll through and click on the ones they like the sound of.

The quickest and easiest way to make your blog posts look great is to use the Divi Theme (because it has lots of modules you can drag into the post). 

Ways to make your blog post look nice:

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One of the biggest changes over the last few years is the rise of Pinterest and Instagram. 

If you choose a nice featured image for your blog post, you can pin it to Pinterest and Instagram.  

All you need to do is add a “social media” plugin to your site. If you use the Divi theme, they have a free plugin called “monarch”.

When you install that plugin, social media icons will show up on the left side of your post (or at the bottom of the post). If a visitor to your blog post likes the post, they can share it on their social media (e.g. Pinterest).

I recommend that you pin the post to your Pinterest and share the posts on your other social media accounts. To do that all you need to do is go to the post as a visitor and click on the social media icon on the left of the post (if you’re using Divi’s monarch plugin). 

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Content is king. Google loves it when a site goes live with a new blog post or updates an old one. 

I have never purchased an advert in my life (not a single Google AdSense ad or Facebook ad). All the traffic that comes to my sites (I have about a dozen sites) comes from my blog posts. Each time you go live with a new post, you get “free traffic from Google” instead of having to pay for it. 

So, my advice to you, when you first set up your website is to chain yourself to your desk and write blog posts for 45 days in a row. Within days you’ll start getting clicks, but it usually takes “eight months” to start getting lots of clicks from a post. 

Make sure you provide at least one “call to action” within each post.

For example, at the end of every tip on this post, I have this call to action…

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If you don’t provide a “call to action”, then the visitors to your site will read the content, then go to another site and purchase from that site instead of yours. 

My advice to anyone setting up a new website is always the same…

Chain yourself to your desk and write blog posts for 45 days in a row.” 

Within days you’ll start getting clicks, but it usually takes “eight months” to start getting lots of clicks from a post. 

So, don’t get disheartened when you look at your Google Analytics and don’t see much traffic coming to your site. Have patience. It usually takes “eight months” for a post to get what is called Hockey Stick growth (where growth takes off vertically/exponentially). 

The good news is that most people who set up websites don’t have the patience to wait eight months, and end up buying adverts on Google and Facebook. Why pay for web traffic when you can get it for free by creating blog posts? 

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If you’ve followed my advice on this post and have created lots of posts on your site, it’s a good idea to spend a couple of days per year updating old posts.

Ways to update old posts: 

  • Change the title
  • Add more content
  • Remove irrelevant content
  • Remove dead links
  • Add a new featured image 
  • Add new images 
  • Remove old images 
  • Use Grammarly to correct spelling and grammar mistakes
  • Add subheadings
  • Add an infographic
  • Add a table

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Content is king. Blog posts are a great way of getting high rankings on Google, and so are Youtube videos. It seems that with every Google algorithm update, YouTube videos get higher rankings. Try it out now. Do a search for something, and I’ll bet there are at least a couple of YouTube videos at the very top of the rankings. 

That’s why it’s crucial to be creating YouTube videos. 

Below is my top tip for creating YouTube videos that rank number one on Google…

Record Screencasts Of Your Posts: Do a screencast using Loom.com (free screencast app) of parts of your blog post, download the video to your device, and upload it to your YouTube channel.

Take this post for example. There are 101 tips. I will do a screencast for each tip, and upload them to my BookOm YouTube channel. That’s 101 YouTube videos from one post! How cool is that. Each one of those videos is like having a free 24/7 salesperson for your business.

Ideally, you want to keep the videos under 5 minutes, though that’s not a golden rule. You can make your videos as long or as short as you want.  

I will name the YouTube video the same as the “tip”. For example, this tip is called “Get A Page Rank 1 On Google Using Youtube”. That’s the name I will call the screencast video. Simple, heh. I love using simple strategies that get results. 

But it doesn’t stop there!

You can also send backlinks to the blog post (which Google loves) to boost the post’s ranking. It’s easy to do. Within the YouTube video’s description, simply add the URL of the post with a call to action.

For example, for this tip, the YouTube description will be:

To find out more about how to get a page rank 1 on Google using Youtube go to https://bookom.org/101-ideas-for-moving-your-business-online/ and click on “Get A Page Rank 1 On Google Using YouTube”. 

This simple strategy of doing a blog post and recording screencast videos of the post is a simple strategy, that anyone can do, to rank articles on the first page of Google.

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Once you’ve got a few blog posts on your site, your next step is to add Google Analytics to track the analytics such as page views, users, sessions, number of sessions per user, average session duration, bounce rate, and much more. 

5 Steps To Get Started with Google Analytics

Google Analytics is available for free and all you need is a Google or Gmail account to sign up. 

Step 1: Visit Google Analytics and sign up for free. You’ll be asked to log in with your Google account. If you don’t have one, you are able to create a Google account. 

Step 2: When you sign-in with your Gmail account, you can signup for Google analytics with your Gmail account. You will then be asked to provide an account name. This name will be used internally, and not seen by the public. Usually, the best name is your business name.

Step 3: On the next screen, you will be given the choice to choose between a web, apps, or apps and web. Select ‘Web’. Enter the website name, website URL, country, and time zone. Click on the “Next” button for Google Analytics terms and services which you need to agree to. Click the “I Agree” button.

Step 4: You will be presented with your Google Analytics tracking code. Copy this tracking code because you will need to enter it on your WordPress site. 

Step 5: Copy your Google Analytics tracking code (see step 4), and add it to your site. Each site is different. If you’ve taken my advice and got the Divi theme, you can follow the steps below. 

Adding Google Analytics To Your Divi Theme

Step 1: Log into your WordPress admin (yourwebsite.com/wp-admin).

Step 2: Select Divi –> Divi Theme Options (Integration) tab. 

Step 3: Paste the copied Google Analytics Tracking Code information into the section that says “Add code to the < body > (good for tracking codes such as google analytics)”. 

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One of the best ways to get prospects going from “interested” to “paying” is by providing them EPIC blog posts. See the “Create EPIC blog post” tip above. 

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Most people who leave your website will never come back again. This means that if you don’t get their email address, then you will have no way to communicate with them in the future.

The most cost-effective way to do this is by building an email list.

Email marketing is the most reliable way to communicate with your website visitors.

You can get started with Aweber, they’re one of the most popular email marketing service providers. 

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Because most businesses are moving online, there are more affiliate programs than ever to choose from.

Take this post for example.

One of the tips is recommending getting a “paid WordPress theme“.

I always use paid WordPress themes, because I’ve learned the hard way that “free themes” are free for a reason. So, I Googled if the WordPress theme I used called “Divi” had an affiliate program and quickly found out that did.

So, I spent a few minutes filling out their online form to become an affiliate, and within 10 minutes received an email saying I had been approved. I then added the “affiliate link” to the purchase a WordPress theme instead of getting a free one tip.

I didn’t create that tip to get affiliate income, but I might as well get some affiliate income if I use the product and recommend it. It won’t make me a millionaire, but every little bit of income helps. 

You can do the same thing!

When writing a post, if you find yourself recommending a product, do a quick Google search to see if they offer an affiliate program. And if you want to be super organized, brainstorm products that your target market uses, and write blog posts about them (but only if you use the product). 

FYI: Most of my sites use the Divi theme from Elegantthemes.com.

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Do a Google search for “online booking systems”. There are lots to choose from. Our one is called BookOm, and you can sign up for free.

If you choose our BookOm (you’ll love it), take as long as you need to set up and explore.  Only upgrade to Solo or Staff if you feel we’re the right fit for you and your business. I recommend you try a few other online booking systems and make your pick.

I created BookOm because I needed a booking system for my yoga classes, and it annoyed the heck out of me to see how much online booking systems were charging. It felt like daylight robbery!

My team had spent over a decade creating and improving the Yoga Lesson Planner software and Pilates Lesson Planner software (now used by thousands of yoga and pilates teachers worldwide). So, we figured it was time to stop the daylight robbery and create an easy-to-use, complete booking platform with all the bells and whistles, at a price that makes people smile. Looking forward to seeing you on the other side.

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When you do your Google search for “online booking systems”, make sure that it has a Customer Panel feature. The Customer Panel is a place where customers log in to view bookings and book onto more of your services.

With BookOm you’ll be able to provide your customers a Customer Panel

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When you do your Google search for “online booking systems”, make sure that it has a CRM (customer relationship management) built into it. 

With BookOm you never have to worry about adding a client to a CRM system. BookOm will instantly systemize and securely store all the customer data. The longer you use the BookOm online booking system, the more insights you get about your loyal students.

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When you do your Google search for “online booking systems”, make sure that has multiple staff (e.g. if you have a Yoga studio).

BookOm Staff does not only get customers to book your services, but it also displays the workload of each of your staff. You’ll have an occupancy graph (e.g. If you have a yoga studio, you’ll see the number of students who attended each class). That means you can easily manage staff payments cutting time and expense on using additional tools. 

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When you do your Google search for “online booking systems”, make sure that it enables you to create coupons. 

If you want to offer customers discounts on your bookable services, you can create coupons inside of BookOm. When creating a coupon, you can set the discount as a fixed amount, such as £5 off the full price. Alternatively, you can set the discount as a percentage of the full price. You can also set the expiry date and usage limit for each coupon. Defining which services a coupon can be used with is also easy to do.

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When you do your Google search for “online booking systems”, make sure that it doesn’t have a booking limit. 

You’d be surprised at how many booking systems have booking limits. No matter which BookOm plan you choose, BookOm Solo or BookOm Staff, you will never need to upgrade to a higher plan to increase the booking limit. That is called daylight robbery, and we aren’t in the daylight robbery business. There are no booking limits with BookOm. 

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In this blog post, I provide 501 yoga teacher services. Even if you’re not a yoga teacher, it’s worth reading to get ideas on new services that you can provide when moving your business online. 

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Once you’ve got yourself a website with a paid theme like the Divi theme from Elegantthemes.com(don’t use a free theme), it’s time to make your offline services available online. 

Most small service businesses can make their offline services available online.

For example, if you’re a personal trainer or fitness instructor, offer live virtual workouts via Zoom, and sell the recordings in an online course.

If you’ve always met with clients (e.g. as a consultant) in person, offer online Zoom calls.

If your business offers a service that has always been in-person, create an information product (e.g. an online course) that will teach them the same things as if doing an “in-person” meeting.

For example, a dog groomer could create content on how to train their dogs themselves like this Dog Training Lesson Planner.

If you’re a snooker pro who has always given “in-person” lessons you could create something like the Snooker Practice Drills Planner.

If you’re a golf pro who has always given “in-person” lessons, you could create something like the Golf Drills Practice Planner

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Most small service businesses can make their offline services available online simply by using Zoom.

For example, if you’re a personal trainer, yoga teacher, Pilates teacher, or fitness instructor, offer live virtual workouts/classes via Zoom, and sell the recordings in an online course.

If you’ve always met with clients (e.g. as a consultant) in person, offer online Zoom calls.

I recently wrote a post called How To Set Up A Zoom Yoga Class. That will give you an idea of how to get started with Zoom. 

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Most small service businesses can make their offline services available online simply by using Skype (Zoom is the most popular, but you may prefer Skype if you’re already using it).

For example, if you’re a personal trainer, yoga teacher, Pilates teacher, or fitness instructor, offer live virtual workouts/classes via Skype, and sell the recordings in an online course.

If you’ve always met with clients (e.g. as a consultant) in person, offer online Skype calls.

All you need for the Skype sessions is a laptop or iPad and internet access. If you’re teaching yoga via Skype, ask your student to set up their computer so you can view their whole body (they will not need to watch you). This means that they will need to be positioned a few feet back from the screen (e.g. their laptop). All you need to do is ask your customer to launch their Skype before your scheduled session time and call them from Skype (you’ll obviously need their Skype ID and have connected with them). 

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Most small service businesses can make their offline services available online simply by using Facebook Live. 

For example, if you’re a personal trainer, yoga teacher, Pilates teacher, or fitness instructor, offer Facebook Live virtual workouts/classes. 

From the Facebook app:

  1. Navigate to the Page, group, profile, or event where you want to publish your live stream.
  2. Tap the Live button at the bottom of the post composer.
  3. Add a description to your video.
  4. Optional: Tag friends, check in to a location, and add a feeling or activity.
  5. Tap Start Live Video.
  6. Tap Finish when you want to end your broadcast.

How to go live on Facebook from a computer: 

  1. At the top of your News Feed, click What’s on your mind, [Your Name]?
  2. Click the three dots icon then click Live Video and you will automatically be redirected to Live Producer.
  3. Write a description for your live video.
  4. Click Go Live in the bottom left.

You can find out more about doing a Facebook Live here

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How to bring guests into your Facebook Live broadcast (e.g. to interview them): 

Live With is a built-in co-broadcasting feature that lets you invite one other person into your mobile live broadcast. You can bring on a guest speaker, interview an expert, or perform with a fellow artist, among other use cases.

As the host, you can select a guest to go Live With during a mobile live broadcast from your Page or profile. 

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SocialPilot is a tool to schedule content across your social media profiles and pages, monitor user conversations, engage with followers, and more.

Add all your social media accounts, and then some. Post all your updates without ever worrying about running out of limits. Go beyond the popular social networks to increase engagement and leads with #1 social media scheduling and publishing tool.

Make data-driven decisions to improve engagement and fine-tune your social media strategy. Download and Share beautiful and presentable social media reports in PDF format with just one click.

Discover the most popular content and schedule them directly to your account with RSS feeds and content curation. Have a lot of things to publish? Use their bulk social media posting tool to upload posts in advance.

With SocialPilot  you can add team members, so they can login and get to work.  

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When moving your business online, it’s crucial to find out where your target market hangs out when they’re online. This isn’t rocket science, and you don’t need any special tools.

Take me for example.

One of my businesses provides online yoga lesson planning software for yoga teachers. I keep a list on my computer of 100+ online forums for yoga teachers (Facebook groups, Linkedin Groups, and other online forums). When I write a blog post that provides something valuable and free for yoga teachers, I share that post on the forums. My mantra is “give first and received second“. 

I discovered years ago that giving something of value within forums (e.g. a blog post answering a question within the forum) nearly always leads to a small barrage of sales. The reason is the “law of reciprocation”. When you give something to someone it tends to elicit the giving response in that person, meaning they’ll want to give something back in return.  

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If you offer any kind of education, whether it’s B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to customer), now is the perfect time to offer it online via Zoom or recorded videos.  Covid has had a quantum change in people’s learning habits. They are now used to paying for online courses, and even when lockdowns end, they’ll continue learning online. 

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If you’re moving your business online, you have to up your “competitor research” game. You may have dabbled with it a bit with competitor research in your offline business world, but you can’t do that online.

The reason is simple.

You now have competitors from all over the world. Don’t let that frighten you!  Most of them are terrible at marketing their business online. Only a handful of your competitors will be doing consistent marketing online. Make sure you’re one of them! 

Don’t make your competitor research too complicated. Keep it simple.

Time for a real life competitor research example…

I will go to my competitor’s site and have a sniff around.

If I find a new feature, I’ll copy the URL with the sales blurb about the feature, and add it to a Trello list called “Competitor Research”, and add my thoughts about it.

And if my competitor has come up with a really good blog post, I’ll quickly brainstorm if I can create a similar but better one. If I think I can, I’ll add it to a Trello list called “Possible Blog Posts”.  I’ll make a note of the blog post URL, and add some thoughts on how I can improve it. Then, when it’s time for blogging, I’ll open up my Trello, look at the notes I made and write the post. 

Time for another real life competitor research example…

One of my sites, GeorgeWatts.org offers an online Yoga Lesson Planner. I have two main competitors. Every month or two I go to their sites and have a look around. I did this a couple of days ago and found that one of my competitors now offers a “student management system”. Guess what the next project is that I’m giving my software developer? Yep, you’ve guessed it. She’s going to create something similar for our lesson planner. This is a feature I’ve been meaning to add for a few years now, but seeing my competitor having it has acted as a catalyst for me to take action. If I don’t keep up with my competitors, then I won’t be in business for long. 

And here’s another quick example of real life competitive research…

A few months ago, my main competitor reduced their pricing. To stay competitive I decided to match their pricing. I may increase the pricing in the future, but during the Covid pandemic, I had a hunch that reducing the price was a good decision. 

Competitor Research Method 1: Google Search

Do a simple Google search for your nice market, find out how your competitors are, and use Trello to keep track of them. I recommend using Trello instead of an MS Word Document, because the Trello board you create will become your go-to marketing plan/resource. I use mine on a daily basis. If, however, my marketing info was in an MS Word doc I wouldn’t do any marketing at all because I’d forget about it. The good news is that Trello is free. 

Competitor Research Method 2: SocialPilot

I use SocialPilot to keep track of all my competitors social media. It’s a real time saver! 

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At the heart of every business is its product or service, which is why it’s the most important part of your competitor research.  

This may take hours, days or weeks, but you absolutely must analyse your competitor’s product line. You then need to ponder the quality of the products or services they’re offering. Are they way better or worse than yours? 

Open up your Trello  and take note of their pricing and any discounts they’re offering. 

Silently ask yourself these questions when looking through your competitors products and services: 

  • Are they cheaper or more expensive than you?  
  • Is it worth joining their site (e.g. if it’s a membership site) or purchasing one or more of their products? 
  • Do they have up-to-date posts on their site? 
  • Is their sales copy engaging? 
  • What’s the main way they differentiate themselves from your business? 
  • How can you differentiate from them?
  • Which of their features could you use or tweak with your products or services?
  • Do they have a Facebook page?
  • Do they have a Pinterest page?
  • Do they have a Linkedin page? 

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With SocialPilot  you can follow what your competition are doing on social media. 

Go to your competitor’s websites and see if they have accounts on: 

  • YouTube
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Snapchat
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest

For example, if you find they have a Pinterest account, you can add their Pinterest URL to your  SocialPilot  and follow what they do. If you have several competitors using  SocialPilot will be a huge time-saver and keep you effortlessly in tune with your competition. 

The next step is to open your Trello, and take note of the following from each of their social media platforms so you have a benchmark to aim for…

  • # of followers/fans
  • Posting frequency
  • Are users leaving comments?
  • Are users sharing their posts?
  • How many shares are they getting? 
  • How many repins are they getting?
  • How many retweets do their posts get?

Time for a real life example…

For example, a few years ago my Yoga Genie Lesson Planner got a new competitor. Within months they had a huge following on social media, which made me sit up and reevaluate my business. The new competitor was from Silicon Valley, and had multiple full-time developers and a full-time marketing team. I had just me and my part-time developer. I knew immediately that if I didn’t evolve and differentiate my business, I’d be out of business within a few short years. But I wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t been following their social media.  So, I can say with 100% certainty that using SocialPilot saved my business. 

Become Sherlock Holmes

The next step is to put on your Sherlock Holmes hat, suck on a pipe, and uncover your competition’s social media strategy by asking yourself these questions…

  • What kind of content are they posting?
  • Are they focused on driving people to landing pages? 
  • Are they posting visual content (infographics)?
  • How much of their content is original?
  • Do they share content from other sources?
  • What is their “go-to” content (e.g yoga lesson planning tips)?
  • How do they interact with their followers?
  • Do their followers interact with their content?

Put all your notes in your Trello

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If you have your own business, you need to be very aware of the dreaded “burnout”.  Your business is there to serve you, not the other way around. Managing your business is stressful. You may not think it is, but it is and your body and mind knows it.  That’s where meditation, yoga, and breathwork come to the rescue because they all calm your nervous system…almost instantly. One of the biggest contributors to a heart attack is high blood pressure (a.k.a stress). 

Stress is toxic to your body.  And you don’t need stress to perform at the top of your ability. Study after study after study shows that “being relaxed” is the most effective state to be in to be creative and productive. If you feel stress building during your work day, step away from your desk, and do some yoga, meditation, or breathwork to return your body/mind to the ultimate state – calm.   

Instead of waiting to become stressed before you step away from your desk, step away every 20 to 30 minutes, and spend 5 minutes doing yoga, meditation or breathwork. 

You can find lots of yoga poses, meditation exercises and breathing exercises on this Yoga Pose Directory

And if you want some free yoga lesson plans, you’ll find a bunch of them here

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