While risk planning is all about preparing for the unknown, resilience is all about recovering from it.

In essence, it’s about how quickly your business could bounce back from a crisis. And can it bounce back even stronger?

If you’re anything like me, your business may already be fairly resilient.

I say this not as someone who has experienced a devastating, business-destroying event, but as someone who has pivoted many, many times, and as someone who has strategically (or at least with a lot of pondering) deliberately put the kibosh on business ventures and income streams.

I’m used to starting again, bringing something to life, creating something out of nothing. You may wonder how and why this is possible…it’s all about building and cultivating the right assets.

Here are a few key assets you might want to start taking better care of…

Your Contacts & Network

Your network is one of the most valuable assets your business has – your existing customer base, in particular. Should one of your ventures go belly up, being able to get something else up and running quickly, by reaching out to existing contacts, and an already-familiar customer base, is an asset you can’t replace (or buy).

Also, ensure you have a broad base of contacts – connecting with people from related fields (both directly and indirectly) – can help reduce your reliance on just one market and give your business more resilience and protection from industry-wide disruptions.

Practice to Cultivate: Pay regular care and attention to cultivate your connections. I like Contactually to help me get into the habit of doing this (although once you’re done one run through, the daily notifications can get a tad annoying – just turn them off!).

Cash

If you had to invest cash in business assets such as a website and other online tools and systems the first time round, you’ll need to cash to invest in them again if they’re destroyed.

Having a ‘resilience fund’ or an emergency backup fund is not only advisable, it’s a must-have if you know that in order to get it back on its feet again, your business is going to need some kind of starter investment.

Practice to Cultivate: Pay into an “Emergency  Fund” on a regular basis. To make it easy on yourself, set up a regular automated payment and forget about it. Even if you feel you can’t afford much, aim for say £5 per week. You’ll be surprised how quickly it builds up and how the weekly approach is almost not noticeable.

Backups

You can mitigate the investment needed to get back up and running again if you keep good backups of your existing business assets – things like backups of your website, backups of your digital products and backups of your customer database & sales pipeline.

Many online services offer the ability to export your data – do this on a regular basis and keep copies in several places.

Practice to Cultivate: Set up a monthly reminder to make all your backups – or get your VA to do this for you.

Our websites are all automatically backed up daily (with 1-click restore functionality) by our preferred hosting company, I have backup copies of all our digital products stored in the cloud (in 2 places – Dropbox & Amazon S3) and for each online service which allows it, I download and take a backup copy of my data at regular intervals – including my Google Calendars & all the files in my Google Drive.

You

You are your biggest asset – it’s a cliché but it’s true. Everything you learned the first time round can be brought to bear on every other venture you start.

Honing your skills on an ongoing basis and deepening and broadening them means that your ability to bounce back each and every time becomes much more of a sure thing. And obviously, taking good care of yourself as a regular practice is important too.

Practice to Cultivate: Find your own self care routine and stick to it! The one that works for me: gym on the days that Mali’s at playschool. This alone is enough to motivate me to eat well, sleep well and keep my energy levels up.

As for skills – honing them ‘on the job’ keeps me pretty up to speed, but I also make an effort to read around widely on topics and subjects which are not directly related to what I do. Find your own self- and professional development rituals and practice them. Regularly.

It’s never a pleasant exercise thinking about the worst case scenarios; it’s even less pleasant living through them.

With just a few mindful practices built into your schedule, you can build and increase the resilience of you and your business.

• What should I do with my Facebook page?
• Should I be using Google+/my Google+ profile?
• Should I use my name or my brand for my Twitter profile?

…then this post is for you.

If you’re asking these kinds of questions, then one or more of the following may ring a bell for you…

• You got started on social media because everyone said you should but you’ve always felt a bit at a loss there.
• You don’t really understand the social media landscape – and potentially how it could (and should) be used for your business – for greater results.
• You don’t have any kind of social media strategy for your business and brand, you’re on there but you know you could be using it better.

If any of these sound all too familiar, here’s how to get yourself back on the right side of the social media track…

Start with Understanding & Clarity

The following definition about what social media and content marketing actually is, is one of the best I’ve seen:

“A controlled opportunity to share a crafted narrative about you and your business with people who care, in a way that directly and indirectly yields brand awareness, traffic and new clients.” Lisa Nicole Bell.

Of course, social media can be used for engagement, interaction, conversation, to make & meet new friends and more, but if you’re using it in a way that is even remotely tied to promoting what you do professionally and commercially, then being clear on what social media is and what it can do for your business is foundational knowledge to start with.

Note: A prerequisite is that you’re clear on your brand, your narrative and your key messages – if you’re not, start crafting these first.

Create a Strategy & Plan

I use a simple template to plot out my Social Media and my Content Strategy & Sharing plan – the two components go hand in hand – and I find that working on your content plan first is the most productive way round (you need to know what you’re going to share before you decide where/how to share it, yes?).

These questions should help you to focus on and identify the following:

• Which key messages and elements of your brand do you want to focus on and communicate online? For example, I recently identified the following as the ones I’d like to focus on more:
  • The interplay & interaction between doing business online and off.
  • Being location independent and building a location independent workforce.
  • Being smarter about leveraging online tech.
  • Being one half of a husband and wife entrepreneurial team & work-from-home parents.
• Which platforms will be the most effective in doing this? For me, I’ve decided that based upon my goals & strategies:
  • My blog & newsletter are key channels for me this year.
  • Twitter is less important, with Facebook just above Twitter on the ladder.
  • I’ll also be testing out Pinterest for a very specific goal later in the year.

And then, in more detail, decide exactly how you’re going to use each platform to most effectively achieve the above:

• What is your primary goal for each platform?
• What type/format of content will you post where – and what works most effectively on each, for your business?
• How frequently will you post?
• How will you track and measure the results and impact on your business?

When you have a basic strategy in place, answering questions like:

• What should I do with my Facebook page?
• Should I be using my Google+ profile?
• Should I use my name or my brand for my Twitter profile?

….become simple.

Even when a new contender comes onto the scene – such as Pinterest did – because you know what you’re trying to achieve with your social media and content marketing activities and where you’re currently trying to achieve this, you can very easily assess the new option and slot it into your plan.

In fact, if you haven’t considered this, then the chances are good that the content you’re sharing is less than optimised to spread the message you really want to share and communicate the standing you hold amongst your peers…

Are you an Industry/Thought Leader?

If your goal is to be seen as an industry leader (a thought leader, even) – someone who shapes and leads in your field – then here’s what you need to do:

• Create your own original content, rather than always sharing content created by others.
• Create and share content which deepens your audience’s understanding and broadens their knowledge of your specific topic of expertise.
• When you do share others’ content, provide an opinion of it – the stronger and clearer, the better.

Are you a Community Builder or Connector?

If your goal is to be seen as a community builder or a connector – someone who is super-connected and includes, integrates and nurtures others within the community – then here’s what you need to do:

• Create content which consolidates, summarises and/or reviews industry news, best resources and other community-created content.
• Share community members’ content, not just your own.
• Connect your audience with relevant content and each other, when they need it.

Are You a Curator or Maven?

If your goal is to be seen as a curator or a maven – someone who knows a topic/niche inside out and can be relied upon to know when asked – then here’s what you need to do:

• Share any and all relevant information on a particular topic, within a specific field; it doesn’t matter whether you’ve created it or not.
• Connect your audience with relevant content, when they need it.

Does what you currently share on social media align with the brand positioning goals you have for your business and your brand?

P.S. Want to see this in infographic format? Click below…

• You want to skill up in an area you feel you’re lacking – perhaps strategy, marketing or business planning.
• You want the guidance of someone with hands-on experience and some chops in the game.
• You want to further empower yourself and your business to make the progress that’s been lacking.

And yet there’s a growing trend of ‘intuitive’ business guides, mentors and coaches online, playing on a USP which can’t be queried, proven or otherwise questioned.

These business mentors have grown their own modestly successful businesses, often for no more than a couple of years, in a specific niche and have decided to turn their hand to sharing what they’ve learned with others in a mentoring capacity.

Here’s why it’s concerning to me and, if you’re looking around for business support, why it should be to you too:

If you’re currently relying on someone else’s intuition to help guide you and make key business decisions, when will you ever learn how to stand on your own two feet and make these decisions yourself?

The problem with intuition is that it’s mysterious. It’s intangible, it can’t be explained (or argued with), nor can it be learned, in the traditional sense.

What you ultimately do when you pay for, and rely upon someone else’s intuitive advice for your business is give away your own power.

And that is far, far away from what you, as an entrepreneur and the master of your own business, really want to be doing, isn’t it?

Of course, intuition is a wonderful thing – call it gut instinct, an inner sense or whatever you will – but the only person’s intuition you should be relying on to guide key decisions in your business (and life, for that matter) is your own.

And while intuition can’t be taught or learned, it can be honed – you can practice listening to it, hearing it, tuning in to it and finally trusting it.

In my work with business owners and entrepreneurs, I certainly put intuition to good use…

• I use intuition to sense how someone’s feeling about a particular aspect of their business (or life).
• I use intuition to sense a particular block – emotional or otherwise – someone may have around a specific aspect of their business (or life).
• I use intuition to figure out what someone needs to hear and how my advice might be best communicated for the most effective response.

But when it comes to giving you specific advice about the needs of or gaps in your business, my advice comes from a depth and breadth of experience.

I know what capabilities, processes, strategies, approaches and tactics work for different types and sizes of business.

This comes not from intuition but from the experience of working as a business consultant and mentor, with many different businesses, of different sizes, in different industries, and in different capacities over the past 12+ years.

My goal is to empower and enable you, as a business owner, to deconstruct these capabilities, strategies, approaches, tactics, processes and tools so you can put them in place for your own business, from a position of true understanding and knowledge.

So, before you hire that intuitive business coach, ask yourself this:

Is this truly empowering you as a business owner, or are you inadvertently giving away your power?

It’s easy to see why many entrepreneurs and business owners choose to share some of their best thoughts, ideas and updates – essentially build their brand – on social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter.

It’s quick and easy to post an update, takes little effort and the gratification and feedback is almost instant. It hardly feels like work or marketing at all, right?

But what if that platform went away tomorrow? (Or your profile did).

You don’t own it, you have no real control over it. You may even – unwittingly, unknowingly – be jeopardising its very survival and existence on a frequent, even daily, basis.*

* The following pretty common activities are all reasons that people have had their profiles/pages taken down:

• Running a Facebook competition which violates their T&Cs. For example, requiring people to like or share your page/update to enter a competition is *not* the correct way to do it and is against Facebooks terms.
• Using a personal profile to promote your business also violates Facebook’s T&Cs.
• If you tweet the same tweet or link multiple times (or schedule the same tweet to be posted), you’re in violation of Twitter’s T&Cs.

Yes it takes more time and effort, but isn’t it more sustainable, more secure and ultimately more rewarding to be building and crafting your brand and its key messages on a platform of your own creation, under your full control and which will be around for as long as *you* choose?

Do your business and your brand deserve better than just posting updates on your social media profiles?

Do you want to be building your brand – one of your businesss’s primary assets – on a platform you actually own?

Where it gets tricky is that many of them have built up their own personal brands, blogs and businesses around their nomadic lifestyle which are now potentially at risk because of their change in circumstance and lifestyle.

When you build your brand around your own lifestyle – whether it’s the way you eat, parent, travel or whatever – it’s perfectly natural that you’re going to have some misgivings and fears around how a change in that lifestyle will be perceived by your audience /community and impact your business.

This is something I went through when we made a similar decision back in 2009/2010 with the Location Independent brand and website. Fortunately, our business has come through the other side much, much stronger for the experience.

There are some useful lessons to be learned however, if you’re in a similar position with a brand, persona and/or business based upon the current lifestyle you lead…

1. Have an Exit Strategy from the Start

It’s usually so exciting at the beginning that the very last thing on your mind is how you’re going to exit a venture should you ever want/need to.

But that’s exactly what you need to consider if you’re serious about building your business as a business, and not just a hobby. If you don’t do this, especially with this kind of brand and business, you risk:

• Ruining your entire business model when your circumstances change (by choice or not).
• Losing a large chunk of your audience/market.

These are not definite outcomes – you could well move through the transition smoothly without a scratch – but as with anything in business, it always helps to pre-empt any potential bumps in the road, rather than cope with the aftermath.

So – while it may seem completely unthinkable to you now – ask yourself the question, “How/Will this survive and thrive, if I ever decide to walk away from it?”.

2. Separate the Personal & Business Brand

So what does happen if you decide you no longer want to live the kind of lifestyle upon which your brand is based?

If your personal brand is so inextricably linked to your business and lifestyle brand – and I can think of a few which currently are – then this could have a potentially large and serious impact upon your business, which will need to be carefully managed should you decide to make some radical changes.

A sensible approach is to build or maintain a personal brand which is distinct and separate from the business brand – and while that might mean having a separate website, it will help shield you from the risk of your personal brand suffering should you change one of your professional ventures.

By all means be a big part of your lifestyle brand, just avoid being ALL of it.

3. Brand Yourself Flexibly

So if you’re not going to brand yourself based upon your lifestyle, how will you brand yourself? How about a skill, specific area of expertise or even the sum of projects you work on – none of which are inextricably and solely linked to your lifestyle-based brand?

This way you leave your own brand easily open to change, development and progression if and when your lifestyle brand no longer fits who you are and the life you lead.

Ultimately, what you’re aiming for is a situation where both you and your lifestyle brand can happily co-exist or cease to exist, without one being of detriment to the other.

The kinds of clients you seem to attract are just not quite right yet. They’re close – they love you, they know they need you, they pay you (but perhaps not as much as you’d like) and they rave about you, even sending you referrals and more and more of your not-quite-right clients. Gah!

Why is this? What are you doing wrong? And how can you change things?

Did you know that there are a few more subtle signals you could be sending out which are attracting the kinds of client you don’t actually want? Here are a few you may be sending out right now…

#1 Your Pricing

Hitting that sweet spot on pricing is tricky because it communicates so much – too high and people often expect a ton of hand-holding and an über premium service for you to be at their beck and call 24/7, too low and you’re likely to attract those who buy purely on price and not on the value you provide.

If you’re currently struggling with a base of low-paying customers who demand ever-more from you but refuse to pay you more, then you’re pricing too low, over-delivering and not respecting your own boundaries.

If you’re currently struggling with a base of premium-paying customers who demand ever-more from you because of what they’re paying, then you’ve:

1. Not identified some of the more subtle components of your ideal client profiles, the aspects such as core values, beliefs, behaviours and even manners or how they treat people. Go back and do this – focus on the type of person you’d like to work with, the deeper values and beliefs and not just the superficial characteristics.
2. Not communicated nor respected your boundaries. Go back and review how you’ve described what you offer (see point #3 below).

Your pricing can communicate all manner of things – much of them far deeper than most people realise. At the heart it’s about value…and defining what this means to you, your business and your clients & customers.

#2 How You Deliver Your Offering

The format in which you deliver what you offer can determine the type of client which is attracted to your business…

If you’re currently struggling with the kinds of customers who need a lot of hand holding and support, look at how you deliver what you offer…

…one to one, in a group, online, offline? Do you send reminders and follow-ups? Do you chase customers and clients to do what they agree/promised? How much are you encouraging – even inviting – customers to need this?

It can be incredibly frustrating to work with people – especially other business owners/entrepreneurs – who need that kind of support, even if it’s what you planned to offer in the first place, but especially so if you didn’t.

It’s why most of our current offerings are “pull” or self-service options – they are designed to attract and encourage our clients and customers to access the support when they need it, not have it spoon fed to them.

This naturally attracts the more go-getting, proactive type of person versus those who need more hand holding and cajoling – I specifically want to work with people who are driven, don’t need to be spoon fed and are adult, mature and entrepreneurial enough to ask for help when they need it.

If you’re attracting the wrong kind of client, take a look at how you’re offering your services and what kinds of messages this is sending to the type of people who are attracted to it.

Could it be that you don’t actually want this kind of client at all, and need to adjust how you deliver what you’re offering?

#3 How You Describe Your Offering

The language you use and how you describe your offering could also be sending specific messages to potential clients.

If you frequently struggle with people who ask for more than you planned to offer, the chances are you’ve not been explicit enough and left things open to interpretation or questioning in your description of your services.

This can attract the type of client who is less structured and not detail-oriented themselves, who doesn’t know what they do/don’t need and therefore it leaves you open to ongoing requests which weren’t in your original plan.

If in doubt, be explicit. Explain everything and never expect or assume customers will just know.

For every programme, service or product that you offer state exactly what is and what isn’t included – it’ll save you from plenty of future headaches and the need to constantly draw and re-draw (or communicate) your boundaries.

The bottom line is this: If your customer/client base is currently less-than-ideal then it’s highly likely to be something you’re doing or not doing to attract them.

Identify what this is and correct it…and get ready to welcome the types of clients who you love and who love you right back ;)

Clients I work with typically come to me saying, “I kind of know what to do in the real world, I’d just do blah blah blah. But online? I haven’t a clue where to start.”

It can all seem a bit of a mystery – even to those who’ve been online for a while – but if you break things down, you’ll begin to see where and how things fit and, most importantly, work.

Let’s start by looking at the common challenges you face when trying to land your first (and every new) customer or client – whether offline or online…

• Finding them
• Meeting them for the first time and making a positive first impression
• Doing your best to ensure they remember you
• Following up with them after your initial meeting
• Convincing them you can help them
• Getting money from them

Now let’s take each one and look at how you can overcome these challenges online…

Finding Customers & Clients Online

You need to be where they are which means figuring out where your ideal customers and clients hang out online and – this is the most important bit – where they might be looking for you and what you offer.

They may well be on Facebook, but if they’re on there for purely social reasons and would never dream of looking for your business there, then having a business presence on Facebook is probably not a smart move.

Example: If you’re selling high end technology consulting services to the CTOs of medium-sized businesses, you may well find they have a profile on Facebook but you can bet your bottom dollar they are absolutely *not* looking for your services there – and will not be expected to be sold to there either.

It’s a subtle difference but one that’s worth taking notice of, especially if your current social media approach does not appear to be converting well.

Meeting them for the first time and making a positive first impression

Irrespective of whether you ‘meet’ someone for the first time on social media or they come to your website from a Google search or an ad somewhere online, there are a number of things you can do to ensure the first impression you make is (a) Consistent no matter where they come across you and (b) Positive.

This means having the following:

• A suitable profile picture, used across all of your online profiles.
• A consistent tagline and/or description of who you are & what your business does, used across all online profiles.
• An effective website.
• A good about page.
• A consistent message.
• Credibility in the form of testimonials, feedback, press mentions, case studies and success stories.

Doing your best to ensure they remember you

Memorability and making an impression is even harder to online than off. How do you make sure someone remembers your name, your website and what you do online if you haven’t had the opportunity to shake their hand, look them in the eye and have a real, meaningful conversation yet?

The following can help:

• A compelling story – told through your brand.
• Making them feel good about themselves; the saying “People won’t remember what you did/said, they’ll remember how you make them feel” is a great maxim to remember when interacting online (or off).
• An edge – whether it’s a quirky online persona or a stand-out visual brand, something which makes you stand out and seem different from your competitors is usually only a good thing.

Following up with them after your initial meeting

Unlike networking in person or even cold calling, people who ‘meet’ you online could well check you out on LinkedIn or visit your website and ‘meet’ you for the first time…and you’ll be none the wiser!

So how exactly do you follow-up with someone who may be interested if you don’t even know you’ve met them yet?

Answer: By giving them ways to stay in touch, connect with you and be followed up with in the form of:

• Your contact details, placed prominently and easy to find on your website.
• Links to other places they can connect with you online and get to know you better – such as on Twitter, LinkedIn or your Facebook page.
• A mailing list to sign up to.

The follow-up is likely to happen numerous times before you even get close to landing any new business from them. Making sales online rarely happens by accident so having a solid strategy in place for this conversion to happen is crucial.

Convincing them you can help them

So let’s say you’re building up a nice relationship with someone you met online; they’re interested in what you do, you’re connected with them on Twitter, LinkedIn and they follow your Facebook page.

They’re engaged – they like, share, RT and comment – but they’ve not yet become a customer. What’s going on? Will they? Won’t they? And when?

Convincing people to buy from you – that you are the solution they’re looking for – is an ongoing process. The tipping point usually happens when:

• They’re ready – they have the money, the impetus and the need or desire to buy what you’re offering.
• They’re convinced that what you’re offering is the best option for them.

You can’t always control the first but you can control the second. So how do you convince someone yours is the right option for them? Here are a few things that will help:

• Proving your worth – a solid content marketing strategy which gives a taster of your knowledge and expertise can help with this.
• Showcasing your goods – online this means clear product/service descriptions.
• Social proof & credibility – testimonials, reviews and feedback from satisfied customers and/or press mentions.

Getting money from them

So how do you actually convince someone to hand over their hard-earned cash to you without ever having met you?

If you’ve got all of the above in place, you’ve built the relationship and you’re in a position to close the deal, this step should be a formality. But sometimes it can still go wrong. It’s vital to ensure that this first commercial transaction with your business is a smooth and successful experience for them, here’s what you can do to ensure that it is…

• Ensure you provide all the information about your product/service so that the customer can make a yes/no decision from it.
• Make it easy to pay you – no jumping through hoops, obscure payment systems which don’t accept certain credit cards etc. Get these all-important technical nuts & bolts right.

A Summary Checklist

To recap, here’s a complete checklist of every item above:

1. A suitable profile picture, used across all of your online profiles.
2. A consistent tagline and description of who you are & what your business does, used across all online profiles.
3. An effective website.
4. A good about page.
5. A consistent message.
6. A compelling story – told through your brand.
7. Credibility & social proof – in the form of testimonials, feedback, press mentions, case studies and success stories.
8. Making them feel good about themselves; the saying “People won’t remember what you did/said, they’ll remember how you make them feel” is a great maxim to remember when interacting online (or off).
9. An edge – whether it’s a quirky online persona or a stand-out visual brand, something which makes you stand out and seem different from your competitors is usually only a good thing.
10. Your contact details, placed prominently and easy to find on your website.
11. Links to other places they can connect with you online and get to know you better – such as on Twitter, LinkedIn or your Facebook page.
12. A mailing list to sign up to.
13. A solid content marketing strategy to help prove your worth.
14. Clear and full product/service descriptions to showcase your offerings and provide all the information about your product/service so that the customer can make a yes/no decision from it.
15. A simple, no hassle payment process.

Put these in place and you’ll be well on the way to removing almost all of the most common barriers that get in the way of making a first (second, third and more) sale online.