Portsmouth businessman dishes out top tips for starting a small business
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Sam Amir runs web design firm, King Orange and frequently helps people in the Portsmouth area through the process of setting up a business.
He said: ‘When you start a business, there isn’t a handy guide to help you through it step-by-step. There’s lots of information to help online, but a lot of it contradicts each other, so it’s important to seek out information from reliable sources.
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Hide Ad‘It’s an obvious one, but the internet is a huge tool to utilise when marketing a business – especially a new one. The first place people tend to go to find something online is Google, so setting up a Google My Business page is a very good first step when setting up. A lot of businesses aren’t utilising this, but it is really important for SEO purposes. It’s not always easy to figure out, but it is something I can help with.’
‘Of course, it goes without saying that a professional website to link that to is going to help you massively. While social media is great, it shouldn’t be relied upon and I think that is where a lot of people go wrong, so a website is really important.’
He said it is important to create a personal brand to encourage people to have trust in the business.
Sam said: ‘Personal branding is really important and adds to the “know, like and trust” factor in a business. PR is a really helpful way of crafting a personal brand and getting it out there. Social media is also a great tool and can help with personal branding too as it’s much more personal.
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Hide Ad‘When posting on social media, it’s a good idea to use some sort of calendar to make sure you know what you’re posting and when, as it’s a full-on job in your business that requires attention and is easy to put off.
‘However, if you are finding that you don’t have the time to pour into social media, or any part of your business, you should outsource to free up your time so you’re able to focus on what you are good at. You can also use automated processes to help with this and there are lots of resources online to help with this.’