We’ve all said it at least once: “new year, new me.” Why not extend some of that New Year Love to your business? After all, your business is an extension of yourself and resolutions are meant to bring about positive change. Whether your business is a budding idea, a growing startup, or a burgeoning enterprise check out some resolutions you can make this year to help your business flourish.
1. Make a Website
It’s time to bring your business online (if you haven’t already!) With everyone plugged in these days, a website is a powerful tool to connect with new customers and build brand awareness. Making a website is now easier than ever. Canadian Web Hosting’s shared hosting plans are as little as $3.95/month and come with built-in Weebly Site Builder. With the easy drag and drop website builder you can create a professional website with no technical expertise.
2. Backup Your Data
This year, commit to one of the most important pillars of IT security and backup important data regularly. This includes personal information in the form of files, photos, emails, and music. If it’s important to you and it would hurt your business to lose it—back it up!
It’s also very important to back up your website, if your business has one. Canadian Web Hosting does regular weekly backups of all its servers (the amount of storage space your website gets depends on its hosting plan), however, it’s a good idea to have your own physical backup. Hardware and system failures, malware and virus’, and human error are all unanticipated events that can cost your business hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Having a backup will ensure you can recover your website. You can find out more about our backup options here.
3. Install Extra Protection and Security
2017 was an onslaught of cybersecurity meltdowns with hundreds of thousands of computer (and the people behind them) affected. The scary thing is that 91% of cyberattacks begin with a phishing email. Protect your business and its website from dangerous malware and phishing attack scams with additional firewalls, malware scanning, and security. All Canadian Web Hosting Linux shared hosting customers are protected with Imunify360’s automated security solution against digital attacks at no additional cost.
You can also practice safe web use: be mindful of the links you click and emails you open, keep your operating system and browser up to date, and check websites for SSL security certificates.
4. Create A Social Media Plan For Your Business
Businesses can no longer ignore social media. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are new places to promote your brand and its services. Social media is a place where you can offer value to your customers in the form of information and customer service, and engage with your customers to create a community. Don’t know where to start? Research the different social media platforms and think about which your customers may be using. Check out our quick guides on how to build a social media plan, as well as how to interact with your audience.
5. Take Your Website To The Next Level
Maybe you’re a retail company that could use an SSL Certificate to promote secure transactions on your website, or you’re a growing business with increased traffic that needs more bandwidth. The New Year is a perfect time to consider what will take your website to the next level and to make these upgrades.
6. Create a blog
Do you want to increase traffic to your website and boost your SEO? Try creating a blog for your business. Blog posts can be daily, weekly or monthly, but always put quality above quantity. Offer something of value to your customers, like a blog post on the different steps businesses can take to succeed in the new year. Blogs can be a page on your website, a subdomain, or an entirely separate site.
7. Organize your passwords
Don’t be that person who uses “starwars” as a password for all of their accounts. If you struggle to create and remember all of the different usernames and passwords required these days for everything from banking to online shopping to social media, find a reputable password manager to help you. Remember to create unique passwords —with a mix of lower and upper case letters, numbers, and symbols— and regularly change your passwords too, especially if there are changes in your company.
8. Opt for multi-factor authentication
While we’re on the topic of passwords, opt for multi-factor authentication where possible. MFA is a method for computer access in which a user is only granted entrance after another level of authentication is provided. If the primary level of authentication is a password, the second one is typically a security question, or a security code sent via text or email. With all the cases of security threats and breaches in 2017, multi-factor authentication is a simple extra step you can take to avoid the same happening to your business.
9. Add a new product, update, or service
The new year is a perfect time to roll out a new product and entice new customers while offering more to current customers. In 2017, Canadian Web Hosting shared many new products with its community, including Immunify360 and VPS Safe for added security, customer intelligence platform CloudDash, Weebly Site Builder to easily design websites, and new reseller plans for customers who want to host their own clients.
10. Increase Or Improve Customer Service
Whether you’re a team of 1 or 100, good customer service is essential for your business. A happy customer can advocate for your brand, while an unhappy customer can hurt it. Rethink your customer service strategy. When and where is your team available to help? What is your communication style? Can customers provide feedback on their experience?
11. Clean Up Your Website Or Perform A Website Audit
As a company grows, its website grows with it. New products, services, updates, and blog posts are continually added to your database. As time goes by, your website can begin to get bloated, with pages looking inconsistent or out of date. Every website can benefit from an audit. Clean up broken links, update images, delete old pages, refresh your About page, all while keeping User Experience in mind. The New Year is a wonderful time to get this project started.
12. Enhance Your Technology Footprint
Nothing is more frustrating than outdated or malfunctioning technology. Whether it be ho-hum internet, clunky desk telephones, or glitchy software, it may be time to bring your company up to speed with technology. This will not only give your employees peace of mind but save valuable company work time.
13. Decrease Your Ecological Footprint
Do Mother Earth a favour and reduce your business’ ecological footprint. Print less. Sort your recycling into paper, plastic, and organics. Reuse plastic bags and paper. Turn off the lights, heating and AC in your office if not in use. Carpool with coworkers or take public transportation. Get some plants for the office, which are proven to improve air quality and create a feeling of well-being!
Best of luck with your 2018 goals! What are your business resolutions for the year?
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