There isn't much we can say to make that feel any better but we can recommend a distraction that will set your business up to grow as life returns to normal. Now is the time to protect your brand recognition.

There have been many downturns in the world's economies and, while many  businesses have plans ready for downturns, forgetting to plan for the upturn can spell disaster.  We know this from studying what happens to business before, through and after recessions.

There are many cases of companies going out of business during the upturn. Surely that's something that can be avoided?

If no-one is buying your service or product now and they aren't buying from your competitors either, then you are competitively equal. You aren't losing any more or less than they are.

If they spend the next 4-6 months building up more recognition of their services/products and you do nothing, what will happen if, in six months time, someone needs just what you offer? Will they come to you?

They will have forgotten all about you and you will have lost out to your competition. 

We don't recommend asking people to buy from you right not - and certainly not asking people to risk infection by doing so (grrrr....). Regularly reminding customers and potential customers about the services and product you offer is a great idea. (Even we do say so ourselves :)).

Use the same message over and over if you want to.

You want my advice? (I hope so... :))

Say the same thing 20 times. I'm challenging you to do that. Pick a service that you offer or, even better, a pain point that you clients/customers have that you help solve and put the message out to your email and social media lists 20 times over the next three months.

Do you accept the challenge?? :)

Here is one of our message versions. Get in touch with us for advice - a call is free!

If you have an online store, one way to shorten the process of buying your products is to set up your Instagram posts so that viewers can see your product info and click through to buy those items. As Instagram doesn't allow links in posts normally, it is a really powerful way of getting people clicking through onto your website.

There are some things you'll need to do to get Shopping set up:

1. Meet these requirements:

• You must primarily sell physical goods.
  
• Your Instagram account account must be a business profile and you must comply with Instagram commerce policies.
  
• You need to be located in Canada, US, Puerto Rico, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Netherlands, Switzerland, Ireland, South Africa, Belgium, Austria, Portugal, Poland, Greece, Cyprus, Denmark, Czech Republic, Romania, Norway, Hungary, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, Paraguay, Malta, Ecuador, Panama, Belize, Dominican Republic, Australia, New Zealand, Japan or Korea.
  
  

• Your Facebook business page can't have age or country restrictions. Message to Buy is also not supported.
  
  
• You need to have your Instagram business profile associated with a Facebook catalog (see below for how to do this).
  
  

2. Connect your Instagram business profile to your Facebook catalog. There are two ways to do this:

Option A: Add a shop section to your Facebook page.

1. Use the Facebook Page template 'Shopping template' and click the Shop tab.
   
   
2. Agree to the Merchant Terms and then click 'Set up Shop'.
   
   
3. Enter your business address and click Next.
   
   
4. Choose your currency and enter the email address you use to access your business Page and click Next. Your currency might be automatically selected for you based on the address for your Page. This currency will apply to all your products and can’t be changed unless you delete your shop and create a new one. Click Finish.
   
   
5. Add your products to the shop.
   
   

Option B: Create a catalog in Business Manager

1. From your Business Manager account (the account that owns the Facebook page linked to your Instagram account), create a new catalog or identify an existing catalog you'd like to use with Shopping on Instagram.
   
   

3. Wait while your account is reviewed. Instagram will review your account and, if using, your catalog, automatically. It can take a few days.

4. Add your product tags and stickers on InstagramUsing the latest version of the Instagram app, you turn on product tags in the following way:

1. On your Instagram business profile, tap the ... or gear icon in upper right hand corner
2. Choose Shopping under Business Settings and press Continue
3. Choose the product catalog you want to use with Shopping on Instagram and press Done

Your business profile will then be set up to tag products in posts and stories. Product tags in posts will show the name and price of your tagged products.

5. Create your first shopping post or story
In a post, you can tag up to 5 products per single image or up to 20 products per multi-image post. You can even tag products in existing posts.

In a story, you can add one product sticker per story. Product stickers show the product name and you can edit sticker color and text. You cannot edit stories that have been published - you would need to delete it and then re-publish.

1. Create a new story or feed post
2. For posts, tap Tag Products from the Share screen. For stories, tap the sticker icon and then select the product sticker option
   
3. Select the product you want to tag from your catalog and place your product tag or sticker on or near the product you are tagging.
   
4. Share your post or story
   
   

Once you have Shopping set up and running, don't forget to regularly look at the Insights to see what gets clicked on and which types of posts and stories work best. If you need any help getting set up, get in touch with us!

We realise this isn't the most exciting of marketing topics but it is really important, so please do read it...

Google thinks that all websites should have an SSL certificate.

If you have not heard about SSL till now, then here's what SSL actually means - Secure Sockets Layer. It is an encoding system in which all the data that gets transferred between your website and the server is encrypted in a language which is unreadable by third parties. It remains secure from hacking.

An SSL certificate helps your website in several ways:

1. It improves your ranking on the search engine
Search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo generally display those websites on their top results page which come with SSL certification. Being a small business owner, it is imperative for you to get the customer's attention online. To improve your ranking and visibility online, you should go for SSL certification. Your ranking for the SEO keywords that you are targeting also improves rapidly if you have an SSL certificate.

2. You gain the customer's trust
Almost 50 percent of online shoppers have said that they trust an e-commerce website more which has an SSL certificate and prefer to shop from such websites only. Imagine the number of customers you are losing out on just because your website does not have SSL certification! You can attract so many more customers if you opt for one.

3. The safety of your data is ensured
Sensitive data like credit card numbers, usernames and passwords are protected by SSL encryption. All the transactions that take place through your website are hundred percent safe and secure. The danger of hacking drops right off and you can carry on your business without worrying about data leaks.

4. You get extra authentication
The SSL certificate that you get from a trusted provider makes your confidential information unreadable not only to third parties using other servers but also to those devices which are on the same server as yours. This additional authentication is provided by the public key infrastructure or PKI.

5. You can avoid from being declared dangerous by Google
Google is ensuring that all websites that show up on its search engine have an SSL certification indicated by the https:// in their website addresses. This is being done with the help of the red font color which is appearing on the link of non-secure websites in the form of http://. This red color warns the visitors to your website that it is not secure enough for sharing sensitive data. This can ruin your credibility online. SSL certification is a necessity for e-commerce websites specifically because of the transactions that are carried out.

 The general advice is if you want your small business to perform well on online , you need to get an SSL certification as soon as possible.

We advise ALL our clients to get SSL certificates as soon as possible.

Contact us if you need help. In many cases, they are free.

You've got a great website. Or great enough. If you leave it sitting on the web, will people find it?

There are more than 1 billion websites on the net and they are all fighting for attention. Does your target market know that your site is there?

Don't worry, there is actually plenty you can do to get your site out there and bring in visitors who search for your kind of products or services. It takes a bit of effort and a bit of time but generally costs nothing (unless you pay someone else to do it) and it works.

In our next two-hour training session on Wednesday 18th October, we'll work through techniques you can use to get the search engines sending you lots of lovely visitors and the right type of visitors at that. We'll look at the content on your website and at the technical stuff, to help you get started. The session is from 12.30-2.30 and costs 350kr.

Find out more here: http://www.writeindanderyd.com/getting-more-people-looking-at-your-website-seo.html

It is very important that you share any evidence that you know what you are doing in your business. People need to know why they should buy from you and by providing plenty of information about yourself, you allow them to accept your expertise and move on to other buying factors.

With that in mind, here is Zen's new shiny badge for becoming 'certified' in inbound marketing. Ask us for more details if you'd like to know more about the subject and how it might help you grow your business.

However, this isn’t the main reason we recommend blogging for small businesses. The main reason is that search engines LOVE blogs and treat them in a different way. Without a blog or news or whatever-you-want-to-call-it section - it is the technical part that matters - search engines see your website as a static brochure. Add in a blog and they pull up each and every one of your posts in the search results so you get a lot more space on the results page but also push down the competition, out of sight:

Blog posts are also the best thing to use to promote your business on social media. They work far better than writing plain old social media posts and send potential customers to your website, where they can find out more about you, your products and services and how to buy them.