Professional Social Promotion

Guest post by Maria Duron

What does it take to run your own business? For the upcoming entrepreneur, there are often a lot of unexpected situations that one might not have considered when working for someone else.

These challenges aren’t there to hinder your efforts though. In fact, they are there to help you and prepare you for success in your endeavors.

Define Your Brand

The first thing that any business owner should remember is that you are representing your brand as your own. It is unique to the market because it is yours. While you may offer similar products or services, it is up to you to define it through your marketing strategies and initiate word of mouth marketing.

Stay Focused

One must also be able to focus on what’s important. You don’t have to say “yes” to everyone and everything. Perhaps the most prominent issue is that business owners consider the entire world to be their client.

But for the most part, unless you are able to do everything, you’ll only produce the wrong results. Focus on appealing to the right audience for your brand. Not everyone has to be your customer.

Perhaps one of the most difficult hurdles to get over is the fact that one cannot simply jump into the act of owning a business and expect it to work. It is practical to start by building a business model that stands and produces regular results.

What do you want to achieve? Goals? Target audiences? While jumping in can produce instant results, the continuity is what matters. Stability depends on customer loyalty. And that loyalty is derived by proving your brand’s viability and reliability.

Establish Stability

One issue that tends to prove a little overwhelming is the realization that when you run your own business, you’re in charge of everything. Start with what you know you’re good at and enforce your strengths.

Don’t try to take on everything all at once. To do this, you must be disciplined. Focus on what you know works and keep an eye out for what might work.

Remain flexible

This brings to attention perhaps the most important lesson, that the business world isn’t a solid structure. While a solid business model is essential to your success, the model must also make room for change.

The business world changes shape with each trend, new tool, and new strategy, making it difficult for any business that is set solid in their ways, to succeed.

In order to overcome this scenario, one must be able to interact with the world and test himself. If you find yourself settling into a niche, it might be time to start searching for the next trend.

The most important part of running your own business is to be flexible and adaptable. Can you change with the trend and be there to profit from it?

Running your own business is a challenge, but with the right mindset and discipline, you can build a business model that is not only solid but is solid because it can adapt to the ever-changing business world of today.

Author:

Maria Elena Duron, is CEO (chief engagement officer) of buzz2bucks.com – a word of mouth marketing firm. She helps create conversation, connection, credibility, community and commerce around your brand by providing direct services, workshops and webinars.

Maria Duron is co-founder and moderator of #brandchat - a weekly Twitter chat focused on every aspect of branding that is recognized by Mashable as one the 15 Essential Twitter Chats for Social Media Marketers.