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Most of us have heard the saying that 'content is king' when it comes to marketing your business, but to small business owners content is more than King – it is the heart and soul of your operation.Now, more than ever, a small business owner needs to create and share very worthy content as part of your business marketing strategy. Without good quality content, no-one is going to be aware of your business and what you have to offer.

The importance of relevant content for the small operator

For the solo-entrepreneur, single info-entrepreneur and digital marketers, it is even more critical to make content the very base foundation of your business services that everything else can be built from.No matter where you look for marketing help these days, the advice is always the same – produce unique, highly targeted and good quality content.Your content needs to be authentic and should be able to solve a problem that your target audience has, or helps to educate them further about a particular topic, or alternatively outright entertains them!It is important that you cast your content net as far and as wide as possible, so this means building a well-structured website with solid pages that provide evergreen information and then backing up your website with a blog.You should make a point of updating your blog with fresh information on a regular basis, especially when you start to build a list of followers who will be expecting you to post regularly.Link in your social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.) and if possible include things such as videos, live webinar chats, podcasts that will engage with your audience and deliver plenty of useful information.

The Heart and Soul of Small Business

As a small business owner or solo-entrepreneur, your content is a reflection of you. You should put yourself into your content and believe in what you create. By producing genuine content you will build a lot of trust in your target audience.What will keep them coming back for more and eventually convince them to buy from you is your sincerity, believability and the passion you put into your content – your very heart and soul.This is especially true for any infopreneurs that are selling informational products. What you sell needs to be believable and genuinely useful to your end customer. Your content and your branding are interlinked and are presented as a package to your target audience.If your customers believe in one they will believe in the other. So if you win their trust by providing them with high-quality content they will learn to trust your brand and will be open to reading the offerings that you send out in the future.

Temper your content well

When you create your content you do not want to just present dry facts and boring information. You need to make your content sound human and very conversational.Think along the lines of sitting down with a friend and having a conversation with them. Offer thought-provoking information and insights that will raise their curiosity and desire to find out more.Opening a dialogue with your audience works really well for customer engagement. It makes your company look and feel more human, approachable and open to a two-way conversation.Making a share-worthy blog where a reader will consume your content and will want to share it with their family or friends will result in your content being actively passed around long after you have posted it.This is the power of using your content wisely on social media platforms where your target audience can read your content then will “Like,” “comment” and “Share” to their own timeline or newsfeed.

Online conversations are free!

One of the greatest things about engaging with your readers on social media platforms is that you will be taking part in online conversations, which is the new medium for marketing your product and services. And what's more your content will be spread around and shared for free!This can be a real bonus for small business owners or sole traders working with very limited marketing budgets.Remember that online engagement and activity is the next big thing in marketing and is on a par with word of mouth marketing where your customers will be recommending your products or services to their peers.By making your content share-worthy your target audience will read your posts and then instantly share it with their friends and family, and most likely a lot of their peers will fit your ideal customer demographic, so you will be reaching out to more people who will like and follow you on social media.

Finding the time to create quality content

The whole point here is to create as much high-quality content as you can and publish it on your blog and across your social media accounts. Even if your content doesn't get shared much it will still count as valuable in the eyes of the major search engines.Google, Bing and other search engines value websites and blogs that contain great content. They will more likely rank you higher in search engine results for your chosen keywords when you are seen to be an active contributor with a good library of published information and someone who posts fresh content on a regular basis.This is why it is important to find a good balance of creating quality content and posting it regularly enough to make a difference.However, if you are a solo-entrepreneur or a small business where you don't have the available staff free to dedicate their time to produce great content on a regular basis, then you could look at outsourcing either your content writing or some of your everyday office tasks.If you have a flair for writing and want to produce your own content, then you can really dedicate your time into pouring your heart and soul into creating rich and vibrant content to share.If you are not very good at writing, on the other hand, it would be worth looking to hire a freelance content creator to do this work for you.Should you want to create your own content, then look at outsourcing your other office-based day to day tasks that will enable you to work undisturbed in peace and quiet to draw up your content.

Outsourcing your essential office tasks

Imagine being left in peace to work on writing your blog posts, creating an infographic or filming an informational video for your business without being disturbed by your ringing phone.You can have your business telephone calls answered in a professional manner by using our Professional Unlimited Call Handling services.Our call answering service is an affordable yet professional service designed to help a variety of clients to manage their incoming calls. With our call answering service, our PA’s answer your phone calls allowing you have peace of mind that you haven’t missed an important call as you were unavailable.Having a professional Virtual PA to answer your calls can add thousand to your business. You can impress your new and existing clients with our professional call handling service. Our team of professional PA’s will personally greet your clients and handle your call with the greatest of care.You can choose to have messages taken or important calls transferred live through to you if you need to speak to any important clients. Our service is flexible and adaptive, designed to add real value to your business. Don’t waste another call, have your calls handled expertly by trained assistants today.We also offer Complete Virtual Office services should you really want your business to be taken seriously and to project a professional image.If you would like to speak to one of our friendly team about how we can help your business to succeed then give us a call on 0207 5663939 or email us at office@capital-office.co.uk

Have you ever watched Black Mirror on TV? It's a British TV drama series that was written by Charlie Brooker and to say it's a bit dark is an understatement! It is compulsive viewing though as each new episode is completely different and like its own film with new characters and storyline that can help your business. How?Well, if you haven't seen it, then it is worth watching on catch-up if you can get it. If you like a good horror mystery set in modern times then you will love it!The main focus of the series is around modern technology such as virtual reality, AI and social media. One episode stands out in particular here called ‘Bandersnatch’.This episode was set in the 1980s and involved a smart teenager creating his own video game based on a ‘choose your own adventure' style, much like the storybooks you could buy in the '80s where you choose the path of your character through the story by selecting actions to take.

Your choices determine your adventure

Wherever you choose to go next will affect the storyline and the eventual outcome. So you could choose to walk through one of three doors, each with a different adventure in store. One door could lead to a battle with a dragon, another could lead you to a castle full of gold, the third may lead you to fall down a well with no escape.But why the Bandersnatch episode of Black Mirror stood out was because the main character in the story (the teenage boy) doesn’t realise that he himself is actually inside a ‘choose your own adventure’ game of his own, but one that you and I as viewers had control over.So, as you watched the episode (via Netflix) you are given the option over what path the teenager takes next. Your choices include everything from mundane actions like choosing what to eat, to more dramatic options that you know may cause issues for him.

Small decisions or huge decisions

What the episode highlighted well was that no matter whether you made a small decision, such as choosing what breakfast to eat, or a huge decision, such as jumping from a high balcony, making a choice to follow a path is better than choosing to do nothing to move your story along.It was quite a ground-breaking TV show and was lots of fun! It is easy to see how this type of show using interactive technology will take off in the future.

What does this have to do with my business?

Watching this Black Mirror episode got me thinking about decisions. More specifically the business decisions we choose to make every day and how by making one tiny decision can change the way you work from now on and well into the future.As a business owner, you are faced with making decisions every single day. You may make dozens of decisions a day, or hundreds per week or month, but all of these decisions are conscious choices. Some of them may be pretty insignificant, but others can be far more impactful.

Thinking outside the box

It can be really easy to forget that your choices can have a huge influence on the future success - or failure - of your business. Many business owners may think that their day to day operations are fixed and set up in a certain way that cannot be changed or improved upon.

For example, you may think to yourself:

• “I could never expand my business. I am far too busy with my day to day duties to keep it ticking over. I simply don't have the available time to work on growing my business.”

• “I tried to get more clients, but I am already struggling to manage the ones I have.”

• “I simply cannot escape the office to meet new clients. What if I miss a call from a potential new customer?”

• “I’m stuck in this boring 9-5 routine.”

Sometimes it feels like there is nothing you can do to break free of your routine and move your focus away from performing your every day necessary tasks and simply getting through the day.If you really do feel this way, then NOW is the time to choose to think outside of the box that you have placed yourself in!

Choose your own path to determine where you will end up

It’s not just the huge life decisions that you make which determine where you end up. You can also choose to make small but significant choices that can actually lead you towards remarkable business success.Take that decision to meet up with an old business colleague for a coffee. Catching up with them and giving them some of your time may result in both of you striking up an exciting business opportunity.Choose to clear out some old junk from your garage or home office. Your decision may lead you to discover that a particular item sells really well on eBay, which you could source and add to your online store to sell.Decide to join a gym to help reduce your stress. You may see a lucrative new sales outlet for your sports shoes or hand-made shower gel.If you believe in the theory of Karma that you get out of life what you put in, then you need to be out there 'putting things into life'.

Free up your time to make your own luck

You need to allow yourself to make small and positive business decisions so you can start to make your own luck in life. If you choose to do nothing, then nothing will improve and you will be actively reducing your chances of business success.A service that can change your business fortunes if you choose to use it would be a Complete Virtual Office. Here you would be utilising the skills of professional virtual assistants to cover your every day essential business tasks that are keeping you from expanding your business.The positives of choosing to use virtual services such as ours would mean that you would no longer be tied down to your office. There will be no chance that you will miss any potential new customer or client phone calls as these will be answered in a very professional manner on your behalf.

Impress potential new customers

What is more, your callers will be immediately impressed that your business can afford to employ a professional receptionist. This can give your company a really polished and professional image. This would be much better than having their call answered by a stressed-out and short-tempered business owner that is obviously struggling to cope.Just think of how much time you can free up to dedicate to growing your business instead of simply being bogged down answering the phones and dealing with your business post for most of the day.Find out more about our Complete Virtual Office services or any of our individual virtual services to discover why thousands of savvy business owners like you are freeing up more of their time from their day to day admin tasks and choosing to make positive choices for their future.

Our human brains are designed to worry and look out for danger – our brains are very good at it too!Leading psychologists have often concluded that humans were not built to be happy, but were built to survive. This strong desire to survive is driven by us looking for potential risks and problems and working out how to overcome them, should they ever occur.It is our cognitive features that have helped us evolve so successfully. From discovering and controlling fire to inventing the wheel, we were driven to develop such things out of fear or to solve a problem.

• Fear of starvation = hunting tools and later agriculture
• Fear of death = medicines and medical treatments
• Fear of threat = organisation of communities and the formation of armies

And the list goes on....Our brains are built to determine the next thing to fix or improve in our lives and this is why sales and marketing techniques aimed at solving human problems and providing solutions to issues are so effective.

Appealing to our restless minds

There are not many people who are in the fortunate position to be able to sit back, relax and be content with their lot. Even those millionaires who appear to have everything at their feet still worry about how they are going to keep their wealth protected and their lifestyles maintained and improved.Instead of our brains being content with our surroundings and how the world is making us feel right now, we will constantly focus on how we can create or fix any problems we have or worrying about what may be on the horizon.Our human brains don't sit comfortably for long wondering, “What can I enjoy today?” But, rather, “What problems can I fix today?”

Making obstacles into business opportunities

Some common human obstacles can become business opportunities if you know how to solve them, or at least provide some temporary relief for a little while.This is exactly how the holiday industry works. You have a stressed out and exhausted worker looking for a solution for their woes. You own a seaside hotel with a pool and spa where people can take a well-earned break away from their busy lives.Your hotel guests get a chance to escape the 9-5 grind and their long and tedious commute to work and back each day. Win-win all round!The skill here is to keep your hotel guest coming back for more. You can do this by keeping in regular contact with them and providing them with exciting news updates and beautiful photographs of your spectacular sea-views, comfortable hotel rooms or tempting new menu.By doing this you are connecting with your customers on an emotional level and you are reminding them that the perfect solution to their problems (overwork and exhaustion) is right here waiting for their return.

Creating a vision for your customers

Everyone is creative – even if you believe otherwise. You are creating new thoughts as you read this. You can help solve your target customer’s problems by creating a positive vision of your solution in their minds.By truly understanding your ideal customer inside out you will know what concerns or issues they will worry about. It is your job to create a vision of their perfect solution and deliver it on a plate directly to them.When you take the time to analyse your target audience and get inside their collective heads you will start to see what things feel good to their senses and things that don't.This way you can avoid switching off your target audience with the wrong message or creating the wrong image of your product or service in their mind.You need to be discerning about their discomfort. The idea and vision you want to create for your product or service is something that is positive and worthwhile. Show them that having what you are providing will enable them to better cope with whatever problems they are experiencing.

Tactile marketing techniques

Despite to huge rise in digital sales over the internet we still have a human need to touch something. This is most common with physical products such as shoes and clothes. We will have a desire to identify the most comfortable texture or the best fit.There is still a huge demand for real books that you can hold and read despite the popularity and convenience of having a digital version to download and read instantly. This is why for self-published authors it can be a good move to offer your book as a digital version on Amazon Kindle, Smashwords and other digital platforms but also offer your book through a print-on-demand service for those who prefer reading physical copies or would like to buy your book to give as a gift.

Emotional marketing with physical materials

As you want to be solving a problem with your product or service you need to connect with your customer on an emotional level. Giving your customer something tactile to connect with can often outstrip digital marketing efforts for gaining sales.A recent study conducted by Millward Brown for Royal Mail found that “this research strongly suggests that greater emotional processing is facilitated by the physical material than the virtual.”Offering your prospective customers a gift or free sample will act to leave a much deeper impression on the brain. This causes your product or service to be better remembered and a positive physical experience will help to build trust in your brand and a stronger desire and motivation to buy from you.

Tactile marketing can be along the lines of these examples:

• Offering free samples of your cookies if you own a bakery shop or market stall
• A free 5-minute hand massage if you are promoting your beauty salon at a local community event
• Hosting a free cheese and wine taster evening if you own a deli or restaurant
• A free sauna or workout session at your gym

Solving problems of your own

While the main focus of your business activities should be towards finding solutions to your customer’s problems, don't forget that there are also great solutions to help you solve your own business problems and issues too!One of the biggest issues a sole trader, solo entrepreneur or small business owner faces is the lack of available time to dedicate to developing their business and making it run more efficiently.As a business owner, you will have problems of your own to solve. So why not consider freeing up more of your time and giving yourself a break by using any of the following tips:

1: Cut down on your time reading and responding to email

Did you know that nearly one-third of an average working day involves dealing with your inbox? Set yourself a rule to only read and respond to emails twice per day. You can set yourself a time limit of half an hour in the morning and the same in the afternoon, for example at 10 am and 3.30 pm.Don't look at your email at other times and only respond to those that you need to. Email can eat up a huge chunk of your day and sending more emails out will only act to increase what comes in.

2: Use productivity apps

There are many free business apps that have been created to help you to better organise your day. Google Calendar, for example, can help to remind you of appointments and important events.Look at using a free Pomodoro timer to help with your concentration and to give you regular short breaks throughout the day to refresh and re-energise your mind.

3: Build an email list

Capture the contact details of your website visitors and build an email list for a low-cost solution to engage with your customers and interested prospect. MailChimp is great for organising your mailing lists and handy for running split-marketing campaigns.

4: Manage your Social Media

We have all fallen into that trap of opening Facebook and then boom! Half the day has gone. Try to curb the time you spend on social media by using a management tool such as HootSuite or outsourcing its management to an outside expert.

5: Outsource your admin tasks

As mentioned above with handing over the management of your social media to an outside expert, you should also look at freeing up your time from other business admin tasks that are just as time-consuming.While essential tasks for the success of your business, admin task are a big time-drain and they are unproductive in the sense that they don't generate any money for your business. Yes, they are necessary, but your time would be better spent focused on other aspects of your business, such as your customer research and marketing plans.Look at freeing up your precious time with services such as those offered by Capital Office London:

• Call Answering: Impress clients with a London telephone number and a team of professional PAs who will personally greet your client and handle your business calls.

• Virtual Office: Our complete virtual office combines our prestigious London virtual address with our leading professional call answering service. Our virtual office is designed to help you convey a professional image whilst ensuring you maximise your productivity.

6: Organise your to-do list

Obey the 2-minute rule where if you have a task will take less than two minutes to complete, do it right away. Getting these little tasks done and crossed off your list will make your to-do list look far less intimidating and you will be encouraged to power through the rest of your tasks with greater energy.

Conclusion

In summary, look at the many ways your product or service can help to solve a particular customer problem. Identify your target audience and work out their likes and dislikes and find where they hang out so you can better reach them with your solution.Don't forget to solve your own problems along the way by making good use of the tools and services that are available to you, from free apps to outsourcing time-draining tasks.With all this extra time you can save yourself, you can better focus your efforts to define your business goals and also give yourself a well-deserved break once in a while.

This is an important question for all sorts of reasons, especially in relation to the future success of your business.While it is important to understand your target audience you cannot really relate to them unless you are exactly the same as them. For example, you simply will not be able to comprehend what your ideal customer will think or feel throughout their everyday life, or how negatively their problems affect them every day without you yourself being able to walk in the same shoes.I doubt that you will ever understand what challenges your prospective customer faces unless you are actually selling a product or service that has helped or does help you!Talking about walking in the same shoes – let's say that you have found a niche market for shoe lifts (these are inserts that go into your shoes to make you taller). It feels great to you that you are helping short people feel a little better about themselves through using your shoe lifts.But how could you possibly know how they think or feel about their lack of height if you yourself are over six foot tall?

Get to know your target customers better

The point I am trying to make here is that the better you can think or feel what life is like from your target customers point of view, the better your sales and marketing efforts will be in attracting and engaging with them.The most successful marketers working for big-brand names make it their business to be absolutely in-tune with their target audience at every level.Many leading marketers in these fields actually are customers themselves so they constantly live with the very products that they are selling. They know their target market inside-out because they are one of them.So, how well do you really know the person that you are selling to? Do you really know them at all?

Time to do your homework!

If you don't think that you know your target customer very well, or you can even admit to not knowing them at all, then it is time to learn as much about them as you can.Believe me, the sales and marketing world is a cut-throat business these days. If you don't know your target customer at all well, you can guarantee that your direct competitors probably will!The best way to really get to know and understand your target audience is to build yourself your ideal customer avatar. You need to narrow down and get to know your ideal client or customer.

How to define your customer avatar

You may be wondering why it is so important to build a customer avatar. The simple answer to this is because knowing your ideal customer inside out will allow you to know their pain points.Knowing how your product or service can help to solve, reduce or manage their related problem will allow you to better target your marketing and make it more effective.

By defining your customer avatar you will be able to:

• Find out where should you advertise your product or service to maximize its exposure to your target customer
• The best vocabulary and tone of voice to use in your marketing
• The type or style of marketing that connects with your ideal customer
• What story your marketing content should be telling

Visualising your customer avatar

Humans are quite visual creatures by nature so it will help your efforts to understand your customer greatly if you give your avatar a name and a composite picture. You could use a cartoon image or a stock photograph of someone that looks like your kind of customer.By picturing them as an actual person you can ask yourself more questions and come up with a background story for your customer.

There is something about 'Mary'

Let's say that you name your customer avatar Mary. You could then think about how your product or service will help Mary to solve an issue. Then ask yourself where you can position your product or service where it will reach Mary.Let's say that Mary has a problem with dry, flaky skin. She is very self-conscious about her skin and is yet to find an effective skin cream that helps. She also works long hours in an air-conditioned office that has a drying effect on her skin.Mary often flies overseas on business, so also needs to be able to safely carry a conveniently sized and packaged skin cream that complies with airline safety rules.Mary needs a high-quality skin cream that is pleasant to use and easy to apply. She also needs to be able to carry it with her to apply during her lunch break at work and during trips.

How your skin cream can help Mary

Your skin cream has proven to be very effective in soothing and nourishing dry skin. It also comes conveniently contained in a travel pack that can be easily and safely carried in a handbag, which makes it ideal to be used when away from home while at work or while travelling.

Here are some questions to ask yourself about Mary:

• Which social media platform will Mary use this week?
• Where does Mary work? Will she be online at home in the evening or during the day?
• What magazines does Mary read?
• What sort of message would make Mary stop to take notice of our product?

Finding answers to these questions will help you get a better feel for Mary, how to reach her and how your dry skin cream can help her with:

• Effectively treating her dry skin
• Being able to carry a supply of cream with her
• Trusting the cream packaging won't break or leak in her handbag
• Is supplied in conveniently sized packs to meet with air travel safety rules

Why it is about more than numbers

Your marketing success has more than just statistics and figures to look at. Yes, numbers are useful for looking at your sales as a whole, but by going deeper and creating an individual end user avatar you can help yourself to keep your marketing message on point and targeted to the individual.If you take the time to build your ideal customer avatar and get to know them inside out as if they were a real person, you could even start to ask them rhetorical questions. Your avatar will be able to answer your questions to help you make better marketing decisions.Too many marketers fail when they try to target 'everyone' as their prospective customer. The trouble is if you target everybody then you will end up attracting no-one.

Don't forget to include the human touch

Creating an ideal customer avatar is building a fictional character that embodies your ideal customer. You may, in fact, have need of more than one customer avatar if your product or service also appeals to different customers – this is fine too.However, remember that once you have gained your customers you will need to do your very best to retain their custom and trust in your business.You should never forget the human touch in business. This means having real-life people to take care of their needs and be there to answer their live questions.Make sure your customer calls are answered by a real person that can help them. If you are too busy to do this yourself because you are a sole trader or small company with minimal staff, you can solve this problem with our Unlimited Call Handling Service from Capital Office, London.So while you are busy creating your ideal customer avatar and using him or her to help devise your next marketing strategy, you can feel reassured that you are not missing a single telephone call.You can be free to concentrate on your next marketing campaign safe in the knowledge that your business calls are being handled by our team of professional personal assistants who will be answering your clients with your chosen greeting and dealing with your calls as you instruct.Don't forget that Capital Office can supply you with a whole range of helpful virtual office services that are ideal for small businesses and solo-entrepreneurs that want to keep their costs down while providing their customers with top-class customer services.Good luck with building your ideal customer avatar! We hope you find this information useful.

The key to customer engagement is to consistently publish fresh and interesting content on your business website, blog and social media pages.This is a very well-known and proven fact that most successful marketers make good use of. However, what do you do with all that valuable content once it has been read?Over the course of time, your website or blog will have accumulated quite a lot of content. Some of it was very popular, some of it not so much.But rather than consigning your old blog posts and articles to your very own content graveyard, why not breath some fresh life into it and reuse it to help boost your company profile and profits at the same time!

Updating content with your current direction

As businesses grow and evolve over time, quite often a company ethos, direction or way of doing things may change. This can mean that what you wrote about your company two years ago may not apply today.For example, with increasing pressure on companies these days to 'go green' and reduce their carbon footprint or environmental impact, many businesses will adopt new environmental strategies into their operations. This means that their old web content and blog posts will make no mention of a new company 'green ethos'.Any new prospective customer that is looking for an eco-minded company to buy from will not be aware of your new positive environment stance if they stumble across you via an old piece of content.You will need to make your customers aware of your new direction if you want to capture that 'green' demographic. Leaving your old content as it is doesn't really position you as the 'go-to' company for products or services delivered with any sort of environmental consciousness.

Recycling your old content for more ROI

As well as the environmental example mentioned above, you can also do something positive with your underperforming blog content and old archived posts.

1: Rewriting and optimising

You should already know which are the most important topics that are of most interest to your readers. You should also know what your most popular keywords are that brings the most traffic to your website.Search through your content to find posts on your most popular topics and pair them with your keyword research. Check to see if your most popular topic content contains your most valuable keywords and key phrases.If they don't contain any important keywords or phrases then you should take action to have these re-written to weave in more targeted keywords and key phrases – but make sure you don't overdo this. Google and other major search engines hate keyword spamming and will penalise you for 'keyword-stuffing'.

2: Creating content pillars

Make an index list on your site where you can list everything your site already contains on those topics or touches on those areas of your business that people most search for.Once you have optimised your content and organised them into a list you will have created a content pillar that easily groups several posts into one strong, easily accessible pillar. Your readers will appreciate this as they will be able to access plenty of information on the same topic easily without having to dig around your site or blog to find the content they want to read.Note: When re-writing and optimising your content remember NOT TO publish it separately and delete your original post. This is important because you may have earned some valuable backlinks on your original content that will be worth hanging on to.

3: Add new CTA's

Revisit your old content to see if you can find any missing opportunities to optimise for lead generation.You need to make it as easy as possible for your readers to take the next step to either engage with you further by signing up to your mailing list or actually go and buy your products or services.Check to see that each blog piece or web page has a call to action (CTA) at the end. You may discover some pieces that don't have a sign-up link or a live link to your online shop or contact page. Add an effective CTA where there are any missing.If you already do include a CTA at the end of every piece of content but you are not seeing good click-through rates, then consider changing your CTA to a more proven one that has worked well on other pieces of content or test different CTA approaches to see if you get better results from using a different format.

4: Redistribute through social media

Your website and blog content is precious material. Although social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are where you will find your customers hanging out, the downside is that social media has a very short memory.The whole point of social media is to share current hot information. People want information and they want it now! This is why they are so hungry for new news and content and hang out for hours each day on social media platforms.You can use this to your advantage by leveraging your now freshly-optimised old blog content for new hungry minds. The chances are that you may well have a lot of Facebook or Twitter followers that haven't read your old content from two years ago.Why not dig up your old posts and refresh them with your new products, services or a special offer that you are currently running and use these to feed your social media posts.Redistributing your newly created information pillars and updated content will work to get the very best return on investment from your posts and will also get your information in front of as many eyes as possible. It will also take the pressure off your shoulders to feel like you need to write new content every single day.

5: Get some virtual help

Your archived blog and website content doesn't have to sit in the dark in some forgotten corner of your site. You can transform your valuable content and put it to work for you to become a high-traffic asset.Reworking your old content and setting up a fresh distribution plan to get your optimised content off the ground will take some time and effort.We understand that the pressure put on your shoulders to perform well and deliver good results can be great. This is why you should look at using effective ways to relieve that pressure.Hiring virtual office services to help you with your workload is not only a very cost-effective way to get the job done but it allows you to put 100% of your focus into your content refresh plans without any disturbances.While you focus on your old content refresh and redistribution, look at making use of these valuable virtual services that will free up your time and allow you to concentrate:

Professional unlimited call answering service

Our call answering service is an affordable yet professional service designed to help a variety of clients to manage their incoming calls.With our call answering service, our PA’s answer your phone calls allowing you have peace of mind that you haven’t missed an important call as you were unavailable. Watch our quick video to see how our Call Answering service can help your business.

Complete virtual office services

Capital Office complete virtual office combines our prestigious London virtual address with our leading professional call answering service.Our virtual office is designed to help you convey a professional image whilst ensuring you maximise your productivity. Watch our quick video to see how our virtual office service works.Both of these cost-effective professional virtual services are ideal for a solo-entrepreneur or sole trader that works alone and can greatly benefit from our professional support without having to hire their own employees.You can read more about our virtual office services and FAQs or contact us directly to discuss your needs with our friendly team.Call us: 0207 566 3939Email: OFFICE@CAPITAL-OFFICE.CO.UKOr drop in to meet us in person at our London offices:Capital Office, Kemp House, 152 - 160 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX

According to figures collected by the Federation of Small Business, there were 5.6 million small businesses at the start of 2018 in the UK. Small businesses accounted for 99.3% of all private sector start-up businesses at the start of 2018 and 99.9% were small or medium-sized (SMEs).There were 1.4 million employing businesses and 4.3 million non-employing businesses. Therefore, 75% of businesses did not employ anyone aside from the owner(s).What makes or breaks a new start-up business, regardless of size or how many people are involved, is their ability to generate and maintain a stable cash flow. One of the main reasons why a small business will fail in its first couple of years of operation is through having a poor cash flow where a good balance of money is flowing into your business at a greater level than what flows out in overheads, such as for staff wages, supplies, business expenses, rent and utility charges etc.

Why your invoicing schedule is important

Believe it or not, there are lots of small business owners that don't actually invoice their clients each week – or even each month!A lot of small business owners are sole traders or solo-entrepreneurs that operate a 'single-person' business where the responsibility of invoicing falls onto the shoulders of the sole owner, as well as every other business-related and administrative task, needed to run their company.The lack of available time to keep up with a regular customer invoicing system is one reason why a small business owner can fail to maintain good cash flow. When you are the person that is doing all of the work, then your financial and administrative tasks will take a back seat should an urgent order come in from a customer that needs your attention.In some cases, business owners are not invoicing until three or four months later after they have completed their work or delivered on the customer order. This can be a fatal mistake to make when trying to run a business.

Invoice management

To establish and maintain a healthy cash flow for your business you need to be invoicing promptly while offering reasonable payment deadlines. You then need to ensure that you chase up any outstanding invoices as quickly as possible once their payment deadline has lapsed.Admittedly, this can be a mammoth task to perform and manage for a single-person business, especially when you cannot afford to turn down work or new customers coming in to be able to fit in managing your invoices.

Tips on invoicing your customers

There are a number of ways to try to keep your cash flow steady when it comes to invoicing your clients or customers. Sending prompt invoices is a good start, so send them immediately as soon as you have dispatched a customer order or completed a job of work that you have been hired to perform.Depending on the nature of your work, you could look at ways to secure payment upfront, or at least a deposit or part-payment. Doing this will mean that you will have some cash reserves to purchase the stock or materials you need to start.For example, if you offer a service that may take some weeks to complete, you can ask for an upfront deposit to retain your services. Halfway through your contract, you could seek a further part-payment that will see you comfortably through to the completion of your project.

Offer monthly payment plan options

Again, depending on the nature of your business, you could look at the possibility of setting up a monthly or even quarterly payment plan for your services, or for a regular supply of stock or product that you sell all-year-round.There can be some comfort in knowing that there will be some regular payments flowing into your businesses coming from a monthly or quarterly payment plan that your customers have signed up for in advance.Payment plans or business subscriptions are also a great way for other small business owners to buy your products or services in small, regular payments without it drastically affecting their own cash flow or completely draining their cash reserves.

Discounted prices for annual purchases

Taking the time to sit and invoice each and every customer you have on your books each week or month can be a tiresome task. If your business attracts customers that will be repeat buyers or needs a consistent supply of goods and services throughout the year, rather than invoicing them each month, it may be more viable to offer them a tempting upfront offer instead!Offering larger companies that have a healthy cash flow system an annual payment option, with a tempting price reduction or discounted rate, can be more advantageous than individual monthly invoicing.The company will be tempted in by a reduced price when compared to the monthly price for your services, plus you will get an up-front cash injection that could provide a very good boost to your business cash reserves.Plus the fact that having annually renewing customers means that you will only have to invoice once per year per client! That is better than trying to find the time to invoice each customer twelve times per year.

How to avoid bad debts

The only way your business can avoid bad debts is to keep a positive cash flow. Having a negative cash flow can do serious harm to your business, especially in situations where you will struggle to pay for essential supplies that you need for your business to operate.If you fail to pay the suppliers that you rely on, as well as a failure to pay your utility bills that are essential for your business to function, you will see your business crumble in the long run.

Let's look at some ways to improve your business cash flow and to avoid bad debts:

• Prompt invoicing
• Taking upfront deposits
• Taking payment part way through your work
• Chasing up outstanding invoices quickly
• Adding a late-payment interest charge to outstanding invoices
• Offering monthly, quarterly or annual payment plans
• Setting up different payment options: PayPal, card payments, bank transfers

Other ways to improve your business cash flow

To make sure that you can dip into some emergency cash during times of need, you can talk to your bank about setting up flexible overdraft options.You could also look at freeing up your time to dedicate towards better management of your invoicing system:

• You can simplify your invoicing by using online accounting tools such as QuickBooks for example. They offer online bookkeeping and accounting services for small business owners and the self-employed.
• Free yourself from your most time-consuming administrative tasks such as answering your business phone and sorting out your business post by outsourcing these tasks to Capital Office London. You can choose from a Complete Virtual Office service to individual virtual services such as Unlimited Call Answering or mail forwarding options at very cost-effective prices to help free up your time.

Remember, this is your own business – your pride and joy! You have worked hard to build this from the ground up, so don’t be negligent when it comes to managing your business cash flow.

Here at Capital Office, we are often asked questions about our virtual office services from business owners that are interested in working with us.We thought it would be useful to explain how we operate and also to compile a list of the most common questions that we are asked about our virtual business services. We hope the following information and FAQ's help to answer your questions, but if not then do not hesitate to contact our friendly team who will be happy to answer your questions.You can give us a call on 0207 566 3939. Email us at OFFICE@CAPITAL-OFFICE.CO.UK Or pop in to see us in person at our offices at Capital Office, Kemp House, 152 - 160 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX. Our offices are open Monday to Friday 9.00 a.m. – 5.00 p.m.

Do I need an office?

After many years of providing virtual office services for business owners based all across the UK, we talk to people every day that still don't know what a 'virtual office' is or how virtual services work.With the advancements in modern technologies, there are so many different workplace options open to business owners that it can make your head spin! How we work has been changing rapidly over recent years and the traditional office set up is no longer seen as your only choice.These days your business does not need to operate from just one single physical office space. Modern workers are no longer tied to a desk or need to commute to a place of work every day.

Modern workplace options

Whether you are looking to set up a brand new business, or you want to streamline your existing operation to cut costs, business owners can now choose how they operate, including:

• Having one traditional physical office base
• Flexible co-working space
• Running a hot-desking system
• Using virtual office services
• Employing remote workers
• Working from your home office

Office rent and availability

Another factor that will impact on how you run your business is the availability of suitable office space in your ideal location. If you plan to rent office space to work from you will need to find somewhere that is easily accessible to you and easy for your staff to commute to and from each day.What most business owners find is that there isn't often any suitable office space available that not only fits the right location but often also comes with a huger price tag for rent, business insurance, utilities and services.You may also find that renting the office space comes with a very inflexible contract that could be costly to get out of should you find the premises unsuitable further down the line.If you are a sole trader, solo-entrepreneur or small partnership and you live and work many miles outside of a major city, then an alternative office set-up such as a complete virtual office will be of a huge benefit to your business.

What is a Virtual Office?

A complete virtual office can act to replace your traditional office set up where you would normally have physical desks, phones, computers and all the other services and expenses that come along with it.A virtual office is exactly the same, just without the physical element and associated costs and overheads that a physical office incurs.With a complete virtual office package, such as the one available from Capital Office, you are also provided with an official central-London business address where all of your business correspondence goes to.Our team of professional mail sorters will take care of your business post and can even sign for your business parcels and packages on your behalf.

Can I book separate virtual services?

If you don't want to use our complete virtual office solution, you can book each of our virtual service options separately. You can choose from:Our Professional Business Address service (mail sorting and forwarding): A London address for you to use on your company website, company correspondence etc.Our Registered Business Address service: To use with HMRC and Companies House.Our Directors Service Address: To keep your private home address off the Public Record.Unlimited Live Call Answering service: Taking your incoming business phone calls and answering with a greeting of your choice. Calls can be forwarded or a message taken.Voicemail only call answering service: Have your own London phone number with voicemail message taking. Receive an email alert instantly. 24/7 access to your messages with PIN protection. Ideal for business owners that need to work undisturbed.Professional meeting rooms: Benefit from using professional, unbranded, modern, central-London based meeting room facilities to meet with and impress your clients.Our flexible virtual office services offer you the right support at the right time. We are here when you need us and you can easily add on extra services as your business grows and you need a little extra help without the expense of hiring a full-time employee of your own.

What happens to my business mail?

On arrival at our central-London office base, your business post will be handled to your specifications:

• You may want us to collect your post together and then simply forward it to you at your preferred address on a regular schedule that suits you
• You can have your post opened and scanned. We will then forward your scanned letters to you via email
• If you are located close to London or visit the city regularly, then you can arrange to drop into our offices to collect your mail at your convenience

Who would normally use Virtual Office services?

The Virtual Office Service users we help and support come from a very diverse range of backgrounds and business professions.From busy single sole traders who need help managing their business calls when they are busy, to solo-entrepreneurs wanting to build a strong business reputation through using our professional business address services, we can help everyone!Our virtual office services bring benefits to just about any company or business set-up – large or small. Whether you are starting off small and lean to keep your overheads to an absolute minimum, to a large international business that needs to have a London-based presence for their company.

Can I set up a virtual office in the UK for my overseas business?

If you are not a UK resident then you still make use of our virtual office services to give your business a London-based hub. This can help your UK based customers or clients to have a convenient London address and phone number to contact and send mail to.We can forward your mail to an overseas address of your choosing, or you can benefit from our scan and email option to get your business mail notifications instantly.

Can I speak to a real person about your services?

Yes, you can! We have a friendly team of people here at Capital Office that make up our customer service base. If you need any help or guidance about any of our services, you can give us a call on 0207 566 3939 and speak to one of our lovely team members. You can also live-chat with us from our website – we are here to help!

Want to know how you can untie yourself from your company telephone and free up some extra time away from your everyday administration tasks?

Want to know how you can give your business image and reputation an instant facelift?

Read on to find out how Capital Office can help you to streamline your business practices, reduce your stress levels, improve your customer service experience, improve your reputation and free up a whole lot of extra time in your day that you can focus on other important business-related tasks that need your attention.

A day in the life of an overworked business owner

I think we have all been here, most small business owners and solo entrepreneurs maybe still are?

9.30 AM: You have a busy day ahead of you. An important business meeting is scheduled for 10am with one of your most valuable clients. You arrive at their offices in plenty of time for your meeting, but to make sure that you don't miss any incoming business calls from potential new customers you have put your business phone on divert to your mobile phone.

For about an hour your mobile phone has been ringing constantly. Somebody is eager to talk to you, but who? Your phone beeps as you get another voice message left to pick up at some point. You become incredibly stressed and frustrated at the thought of all those missed business calls.

Your stress levels are building up....

Have you missed connecting with a new customer that could prove to be even more valuable than the client that you are about to meet today? You don't know.

Have you completely missed out on a lucrative new business contract or large sale because the impatient caller has now gone to your main competition to get what they need? You don't know.

Your business meeting goes as well as you expect, but because you switched your phone to silent, your focus was being distracted by the thought of all those calls being missed.

You feel overwhelmed.....

On your arrival back at your home office or workshop, you notice the pile of unopened mail sitting on your doormat. You let out a huge sigh at the realisation that you are going to need at least an hour to open and sort through your mail before you can go back to focusing on your work and following up on your business meeting.

Meanwhile, you also realise that you have a countless number of phone messages to listen to, note down and respond to. You throw your hands up in defeat knowing that the best part of the rest of the day will be consumed in dealing with all of your administration tasks.

You have a Ground-hog day moment....

You shake your head and rub your stressed brow at the thought that you will have many days just like this.

• Yes - your administration tasks are important.
• Yes – you need to open and read your business mail.
• Yes – you need to answer your business phone calls.
• Yes – you need to respond swiftly to your statutory mail coming from HMRC and Companies House.

Unfortunately, being so busy trying to manage all of your tasks while dealing with clients doesn't give off a good image. It doesn't instill a lot of confidence or trust from your clients or customers. They will see that by doing business with you they risk their phone calls or important letters being ignored or handled badly.

But how can you do all these tasks and still manage to do the work that you need to get done and build a good reputation for your company at the same time?

Capital Office Complete Virtual Office Solution

At Capital Office, London, we have helped thousands of small business owners and sole traders over the years that seek our help to relieve them of the pressures of coping with their everyday administration tasks.

We understand what it is like to try and juggle dealing with rushed phone calls, hastily written notes and reminders to call someone back, keep on top of your business mail, while at the same time trying to keep your composure in front of your clients to present a professional image.

So, let's take a look at how our Complete Virtual Office services can help you. Here is a breakdown of what's included in the complete package and how each part can help your business to thrive and grow.

Complete Virtual Office London Overview

London based PA’s taking your calls

Firstly and most importantly, you will have our team of London-based native English speaking live PA's taking every single one of your incoming business phone calls. Nothing beats that personal touch of talking to a real person when it comes to delivering top-quality customer services for your business.

Your virtual receptionist will answer your calls with your preferred company greeting and will handle your calls exactly to your instructions. This can include forwarding calls to you or another person in your company, taking a message and forwarding your messages to you via email or text message.

With your professional call answering service, you will benefit from unlimited calls and an 'Out of hours' voicemail to email service so that not a single call is missed, even if they are made outside of your business hours.

Choose a 0207 or 0203 Telephone Number

When you sign up with our service you can choose to keep your existing business telephone number or you can choose a more professional London-based 0207 or 0203 telephone number for your business. You can use your own London-based service number on all of your communications and having a central-London business number will give your business a more professional image.

Impressive London Address

As part of our Complete Virtual Office Service you also get to use a very prestigious central-London address to use for your business. Based in the heart of London's bustling business district, your business address can be used on all of your company paperwork and will help to build a strong business image and more professionalism around your business name.

If you are running your business from home or from a small base that doesn't have any suitable meeting facilities for you to conduct important business meetings with your clients, then you can also benefit from Free EC1 Meeting Room Use in our London city offices.

We have modern, well equipped, unbranded meeting rooms that you can use to impress your clients or have a convenient place to hold a meeting in London with good transportation hubs. You may run your business from anywhere in the country, but it may be difficult for your business clients or B2B partners to reach you easily. London is pretty accessible from anywhere, so our professional meeting rooms are an ideal venue for your important business meetings.

Forward / Scan / Collect your mail

By using our Complete Virtual Office Services you will benefit from having all of your incoming business mail directed to our offices in London. Our highly experienced team of mail sorters will take care of all your incoming business mail and you can decide how you would like your mail handled, including:

• Collected together and forwarded to an address of your choosing (including an overseas address) on a regular schedule
• Open, scan and email you a copy
• Save your mail to be collected by yourself in person from our London offices
• Packets and parcels signed for

The great thing about our mail handling service is that you get unlimited letters included in one low price of our combined package. You will save money by using our Complete Virtual Office Service rather than buying these services separately.

Under 60 Second Sign up

The great thing about our complete package is that it takes seconds to sign up for and your service can go live immediately, or at a time of your choosing. You can easily book with a secure online payment and start to benefit straight away.

So, if you want to streamline your business, take the stress out of having to cope with your daily administration tasks, never miss a business call again, give your company a professional business makeover and free up your precious time to dedicate more productively, then sign up today!

Regardless of how large or small your business, your business address can be a help or a hindrance to your business.

Your professional image counts for a lot, especially when you are trying to attract new customers or coax a new B2B partner into trading with you. Having a solid business image can inspire your customers and potential new trading partners to have confidence in your business and your ability to deliver a trustworthy and professional service.

Pretty much 99% of potential new customers or B2B companies will check your business out on the internet before they make contact with you. This means looking at your business website for more information about your company, your products or services, your history, your track record and more.

Should your business website not include a physical business address or the address you use looks a little suspect, such as using a PO Box address or using a residential address (because you are running your business from your home office or spare bedroom) the first impression you make will not be a positive one.

Chances are that anyone checking out your business and seeing that you don't have a solid business address will raise doubts in their mind about your business integrity. This can mean them swiftly moving their search on to one of your competitors with a better profile and more credibility to deal with.

Why do I need a physical Business Address?

No matter whether you are running a business as a sole trader or as a limited company, you will need to supply a business address to HMRC when registering as a sole trader (and Companies House for a limited company). You need to give an address where your statutory mail can be delivered and also be recorded on the Public Register of Companies at Companies House (for a limited company).

Many solo entrepreneurs that are running a single person business operation from home may not actually need to go to the trouble of renting official office space, especially if they don't plan to take on any staff, or if they plan to outsource a lot of their daily tasks to remote freelancers.

It is worth considering what office set-up would suit your business, especially if you work from home or from a workshop or warehouse where there isn't a physical office present.

While running your business from home can really help to keep down your business overheads and help you to keep your business running on a lean infrastructure, there still remains a strong stigma associated with using your own home address for your business.

If you are providing services to other registered limited companies or larger corporations, many of these organisations will not even consider dealing with you based on the fact that you are operating from a residential address. Most will not even agree to a contract with anyone that isn't registered as a limited company. This isn't good news for sole traders, even if they are highly skilled individuals that would be perfectly capable of doing the job on their own without breaking a sweat.

How a professional business address can build trust and confidence

Having a professional physical address for your business can help to build confidence in your customer base. They will see that you have a real-life physical address that you are operating through and that you are not some fly-by-night operation that simply sets up a website to scam as many people out of money as they can before being discovered and then flee with all the money.

Potential new customers need to know that your business has a solid base and will be discouraged from buying from you if you cannot provide a legitimate contact address. No matter whether you operate a service-based business or you operate in the virtual world, being able to legitimise your business with a professional business address where your customers can contact you, will help to instil trust and confidence in your business.

Having a professional business address for your company will help to build trust and credibility, especially if your aim is to deal with other companies on a B2B platform.

Search Engine Optimisation advantages

We all know how competitive the business world is. We have to fight for elbow room in our niche sector and use all the tools we can to climb the SEO ladder to get our business to the top of the search engine rankings.

Should your business website have no business address listed, then you will have no chance of being discovered by any of the major search engines. This is even more relevant if your business operates on a local community level where your main customers are right on your own doorstep.

Let's say that you live in Gloucestershire and offer a local gardening and DIY service for your local region or county. Should anyone wanting help from a locally-based gardener search Google for 'Gardening services, Gloucestershire', the chances are that without a proper business address your gardening services will not appear at the top of the search results, or even appear on the first page.

What is also important to remember is that without a proper business address, your business will not show up on Google Maps. Lots of potential customers like to have a visual representation of where their local business search results are. If you don't have a pin in the map, your business will be invisible in the search results.

Your family privacy and safety

While it may seem like a very convenient option to simply use your home address for your business, especially if you are running it from home anyway, don't forget that taking this option can come loaded with lots of negative consequences.

Listing your home address online via your business website and your social media pages doesn't look very professional for one thing, but you may also be breaking your tenancy agreement if you rent your home and your landlord doesn't allow their tenants to list the property address for business purposes.

Many landlords will have to take out professional landlord insurance and quite often part of the agreement for cover is that the tenant isn't allowed to carry out any business on the property. Doing so regardless can mean any insurance claims the landlord may need to take for accidental damage can be invalidated.

This is one reason why having a separate address for your business can help to separate your business from your home address.

If you live with your family, then you also have to take into consideration the privacy and personal security of your family members as well as your own. Listing your home address as your business address will mean that you are opening up your home to being inundated with cold callers, phone calls and junk mail.

Would your partner appreciate the fact that strangers can turn up at your door at all times of the day, especially if you are home with young children? Not only is the intrusion into their personal life very disrupting, but it could be putting their safety at risk too from disgruntled customers or even rival business owners that resent your presence.

Are these risks worth taking when for just a few pounds per month you can avoid all of these privacy and safety issues by using professional business address service options such as those provided by Capital Offices in London.

What is a Business Address Service Provider?

When you use a professional business address service provider such as Capital Office, London, it means that you can get a very smart London-based business address for your company. Your business address sits at the heart of London's business district so you will be able to get instant credibility for your business by carrying an EC1 address on all of your business documentation and websites.

No matter if you are a single sole trader or have formed your own limited company, you can get a London-based business address no matter where you operate your business from.

What this also means is that you can benefit from having a central-London business address without paying the price tag that accompanies renting such prestigious properties.

Here is what your London business address will look like:

Your business or personal name,

Kemp House,

152 – 160 City Road,

London, EC1V 2NX

How do business address services work?

Once you have set up your business address service with us, depending on the address package you have chosen, you can benefit from our virtual mail forwarding address and have all of your business letters and parcels delivered to our offices in London.

You can then instruct us about how you would like us to handle your business post. You can choose for us to open and scan your mail so that you can read it online, or you can have us collect your mail together and then post it on to you to an address of your choosing at a frequency that suits you. This includes packages and parcels and also global addresses. Our mail handling services are trusted by thousands of business owners.

If you are in London or visit the city on a regular basis, you can even call into our offices in person to collect your business mail. We offer a flexible service that suits your needs. Your new business address can be activated instantly, which means that you can start to use it right away on your business documents and you can add it to your business website so that you can get your website ranked on all of the major search engines.

What about meeting my clients in person?

You may be worried about meeting with your customers, clients or potential business partners for important meetings or updates. Instead of having to invite them to meet at your home or in a noisy coffee shop somewhere, you can instead get free use of one of our professional unbranded meeting rooms at our central-London offices with our annual mail forwarding address package option.

We offer our executive meeting rooms for hire to our customers should you need to meet clients on a regular basis, but with our premium 12-month mail forwarding address service, you can benefit from 4 hours of free use of our professional meeting room throughout your contract.

By inviting your business clients to your 'place of work' in central-London with a professional atmosphere, you will be able to add even more credibility to your business.

London Office Address & Mail Forwarding Overview

Here is a brief overview of our business address and mail forwarding service. For more information and benefits see our service breakdown page.

• Forward, scan or collect post
• Free Meeting Room Use
• Global mail forwarding service
• Instant Account Activation
• Packets & Parcels signed for
• Prestigious EC1 Address
• Secure & Confidential
• Secure Payments
• Under 60 Second Sign up
• Unlimited Letters Included

So you can see that by using the professional business address and mail forwarding services provided by Capital Office, London, you will be boosting your company image and credibility so that your potential new clients, customers and B2B business partners will take your business seriously.

Sole traders and small business owners working from a home-based office actually have a lot more pressure put on them when compared to doing a paid job working from an employers office space.

While the majority of people imagine that being your own boss comes with a lot of freedom, but in most cases the opposite is true.

You may think that every solo entrepreneur or small business owner can sit around all day in their pyjamas, drinking coffee and having the TV on in the background while they work from a laptop.

This image may seem really appealing, especially if you have to face the daily grind of commuting to an office every day, sitting in slow moving traffic, feeling uncomfortable sitting at your desk all day while wearing a suit, tie and tight shoes.

However, there are a lot of things that you can take for granted in your employed job that a small business owner must factor in. We are talking here about time-consuming, yet very important tasks, such as emptying your office waste bin, keeping your office environment clean and free from dust that can seriously affect the inner workings of your electronic equipment, and more....

More responsibilities than you think!

But it is not only the added tasks of a bit of office cleaning that you will need to take care of – the security of your home office will also fall squarely onto your shoulders.

An employer will provide their workers with a safe environment to work within and this includes having Health & Safety policies in place to keep staff physically safe and free from injury, but also Data Protection procedures that prevent sensitive data breaches and company information falling into criminal hands.

Working for an employer will also mean that your boss will be the one paying out for security staff, CCTV, security access points, fire alarm systems and equipment, smart locks and physical window and door locks.

Just because you run your business from your home office doesn't mean that you don't need to have security measures in place to protect your customer information and business data to remain compliant with the current Data Protection Act.

However, there are a lot of steps you can take to help automate your home office and free up your time from your day-to-day administrative tasks that are essential to the success of your business.

How to utilise digital assistants in your office

With the introduction of digital assistants in the form of Amazon's Alexa and others, we have been able to revolutionise our homes. Digital assistants have fundamentally changed the way a growing number of us interact with our digital devices.

Voice-activated AI technology is growing more versatile by the day. We are now seeing Alexa and other digital assistants being able to take on many different tasks in the day-to-day operation of our small businesses.

Setting up Alexa or an Echo-dot in your home office can immediately start to pay for itself through automating task such as scheduling your diary, conferencing calls, running productivity tools to keep you focussed on your work, organising your to-do lists, and delivering data.

Here are just three useful examples of how using a digital assistant can save you time and effort:

Automate your conference call schedule:

You can use a conferencing managing tool to sync with Google Calendar. This will help to remind you of your next conference call and will automatically connect your call without you needing to dial the number. You would simply need to say out loud: "Alexa, tell Conference Manager to start my conference call."

Organise your travel with email assistant:

If your home business involves visiting clients, then you can sync Alexa with an email assistant tool. This handy tool will parse your email inbox to find and read back travel confirmations, so if you want a quick rundown about your car rental, hotel booking or flight details, you will get the information you need without needing to physically check your emails for the information. You would simply need to say: "Alexa, ask Email Assistant what time is my hotel check-in."

Get up to date web analytics:

As well as delivering current news and curated data, your digital assistant can also give you real-time website data. Alexa offers web analytic tools that can sync with Google Analytics to deliver you fresh, real-time updates on your website data, such as visitor numbers and web traffic.

There are new skills being added by the day to digital assistants such as Alexa and Google Assistant. It is worth keeping up with the latest releases and useful tools that can help free up your time and keep on top of your office based tasks.

Automating your business bookkeeping and accounting

Balancing your books and keeping track of your business expenses can be an incredibly tedious job for most small business owners. Rather than sitting and pouring over your business bookkeeping and accounts for hours each week or month, you can look at automating these essential, yet quite boring tasks.

By using an online bookkeeping and accounting service, such as Quickbooks for example, you can transform how you do your company accounts.

Many sole traders will start out simple and use free tools and easy systems to get them off the ground and the money rolling in. This can involve creating a simple invoice in Word and sending this to your customers at the end of each month, or on the completion of your work project.

A physical paper-based cash book would then be used to note down all income and outgoings, along with petty cash and recording of business-related receipts.

Instead, by automating your bookkeeping and accounts through an online service, you can save yourself a lot of time and effort. Your accounting service will sync with your business bank account and any merchant trading accounts you have. Every time you make a business transaction it will be recorded. You can scan in physical receipts for petty cash and non-electronic spending.

What is also a major time-saver with online accounting software is that you can create and send invoices in seconds. These will be logged and tracked and you will be sent an automatic reminder of any late payments and outstanding invoice details.

You will be able to see at a glance how much you are owed, how much you have spent and know instantly the state of your business cash flow. This is so much better than having to work out all of your figures by hand.

Automating your Annual Reporting

As a sole trader or small business owner, you will need to complete and submit your annual tax return based on your income and expenditure for each tax year. You can prepare and submit these easily by yourself by using an online accounting solution, such as Quickbooks or a similar option.

As a sole trader, you will need to pay tax according to your income tax band. You will also need to pay either Class 2 or Class 4 National Insurance contributions, depending on your total business profits. Again, your tax and NI contributions can be automatically worked out for you using your online accounting solution.

If you are a limited company, you will also be required to complete and file your audited company accounts each year. This is necessary to keep your company compliant with the law, but it will also show you the financial health of your business. Your figures will also be used to work out how much corporation tax you will need to pay.

Ideally, you should have your company accounts drawn up by a qualified business accountant. This can be an expensive overhead for a lot of micro-businesses owners, especially if they are used throughout the year to keep checks and balances on your business finances, so using an online accounting system to do all of the legwork for you can make your record keeping as simple as possible.

You can set up your own personal gateway online with HMRC and this portal will allow you pay your self assessment tax bill each year, as well as check on things such as your pension entitlement assessment for when you retire, and details of any benefit payments that you currently receive, such as Tax Credits.

Freeing yourself from your home office

As a business owner working from home, you will have important day-to-day tasks to perform that are essential to keeping your business ticking over. This includes completing menial tasks without becoming distracted or sidetracked.

It can be hard to concentrate on your work if you are worried about what is going on right outside of your home office door. You may have a sick child at home that needs your attention, or you may be trying to work during school holidays and your kids are causing chaos.

Before you know it, you have lost a day's worth of productivity and important business calls have been missed or cut short. Your incoming business mail is piling up and left unopened, and your emails are stacking up in your inbox, but you are unable to work through them because you are struggling to juggle with so many other office tasks.

You can take steps to free yourself from your everyday office tasks and be there for your family whenever they need you. It is possible to escape your home office to take care of family matters knowing that while you are absent all of your important business telephone calls are still being answered promptly, professionally and in a friendly manner.

Now would be a perfect time to make use of very flexible and cost-effective virtual office services, such as those offered by Capital Office, London.

Whether you want to have your business phone calls covered when you need to concentrate on work, meet with important clients, or simply spend time looking after a family member when they are sick, you can use our unlimited business call answering service or you can go the whole hog and have our complete virtual office services at your fingertips when you need a little extra help.

By using virtual office services to free you from your every day time-consuming administrative tasks you can focus your time and energy on other more important things, such as getting a work project completed to meet an impending deadline, meeting with customers or potential new B2B partners or trade suppliers.

Capital Office, London is here to help you if you are struggling to run your own business from home or find your everyday business admin tasks are becoming a little overwhelming. You can find out more about the benefits of using an unlimited call answering service and how it can set you free from being tied to your home office telephone. Or you can discover how using a complete virtual office can actually be good for you and your business if you are a sole trader.