A Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) is not a new concept.
Business owners have developed and used them for centuries. The thing to remember is that they translate easily into the online world that most of us inhabit. Choosing to develop and implement SOPs that govern the way you present your company online will play a key role in your success in 2019. At the same time, effective SOPs will do quite a bit to keep you sane in an insane and competitive environment.
Try these five approaches to standard operating procedures and make the coming New Year a happier one.
SOP #1: Refresh Your Guidelines for Writing and Distributing Press Releases
One common mistake that many business owners make with the creation and distribution of press releases is that they don’t understand what this type of document is supposed to accomplish. It’s not an opportunity to provide a comprehensive overview of your business. What it is supposed to do is provide a simple, straightforward, and engaging announcement that motivates the readers to seek out more information on something newsworthy like a new product or service.
You need standard operating procedures that relate to how you draft press releases, how to feature them on your website, and where you can share links to reach the most people. Remember that it’s not just journalists and reporters whose attention you seek. It’s also the key that those releases make direct contact with readers too.
Your SOP for press releases should include a basic template that you can adapt for any kind of newsworthy event. It should also include a list of social media pages, blogs, and other sites where you will post the release. Maintaining a list of spots to consistently post releases will ensure your news gets more attention and helps increase your brand’s name recognition.
SOP #2: Develop Procedures for Using Email Marketing
You’ve tried email marketing in the past, but how much thought went into the process? Perhaps you purchased a list, created content for an email, and did a quick bulk emailing. The results were okay, but they could’ve been better.
You need a standard operating procedure for managing an email campaign. For example, start with a qualified email list. That simply means all the addresses on the list belong to people who have expressed interest in the type of products you sell. That’s different from an unqualified list where the addresses are basically harvested from various sources and may or may not be interested in your products.
The procedure should also include a series of simple steps to evaluate returns from the campaign. That includes evaluating in terms of who has visited the website, who made the purchase, and who signed up for your company newsletter.
SOP #3: Know What to Do With Website Downtime
Website downtime means lost opportunities. While it’s bound to happen sooner or later, there are things you can do to contain the loss, and get by until the site is up and running again. Developing a standard operating procedure that kicks at the moment the site goes down, and serve you well.
For example, you can arrange for your provider to automatically redirect the site DNS to some form of backup hosting. It may not have the same level of bandwidth and other benefits your main host provides, but it will suffice for a short time.
With the site DNS temporarily redirected, work with your host to determine the primary recovery targets. That means prioritizing the recovery of specific hosting services. Some of them may be related to security while others have to do with the preservation of critical data.
The goal of this procedure is to avoid inconvenience to your site visitors while the origin of the issue is identified and corrected. Keep that in mind as you develop the procedure and come up with an escalation process to accompany specific line items with that SOP.
SOP #4: Know When to Talk With Your Web Host About More Bandwidth
The amount of bandwidth that you have now may or may not be enough by this time next year. What will you do when there’s not enough to meet your incoming traffic needs? If you have a standard operating procedure for evaluating bandwidth limits and arranging for more before it’s needed, you will avoid losing out on opportunities to win new customers.
Your SOP should be based on a process used for many years by inventory experts. That process has to do with usage. Essentially, supply experts would establish a minimum number of any item they kept in inventory and automatically reorder when the supply on hand decreased to that number. In theory, it ensured that more units would arrive before the supply on hand was exhausted and the operation would not be disrupted.
Use qualified web hosting reviews like those of Hosting Canadato discern the appropriate package for your needs, including the amount of bandwidth for your anticipated traffic plus a margin of error to the high side. Many are happy to upgrade customers when the need for bandwidth increases beyond the limits of their current plan.
Your SOP should set a point in which you seek to secure more bandwidth from the provider.
For example, you could submit the request when your site reaches 90% of bandwidth capacity for three business days in a row. The operating procedure would call for upgrading to the next package offered by your web host that would increase the bandwidth by at least 50%.
Remember that a significant number of visitors who attempt to reach one of your pages will only try one time. If they can’t get there, they will not be back. That represents a lost opportunity.
SOP #5: Establish Quarterly Reviews of Your Online Presence
Setting up a website, an online store, social media accounts, landing pages, and other essentials is not a one and done thing. There is a need to regularly evaluate how each of your point of presence is doing in terms of attracting visitors and converting them into some type of generated revenue, and making updates or changes as needed. One of the areas where many company owners drop the ball is by only performing an evaluation once a year. If that’s what you are doing now, things must change.
Setting up a website, an online store, social media accounts, landing pages, and other essentials is not a one and done thing. There is a need to regularly evaluate how each of your point of presence is doing in terms of attracting visitors and converting them into some type of generated revenue, and making updates or changes as needed. One of the areas where many company owners drop the ball is by only performing an evaluation once a year. If that’s what you are doing now, things must change.
Develop a standard operating procedure that calls for evaluating your overall online presence within two weeks after a quarter ends. The procedure should address specifically what date you want to collect from each point of presence and how it will be compared to the previous quarter and the same quarter last year. Doing so will give you a better idea of what is working and what needs to be changed.
Final Thoughts
Take a look around all the areas of your operation and determine if some department or process would be easier to manage with a more specific set of procedures. By being prepared for a wider range of contingencies, you position the business to make the most of all sorts of opportunities and be a stronger entity by this time next year.
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