Chantal

Back in June 2010 I wrote a blog post about the SWOT Analysis we had recently carried out on our business. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats ? click here to read that blog. I recently reviewed what we?d put into the different sections of the analysis and thought I share a few of them with and let you know what we?re doing about them.

Strengths ? we think that our clients are one of our biggest strengths. We?re lucky to have some great clients who say lovely things about us. We could sit back and get complacent, but then we might lose some of those lovely clients. So instead, we?re looking at ways of keeping our clients really happy. We?re making sure that we meet with them on a regular basis, to find out how they?re doing. We don?t try to sell to them every time we see them ? we just work on building up the relationship with them … and they give us more work and more referrals!

Weaknesses ? back in June 2010 when we did the SWOT Analysis, we were worried about the process we had for setting up online services for clients ? blogs, websites, twitter accounts and all that. We realized that we didn?t have a solid process for creating online services for clients ? a relatively new area for us. This could leave clients feeling like we weren?t providing them with exactly the service they wanted. So we did a lot of work on improving the process. Its work in progress, but already we have a much more detailed process, which involves setting expectations with clients at the outset and lots of careful project management. In this way, we?re working on turning a weakness ? the process ? into a strength and the result is delighted clients!

Opportunities ? one of the many opportunities presenting itself to me back in the summer was that of helping clients to use social networking to promote their businesses. We?ve been using a number of social networking tools to promote Appletree for a while and wanted to help other people get more from it. Our experimenting meant we were in a good position to get other people started on Twitter, getting more from LinkedIn and writing blog posts. Moving with the times is a great way to keep ahead of your competitors and keep your clients happy.

Threats ? the number of other people providing social networking services to other businesses is also on the increase. We?re in competition with other marketing companies ? from large agencies to one man/woman freelancers; from PR agents who used to send press releases to computer specialists. What do we do about this ?threat? of competition? We look at what they?re doing and see how we can do it better, more effectively, with more marketing planning or with better writing, depending on what our clients want. Keeping an eye on the competitors helps us turn a threat into an opportunity.

SWOT?s the point? The point is that a SWOT Analysis is a great way of seeing where your business is at. Focus on the positive aspects and see how you can improve on them. Then look at the negatives and rather than worrying about them, see what you can do to turn them into positives too! Have fun!