If you want your business to succeed (and I know you do!), you need more than just your wits and elbow grease. To achieve results, you must consider how to connect with customers via social media, how to optimize content marketing to drive revenues, and how to back up your company’s digital data in an efficient way. Here are three strategies that will help you grow and maintain a successful business.

Strengthen Social Media

Communicating with your audience on Facebook, Twitter and other social channels requires much more than an occasional tweet or wall post. It’s a matter of creating an active and engaging community conversation to help your target clients to connect with your products or services.

Small Business Trends suggests that social media content integration should happen in three stages: participation, anticipation and coordination. Sharing content multiple times — regularly, but not so often that it becomes annoying — is essential to driving more traffic to your main site.

A comprehensive social media plan should include a calendar or schedule of possible content, so that you or your virtual assistant can understand how to best funnel messages through your social media accounts. Think about which deals, events or stories you want to highlight.

Refine a Content Marketing Plan

Social media is a free and easy way to get your business in front of possible clients.

Content creation requires you to tap into the depths of your company’s stories. What makes your small business tick? What sets it apart? Where are your successes? These things can be spun outward to consumers through non-traditional means by focusing more on stories than traditional methods such as descriptions of your services.

In an article on Fox’s Small Business Center, one business owner said content marketing will continue to explode in 2014 as more companies see the value of marketing through original stories and active online content.

Ensure Your Data Is Secure

While you develop content for connecting with potential clients online, don’t forget about what goes on behind the scenes.

What would happen if your office caught fire or was compromised in a natural disaster? Would your data be backed up? Your insurance company might help replace computers and hard drives, but what about all the files that are critical to your everyday operations? If they’re not securely stored off site, that information could be lost permanently.

Cloud solutions are becoming more popular, as they require less space than traditional computer systems and provide more flexible access to your files. Cloud laboratories or storage areas are often accessible from anywhere, which can come in handy if you need to use your data at more than one location. An online cloud backup solution from Mozy or another service provider will give you the peace of mind of knowing that your data is protected.

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