Your online business is something you’ll be available for 24/7, and most probably other people in your life will often encourage you to take a break.

But even though you’re your own boss, that doesn’t mean less work. In fact, in the beginning (and for a long time) it means less money and a ton of work and experimentation.

I’ll now share with you some ways in which you can level up. They are all areas you should pay attention to. But skipping one might lead to plenty of missed opportunities.

So, assuming you’re in this for the long game, let’s see how to take your precious online business further:

1. Stay current on trends.

Things are moving fast in the digital world. New gadgets, companies, brands, marketing techniques, types of content, payment methods, laws, and more, are coming out every day. And you might easily miss something important if you just rely on other people to keep you updated.

Start using Google Alerts, read articles on the top publications in your field. Follow trendy hashtags on social media, see what influencers are talking about, go to events, attend webinars.

There are plenty of ways to stay on top of business news. Just make sure you turn this into a free time activity and do it often.

2. Produce video content.

If you’re still denying its importance, you’ll be left behind soon.

People prefer watching video and that’s gonna become even more popular in the future. What’s more, they’re doing it mainly on mobile devices.

So don’t stay away from it. Even if you aren’t comfortable with making videos yourself, (although that should be on your list too), you can outsource this, or just do screen recording for now.

The point is that by not making the most of video, you’re missing out on the eyeballs on YouTube, and Facebook and other social media channels, that will engage with your content more because of its type.

Which brings us to the next point.

3. Leverage social media.

Even if you’re already utilizing it, chances are you aren’t active on all important social media platforms.

But what if Instagram was a goldmine for your business and you never gave it a try? What if you could find your next client on LinkedIn? What if you can get a ton of traffic from posting answers on Quora?

You’ll never know until you try.

4. Optimize more.

All businesses need SEO. You  should know exactly why, what it’s about, and its main elements.

But it’s also worth investing in professional services.

What Google thinks about your website matters more and more every day as new updates come out often.

So you don’t just need to do on-page SEO, while still having user intent in mind, and plan to rank high for all your keywords. No. You should also make sure you’re perfectly optimized for mobile. That your old content is updated too. That you’re doing internal linking right and getting backlinks from quality sites. That your domain’s authority is increasing, and you’ll never do something that will get your site penalized.

And that’s just one part of SEO. Then comes the time to monitor everything carefully, fix errors in the code of your site that you probably can’t even find, think about security and analytics.

There comes a time in every online business’s life to invest more, in order to get more in return. SEO is something you can’t go without. The difference between being on the first and third page of Google means millions of dollars for some companies.

To get more organic traffic and fix any optimization issues you might be having without even knowing, you can check out Webris. It’s voted best search agency in New York.

5. Use the latest technology.

Innovation should be part of any aspect of your online business. So give some tools a try soon.

That could be Quickbooks if you’re looking for accounting solutions. Or adding a chat box to your site and encouraging potential customers to get in touch. It can be a software to track your time and productivity, or communicating better with your team with Slack.

Social media can be automated too and thus save yourself a ton of time. Get to know the features of Zapier, Buffer, IFTTT, Hootsuite, Crowdfire, CoSchedule, and more.

Welcome change in your life and your online business, and you’ll constantly be on the grow.