Yes, it’s hard to believe, but back-to-school season is happening and experts expect sales to be more robust this year. According to an online article at CNBC.com analysts are predicting back-to-school sales will grow 6.2 percent over last year making this the best year since 2006. This can be a perfect opportunity for you to jump-start your store sales and begin creating some positive momentum headed into the all-important holiday season.

Here are a few tips:

Make sure to have the right products
Take a fresh look at your product selection and make sure you are carrying the latest, most unique, most novel items for back-to-school. Make any inventory changes to better meet this year’s customer demands and desires. Make sure your inventory is adequate so you don’t run out of important items. Your unique, thoughtful product selection will bring customers in and the service you provide will keep them coming back.

Provide the value-add your customers want
Speaking of service, what are the value-added services you can provide for your back-to-school shoppers. Whether it’s having the school supply lists for your local schools or free delivery. Providing the service that your customers want will help create loyal customers who will hopefully spend their holiday shopping dollars in your store too.

Set the stage for sales
Create a welcoming, easy to navigate store layout that helps back-to-school shoppers find exactly what they are looking for. Spend some time out on the floor observing how your shoppers move through your store and taking a fresh look at your store layout. Create some in-store excitement by engaging as many of the five senses as you can.

Promote your efforts
Now that you have a stellar product selection, great value added services and a well-presented store, it’s time to promote it all. Launch a campaign that will bring shoppers in such as a free-gift with purchase. ITunes gift cards are popular with young people and parents alike! Try to avoid deep discounting until later on in the back-to-school season. Start promoting your products, services and special deals online through your website, social media, blog, and email newsletter. Also, contact your local papers offering yourself as a back-to-school expert. Write a press release about the top back-to-school items (that your store carries, of course). Hopefully they will feature you in a local back-to-school article.

Would you like to increase the effectiveness of your email marketing? Of course you would! We all would, and here are a few tips to make your email more personal, more effective and more likely to result in new sales.

Change up your language. Rather than being too newsy or formal, try changing up how you speak to your readers. Take a more informal, friendly tone – as if you’re writing an email to a friend you’d like to get together with soon. Use technology (included in most email services) to start the email with the reader’s first name.

Segmentation is key. In order to create effective, personalized emails you need to have a segmented database. For example, segment customers by the date of their last purchase and if it’s been awhile since they’ve been in the store, send them a friendly “we miss you” email. Think about your customer base and products to determine the most useful segmentation strategy for you. For example, you can segment by age, gender, geographic location, purchase history, etc.

Reach out to individuals. Once you have a well segmented list you can easily personalize key emails. For example, when you know you’re writing to just the women in your database, it’s much easier to write an email using fun, exciting, informal language when writing about a new shoe or accessory line. Let your personality shine through and give your readers the flavor of your brand and why customers love your store.

How is your blog going? Do you need some inspiration on how to spruce it up, spice it up or create new excitement?

DO – Create a conversation rather than trying to sell, sell, sell. Your blog should be a place where customers can get to know you, your store and your products. Avoid being overly promotional and instead opt for the soft sell by making your blog a relationship-builder and a place where you can present your store’s ability to solve problems for customers.

DO – Present your unique perspective. Use stories of your customers, staff and yourself as fodder for your blog. Write using your unique perspective on your industry and highlight the attributes and abilities you and your staff possess. Readers that are invested in you emotionally are more likely to be loyal customers.

DO – Spruce up posts with photos and videos. Create more interactive and appealing posts by including photos and videos when you can. Using photos and videos will not only help you rank higher in search engines, but also will increase readership and is a great way to get a conversation going.

Looking to boost sales with your customers? Here are a few tips:

Be a retailer without borders.
If your customers are not coming to you, perhaps you can go to them. Consider setting up a table at a local farmer's market, street festival or swap meet. Consider hosting a sidewalk sale or your own mini-festival outdoors.

Give customers a new reason to come in.
Come up with a compelling promotion to bring customers back, such as a free gift with purchase or a shopping party that has free food and drinks to all shoppers. Don’t forget to market your promotion widely. Once customers are in your store, increase per transaction sales numbers by including great impulse buys at point of purchase and promoting items on the wall directly behind checkout.

Generate buzz.
Slower summer days are a great opportunity to step up marketing and promotion efforts. Consider using print advertising in your local newspapers and magazines. And step up your public relations by writing some press releases. Of course, remember to keep up with your online marketing efforts (blog, social media and email newsletter) too. Perhaps you can try some new tactics and see what works.

Ever feel like your to do list and email inbox are growing faster than the national debt? Or that as hard as you’re working, you never seem to be ticking off the most important items on your task list? We all feel that way at one time or another.

Here are some tips to help you harness technology and work smarter, not harder.

Work from anywhere. Save time by making it easy to work wherever you are. There are multiple ways you can insure access to important documents, emails and schedules from anywhere, such as storing it all on the Internet, carrying a small jump drive with you at all times, or using a laptop that you always carry with you.

Automate important functions. Avoid wasting time cutting, signing and mailing checks. Automate your bill paying and payroll as much as possible. Most banks have an online bill paying feature that you can sign up for.

Put your inbox on a diet. Increase efficiency in your inbox by using an email program that allows you to filter and file emails with no action on your part. Set up folders and filters so that you only see important, action-required email in your inbox. Then deal with emails as you read them so that they can be filed and finished for good.

Automate marketing tasks. Set up auto-responders for emails and social media messages. Create auto reminders for consistent tasks such as writing blog posts or submitting artwork for your newspaper ad. Also, create checklists and forms for tasks you do regularly so that you’re not reinventing the wheel each time.

Sweat the exceptions only. Avoid spending time reviewing items, reports, statements and paperwork that don't really require your attention. Make a habit of only reviewing items that are exceptions, such as budget overruns or missed sales forecasts.

Do you ever wonder how some businesspeople are so productive? These folks have a seemingly insurmountable workload and get it all done while growing their business and being a great boss. The answer may be momentum. Creating momentum in your life can help you get more done, grow your business, boost your attitude and your bottom line. I was recently reading up on this subject and have a few tips to share on how other successful businesspeople have created momentum in their lives.

Plan ahead. Carry your momentum from one day to the next by taking time at the end of each day to plan for the next day. Include your staff in this exercise to help carry your business' momentum into the next day as well. Prioritize and forecast what needs to happen and when it arrives, you’re focused and ready to charge ahead.

Avoid momentum breakers. Long, drawn-out, unproductive meetings or lunches can create a break in your daily momentum. Keep meetings and lunches short and focused to avoid letting them break your stride.

Capitalize on technology. Use productivity tools that can help you speed through daily tasks that can bog you down, such as reading email. Implement email filters or an email filing system so that only emails that need your attention appear in your inbox. Examine other daily tasks and see if you can implement technology to streamline them.

Take care of your body. Being highly productive can be exhausting! Create a healthy lifestyle including exercise and healthy eating to help kick-start your physical momentum and support the pace you expect to keep. Many successful businesspeople report starting their days, no matter how early, by hitting the gym.

Your Facebook posts may only be seen by half of your fans that have “Liked” your page. Why? Facebook is constantly changing the way posts are presented to users. You can see evidence of this just by going to the News Feed on your personal page and looking at the top right column—you’ll see two choices: “Top News” and “Most Recent,” with “Top News” as the default. So how do you keep you posts running in the “Top News” of your fans? Here are a few tips:

Post regularly but not too much
Those that post consistently are more likely to appear in the Top News feed. The trick is to find the right balance between posting often (but not too much) and creating interesting posts so as to not bore or annoy your fans.

Know your audience
Launch your posts at days and times when your audience is most likely to be reading them. Go back and examine the days and times when your fans comment or post on your page. See if you can glean any trends and post during those ideal dates and times.

Shy away from social media dashboards
According to what I’ve been reading, Facebook has begun frowning upon content coming from dashboards like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck. I’ve used and suggested these tools in the past, but now the latest information is that content from these tools is less likely to appear in Top News—and is dumped to Most Recent.

Use photos and keep it short & sweet
Posts that include photos are more likely to appear on fans’ Top News feed, so include pictures when you can. Also, remember that shorter posts get more readership and interaction. The optimal post length is 80 characters or less.

Speaking of interaction
Do what you can to encourage fans to “Like” and comment on your posts. Post and posters that garner lots of interaction will appear in Top News more often.

Here are three more suggestions to inspire your mid-year check-in:

Create greater efficiency. If you are feeling so mired in the day-to-day operations of your business that there is no time for goal-setting (let alone course-correcting), now is the time to create greater efficiency. Review the daily, weekly and/or monthly tasks that are holding you back and consider ridding yourself of unnecessary duties and streamline others with technology or changes in process. Creating greater efficiencies will open up space in your schedule to begin setting goals, innovating and growing your business.

Make sure changes are real and not superficial. If you plan to make course corrections, make sure the changes you make are real and transformative. Oftentimes as business owners we resist transformative change for fear of alienating core customers. Trust that your best customers will come along with you as you improve your products, customer experience or technology.

Consult with others outside your normal circle. If you and your business are feeling stuck, try venturing out from your inner circle of advisors and seek the advice of outside sources. Consider joining a professional organization where you can meet and speak with a whole new group of professionals. Try speaking with those outside of your industry to gain council and insight.

As we approach the mid-point of the year, it’s a great time to ask, “how is the year going?” How are you doing with the goals you set for yourself and your business this year? Are you still feeling motivated to achieve those goals or is it perhaps time to make some modifications? Here are some suggestions to get you back on track:

Remember your mission. When you began the year and set some goals for yourself, you perhaps had a mission for the year, whether to kick-up your marketing a notch or grow your business by opening a new location. Now is the time to revisit that mission and renew your commitment to it. If others of your staff are involved, revisit the mission with them as well and examine what it will take to achieve your goals and mission over the second half of the year.

Are your efforts working? If your efforts toward your goal make you feel like you’re swimming in quicksand and not getting anywhere, now is the time to reexamine why. If new marketing efforts seem not to be effective, or if a new product line is struggling, perhaps it’s time to refocus on what your customers or staff want. Take time to listen to others whether it be your advisors, employees or customers. Correct your course and see what happens over the next six months.

De-clutter for maximum gain. Now is a great time to examine your workload, products and even employees. Find all the activities, products and people that are bogging you and your business down (and demanding attention with no profit potential) — it’s time to eliminate them. Create space in your store and in your life and fill that new space with efforts, products and people that you know will add to your business success and work with you to achieve your goals.

If you’ve seen any of the financial news lately, it looks like we’re not quite out of the woods economically in this country. This fact has reminded me that I need to be ever vigilant with where my money is going.

Here are a few of the most common places retailers tend to spend funds unnecessarily:

Paying the wrong person for the job. As we all know, our staff’s salaries are a major expense. Take a look at what you’re paying people to do. Do you have the right folks in the right positions? Are you paying managers to do tasks that support-level people could do? Are you spending more than necessary outsourcing something that could be done in-house at a lower cost? Are your people trained to know how to do their job efficiently and independently?

Paying for more space than you need. Rent is also a major expense for most retailers. Now is the time to examine whether you need all the space that you have. Could you rent part of your space to a complimentary retailer or merge with another shop? Perhaps you could negotiate a better deal with your landlord? Yes, moving is expensive, however you may want to run the numbers and see if over the long-term it makes sense.

Keep an eye on the little things. Take a look at all of your ancillary expenses from items like office supplies to your phone and internet service. Shop around a bit and see if you can get some better deals. You may have features on your phone and internet plan that you don’t need, or those that you are using à la carte, but could be included in a bundle pricing deal. Remember that phone and internet are often negotiable so try and negotiate yourself a better deal.