Month: December 2019

Knowing your audience is a fundamental aspect of social media marketing for your business. A good social media strategy will use the business’s knowledge of their audience to determine the type of content they produce, what kind of promotional methods they use, when the best time to post is and where they should post.

Narrowing down your target audience can be done by asking questions such as:

• What age group does your product/service cater to?
• What is their average income?
• What are their common values?
• Where do they get their information?
• What type of content do they like?
• What are their interests?
• What is their geographical location?
• What challenges do they face?

You can answer these questions by undertaking comprehensive research that is current and accurate. Look into statistics, audience behaviour and past social media campaigns directed at your audience that have succeeded and failed.

Getting to know your social media audience doesn’t stop after you have identified demographics. It is helpful to continue trying to understand your audience after your campaign has gone live. Acknowledge areas you correctly predicted about your followers and continue or grow your social media strategy around them, but also understand where your campaign failed to please your audience. Learn from what your followers didn’t react to or gave negative feedback on and make changes to your campaign accordingly.

Identifying these positive and negative reactions can be done through using social media analytics with tools such as Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics or Brandwatch Consumer Research. These can tell you information such as engagement rates, follower increase and decrease, click-through rate, time of interaction and reach which can be used to track positive and negative reactions to different posts.

Another way to get familiar with your audience is by releasing a survey on social media. This can help you obtain quantitative and qualitative data using questions like:

• What social media site do you use the most?
• What kind of people do you follow on social media?
• What time of the day are you most likely to browse social media?
• What kind of content would you like to see more or less of?

It can also be useful to look at the type of audiences your competitors have, as they will be similar to yours. You can see the type of content different competitors are posting and see what is working well and not so well, based on engagement numbers and comments.

Hiring a new employee is a time-consuming process that affects you, the company, and the team. It can often be especially nerve-wracking for the new employee starting a new job and joining a brand new team. It is therefore important to take steps to make the process easier on all parties affected.

One of the most effective ways to announce your new employee to the team is through an email. This ensures that all staff are aware of the new employee whether they are in the workplace that day or not. It is also a great way to have written relevant information that staff can refer back to. Introduction emails usually cover key details such as the new employee’s full name, start date, job role, department, responsibilities, supervisor, professional and/or academic background, and perhaps an interesting fact about them. The email can also encourage other employees to welcome the new employee and say hello, making them feel welcomed and valued and providing a positive start to staff relationships.

If the team is small, you can also introduce your new employee by organising a meeting for everyone to meet face to face. This can be formal or casual. A meeting through a morning tea or lunch is a great way to gather staff in the same place and provide a positive atmosphere to encourage a warm welcome. This event would be casual enough that the new employee doesn’t feel overwhelmed, but big enough that they feel valued and get the opportunity to introduce themselves to everyone.

The way you introduce a new employee often depends on the environment of your business. If the workplace is a bit less formal, you can announce the new employee’s commencement on a staff Facebook group if you have one, instant messaging channels such as Slack, or noticeboards.

If your business has regular one on one interactions between the same staff member and client, it is a good idea to formally introduce the new employee to your clients. This can be done via email that provides the new employee’s name, business details, and work experience. Good emails let the client know that they are appreciated for their time and patience and that they will still be supported as normal during this transition period. This can also be done through a social media post alerting your followers about the new employee which lets them know what is happening without direct one on one correspondence.

With so many eager school-leavers looking for employment opportunities, hiring an intern can seem like a good way to offer work experience to someone without the risks of a long-term commitment of a regular employee. However, you should consider whether hiring an intern would be the best move for your business. Here are some pros and cons you may run into:

Pros:

Extra help: It can be handy to have some extra assistance over busy periods in your business. This also ensures that the intern isn’t bored and gets hands-on experience taking on real-world tasks.

Potential employment: If you feel that the intern fits into the workplace well, you could offer them employment later on. This is often a smoother introduction to employment as they are already trained and familiar with the business. However, you are not obligated to offer them a job if you don’t feel they are a good fit.

Fresh perspectives: Interns can often offer new perspectives to work that you may not have thought about before. Having someone who hasn’t sunk into the routine of your workplace yet can be useful in offering new ways of thinking that could potentially improve your business.

Social media insight: Most interns are young and tech-savvy and could offer important insights into the world of social media for the new generation. They could help you devise relatable, trendy content for your social media that you may not have considered.

Cons:

Time commitment: Taking on an intern means that you will need to filter through applications and conduct interviews, as well as providing them with supervision and training. If you’re too busy to dedicate time to take care of an intern, it may not be the best move for your business.

Inexperienced: If you’re looking for some to take on roles that require knowledge and experience, an intern may not be the right choice as they often have limited work experience in career-based roles.

Less flexible: If an intern is still studying, then the hours they can offer you can be limited and variable depending on their timetable. As well as this, when exam periods arrive they could have an exam on a day they would normally work or may ask for time off to study.

Entering into a business partnership can come with conflicts and misunderstandings between you and your new associate. This is why having a written agreement that clearly outlines your rights and responsibilities is important for maintaining a healthy business relationship between partners. Here are some key areas to include in your partnership agreement:

• Name of partnership: agree on a name for your business. This may seem simple but many partners have different ideas for what they think the business should be called.
• Contributions to the partnership: work out and record how much each person initially contributes to the business, whether it’s cash, property, or services, and decide what percentage each owner will have.
• Admitting new partners: agree on a procedure for admitting new partners so that you can equally decide on a new person.
• Distribution of profits/allocation of losses: decide how profits and losses are allocated to partner shares.
• Partnership decision-making: to avoid conflict when it comes to making unanimous or individual decisions, set up a decision-making process that everyone is happy with.
• Death, disability, or withdrawal: if a member of the partnership wants to withdraw from it, or is forced to due to death or disability, then a buy/sell agreement is needed to manage the situation. Consider who you trust to make decisions on your behalf, who would inherit the shares of your company etc.
• Resolving disputes: to deal with situations where you and your partners can’t agree on something, set up a mediation clause where everyone can agree on a procedure to resolve major conflicts.
• Management duties: work out some guidelines on how the business will be managed. This can include who is responsible for dealing with customers, supervise employees, manage bookkeeping, negotiate with suppliers, etc.
• Partner time off: work out how leave will work, including paid and unpaid sick leave, vacations, annual leave etc.
• Non-competition clause: if you’re concerned about a partner leaving and then competing with the partnership’s business, you can include a clause that restricts them from doing so within a defined time period.