Values is a term that we are seeing really moving in conversation at the moment. Not just with movements and governments, but in friends circles and family conversation. But how do brands add value to their customers, and why do we care?
Read MoreWhy running a value based business means you will still have a business when this is all over
We are being asked a lot how Covid-19 is affecting our business. What all of this means for our little Company of One, what we are doing with all our “extra time” and are we worried about what the future holds?
Read MoreBeing Kind to Yourself in a Crisis
Corona Virus continues to spread across Australia and despite the changes we are all making, it doesn’t look like we will be coming out the other side for a while yet.
Read MoreWays to stay sane when working from home
Working from home can be a complete luxury and also a total buzz kill, depending on how you go about it. Unfortunately, in the current time, we are all being encouraged or dictated to work from home for a significant period of time. For some people, this conjures ideas of “staying home” all day and working in your PJ’s with Netflix on in the background. For others, it conjures ideas of complete and utter social isolation and uncomfortableness. Both can be true, but what you do really need to focus on is how to best stay sane when working from home.
Read MoreWE’VE GOT OUR PRIORITIES IN THE WRONG ORDER.
The end of the year is a time rife with clashing commitments. Kids school plays, conflicting Christmas parties, deadlines that all fall on the same date and simply cannot be met in the time allocated. It’s tough and rough and we are all burnt out and absolutely READY for a break – but the year just keeps on coming. Working parents have it particularly tough as they try to balance their own needs and the needs of their tiny humans together. As a business that works mostly with small businesses, we see a lot of these conflicts up close and personal, when working parents have to make tough decisions and tough calls about what time they can dedicate to their life and their partner and their kids, and what time has to go to the business. And sometimes those decisions aren’t nice and aren’t the best thing for anyone involved, but they’re still the call that needs to be made.
Read MoreNO LIKES, NO WORRIES – why we need to move away from vanity metrics in social media
Over the past few months in Australia we have had a huge change in the way that social media operates, particularly for brands and influencers. The removing of likes by both Instagram and now Facebook has caused outrage in some corners of the social media world and rejoicing in others. The question now is what this means for business, and I am the first person to say who the heck cares if they’ve hidden the likes – that’s not the point. Outrageous, I know.
Read MoreDIVERSIFICATION IN SMALL BUSINESS
It can be challenging being a small business owner. Sometimes you feel like an expert in one really niche area of the world, and wonder how the hell the person who needs your services will ever find you. Or else, you feel like a jack of all trades but a master of none – and it tends to swing from one extreme to the other.
Read MoreMORE THAN THE BASICS FOR YOUR BRAND GUIDELINES
For one reason or another, there has been plenty of talk online lately about brand guidelines – what you should include, why they’re important and what they offer your business. I’m not going to rehash that here, it doesn’t add any value to a conversation that is already happening. What I have observed though is the tendancy for brand guidelines to be a beautiful document that sits in a drawer and doesn’t get applied to all parts of your business, the way it should be. And that’s something worth tackling.
Read MoreTHE WORK YOU WANT TO DO
Each of us in small business came into what we are doing with a Vision or a skill or maybe even a dream. It could have manifested itself as a product or a service, a doodad or widget or even just selling the idea – but there was obviously a time where we were doing it all. The making, the thinking, the website, the writing, the selling, the chasing and – if you were lucky – the invoicing.
Read MoreLet’s talk about digital communication and sales.
As part of an ongoing conversation into how we should all be using social media in 2019 is the conversation about sales. Social media managers are increasingly being asked about the dollar value amount they bring into a business, what’s their ROI. And we have no issues about being asked about our ROI – what we do want to look at is what we mean when we talk about the “return”.
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