This Sunday at 7.30pm I’ll be going LIVE in the Business Women Torbay group!
As you may have seen from my various social media posts and blogs, I’m really passionate about helping small businesses, particularly through this pandemic, as it’s hitting small independents hard.
I recently ran a competition for some affected businesses to win one of 3 Photoshoots. The whole idea stemmed from Halloween, and thinking about how this would have all affected my previous business (you can read the blog about this here, but please remember, the competition is now closed)
Then we hit another Lockdown, which was announced the weekend I was announcing my competition. It became even more poignant. I’d love to have given free Photoshoots to everyone who told me about how their business has been hurt by Covid19, but I’m a business too, and I couldn’t afford to. I lost every single one of my bookings for November. And as someone newly self employed (I only returned to work in the summer when my baby hit 9 months old), there’s no government financial support for me. No shoots in Lockdown means no income.
So what else can I do to help?
Well, before going self employed I spent many years working in marketing. I worked for marketing agencies and within Businesses. I worked with big brands like Coca Cola, Betfair, The Open University, Orange (as it was back then, before it become EE), Vodafone, Playboy plus lots of others. Then I ran my own successful retail business in Bristol for a few years before we started having babies and moved home to Devon. (If you want to read more about my background, it’s all on my LinkedIn profile)
I’ve learnt a lot about it over the years. I know what we all need to do to get ourselves found online. I don’t always do it myself, I struggle with time hugely as I can only work during naptimes, at night when the kids are asleep or when I get a sitter for actual shoots. So I’ll confess, I’m not setting the best example right now. But I know o can share that knowledge and help some local businesses.
When I’ve been chatting to several clients and potential clients over the last few months about their photography needs, I found it amazing how few knew some of the basics. I totally take for granted what I know, because I know it and it’s part of my everyday life, and I forget that lots of others don’t know this stuff. And need to know it. And I can actually help with that.
Back in February before this crazy shit kicked off, I went to a Seminar for learning about social media marketing at the Imperial Hotel in Torquay. I didn’t need to... to ge honest I saw an ad, it reminded me of my old life (pre kids), I was feeling overwhelmed with motherhood and how my life had changed and I wanted a break from the 2.5 month old baby and the 3 year old. it Was bloody lovely, but nothing was new really. I did, however, find it amazing how many people there with businesses knew nothing about it all.
Anyway, when I was promoting my competition in the Business Women Torbay Facebook Group, I touched on the idea of doing something like this, and was asked by the Admin if I could do it for the group, and now here we are.
So what will it be about?
There‘s a post in the group about it, asking for anyone who’s interested to comment with any requests they’d like me to cover. So if there is anything in particular you’d like help with, make sure you let me know ASAP so I can plan it in!
(link to the post here, but you’ll need to be a member).
I’m only planning on doing 30-45 mins, and that’s not nearly enough time to cover everything, but it’ll be more like lots of tips to help small businesses with not much digital marketing knowledge and experience. It’ll give you some actionable advice you can take away, work on in lockdown and hopefully get a bit more visible to your target audience.
I’m planning to cover a bit about
your target audience
websites (how important, setting one up, getting it seen)
Social media marketing
then finishing up with a few marketing ideas and tips to get started on
This may be adapted depending on the requests I get. But it is happening tomorrow so if you have anything in particular you want to hear about, tell me ASAP.
And please do comment on the post and let me know if you’re coming along! I‘ll be having a quick nosey at some of the businesses attending beforehand so I can try and include relevant examples as I’m talking.
To save you scrolling back up (if you’ve read this far!) to any of the links I added above, they’re all repeated below.
Hope to see you in the Live session tomorrow!
Fran x
Not a Torbay Woman in Business but still interested in joining? Let me know and if enough people are, I’ll do a replay elsewhere.
Business Women Torbay Facebook Group
My LinkedIn Profile (feel free to add me on there!)
Competition Blog Post (please note, the competition is now closed)