Host: Okechukwu Matthew (Team Leader and Founder of Elabsafrica Digital Agency)
Mentor: Theodora Isola
As an IT consultant, I have worked with quite a number of small businesses, majorly helping them leverage the most suitable technology that is right for their business. I also work as a business applications lead with my team, to ensure that enterprise applications currently used in an organisation are working effectively and very functional. I also work with a lot of young women to help them create a roadmap that best suits their Tech career needs.
Tech tools for small businesses: We will be using a storytelling pattern for today’s class. Let’s take for example, Mr. Ali is a mechanic who feels he can do more, so he decides to leverage technology for his business for more visibility. We will mostly focus on reaching people online in his local community. This is because he wants to get his business to where he can be reached and also reach more people.
The first step to starting up will be coming online and there are several social network platforms you can use, examples of these online tools can be Facebook page, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn etc.
In starting an online business, the first thing you would want to do is to create a business account on any of the social network platforms you decide to use and set it up: setup by; creating a business email for all your social networks, write a short description about what you do, etc
Next on the list is to create a simple graphic representation of your business using Canva (is a design application used for creating simple and beautiful web and social media designs) in a way that best suits your business. To access Canva, you will have to create an account using your business email.
Next you will start creating content. You can get content by researching using google search, follow up on what’s happening in your industry and create catchy contents around it. Then post: contents, photos, videos etc of your business, with a brief description to explain what you do.
Also, you will need to Create your objectives for being online. For example, what drives my objectives for coming online is: I want to teach, inspire and support, meaning I try to create contents around these three objectives. Also my target is to be able to reach out to my audience again and again, by so doing I will be building my own audience. This can be done by using any of these two platforms : facebook group or creating a resource to help me catch up with my audience and this actually takes us to E-mail marketing.
Email marketing setup: Some email marketing platform such as mailchimp allows you to have an account for free with over 2000 subscriber, then you can create a form for people to sign up, you can also create a lead magnet (you can create it using canva) an example of a lead magnet can be; a checklist, ebook, workbook. Next is to set it up on google drive: upload and generate a link that you can share and add on your email setup once they drop their names and email in the form so they can download your freebies, this will give you access to share any other resource you have. This way you can build your list and trust with your audience.
How do you take payment online: create a paystake link: it allows a payment integration when you decide to have a website or you can create a paystack account and create a payment page to generate a payment link for people to pay with. Also you might want to generate an invoice when you receive payment you can use Waveapp. Waveapp allows you to create invoices for free
For more visibility you need to create new contents daily. For your contents to be easily accessible and visible to your audience and also to save time, you can have your own website or blog. Your website should have a little bit of your information on different pages so you can always share the link for them to check it out.
All these social networks allow you to use them for free at a particular limit or time. Meaning, you are limited to only what they are willing to give for free, so whenever you want more you would have to pay for it. For example: Facebook page allows you to invite only people you already know, that is, to reach a wider range you would have to pay for facebook ads to reach a wider range of people, this applies to Instagram also.
For Google you will also have to do some google ads to be able to get more likes and visibility.
QUESTION
For someone who does not know what social media is all about: you can either employ the service of someone who already knows how this works or you can also spend the time to do it yourself.
Remote starts here, is a guide/blueprint that you can follow step by step in order to start up your tech career or set up your brand.
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