We all know the saying “there just isn’t enough time in a day”, well if you’re an entrepreneur you try to squeeze as much productive time in each and every minute, sometimes you’re successful, other times you’re not.
1 year, 28 days, 5 hours, 37 minutes, and 6 seconds ago I jumped head first into the world of business owner. I had always been an entrepreneur, creating and developing for other people/organizations, but now it was my turn.
I combined my passion for marketing and branding with my love of photography and developed La Capoise Galerie a firm specializing in commercial and corporate imaginary, as well as capturing lifelong family memories.
My days consist of; checking emails, cold calling potential clients, sending proposals, consultations and photo sessions with existing clients, meeting with my team, maintaining partnerships, customer and vendor relations, editing images, and delivery runs. All these I can do without batting an eye. Here comes the IRONY, the most important thing that I have little or no time to do, the one thing that I drill into the minds of each and every client, the thing that I know like the back of my hand, I do not do well enough for my own company and that is (WAIT FOR IT) marketing and branding.
(WARNING: run-on sentence tirade) Can you believe it! I’ve been doing it for years, I live and breathe to create marketing magic for companies, I jot down ads that WOW me, to show clients how and why competitors and comparable size businesses are growing their bottom line and here I sit struggling to plan out how I will make my three month marketing plan come to light while servicing my customers? Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!
Clearly I needed to get a move on with my own campaign, especially the FREE social media scene. But yet I have a Confession, I have not updated my facebook in 3 weeks, my blog in 4 and don’t even ask me the last time I twitted. If I took for granted the saying, “there just isn’t enough time in a day” before, I promise never to do it again. I started feeling guilty, thinking how can I teach my clients to do something, if I wasn’t doing it myself!
Then I met with Edward Boches, Chief Creative Officer and Chief Social Media Officer of Mullen Advertising. He gave me some basic tips to eliminate the entrepreneur guilt, get back on the social media train and strengthen my company brand in no time. Here are some examples; 1. Find inventive ways to create or gather content First, whatever you’re doing, write about it. Report on your progress. Second, come up with a daily question you'd want someone to ask and respond to it in a blog post or video. Third, save time by collecting content from others. Place your product or service, even in beta form, in front of people willing to blog, make videos, and tell stories about it. Aggregate this content to your blog or video channel. Fourth, conduct polls or ask questions about a related topic and turn these results into future posts as well as “news” you can release to both bloggers and press.
2.
Connect your customers and prospects to each other. One of the best things you can do as a young company is to foster word-of-mouth conversations among your earliest customers. Whether you do it on Facebook or on your own site, it's important to invite your customers to talk to each other and share ideas. Allow them to guide one another on how they use your product or service. Not only will you have the opportunity to learn what people like and don't like about your product, you may end up with a bunch of people you can ask to help you.
3.
Make the time, build in the role, or hire the right partner. You can do all this yourself if you have the right time, energy and commitment. If you can’t muster that, give this role to one of your first hires. If you’re less than comfortable identifying that person within your own company, (hint: it’s not an intern or a kid right out of school; Digital Natives may know all the technology, but they often lack the strategic chops and the ability to create truly compelling content) retain the services of a public relations agency with real experience in social influence. Make sure that if you go this route, you ask for case studies as evidence that the PR team assigned to your business actually practices what it preaches.
Ed got me motivated and guilt wasn’t going to slow me down. I took a personal day (yes, entrepreneurs do take days off), headed to my local library and wrote this article/blog/rant/info session/BRANDING message.
Becoming a business owner has become one of the best decisions. The risks are high, the mistakes are many and the rewards continue to flow.
