Should business owners be on social media?
The short answer is yes.
Do business owners need to be on social media? No.
There are also a few other questions related to this:
Do you need to have a working knowledge of pop culture to be effective at marketing?
This is the question that I’ve been mulling over for a bit. The cultural competence part came in when I read a piece about therapists and building up a cultural competence of those who are “extremely online.” In marketing, it doesn’t seem like we call it cultural competence. Instead, we create buyer personas and market research. We do focus groups and ask if someone’s interested in such and such product, dutifully noting down their demographics.
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An argument could be made that because of the existence of Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google merchants, etc., there’s no longer a need for a standalone company website. It’s just another thing to take care of in a very long list of things. Plus, if you’re new to navigating the backend of a website, it can be very daunting to take on.
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It’s been three years since I wrote about influencer tips so I thought it’d be a nice revisit on the basics. I’ve seen quite a few social media posts now where either the influencers or brands or both weren’t disclosing their relationships.
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DM like it’s going to be public because it basically is.
If there is any tl;dr to this, it is that DMs between a brand and person are never private and should never be written as if they were.
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If you’re thinking of outsourcing your photography work, this piece is for you. I’ve written about why I don’t think freelance marketplaces are great for creatives but I haven’t focused specifically on photography yet. I’m writing this with a dual perspective: as someone who advises on marketing and as a photographer.
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Today, we’re going to focus on COVID & your communication (or lack thereof) of it.
In the pandemic’s first few weeks, the news arrived loose and fast, often changing several times within a 24-hour span. It was difficult to keep track of as a business and I’m sure many things fell to the side. Depending on where you are, coffee businesses may be open with precautionary to extreme measures. I wrote about mental health and reopening back in June. Some of these tips still apply today.
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There’s a weird partnership between perfectionism and marketing. You spend too much time thinking about how a campaign can go poorly and you miss an opportunity. But if you don’t think about enough, you might end up trending on Twitter in a bad way. How do you craft a plan that feels good but also stops you from becoming a nitpicking monster?
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“Read the room” is a common phrase when talking about analyzing an audience while you’re the speaker. In case you’re unfamiliar with the phrase, you take into account nonverbal and verbal cues from the people you’re around and adjust your words accordingly. A good example of this would be that if you’re at a posh dinner party, avoiding sharing intimate details about your life (unless, of course, that’s the topic- and that’s where you’d “read the room” to adjust your words).
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While this article is geared towards SCA Expo attendees, you can certainly extrapolate the content to apply for any conference your company attends. Whether you are attending as an individual professional, a coffee company, sponsor, or exhibitor, the basic marketing tenets are the same. And planning is your friend.
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I'm a San Francisco-based writer & photographer. On the side, I munch on donuts & hang out with my dog Zoey.
You can reach me here or on Bluesky.
Life goal:
eat / drink coffee / write / travel
>>>> all in one.
about
Jenn is a San Francisco-based writer & photographer. On the side, she munches on fun flavored chips & hangs out with her dog Zoey. You can reach her via the contact page or on social media @thejennchen.
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