Create the New School: Live. Learn. Create.

Live. Learn. Create.

That’s the concept behind Create the New School.  Create was founded with the goal to provide exceptional education opportunities for creatives.  With a focus on photography, design, fine arts and music, Create exists to provide unparalleled resources and education opportunities in a workshop format.  Workshops are available for beginner creatives or creatives who are looking to develop their new or existing business.

Create will be offering workshops in the areas of business, photography (theory & editing), printing and music and will be hosting them in a variety of local venues around Edmonton.

Lucky for us, the ladies behind Create came to us and asked us to teach the curriculum for their social media marketing classes and of course, we were more than excited to do so!  AND the amazing Erin Walker, of Erin Walker Photography, who is the talent behind the design and photography for Hello Media Co. (and many of our our amazing clients!) will be teaching some of the photography workshops (and an awesome photography for bloggers course!) for Create!

If you would like to explore the classes that Create will be offering for their fall schedule, check them out!

Ask the People!

“Finding” content is rarely a simple task for companies.  Although each and every business owner has tons things they want to say about their business and different ways they wish to promote it, finding the words to pull it through is often challenging and very honestly, sometimes what we, as business owners, want to say isn’t necessarily what our audience wants to hear.

I learnt long ago that if we don’t ask, we won’t receive and this is why I believe crowdsourcing to be one of the most effective ways to learn what your clients want to hear from you on your social media channels.  Of course there are tools that we can use to help us understand what kind of content really gets our audience interested, but one of the most effective ways to find out what your audience wants from you is to ask them.  This doesn’t only relate to your social media content but to your business as a whole.  If you are a retailer trying to figure out what type of water bottle to bring into your store, allow your customers to vote on the bottle they love best!  Simple yet effective.

Imagine how effective your social media content strategy would be if you could pulled out all the stops by using tools AND people! *gasp*

If you are interested in learning about some social media management tools to help make your social media content strategy that much more effective, click here to join us at our next social media workshop!

Planning Your Social Media Content

So, here’s the scoop.  If you’ve been managing a Facebook Page, a Twitter account, or maybe a Pinterest Board, chances are that you’ve sat in front of your computer screen at one point or another thinking, “I don’t know what heck to say next.”  Quite frankly, when I talk to clients about the challenges that they face with their social media initiatives, this is the number “challenge” that I hear.  So… let’s talk about this!

Determining your social media content may not always be easy, but there are some things that we can do to help simplify the process.  The number one tip that I can give you is to take the time at the beginning of the week to plan out your social media content for the upcoming week.  This doesn’t mean go through and schedule absolutely everything, it just means create a plan!  Think about all of the things that are going on in your business’ world.  Now I know this sounds kind of funny by itself but try it.  Right now!  Take two minutes to think about what is going on in your business this week.  Maybe you have a meeting with a buyer.  Maybe you’re taking your staff out for supper for all their hard work.  Maybe your new billboards are going up around town.  Think about all those things and THEN think about how those are relevant to your audience.  Some of those items may be important to them while some of them may not be.

Once you’ve determined those key “events” going on in your business, you’ll be able to plan out your social media for the week accordingly.  Think about the individuals goals and audiences of each of your social media platforms and go from there.  Although it will take some time at the beginning of the week, you’ll spend far less time in front of a blinking cursor wondering, “what the heck should I say!”

On May 2nd, we’ll be hosting the 2nd social media workshop of our 3-part mini-series with WECAN.  This workshop will focus on helping you go through the process of planning out your social media content for the next month!  If you want to join us at next social media workshop, click the link to save your seat!

Choosing Social Media Platforms for Your Business

If there is anything that I can ever promise you it’s that social media is here to stay.  It isn’t a fad.  It isn’t a faze.  It isn’t “only a matter of time before we find something new”.  It’s here and it isn’t going anywhere.  So, let’s embrace it and figure out how we can use this new-ish way of communicating to reach out to our target audience!

Whenever I talk to clients about where they should start with their social media journey, the first thing we do is figure out a.) their social media goals and b.) determine their target audience.  Without knowing either of those, it is nearly impossible to implement the next stage of the process which is determining which social media platforms they are going to use to help them achieve those goals and reach their desired audience.

One of the most important things to remember when choosing social media platforms for your business is that the “answer” for one company may not necessarily be the answer for your company.  It is very important to understand the key differences between each social media platform and how (or if)  your audience is using each of those platforms.  For example: if you are selling skateboards and your target market is 15 year old males, Pinterest probably isn’t your best bet.

If you’ve been sitting there and asking yourself, “where the heck to I start with all of this,” on April 18th, we’ll be hosting the 1st social media workshop of a 3-part mini-series that speaks exactly to this question.  We’ll walk you through some key steps to setting those important social media goals, to understanding your target market, and choosing the platforms that will help you achieve success in your company.