by Karen Petrauskas | Mar 16, 2018
We all have our own approach in how we view or look at leadership and what makes a leader. It can depend on your environment, the type of industry you are in or even your own personal life. But what makes a great leader is the attitude to see results and lead by example as well as getting the job done.
“As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.” – Bill Gates
So what makes a great leader?
We must believe in what we are doing and have faith that are able to achieve it. This does not necessarily mean that you’re going to do all the work, but you learn to delegate or lead by example in order for a task to be complete.
A leader is used to make hard choices and to take the initiative to say yes, or no, to a problem or solution. It’s very easy to get swept along with the tide in busy business environments or to get into a routine that doesn’t allow for improvement. However leadership really is a mindset that is in action. A leader doesn’t need a title, they believe in what they are doing and they act on that, taking initiative to see something through to completion. The title is not given, it’s earned.
“The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers.” – Peter Drucker
If you want to make the move from managing to leading, from being a professional to being an inspirer, from being one of the team to being a leader of the team, you need to know the ABC of Superlative Leadership.
Take a read of the Leadership ABC’s:
Let’s take a look at these in more details:
A is for Appreciative Cultures, the end result of a leader’s work, when the culture he or she fosters becomes an appreciative value of the company.
B is for rock-solid Belief that your team can move mountains.
C is for Culture, which is the way people behave when you’re not looking.
D is for the Drive for Power that makes you want to lead.
E is for Encouragement, like sun after the rain.
F is for Fun, an indication that the right work is happening.
G is for Growing your people and believing that they can achieve their goals. Putting them first.
H is for Helicopter vision, because you need to see in three time zones: the near, the middle and the far.
I is for leader Identity, the ability to be comfortable in your own shoes.
J is for Joy because leaders rejoice in their own blessings as well as the successes of their team.
K is for Knowing your people, not just by name and number, but by strength and weakness, character and spirit, skills and potential, what makes them sigh and what makes them soar.
L is for Learning, because learning is change and learning is growth.
M is for Mission which leaders live as well as dream and portray.
N is for the Nobel complex, the belief that everything your people do is worthy of a Nobel prize.
O is for Opportunity. Take hold of everything you can in order to see results.
P is for Plain-talking because leaders need to be understood.
Q is for Questions, such as “What do you need me to do?” and “How can I help you work better?” and “What should I be doing?”
R is for Respect, the touchstone of every relationship a leader has.
S is for Symbols, the language of leadership.
T is for the Traits of courage and determination, patience and perseverance.
U is for Unleashing what’s there, allowing team members to express themselves and explore new ideas.
V is for Values, the guiding principles of the team, or “the Walkmans of the mind”.
W is for the Way, the Chinese “tao”, the route that leaders take and others follow.
X is for Xtraordinary because leaders get ordinary people to do extraordinary things.
Y is for Yes, because there is always a plus to be found even in the worst situation and the toughest setback.
Z is for Zero tolerance of failure, sub-performance and giving up.
Learn these simple principles and there are no limits to where you can lead your team.
Can you add to these points? Do you have your own A,B,C of leadership that you apply to your way of working? Please comment below and share.
by Karen Petrauskas | Feb 2, 2018
In today’s society it is a must for any brand to be using social media to grow their business. With literally billions of people worldwide that currently have an active social media account, it is a means of marketing that cannot be missed if you’re looking to truly expand your business and add value where it counts.
Harnessing the power of social media is a necessity to see business growth, if you’re not currently using social media for your business, you can be assured that your competitors are and you will miss out on many opportunities to reach your customers.
There is no end to the opportunities that are available to you as a business owner when it comes to social media and managing it properly with marketing campaigns. If you are not yet in a place where your business is using social media, it’s time to start working on your first campaign and embracing the online marketing world.
You may have a fantastic product or offer excellent services – but how are you reaching new clients to be able to increase your sales? Social media is an extension of word of mouth advertising and an avenue that is essential to any business and marketing plan.
So how can you be consistent and get the best out of your social media marketing?
Discover your best networks
There are many channels for social media available, but we believe that to market your business well, you need to focus on the channels that best fit your customer. Spreading yourself thin and trying to post and keep up to date with every platform going will not only be bad for your health (time and pressure wise), it could reflect badly on your business and professionalism may slip.
Take time to research the different social media networks and see where your ideal audience is present the most. Follow conversations and trends that relate to your industry and then where you find the majority of your audience, that’s where you need to be! From there you can put real focus in directly targeting the people you want to reach and provide value to them in their comfort zones.
Create mind blowing and creative content
We all know that social media can be pool of never ending posts and images, and many of these will pass people by without thought. Therefore, you need to create content that is eye catching and meaningful, showing your audience that you care and are passionate about your values. What do you want to showcase? What does your business believe in? Use the answers to these questions to create posts that people will aspire to and will want to engage with.
It’s fine to share other people’s posts and to get on board with other causes but remember that you too have something to offer that is of value and worth sharing. Always have in mind that with every post that you create – it needs to add value to someone, somewhere. You are trying to reach a potential customer in a busy chaotic world, so speak loudly and with authority and be seen and heard above the rest.
Just remember that there is no such thing as social media marketing without content!
Be consistent
We have seen it so often that people start a business social media account, keep it going for a few weeks with some great content, but then everything stops. A few months later there may be a few more sporadic posts, and then it stops again.
When it comes to social media, you need to be consistent. Yes it can be time consuming and yes it does take effort to manage effectively – but when performed correctly, it will have massive benefits to your business. If you’re struggling for time to manage social media, consider hiring a social media manager to lighten the load. The cost of hiring a social media manager will be balanced out and then cancelled out by the brand awareness and business growth that you will see going forward.
Plan and schedule and create a marketing plan that reflects your business. Post regularly to your networks and be interactive with your audience. This is a great way to provide an outstanding customer service experience that may at times be lost when a business is not consistent on social media.
Engage with your audience
Social media is all about engagement. It’s about understanding what you clients are looking for and giving them solutions. Social media is not a place to sit back and watch the world go by! People want to know that there is a human behind the business and by engaging and interacting with individuals and providing a great user experience, people are more likely to buy from you or to recommend your services. Networking and building relationships builds trust and loyalty. Understanding your audience will enable to you reach them and to target their specific needs. That’s when they will see your value and know that you really do want to help them.
Just like any part of a business, marketing is an important aspect and for it be effective, it needs to be done correctly. Online marketing is often over looked or pushed to the back burner but if you consider what power social media has to drive your business forward and to increase your bottom line, there is absolutely no reason why any business should not be using it!
If you’d like assistance in getting started or putting together a marketing strategy that fits your business model, get in touch, we’d love to chat with you.
by Karen Petrauskas | Dec 29, 2017
Can you imagine life now without social media? For a trend that people thought would likely never take off or at least stick for only a short while… businesses and organisations have marvelled in its influence and have grown further than they ever thought possible by utilising the power of social media.
People spend so much time on their mobile devices now, whether that be a smart phone, tablet, iPad or laptop – digital marketing is here to stay and to stay on top of the marketing game, social media must be incorporated within a marketing strategy for a business to succeed.
So as we approach the end of the year and look forward to 2018, what should we look out for within online marketing to achieve success?
Video marketing
Video marketing is expanding rapidly and so many people are jumping on board with this trend that it is definitely something not to be missed.
With Facebook Live, Instagram Stories and Snapchat – to name the most popular – incorporate these into your marketing plans and you will see an noticeable increase in your social media engagement. People love watching live video. In fact, 80% of users said they’d rather watch a live video than read a blog post – and according to Facebook, a live video will get 3x more views.
Why live video?
- Can show behind the scenes footage
- Can introduce team members
- Promotion of events
- Portrays a real-life brand
Everyone loves to know the truth behind what they are buying into, and using video in your marketing will provide trust and uniqueness as well as a better customer experience.
Content Marketing
With so much competition and everything being so widely available via digital channels, it is more important than ever to be authentic and original. Content marketing is vital to build brand awareness and demonstrate industry knowledge.
Customers would much rather read about an organisation and learn about them from an article, than be confronted with an advert. Adverts have their place, of course, but content marketing is in a league of it’s own.
Content marketing can be shown in different forms; blog posts, articles, videos and infographics but all contain meaningful information that increases awareness of a brand or product.
Anyone that runs a business will also know that content marketing can become time consuming which is why it often gets left behind but don’t stress – a Virtual Assistant can provide a great service to write content for your business so you don’t need to let this part of your marketing plan fall down.
Marketing Strategies
Planning your marketing is just as important as implementing your marketing. It can be easy to jump on every trend and social media platform that you come across, but it is essential to evaluate and work out what is best for your business to provide the best success rates.
Writing a marketing strategy will all enable you to look at your brand competition, see what you already have in place and what works / and doesn’t work which then leads to creating a plan to implement and move your business forward – being focused on your business goals and objectives. If this is something that you’re not sure on, look to a professional marketing agency that can provide this service for you (KJP Creative can help!). If you are serious about growing your business, the initial cost of having a strategy created for you will easily be recouped in the results of successful marketing.
Images
Just like live video, imagery is extremely effective in your online marketing. People love to see images which is why networks like Instagram and Pinterest are a huge success. Images allow a brand to be creative and show uniqueness. Images can be portrayed in many ways to show different aspects of a business and can also be accompanied be other mediums to tell stories and create brand awareness.
And you don’t have to be a graphic designer to produce great images. Using free graphic platforms like Canva, you can produce industry standard creatives.
There are many trends that will be become essential in online marketing success in 2018 but above all else, customer experience is the most important thing to remember in order to satisfy the customer as well as the growing competition.
Ensuring that your customers have a great experience from start to finish will be the ingredient that keeps a client coming back for more. Being involved and interested in what a customer is looking for and how their journey progresses throughout their time with you is important in business growth and product development.
Make the most of your digital marketing throughout 2018 and look to implement strategies that best fit your business objectives.
If you’d like help in moving forward with your online marketing, get in touch, we’d love to help!
by Karen Petrauskas | Dec 12, 2017
Everyone is trying to get a piece of the action and when it comes to social media marketing, you need to get yourself heard.
For us here at KJP Creative, we believe that one way to ensure that will happen is to hire someone that knows the industry and can get your business where it should be – but – if you’ve not got the budget or would rather have a go yourself, here’s a few tips to help boost your social media performance.
Firstly, social media is all about building relationships and creating engagement. Creating engagement means that people are interested in your services and product and they have started their customer experience with your brand. Maintaining that trust and building up to be somewhere that a customer actually wants to buy from is your goal whilst being a place of information and advice for that customer also.
Most people will research a product or service prior to buying, therefore, it is vital that you provide an excellent customer experience right from the beginning to enable that customer to come back for more.
Provide value
Always focus on providing value. If someone is doing their research properly, anyone will see through a business that doesn’t really know what they are talking about. A few good quotes here and there may seem pleasant but is there really knowledge and understanding of what the customer really wants beneath it all?
Ensure that your social streams are backed with plenty of industry related content and posts that you personally relate to as well. People don’t want to be inundated with irrelevant news – they will follow and engage with you if you provide value for what they need.
Using a content curation programme can make life easier when you’re searching for content. A person can spend hours (we’ve all been there and done that!) looking for posts that relate to your industry. Using a content curation feed will make finding relevant articles so much easier and will be much more time efficient.
Here’s a few for you to take a look at to get started:
Create a posting strategy
It’s all well and good posting every now and again when you’ve got time to sit down and find content but how much more effective would your social media platforms be if they were planned out and there was content being added daily? More people would see your presence, you’ll have more of an impact and you’re more likely to be seen by a wider audience which in turn will mean that your engagement will increase. The more you post, the more likely you’re going to get in front of your ideal clients.
Think about the type of content you want to use. Think about the different sources you might have and work out a strategy that can incorporate these. For example, if you have your own blog feed, schedule one of these posts once a day. If you want to use quotes, add one quote a day to the mix. The using your curated content, add one post a day… or however often you think appropriate to post, schedule content to these timeframes.
Work out what times of day are best for your ideal audience. Are they are work during the day, perhaps an evening might be better? Are you aiming at businesses – then first thing in the morning might be better? Test different times of day to find which times are good to gain the most engagement.
Use a social media management programme
You’ve now got your content organised and you know where you are pulling your content from, so now is the time to find a social media management programme that will allow you to schedule these posts in advance. No one has time to jump on to their social media platforms 5 times a day to post!
Again, this will make your life so much easier and will allow you to rest assured that your content is being shared on your social media channels and you can get on with other parts of your business.
Here are a few social media management platforms that we can recommend:
Make Your Content Visual
Visuals gain more engagement over text posts (that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use text). But looking through a social media feed and seeing visuals will strike more appealing for the majority of your audience. Therefore, you need to get creative!
There are 3 main types of visuals:
Using any three of these will boost your social media performance and will encourage people to share and engage with your content.
If you’ve got products to show, use an image rather than just talking about it. If you’re promoting an event, create a image to advertise the event. Even if you want to share a quote – add it to a nice background and make it look attractive. More people will share your content if it looks good enough to share!
Creating images are one thing and you may be thinking that videos are too tricky for you to tackle. They don’t have to be. Why not try a live Facebook video introducing your staff or showing off your products? Or perhaps you’ve got story to tell, add a quick snippet to your Instagram feed. People love to watch videos – you’ll be surprised at the engagement they have when you put them in your social media feeds.
And GIFs? This may be something that you haven’t even touched upon yet. Don’t be scared of them, they are extremely popular at the moment and are overtaking static images. GIFs can be created in a number of ways but first off if you’re not that tech savvy, you can head over to somewhere like Gify.com and get started there. If you have a number of static images, you can make them into a rotating slideshow. If you’ve got some drawings you’ve put together, you can make them move! If you’ve got a video that you’ve made but only want to show a few seconds of it, you can upload it and snip it down. They are very simple to create and will be very effective in your marketing. If you’re not comfortable in creating your own GIF, then there are an array of ones to choose from depending on what subject you are looking for.
If you’ve not yet tried them – have a go!
The above are just a few ways to boost your social media performance but remember that the more you engage with your customers, the more they will engage with you. The more opportunity you give your customers to see and hear your branded voice, the more opportunity you have at reaching them.
Social media is about being ‘social’ so get stuck in and promote your business in the best way you can.
If you’re just starting out in business, or you’re a small business owner with not enough time in the day to do social media effectively, then get in touch. We have standard, affordable packages available to get you started or more bespoke packages if you’re looking for something a little different.
We’d love help so contact us today!
by Karen Petrauskas | Dec 5, 2017
Whether you are a sole trader, freelancer, entrepreneur or small business, branding is the key to building your business and creating an awareness of your product and services. Without branding your business properly, you are limiting your career opportunities and business growth.
Branding is about building a reputation that goes above and beyond, allowing you to market your business as a trustworthy, reputable, growing organisation.
Your brand is your promise to your customers, it stands you apart from your competition and allows to create your own image to show what you have to offer.
Simply ‘existing’ is not going to grow your business, you need to step out of the boat and promote your services – using your brand identity.
Here are a few tips to create your brand identity for you and your business…
Become an expert in your industry
Learn, learn, learn. Be knowledgeable about your industry and be aware of everything that is going on in your niche. This doesn’t have to be hard work; using Google alerts or using a platform like Feedly can keep fresh information coming in daily, giving you resources to be able to stay up to date. Education is key to show people that you mean business and you do know and understand your market.
Start networking – brand awareness
This doesn’t have to be completely online. Remember those business cards you’ve got stuffed away in a drawer? Keep them in your wallet and when you meet someone and get chatting about what you do, you’ll have a business card handy to be able to share your services.
Find a networking group, whether that be a physical group that you attend or an online Facebook group – start to build contacts around you where you can share your knowledge and talk about your business. People can learn from what you have to offer and if your industry knowledge is good – you’ll portray a good business image for those you come in contact with.
Build an online presence
It goes without saying that a modern business needs to be online, everyone who looks for a service or product more than likely will do a Google search for what they are looking for. Therefore, you need to be online.
Social media. Ensure that all your social media accounts show a professional, trustworthy image of your what you and your business are about. You may choose to separate your business and your personal profiles but be sure to keep your personal accounts professional too. If people know and search for your name rather than your business, you need to look like you can offer the service or product that you have promised. Remember that once on the internet, always on the internet! If you are serious about building a business and want to be seen as professional, your personal profiles need to show this image too.
Start blogging
Blogging is a great way to express yourself but it’s also a great way to get your voice heard. Blogging for your business is great for SEO and a way for your brand to seen. Incorporate your blog into your business branding and write as you want your business to be portrayed. Even blogging for personal enjoyment is great, just link back to your company to ensure that it gets seen by the right people.
If you want to blog outside of your business, use LinkedIn to create articles and get exposure to industry linked people. You can mention your business within your article or simply allow people to see your company through your profile. Either way, you are the voice of your business – make it be heard!
Don’t forget that branding is one of the most important aspects to any business, whether that be a big or small business.
On top of all the important points listed above, your brand is recognised by your logo. Your colour scheme, fonts, packaging and promotional material should all be recognised by your logo. Ensure that your business branding is professional and in line with your values and how you want your business to be seen. Then use your branding in everything you do.
People will soon notice you, your business will be recognised and the more you step out and push forward with growing your business, the more powerful your brand will become.
Be true to your branding, be true to what you believe and the rest will follow.
If you’d like advice on branding or would like to look at a strategy for your business, feel free to get in touch!
