By HARRY CLARKE | SPONSORED
HUGELY popular workshops providing small business owners with expert guidance on how to leverage the power of social media will next month return to the Western Downs thanks to Shell QGC’s Business Navigator program and the Western Downs Regional Council.
The free workshops, hosted by renowned marketing, social media and small business coach Tracy Sheen, will be held in Chinchilla and Dalby from March 13 to 16, and are open to small business owners of all levels of social media experience.
The ‘Stepping Up Your Social Media’ sessions with Tracy are back by popular demand.
Tracy, an award winning author who has 30 years of experience as a small business digitisation coach, held workshops throughout the Western Downs last October which were praised universally by those who attended.
CLICK HERE FOR BOOKING INFORMATION
Tracy said the upcoming round of workshops would have an even greater offering of tips and strategies to help business owners and entrepreneurs make the most of a range of social media business tools.
“A lot of what I do is to help up-skill foundational users – people who aren’t really familiar with social media at all,” she said.
“One of the more popular workshops we’ll being doing is about those basics, and then we’ll be doing a bit more of an advanced one which will cover paid advertising, boosting posts and things like that.
“We’re adding a couple of other workshops into the mix as well – one about Canva, which is a design tool for business owners, and the other one will be on social media strategy.”
CLICK HERE FOR BOOKING INFORMATION
“The Strategy workshops are really about building community, how you build a marketing strategy, asking ‘what are you trying to achieve by posting and using social media?’ and ‘what’s the difference between organic and paid social media reach?’ It’s about how to develop a call to action – that type of thing,” Tracy said.
“In the Canva workshop they’ll be creating some tiles to use on social media and in the paid advertising workshop they’ll be learning what’s working right now in terms of boosted versus paid campaigns and what business owners are better off putting their time, energy and money towards.
“Canva has what’s called a ‘Freemium’ model which starts off free and goes into paid versions, depending on how much you want to go down the Canva rabbit hole.
“It allows you to really get a consistency of brand across all of your marketing. They have pre-designed templates for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, for brochures, flyers – you name it. You can just go in and add your own brand, colours, fonts and images, and create that continuity of messaging across your platforms.”
Workshops in CHINCHILLA – RSL
Workshops in DALBY – Bunya Vista
CLICK HERE FOR BOOKING INFORMATION
Tracy Sheen began her career in business technology more than 30 years ago and, as a previous employee of Telstra and Optus and contributor on David Koch’s Building Business program, has been involved in the Australian launch of revolutionary technologies such as SMS text messaging and the iPhone.
As a social media and marketing coach, she’s conducted about 2,000 workshop and webinars around the country and authored The End of Technophobia, which won awards for Australian Business Book of the Year and Best Technology Book in the 2021 Australian Business Book Awards.
She said despite the internet being part of everyday life for more than two decades, most business owners were among the demographic who were not “digital natives” growing up with the internet.
“About 63 percent of ABNs registers are over the age of 45, so we didn’t grow up with tech, tech happened to us,” Tracy said.
“A lot of the business which I work with in regional areas might be involved in agriculture, or an industry where they’ve not felt as thought they’ve needed to tap into social media before now.
“There might have been a lot of word-of-mouth in doing business, and it’s only now that they’re saying ‘hang on a minute – I need to diversify where my clients are coming ‘ or ‘I need to understand where marketing is going’.
“I lot of them might have their own personal Facebook page but they’ve not actually used it in a business sense, so they don’t understand what the difference between a personal page and a business page, what the anatomy of a post looks like. There’s still a lot of people who don’t understand hash tagging or tagging others in posts.
“The Social Media for Beginners workshops are probably still the most popular workshops that I run across the country.”
CLICK HERE FOR BOOKING INFORMATION
Tracy said she was looking forward to returning next month to the Western Downs, were her previous workshops reflected a collaborative and enthusiastic community of local small business owner and entrepreneurs.
“The workshops are very practical. They’ve got to come expecting to work,” she said.
“I’m a big believer that you should imbed learning while you’re there, and there’s no stupid questions.
“We have a lot of fun, it’s very engaging. I like to know exactly who’s in the room and what sort of business they’re in, so that as we progress through the workshop I’m able to give practical examples and really ‘hot seat’ people to really understand what it is that we’re doing and who they’re able to create that content for while they’re there.
“The one thing I loved about the Western Downs was the sense of community. Once we got into the room it was really great to see how everybody was willing to pitch in and help each other.
“Even in some of the workshops where people were starting from a really low base, we had more experienced people getting up to help them out. By the end of some of the sessions we had everyone following each other and starting to mention and tag other businesses on their posts.”
Feedback from guests at Tracy Sheen’s previous round of workshops in the Western Downs:
CLICK HERE FOR BOOKING INFORMATION
Business Navigator Western Downs is supported by Shell’s QGC business and delivered by Toowoomba and Surat Basin Enterprise. The social investment program, supported by Shell’s joint venture partners Tokyo Gas and CNOOC, contributes to a strong and diverse economy within the Western Downs.
The program was developed in consultation with Western Downs business communities, who indicated that a strong, diversified economy was important to them; Business Navigators was designed to support and enable local small business to grow sustainably.
If you operate a Western Downs-based small business and would like some support to grow your business, visit www.navigatorwesterndowns.com.au. For more information on how the Business Navigator program could assist.
