December | 2014 | Teik Oh

5 Key Social Media Policies

Dec 19 2014

Social media is now huge part of everyday life. Social media can be used as a positive tool in the branding of your organisation or it could become the bane of your organisation’s credibility. It’s not only a Facebook page to share food photos with old school friends and post emoticons.

Even though they may have a social media advertising strategy, some organisations ban it internally, not allowing staff to access social media during work hours, even to the extent of blocking it on the organisation’s IT systems. Why not embrace it, show your staff trust and give them responsibility to use social media responsibly?

Why not create and use a corporate social media policy? What should this policy include to ensure that people are using social media responsibly? Here are the 5 key items to include.
Read More

Comment 13

Are high-end businesses any different from budget-goods businesses?

Dec 18 2014

A friend of mine is an artist. She and her husband, another artist, operate a gallery where they sell their paintings and run art classes.

She asked me recently if I could help them look at new ways of doing things as finding new business was as hard as ever.

I don’t know much about how good quality art galleries work, except that artists value their work because of the effort and the pain of creativity put into their creations. An artist does not paint a painting in one or two weeks. Ask any artist and they will say that each painting took a lifetime, because it was a lifetime of experience and emotion that went into each painting.

So that means they sell high-end value goods.

However I do know that selling high-end works of art is nevertheless a retail business, and retail is hurting at the moment, whether it is a high-end store or the local $2 budget store. People are more careful with their money, they look for bargains, they haggle, and if they can, they buy online. At the same time, costs are rising – from shop rents to wages for staff, and, as the cost of the shopping basket rises, the owner has to make more profit to afford their own shopping basket.
Read More

Comment 13

Work out your divorce before you get married!

Dec 17 2014

As a business advisor, I have advised my fair share of start up businesses where the owners have been friends or colleagues starting as co-owners. I have also sat through many a business dispute between these people who started off as friends, colleagues, and co-owners!

You will be well familiar with the much touted statistics of the large proportion of start up businesses that fail. Yet even businesses that succeed may eventually (and more often than you think) have a falling out between co-owners.

It is predictable that when you are at the beginning of an exciting idea you think it will last forever. Yet, it is also predictable that circumstances will change and the business is unlikely to stay the same. The business may ebb and flow and different people may have different risk tolerances for that ebb and flow. Opportunities may arise and different people may view those opportunities very differently depending on their own priorities.

If nothing else, relationships change with time, emotions change with time, energy levels change with time. Profits and growing wealth (or the opposite!) raise questions never asked at the start of the relationship.

So, when asked what is the single most important structural thing to consider when two or more people start a business together, I don’t say type of entity or share values, I say “write up your divorce papers before you get married!”
Read More

Comment 13

Managing People? Learn about 3 skills

Dec 15 2014

Yes, we have read about “Leadership” and how that is different from “Management”. Yes, we are well aware that moving a large group of people towards common goals require vision and the ability to translate that vision to the employees. Yes, we are clear about how productive a vibrant and self-motivated workforce can be.

But wait, what if we are talking about managing rather than leading (some of us remain “managers” of people after all). What if we are talking about managing the work of individuals? After all you can’t “lead” 50 individuals individually.

What do you have to do?

Comment 13

Do you have the skills to be a Board Director?

Dec 03 2014

Having spent a lifetime advising Boards of small and larger enterprises, I now spend a considerable amount of my time sitting in Board myself as a Non-Executive Director. It is interesting to me when I look over the meeting tables at my fellow Directors and see what they bring to that table.

I believe many Non-Executive Directors bring technical skills to the Board, and others bring their management experience having run their own businesses. This is all well and good, but I believe that being a Non-Executive Director, you need to bring a different set of more helicopter-level skill-sets. Funnily enough, I believe these skills are very similar, if not the same as those of a good leader in a business, or those necessary to run your own good small business, even though the extent of the practice of those skills is different.

Here is what I think you need to do if you become a Non-Executive Director.
Read More

Comment 13

Increase your sales through a highly focused marketing plan!

SMART Marketing: In this book, the owners of a small business are led through the SMART Marketing 7 Step Process to produce a marketing plan targeted at their most desirable customers. Any business can use these principles and in 4 to 6 weeks implement a plan to get them through the door! Find out how...

The SMART Marketing Workbook: Companion to “SMART Marketing”, this workbook sets out the SMART Marketing process in 7 workshops for you and your staff to complete questionnaires and templates that at the end, form the marketing plan you need to sell your REAL product to your REAL customer! View now...

Archive - December 2014

Get FREE weekly ideas to grow your business

5 Key Social Media Policies

Are high-end businesses any different from budget-goods businesses?

Work out your divorce before you get married!

Managing People? Learn about 3 skills

Do you have the skills to be a Board Director?