Tag Archives: business owners

Great Skills to Build as a Business Owner

business owner

business owner

Developing skills is one of the best ways that you can spend your time as a business owner, particularly when those skills are directly linked to your capacity to effectively lead your business toward success.

Fortunately, there are plenty of things that you can and should do to best facilitate your engagement with skill building. So, to help you out a little, this article aims to highlight some of the most important and exciting steps you can take toward building those skills so that you can make the best use of your time.

Identifying New Skills to Learn

If you have decided to start building up a solid skill set as a business owner, then one of the most important things you can do is work to develop a comprehensive list of the best skills to learn to enhance your business.

There are plenty of resources available online from which you can draw to build a list such as this. However, if you are interested in a few of the top picks then here are some interesting options.

  • Outsourcing. When you are running a business, you’re always going to need to work toward finding the ideal balance between cost and effect. That is to say, you are looking for the least expensive way to get the most done, and, on occasion, that can mean simply paying an external service a flat fee to get the job done fast. This is generally most important when the work you need to be done is specialist in nature and won’t be consistently necessary – Outsourced IT Services, for example.
  • Data Interpretation. Alternatively, if you wanted to develop a skill that could help you to get an insight into the mindset of your customer base, then you might want to consider the many uses of data interpretation within a business setting.

Of course, you should not try to master every single one of these skills at once. It would be best to select one or maybe two of these skills to begin developing and focus on getting those right. After all, focus and dedication are some of the most important things that you can have when looking to effectively develop your skill sets.

Enhancing Existing Skills

Speaking of developing skills, you might be more interested in simply enhancing skills that you already have, rather than learning something entirely new. Fortunately, there are plenty of processes through which you can work to improve your existing skills, many of which are easy to implement in your day-to-day and can provide some brilliant results.

Since you will undoubtedly already have a good base knowledge regarding this skill, then you might find it useful to engage with online learning resources that can help you to learn advanced-level information about your skills from seasoned professionals.

What’s more, you would likely benefit from engaging with and acquiring any research regarding the skills you are looking to build. Some of your best options related to this would likely be the books published by professionals to help cover particular topics.

Developing Habits for Skill Development

Finally, something else you’ll want to be doing is developing the processes through which you can learn and enhance these new skills. Habits are a fundamentally important element of skill development and there are plenty of reliably useful habits that you might want to consider, so you can continue to progress.

By taking the time to work these habits into a consistent routine, you can give yourself the best chance of quickly building up the skills you are interested in developing.

5 Facebook Page “Never Do’s” for Business Owners

5-nevers

Since 2010 we have worked with over 85,000 Facebook pages.  We’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly happen to businesses on Facebook, mostly by their own bad decisions, or decisions made out of ignorance.

Today, the vast majority of businesses have a page and it’s not a “Profile” masquerading as a page (that’s a basic 101 mistake) but a true Facebook business page. However, many business owners have not been closely connected to the creation or maintenance of their Facebook page and that’s a big “no-no” which can cause them a lot of unnecessary problems and hassles.

The fact is, business owners need to be aware of the status of their Facebook page just like they need to ensure their website domain name doesn’t expire!  

What could happen you ask?  

What if you lost control and can’t access to post on the Page as the Page?

What if all the “Likes” and community interaction were gone because no one active with the company now has access, therefore requiring you to abandon the Page and the custom URL?

What if you as owner, don’t have control at all over the posts on the page that bears your company name?

You don’t want this to happen! 

Here are 5 “Never Do This!” Items for Business Owners:

1. Never make one individual the sole Page Admin Manager of a company Facebook page.

Maybe the Page was created by an intern, or perhaps by a employee.  If this employee ever leaves your organization, your page is essentially out the door with them. Not good! 

How many Admins are there on your Facebook page?  What roles do they have?  Are you as owner a Manager?

2. Never give an employee access to your personal Facebook profile.

This is like your Passport or Drivers License.  It’s YOURS and FOR YOU.  If you give someone access to your Facebook profile or any online identity that is linked directly to your real-world identity, you’re taking a major risk.  There is NO NEED to give them access to your profile.  Pages can have multiple managers, and they should! We’ll get into the types of managers further on down in this post.

3. Never allow your hired Marketing Agency to create your Facebook Page and not add you as a Manager. 

We’ve seen it  happen too many times.  The business relationships ends and the Page manager access has basically slipped out of the country quietly and there is no forwarding address!  DON’T DO IT!  Yes, you can add the agency but YOU should remain as Manager as well!  I did mention already that you can have more than 1 Page Manager.  I think it’s worth repeating!A

4.  Never, ever, ever create a “dummy” Facebook account and name it “My Company Name”.

Facebook will automatically give that profile the URL “Facebook.com/MyCompanyName” and you will not be able to claim it for your business page URL! Doh!

As well, creating a dummy account is against Facebook terms.  They shut down dummy accounts as they find them!  Yes, they do.  We’ve seen it happen.

5. Don’t create a Business-Only Facebook Page Not Connected to a Profile.

Facebook, for some reason, gives pages the ability, if they want, to create a Page and the only login is the “Business Page” login.  It’s not tied to a profile.  This seems smart to some, but it’s not!

A business-only Page has several limitations including:

  • No Search bar at the top of the Facebook Page. You will not be able to search for and navigate to other Pages when you are logged into this account.
  • No way to like other Pages as your Page. If you have a business-only account, you can’t like another Page to show your support for that Page or connect with that Page.
  • No Page Home Feed. Since you can’t like other Pages as your Page, you won’t get updates as your Page through your own Page’s News Feed.
  • You may have to provide a separate cell phone number to verify this account. This feature is different and not consistent, but many people who have created a Page this way report that they need a separate cell number that is different from their personal profile account to verify this business-only Page. Not everyone has two different cell numbers.
  • Most importantly, you can’t add Apps!  Facebook’s API for things like TabSite Apps are tied to personal profile users.  Business-Only Pages cannot add all the versatile app features that providers like us offer to Pages!

Read more about the limits of Business Pages and the differences between profiles and business pages in this Social Media Examiner post by Andrea Vahl.

So what should Business owners DO?  

Share this Infographic, then scroll down past it for more info!

5-nevers-tabsite-infographic

1. Always have yourself as the top level Manager of the Page.  Be careful who else you add at this level. Ideally you should have 2-3 people you trust wholeheartedly at this level, regardless if they actually post on the page or not.

2. Set Page Access Roles Carefully. Most of time other employees and service providers DO NOT need to be top-level managers.  They can be Content Creators to create posts and reply to comments as the Page.  Heck, most of the time Agencies only need this permission as well!  Got someone doing Facebook Ads for your company?  They only need the Advertiser level of authority, not the kitchen sink and keys to the office!

Here’s Facebook’s breakdown of the roles and a link to the Facebook Help area on the topic.

5 admin roles for pages

3. Regularly check the Page Admin settings to ensure roles are accurate.

The Business Owner makes sure their accounting is done accurately, that the keys to the office are accounted for, and that the domain name for the website never expires.  They need to also review the Admins on the company Facebook Page!  Your Page is your calling card on the largest, most active social network in the world.  Take care of it.

I’m guessing at least a few readers here will go check their Facebook Page Admins and find someone or something out of date or out of order.  Anyone willing to admit it?

So, what happens if it’s too late?  What if you lost control, is there anything you can do?  I’ll give you a slight glimmer of hope.  You may be able to reach Facebook and you may be able to access back, but it’ll be work.

The easiest route to get access back is to request the person who is Manager to give you access. Facebook specifically says the only way to become an Admin is for an existing Admin with Manager control to add you.  Facebook also does have a way to report that you are the authorized representative of a page. You may need official company documentation that you would need to submit and have reviewed.

In the words of Winston Churchill, “Never, never, never give up!”  And if he were around today…”Never, never, never neglect managing the Admin’s of your Facebook page!