A. Hopkins Insurance & Financial Services

Tag: Chamber Plan

  • How to write an engaging caption on social media for your business

    How to write an engaging caption on social media for your business

    “Discomfort is always a necessary part of the process of enlightenment”

    -Pearl Cleage

    There are many reasons to spend time writing quality social media posts for your business. Whether you choose to wield your own words, or borrow someone else’s, as in the above quote, a great caption can take your audience to great places, get them thinking, spark an interesting conversation around one of your products, or engage your audience in a way that says something about your brand, and who stands behind it. Your audience wants to believe and know you are thinking about something other than your bottom line.

    One post or caption with accompanying video or photo can be all it takes for someone to engage, buy, call you, return for more, or pass on a good word.

    Even though it’s not a lot of content, a short phrase or sentence, a good caption or post takes some thought.

    To start, ask questions such as:

    Am I giving my audience a reason to engage?
    Am I inspiring them to think outside their own comfort zone, their own life bubble or sphere of influence?
    Am I informing them about something that I think will help them in their life or their business?
    Am I revealing something honest and real about my company/brand values that others can resonate with?

    To begin writing:

    Start with an intention. What are you wanting to accomplish with the caption—is this an introduction to your brand? Do you want to tell people what you do? Do you want them to start their own conversation on what you have presented? Do you want them to share?

    If you ask a question, make it open ended. When was the last time you walked away from the spa and felt like a new person? What would your revenue look if your equipment maintenance could be finished a day earlier than promised? What is the best thing about a Friday in November? Spur people’s curiosity with a question they can’t help but think about, or scroll on.

    Get to the point. If it’s too long, you risk losing and boring your audience. We all know this. Pay attention to what grabs your attention in your own social media activity and behaviours and work towards maximum engagement. If it’s a sponsored post, don’t forget to add a call to action.

    Raise the stakes. If the audience doesn’t engage, what will they miss out on? A chance at a one-time promotion or sale, a chance to realize something about their own life or self-growth?
    
    Support your caption with an accompanying image or video. As we all know, visuals are essential. They are what draw people in, prompt them to pause, watch, if only for a few short seconds.

    360PSG also recommends keeping it short. They recommend, “Don’t make them click to see more…someone casually browsing Instagram is likely to keep scrolling when a lengthy caption takes them out of their flow.”

    Something else that can go a long way is giving the caption a “clean” visual. 360PSG recommends burying the hashtags in the comments rather than in the caption.

    Social media is a creative medium. Don’t bore your audience or turn them away with something too conservative. One thing to consider before you begin writing a caption—when you feel the impulse to screen shot something so you don’t lose it in the stream of your social media feed, pay attention to those moments. What caught your attention and inspired you?

    Author: ChamberPlan.ca

  • Three Ways You Can Boost Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace

    Three Ways You Can Boost Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace

    Right now, people everywhere are taking a close look at how unconscious bias, privilege, and structural racism continue to manifest in the so-called woke world. This includes the workplace, and these conversations underscore the importance of regularly reevaluating and re-energizing equality, diversity and inclusion (ED&I) initiatives to ensure real change is still happening.

    Adding the following three criteria to your ED&I strategy will go a long way to disrupting the organizational structures that continue to stand in the way of meaningful change in the workplace.

    Empower leaders responsible for ED&I so they can enact systemic change

    Most ED&I tool kits include some form of unconscious bias training where individuals reflect on their own intrinsic biases and learn how to adjust behaviours to mitigate the ways these preconceptions play out in the workplace. What these activities don’t specifically address, however, are the systemic issues inherent in most organizational cultures at a structural level that allow bias to continue to operate in the workplace.

    And while it is still important for each of us to be aware of personal bias and to learn how this impacts our behaviour, ED&I initiatives also need to evaluate systemic issues that are deeply ingrained in organizational structure, and interrupt those systems to create a more genuinely inclusive work environment. Change of this magnitude needs to be initiated, implemented, and evaluated by someone in the organization with authority and autonomy to overhaul current systems.

    James D. White, former CEO of Jamba Juice, discusses in a digital article for HBR how important it is to empower those responsible for ED&I so that sweeping change is actually possible. “[T]he standard DE&I playbook has been to hire a chief diversity officer (CDO) with a budget for consultants and enrichment programs. But you can’t build capacity if the problem is not with the diverse talent but with the culture that determines their future… doing anything once cannot change a corporate culture that reinforces itself day after day.” As CEO, White was able to implement broad change at a high level, including championing a more diverse Board of Directors — something a consultant or CDO likely could not have done.

    Change how high-profile projects are assigned

    Despite the time and resources invested in ED&I over the years, data shows that we still have a long way to go when it comes to diversity, particularly in leadership. Up to 70% of senior leadership roles (VP, Senior VP, and C-Suite) positions are held by white men, and over the past 12 years, the percentage of white male CEOs has only fallen 4% from 93.4% in 2005 to 89.4% in 2017.

    White and his co-author, Joan C. Williams, suggest that changing how “glamour work” is distributed can help boost diversity in all levels of management.

    According to White and Williams, “glamour work” refers to the high-profile assignments and projects that get people noticed and ultimately position them for promotions. By purposely choosing employees who were previously overlooked for glamour work, White appointed Action Learning Teams (ALTs) who had on-the-ground expertise and skills that made them ideally suited for solving relevant issues related to key business goals.

    Selecting individuals based on frontline experience and grouping them in teams to leverage the right mix of talent and skills to solve the issue at hand “meant that the teams were far more diverse than the company’s workforce as a whole.” It’s also important to set teams up for success by giving them release time from their regular jobs so that they can work on these projects and execute them well.

    Interrupt structural racism at every level including HR and middle management

    As White and Williams point out, “effective policies enable inclusion, but middle-level managers [and HR] hold the key to delivering it.” It is crucial that every level of your organization is highly attuned to issues of bias and, more importantly, is empowered and encouraged to enact concrete changes to interrupt them.

    At Jamba Juice, White implemented a new incentive system that assessed store manager compensation based on a variety of criteria including engagement, climate, and organizational health scores. In terms of debiasing HR, White and Williams suggest creating an action learning team that includes the CEO or equivalent, and setting a mandate and timeline to restructure the hiring process by developing objective hiring criteria to promote diversity and inclusion.

    Having an ED&I statement on your website or an annual bias awareness workshop simply isn’t enough. To see real change in the next 10 years will require a complete overhaul of all organizational systems — from hiring to promotion and everything in between — with a focus on eliminating privilege and inequity in the workplace.

    https://hbr.org/2020/07/update-your-dei-playbook

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/janicegassam/2020/12/29/your-unconscious-bias-trainings-keep-failing-because-youre-not-addressing-systemic-bias/#6d0b24c11e9d

    Author: ChamberPlan.ca

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  • Time to reinvent your business?

    Time to reinvent your business?

    It’s been said “never waste a good crisis.”  Most business owners who have been enduring the unexpected impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic would probably agree:  as far as crises go, this has been a pretty good one.

    “Good” may not be accurate. For some, words like “devastating”, “ruinous” or “bankrupting” might be better descriptors.  To be sure, the pandemic and its economic consequences didn’t bring much good to anyone – unless you were in the toilet paper or hand sanitizer business – but what it did bring was the opportunity (and for many, ample free time) to take a good look inward and reflect — on our lives, our careers and our businesses.

    If you run a business, it’s certainly the right time to take a second look at what you’ve been doing and decide if you can – or should – keep doing it.  Whether your business is currently open, getting ready to re-open or shut down for good, some reinvention may be in order in this new, post-pandemic world.

    To get those thoughts rolling, here are a few book suggestions:

    The Optimization Edge: Reinventing Decision Making to Maximize your Company’s Assets – Steve Sashihara

    Author Sashihara takes a look at why, on a level playing field, some companies downsize while others keep growing. The book talks about how to approach your decision making in a way that optimizes your assets and gets the most value from your company – under any conditions. Sashihara presents step-by-step best practices and tools to help you stay ahead of the competition, even during a downturn.

    Reinventing the Organization: How Companies can Deliver Radically Greater Value in Fast-Changing Markets – Arthur Yeung, David Ulrich

    Markets change quickly. To keep pace and stay competitive, businesses need to change at least as rapidly. Yeung and Ulrich use their in-depth research into some of the world’s most successful organizations – including Amazon, Facebook and Google – to help readers build an organization that responds to changing market opportunities with both speed and scale. The book includes a six-step framework to help with all decisions leaders need to make in these shaky times.

    Business Model Renewal:  How to Grow and Prosper by Defying Best Practices and Reinventing your Strategy – Linda Gorchels

    When the global market is constantly changing, one-size fits all solutions don’t work. Author Gorchels argues that these days, even best practices can go out the window along with the phrases, “business as usual” and “tried and true”.  The book is not just about renewing your business model, it’s about reinventing it – by re-evaluating your methods, rethinking your strategies and broadening your perspectives. There is no crystal ball, but there is a way you can be ready for (practically) anything.

    What Happens Now: Reinvent Yourself as a Leader Before Your Business Outruns You – John Hillen and Mark Nevins

    What happens when your organization changes faster than you do?  Many leaders change everything around them – hire new staff or put in new reporting structures, for example, while others do things the same way they’ve always done them, only more so.  What Happens Now is the leaders’ guide to changing their own behaviours and skills so they can successfully drive the new ship. The authors share stories from dozens of leaders who have faced the need to change or (figuratively) die, and have come out the other side a stronger person, a superior leader and with the tools they need to adapt – and lead – in ever-evolving situations.

    Good Leaders Ask Great Questions – Your Foundation for Successful Leadership – John C. Maxwell

    John C. Maxwell is an acclaimed leadership authority and has acquired much of his knowledge on the subject by asking questions. He’s used what he’s learned to inspire millions of people through books including Leadership 101, What Every Leader Needs to Know and No Limits Blow Your Capacity. In this book, his readers get to ask their questions. With 70 plus questions answered, the book will show you how to be a better leader and how to ask the questions that will keep you at the top of your game – even in a crisis.

    Author: ChamberPlan.ca

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  • Innovative ways businesses keep going during COVID-19

    Innovative ways businesses keep going during COVID-19

    As the saying goes, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Montreal distiller Paul Cirka decided to take his own spin on this old adage when life – or more accurately, his supplier – gave him corn. Instead of turning corn into gin, he made hand sanitizer.

    Cirka Distilleries is one of many businesses finding innovative ways to keep the doors open during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s not an easy task. As the federal and provincial governments take measures to combat the virus, more than a million Canadians lost their jobs in March and by mid-April more than five million people had applied for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit.

    Over the last month, many businesses have been declared non-essential. Many have closed their doors, hopefully temporarily, as they ride out the pandemic. Others have turned to alternative ways to carry on. Restaurants are doing takeout and delivery, for example, and fitness facilities and yoga studios are putting classes online.

    Some businesses have become even more innovative. Fortunately for companies like Cirka Distilleries, COVID-weary Canadians need a drink more than ever and businesses that make and sell alcohol continue to operate. Cirka saw a need even greater than gin and vodka, however, and using a recipe approved by the World Health Organization, the business has joined distilleries around the world to produce much-needed hand sanitizer. Since March, Cirka’s employees have been working around the clock to develop the antiseptic, which requires a much higher form of alcohol than the usual 40 proof Cirka uses to make its vodka and gin.

    Other businesses are also straying from “business as usual”. Bauer Hockey, one of North America’s top producers of hockey equipment, has changed its focus to make another product currently in high demand: masks. Bauer is using hockey visor materials to manufacture full medical face shields, which are meant to protect the wearer from being infected by respiratory droplets that carry the virus. Organizations can request a minimum of 100 face shields directly through Bauer’s website.

    Bauer’s venture into medical face masks is a welcome contribution in a time when frontline workers are in dire need of personal protective equipment…and when employees of businesses deemed non-essential would otherwise be unemployed. The switch from hockey gear to hospital gear is keeping 20 people working in Quebec and another 12 working in New York.

    Peregrine Retail Design Manufacturing’s in Burnaby normally creates elegant front counter designs for high end clients including Lululemon, CIBC and Starbucks. But when many of its clients were forced to temporarily shut their (undoubtedly fancy) doors, work came to a halt and Peregrine had to lay off 30 per cent of its 85 person staff. Seeing a need in the retail sector determined to still be essential – grocery stores, pet stores and (as we determined earlier) liquor stores, Peregrine quickly turned its sights to manufacturing a product slightly less high end but ultimately more critical in keeping retail workers safe – plexiglass shields.

    There’s no word yet on when life will get back to normal. But while the future remains uncertain for many small businesses in this most unprecedented time, one thing we can likely count on is that more business owners will embrace innovation, and find new ways to stay afloat, meet a need and keep their workers working.

    Author: ChamberPlan.ca

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  • Start a New Decade with These 5 Noteworthy Lessons from Small Business Owners

    Start a New Decade with These 5 Noteworthy Lessons from Small Business Owners

    Entrepreneurs, in particular small business operators and owners, are not strangers to trial and error and misstep. What is important is what we learn and take away to fuel our next move. Here are a few lessons from small business owners to lead us into a new decade!

    Hiring Key People. Susan Guillory, President of Egg Marketing & Communications, and contributor to Forbes says finding success is easier when you have the right people on your team. She admits to designing her own logo when she started her company 13 years ago and that it was a big mistake. “I can tell you that this DIY strategy is not effective as your business grows,” she says. She encourages all business owners to, in the very least, find one person who can support you.

    Take action on new projects. Neal Schaffer is a social business coach and author of Maximize your Social. His advice is to push new projects forward. “Sometimes if means simply turning down things that we used to accept or deciding to simply unplug from other activities,” he shares. What does unplugging, or disengaging from usual practices look like for you and your business in 2020?

    Collect your own data. How do you examine your own customers’ behaviours? Their spending patterns? Their aversions? What questions do they frequently ask? No one knows your business better than you do. Or rather…no one should know your business better than you do. But we are not always great at tracking our own data—that is customer demographics, how they found you, their likes and dislikes, etc. For Larry Kim, founder of Wordstream and CEO of MobileMonkey he believes the key to success is to “fail slightly less often by using more data rather than gut feel in project planning phases…”

    How do you plan on gathering more of your own business’ data in 2020?

    Tune out the noise and follow your instinct. Instinct—we know it’s there, and yet, we don’t always listen. Sometimes it’s because there is A LOT of noise to break through, but, also, listening to our instincts actually takes practice. Not only is it tricky to pin down that initial feeling we had about a certain business move or hire, but to ignore the other pressures that exist in business environment or society in general can be difficult. Caroline Ghosn, co-founder and CEO of Levo League, says there are always warning signs. “As an entrepreneur, the latitude of failure and of success is directly correlated to people. I am growing more and more attentive to my first instincts, even if I can’t justify them, as they apply to people.”

    Keep it simple.

    That’s Neil Patel’s simple advice. He is an entrepreneur, investor, advisor and well-known blogger, with expertise in online metrics and analytics. He admits to having many of his start-ups fail. “Typically the failure wasn’t due to the idea. Instead the solution was complicated and hard to use.”

    Wishing you every success for your business ventures in 2020!

    Author: ChamberPlan.ca

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