Something strange happened to me recently. I was in my personal e-mail inbox and suddenly saw a mail of which the subject line read ‘Invoice so-and-so’. Anybody who knows me well knows that I am super allergic to any debt that can be avoided. So for me, on a personal level, to be receiving any form of an invoice is pra
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The Vanity Metric Mindshift
When it comes to vanity metrics the basics are simple; we need to value quality over quantity. People get so wrapped up in their following and their likes; “How can we get to 10 000 on Facebook?” “How can we get to 10 000 on Instagram?” Well, getting there is not really the problem. Anybody can “get” to those numbers.
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Event Sluts
Welcome to the Brand Central Station etiquette school. We often find that people get completely trigger happy when it comes to social media events and there are a few things you need to keep in mind when it comes to social media etiquette. If you click the “Going” button on any event; that means that you are 120% certa
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The Big Social Media Marketing Scam
We have to give a lot of training to upper management, CEO’s & owners of companies. That is not because they are actually going to start doing their own social media marketing, but their biggest concern is the fact that they have to sit in status meetings with marketing teams and department heads. And that these gu
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Instagram is Planning on Removing Likes
For those of you who have not heard yet; Instagram is planning on removing likes. The reason behind this move is due to a growing concern regarding people’s mental health. Studies have shown that people can get so addicted to social media that their entire identity and self-esteem revolves around their social media acc
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The Difference Between Successful Thinking & Non-Successful Thinking
I was part of a very interesting conversation recently that perfectly depicted the difference in mentality between people who are successful and people who are not successful. I was at a social gathering with a variety of different kinds of individuals from various walks of life and various industries. It was a good mi
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The Dangers of Dating Apps When it comes to Our Children
In the past I have spoken about the dangers of social media regarding our children. What to do, what not to do and all the technicalities that people don’t know. It’s a topic that is very close to my heart because I don’t want any parent to do something that they will later regret. When we talk about social media platf
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Ads are not Love at First Sight Situations
There are certain people who still think that if you write one perfect ad, with the perfect conversion copy and the perfect call to action that everything is going to magically fall into place. You click that publishing or create ad button and ‘voila!’, you can sit back and watch the millions start rolling in. If that
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The Social Media Competition Con
There’s a very cheap marketing ploy that has existed since the dawn of social media. You get random posts with beautiful imagery of anything from Disney land to the Caribbean island beaches, and somehow the winner of that competition fell through or can’t be reached, so luckily for us this amazing prize is up for grabs
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Be Careful!!!
They say that ignorance is bliss. I’m sure that that saying was specifically made for any real digital marketing specialist in South Africa. We have made peace with the fact that there is a new guy or girl suddenly claiming to be an expert every day. They claim that they have been in the industry for a million years an
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What is the Recipe for Success?
Today I want to share a story with you that has an amazing message and very powerful lesson attached to it. Sadly, we recently said goodbye to one of the biggest musical legends of our country. One of his fellow musicians shared this heartwarming tale. If you are a beginner or an amateur in any business or any industry
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Find your Fame
Recently I went to visit a friend of mine. Way back in the day, when we first met each other, he mentioned that he was working within the entertainment industry. Although we spoke about work in general we never got into the details of it. It was quite surprising to me when I visited him in his hometown that we were abs
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The Low-Down on the Latest Algorithm Change
It’s June 2019 and the news that we all dread so much have just arrived… So, the Facebook algorithm is set to change yet again, and these changes are going to mainly be in post prioritisation. This basically means that two kinds of posts will be prioritised within newsfeeds which means that it will be given much larg
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Facebook Keynote 2019 Takeaways
Wow…The Facebook Conference Keynote of 2019 by Mr Mark Zuckerberg really started with a bang. There were a few things that were said that could impact the world of social media marketing immensely. Some of these things were: 1. the statement that Facebook will be focusing much more on smaller communities (which typical
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Workshop Advice
We’ve just returned from national workshop tour & during our journey we’ve picked up on a few very important things that’s worth sharing with anyone who’s interested in or joining us at our workshop events. Limited Number of Attendees We keep our workshops small, so we do limit most of our workshops to only 10 atte
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The Do’s and Don’ts of Social Media Engagement
In our blog today we are tackling all things engagement. Engagement baiting is a big no-no. This is when you ask people for likes, shares or comments. The algorithm identifies these keywords and immediately suppresses your post reach. If you do find yourself in a position where you REALLY have/want to “request” engagem
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How to Deal with the Daily Social Media Traffic Jam
Many people experience that they’re posts are “published too late”. That doesn’t mean that after you’ve posted a post that it’s being stored away somewhere in cyberspace and published later; the big problem here is newsfeed traffic. There is so much content flooding into social media platforms on a daily basis that it’
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Is Social Media Marketing Dead?
I get asked this question a lot. Back in 2015 (the so-called organic reach glory days) your business page posts reached between 80 – 100% of your page followers. Keep in mind that this is ORGANIC reach which meant that these were the results without a single cent being spent on ads. Today these stats (and your reach) h
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Mythbusting our Perceptions of Pricing
I’ve had quite an interesting experience recently whilst doing some work on my house. One of the things on my to-do list was to replace the front door. To me it seemed like a very simple task. I mean; how hard could it be? You take the old one out and put in the new one. So I started gathering quotes and I was just sho
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Could THIS be the missing ingredient in your business?
I’ve had a very interesting conversation recently with someone who came to see me regarding their business. It was the usual complaints; “the business is struggling”, “we need more clients”, “the people in our area aren’t willing to pay, they’d rather pay someone less skilled if it meant paying cheaper”. Although these
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Get Out of the January Funk!
Everyone is experiencing some sort of January financial
depression. This is something I don’t understand. We all have the same
24 hours available to us every day. So why is it that one person has money and
another one doesn’t? Why one person’s business flourishing and another one’s is
is stagnating or dying? This all b
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How to Keep the Momentum
We are nearing the end of the year and we are all starting to feel it. So how do we keep the momentum going during these last couple of months? Well, firstly we need to understand the concept of momentum. Momentum is gathered. We don’t jump out of bed every morning already on a roll. Think of it in terms of a game of p
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The Dangers of Social Media and Our Kids (and no, it’s not what you think)
*Warning: This gets pretty scary. The goal of this blog is to inform and educate – not judge and set parents on a guilt trip if you are currently doing or have done any of the following things in the past. As the saying goes; if you know better, you do better. As parents we are constantly worried about our children and
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What is the Difference between a Meeting and a Consultation?
The lines between these two have become very blurry and that’s mostly because of our own perceptions. So let’s start by examining what the technical definitions of each of these are: Meeting: an encounter or instance of junction or intersection between people. For example; “I am meeting someone for lunch” or “I have me
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How to Manage Expectations
Managing expectations are very important to any business, but managing expectations work both sides of the coin; as a business owner having to manage client expectations as well as being a client yourself and managing your own expectations. There are a few things to take into consideration when managing expectations: A
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Marketing is like Shrek’s swamp
People often ask me; “but what are the MOST important things I need in place FIRST?” I don’t really have an answer for that. Sure, there are many things that can be seen as add-ons to your marketing strat and execution (especially with a very tight budget), but when it comes to marketing you need a very holistic approa
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What is social media marketing and why is everyone and his dog doing it?
Let’s start by discussing what social media marketing is NOT. It is NOT having the capabilities to post photos to your personal profile. It is NOT creating a business page or account and then coming from a position of “build it and they will come”. This is not how social media marketing works. There is a much larger st
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Defamation & Social Media
There are a lot of strange ideas and misconceptions when it comes to defamation and that’s because of the fact that South Africans are very influenced by Hollywood and what is depicted in movies and series. These misconceptions often lead to quite a big reality shock when the time comes. In order to properly understand
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The Importance of an Editorial Calendar
The foundation of successful social media marketing is your editorial calendar. If you don’t know what an editorial calendar is then you are already on the wrong path and can contact us here. As business owners, we can’t spend every day trying to figure out what to post on which platform – that is not time-effective. B
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How to Extend your Reach during these Difficult Algorithm Times
The last couple of algorithm changes have had a very nasty effect on organic reach. This is obviously a strategy to force people to spend on paid ads. The problem is; paid ads have ALSO become more expensive. This is devastating for small businesses that don’t have such deep pockets as the bigger corporate companies. I
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The Trifecta of Content Marketing
Content marketing is the foundation of your social media marketing. There’s a recipe to content marketing success which I like to refer to as the golden trifecta of content marketing. The content that you share needs to be; valuable, relevant and consistent. When we say it needs to be valuable, you need to ask yourself
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Steer Clear of the Boost Button Booby-trap
The topic that pops up a lot during our workshops is Facebook’s boost button. There are two things you need to know when it comes to the boost button: The boost button is not as effective as creating an ad on your ad manager. If you don’t know what the ad manager is, you need to contact us…as in yesterday. It’s absolut
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Is Facebook Sabotaging your Business?
This was the topic of our #TipTuesday live feed this week, and the scale of thankful feedback we received was really not what we expected. So for those of you who missed it, here’s a recap. Just like you I am part of many groups and pages on Facebook and the last couple of week’s people have been posting quite irate po
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Payday
Today is the 25th… payday. The world can be divided into two sets of people; those who work for the 25th and those who are rewarded on the 25th. The first group is quite content getting a position within someone else’s organisation, working 8-10 hours a day and then picking up their paycheck on the 25th and pay the bil
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Why do you need social media marketing?
Social media took the world by storm with the first launch of MySpace. All of a sudden communicating (and stalking J) became much easier. Our lives were changed forever. It kept us glued to our desktops and as technology improved, we found ourselves chained to our smartphones. In the meantime social media has exploded