Category: Running a Small Business

It’s not content marketing, it’s communication: Writing a brief

If you run a business and have been persuaded by everything you see on social media and the Internet generally that your marketing efforts should include “content”, then please sit down and think again.

The question to consider: what does “content” actually mean?

The Oxford dictionary definition (in my premium version) has four possibilities:

  • The things that are held or included in something (ie the contents of a glass jar)
  • A list of the chapters or sections given at the front of a book or periodical (the table of contents)
  • The material dealt with in a speech, literary work, etc. as distinct from its form or style
  • Information made available by a website or other electronic medium

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The metaverse for writers, editors and other creators

I was recently asked to write a series of articles about the metaverse for a client. I didn’t know much about the metaverse when I started out, but a bunch of research soon fixed that.

As I was doing that research (which looked at the role of the metaverse in a particular industry) I found myself wondering how this Shiny New Thing applied to my own world of work. Were there trends that I needed to know about? What skillsets might I need to get? This article is the result of my own research into the issue.
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Loadshedding solutions for home office workers (that won’t break the bank)

A friend who lives in Melbourne, Australia complained on Facebook that he had been without electricity for several hours, in a curfew. His laptop died on him, and there he was in the dark with only his thoughts for company.

I smiled slightly but did not comment.

And recent news from Sydney that residents had been asked to conserve power in the evening as much as possible to avert blackouts prompted the same wry smile.

After all, there is no real joy in claiming the high ground on the question of being without power. All the tips I could give Australians are not really needed: sitting in the dark probably won’t happen to them again for months or even years.

Here in South Africa of course we all know what it is to be without power – that state of being for which we all grudgingly use the Eskom term: loadshedding. Continue reading

Things I have learned about running a business (2)

In November 2016 I took a retrenchment package from my post at Independent Online.

I thought of myself as being about to go freelancing, a time-honoured way for journalists to reinvent themselves.

Four years later, I think about things a little differently: I think of myself as running a one-woman business. If I didn’t hate the clumsiness of it, I might say that I was a solopreneur.
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