Starting your own business is exciting, there is so much to do and so much to learn. An important part of getting your business started is marketing and in today’s world that means Social Media. It is free advertising, and it is the way people shop and look for services now, so it is critical that you get involved. 

Don’t rush in.  It’s best to do some planning first and get to grips with what you need.  Here is a quick break down of how to get started. 

1. Branding 

You will need a logo and a general theme (colours and fonts) to represent your business. When you come to create your business profile on Social Media, it is best to have these in place, so you can create your Brand straight away.  Create some paragraphs and sentences that really describe what you are doing. These will be useful to fill in your profile details.  Have you got your website, email address and phone number ready to use? 

2. Who are you talking to? 

Take some time to think about who your potential clients are? 

Where will they be on Social Media?  Young and trendy – then you need to go to Instagram. A bit older – then you need to head to Facebook. Targeting business owners – then try LinkedIn.   

How do you talk to them – what tone of voice do you use? Do you speak very formally, or do you use lots of emojis? 😊 

3. Collect images to use 

Take images of your products, your work environment, yourself, inspiration images of your life etc. If you struggle with this, do look out for the copyright free image sites like unsplash.com or pixabay.com. 

4. Do some research 

Go and look at similar businesses to yours. See what they are doing, get inspiration. Take notes of the words, images and types of posts they are using. 

5. Now to dive into the world of Social Media 

Start with one platform at a time, try to get that one set up fully before starting another one. You don’t want to spread yourself too thin.  Most platforms take you through a step by step procedure to set up Business Pages, prompting you to fill in and action certain things.  Take your time and click into everything, fill in everything and explore everything that you can do. It will not break, and everything is fixable and removable. So be brave and try everything. 

6.  Start posting 

Deciding what to tell your potential clients can be a bit overwhelming. Do remember that Social Media is social, you need to be chatty, informative, interesting and fun. Don’t just sell, sell, sell – people will get bored and wander off.  So do one salesy post a week and then do an instructional/interesting piece that relates to your business and do a fun piece showing who you are and why you love doing what you do.  Mix it up, make people want to follow you – and ultimately spend their money with you. 

7. Take it further 

Once you are comfortable with a Social Media platform, do push your boundaries. In Facebook, join the local groups and start posting in there. In Instagram, try doing reels and stories. In LinkedIn, reach out to someone and start a chat. Be brave, chat to people, join in and be Social. 

Take a deep breath and get your business out there. Remember it’s not like normal marketing – you can delete, edit, amend and change everything, so get posting and let everyone know you are there.  

This article was written by Fiona Service of Litus Digital

A lifelong career teacher, Susan Fox had always loved pursuing creative activities in her spare time but decided to take early retirement at Christmas 2021. It was a decision that was easy to make,

“When I was younger, I would have loved to have done something more creative as a career path, but my parents wanted to me to have a ‘proper job’. After years of teaching, I was a bit disillusioned with the profession and had experienced a family bereavement, so thought ‘why not – life’s too short!’”

Four years previously Susan had started taking pottery classes which she found she loved. Although the classes themselves were curtailed a bit during COVID, in November 2020 she bought a pottery wheel and moved into a new house which had a perfect space for her pottery studio. At this point, her thought process was just to make pots to give to friends. The idea for teaching pottery courses came later.

A new business that offers an experience

Susan heard about the Inspiring Enterprise project through her partner who was old friends with Julie Stevenson, Enterprise Specialist. After seeing the post that Susan’s partner put up about her new venture, she got in touch to say that she helped support businesses start-ups. Susan found she was eligible for support and thus a beautiful business relationship began.

Susan decided to combine her teaching skills with her love for pottery and now her business, Combe Cottage Pottery offers pottery classes, or as she put it,

“My unique selling point is ‘a personal experience’, I don’t have a mixed ability class, but clients can sign up with a friend or on their own to learn the skills I can pass on.”

As she now has two pottery wheels, she can offer a one-to-one or bring a friend ‘Throwing Experience’ (where Susan finishes off the pottery afterwards), a one-to-one or bring a friend ‘Throw, Turn, and Glaze Experience’ and a 5-week course at a reduced rate if the client books for two people – which means they get to experience twice the amount of throwing and turning and produce twice the amount of pots. The idea being that the experience is with someone they know, for example a friend or relative. She also sells gift cards which offer all these options.

Susan can be flexible in the times of booking, offering during the day or in the evenings, will do one-off experiences and can arrange mutually convenient times with her students. Although the classes are predominantly aimed at adults, as children can get frustrated with the process, she has offered family classes and courses,

“One family has booked an experience for their 9^th Wedding anniversary as the traditional gift for that milestone is pottery. They have booked this with their eight-year-old child. I have also just booked up a mother and her nine-year-old daughter for a 3-week course in her Easter holidays.”

Susan emphasises that she is utilising her teaching skills to teach but is still developing her skills as a potter at this time,

“I make it clear that I don’t have years of pottery-making experience, I don’t have a ceramics degree and I’m very much learning about the art as I go along. I love creating pottery and I have years of teaching experience, so I’m combining the two skills.”

A Booming Business

At the start, a friend and her sister came along as ‘guinea pigs’ to her very basic studio, so that she could test out what worked and what she wanted to do. Once she realised it would work, in February 2022 she started booking courses to commence at the beginning of March and at time of writing has 25 courses sold. Well-placed in the commuter belt of Hindhead, she is now receiving regular phone calls and emails enquiring about courses and has a wide spectrum of clients. Occasionally she does sell a few pieces of her own pottery, but this is not where her focus is,

“I have a stall booked at a local fete in the Summer and may well sell a few pieces, but the money is not in the wares themselves but in the experience and I will use this opportunity to give out my business cards and book up some courses.”

Support from Inspiring Enterprise

As a lifelong career teacher, before starting her business Susan has never had to deal with tax and how it works. She had never drawn up an invoice, or in her own words, “had no clue about the financial side of things, such as tax return dates.” Julie helped her with all of this,

“Julie helped me with what I needed to know and what I had to keep in terms of records – the practicalities were totally out of my experience. I now have a template for invoices and a file for the tax man. I have been on a Facebook training course that Inspiring Enterprise participants can attend, and I have been able to get more traffic to the website that I had already set up due to that training.”

Future Goals

Business is currently booming, and she is booking courses back-to-back, but Susan doesn’t want to get complacent and make sure that the business can sustain itself.

“I must push my business and myself and that’s not something I’m used to! I have to become more confident in selling ‘me’ and how I teach, but I am gaining in confidence all the time.”

Susan’s Top Business Tip

For anyone thinking of starting out on the self-employment journey and setting up their own business, Susan has the following advice,

“Do something you KNOW and LOVE, something you already have the skillset for. Also, it has to be something you are happy to commit to.”

More information about Susan’s Combe Cottage Pottery can be found on her website or you can follow her on Instagram or Facebook

Bulgarian Lyusien Byalkov had the idea to set up a juice bar after the first lockdown in May 2020, when he was at home making juices every day.  

“This made me think that may be not everybody has time to make juices themselves, so why not try to open a Juice Bar.” 

A former salesman for a large company back in Bulgaria, Lyusien already had some of the necessary skills to set up his own business with a Degree in Accountancy and a Master’s in Public Finance.  

He also previously worked as an accountant for the same large company for two years, which gave him a good grounding to start his own business. In addition to having a lot of friends in the business community back home who could advise him, he was confident he had the skills necessary to get started. 

“I thought, I’m a smart person and all the previous experience and knowledge I have from my previous roles I can use in my own business now!” 

Lyusien found himself out of work from his job as a supervisor in construction due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the job centre put him in touch with Enterprise Specialist Paul Creeden of Inspiring Enterprise. He is full of praise for Paul, 

“He is a wonderful person. He was always positive! The communication with him was always smooth and motivating. He helped me answer all question that I had difficulties with. He is just unique person!” 

After months of hard work, Lyusien is now operating from his own colourful small juice bar – The Juice Bar UK with the slogan “Drink Fresh” in Islington.  

Future goals 

He has big plans for the future,  

“I want to establish my business in the market as a name, logo and brand that will make people smile and enjoy visiting the juice bar. My dream is to have seven or more shops across central London.” 

Top Tip 

Lyusien has great advice for anyone beginning their own entrepreneurial journey: 

“My advice for anyone just starting out is to learn by your experiences, give 110% to every project, then you will succeed. But most of all, never give up!” 

You can find out more about The Juice Bar UK on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. 

Helen Asling is our Marketing and Communications Executive and is the newest member of the Inspiring Enterprise team.

She has over 25 years’ experience in marketing and has worked across a range of types and sizes of organisations.  Marketing and how it is implemented has changed a great deal over that time and Helen enjoys keeping up with all the latest trends, especially those in social media. Although she says sometimes social media drives her mad as well!

She loves working for Inspiring Enterprise not just because the team is so friendly but also because she is helping people get access to the business support they need.

Helen Says “My 3 top marketing tips would be: Know your Audience, Be mindful of the data and Plan ahead”

If she wasn’t doing this job, Helen would like to be writing a novel somewhere very warm!

When Helen is not working, she is mainly spending time with her family with whom she enjoys walks in the countryside, luckily for Helen the countryside is just outside her home office window.

Terese Scott worked as a high-powered Executive Assistant looking after 3 Global Directors and organising large corporate events, before Brexit and COVID happened in 2020. These two events greatly impacted her employer, and she was unfortunately made redundant in March 2020. After being out of work for a year and applying for hundreds of positions, Terese took 3 short-term contracts throughout 2021 to help to make ends meet, until the job market and economy started to improve.

Confidence issues

With life being so unsettled with the lack of job opportunities, covid restrictions and spending lockdown so isolated away from her friends and family, Terese then began to experience some intense anxiety issues. On top of everything else she found herself plunging headfirst into the menopause with unusual and intense symptoms that even her GP was baffled by.

“I felt worthless, couldn’t remember how to do things that I’d always done and became full of self-doubt.”

Her employer realised she was struggling in life and work, due to the changes in her body and mind and luckily for Terese, they discussed her position together and decided to mutually part company. Her employer offered her 6 weeks’ pay as a gesture of good will, which gave her time to start her self-employment journey.

A Confidence Boost

Terese had always styled friends and family’s hair and they encouraged her to do it as a real business. So, with the help of Julie Stevenson from Inspiring Enterprise, Terese set up TLC Hair & Beauty in January 2022. She offers her clients Hair Colouring & Cutting, Hair Extensions, Gel polish & Nail Extensions, Waxing, Eyebrow and Lash Tinting and Gents Cutting & Grooming. She also undertook a course, paid for her by her daughter Mollie to boost her confidence and to extend her skills.

Julie, who was already a friend and client of Terese, encouraged her to set up on her own.

“She offered her help to put me on the right path. I found some things daunting such as the tax side of things and making sure that registering as a new business was done correctly. She gave me confidence that I was doing everything in the right way, gave me ideas and helped me get started.”

“She just sat next to me and that gave me confidence. In fact, she gave me my confidence back.”

Future goals

The beginning of the year is a slow time in the hairdressing industry, but it has given Terese time to adjust and focus on the future of her growing business, whilst she gains momentum and confidence in her abilities to increase her earnings and her clients. She is planning to branch out into doing Children’s pamper parties and further courses in make-up, so that she can offer an all-in-one service to all her clients.

Happily, her health has improved significantly,

“I want other women reading this who may be struggling with the effects of the menopause to understand sometimes you have to stop, step back, reflect and realise your health is more important than a high-status job. You are changing as you age but it doesn’t mean that life must stop! Don’t be too hard on yourself thinking you are not good enough! Just change your thought process and when the opportunity arrives, you can start a new journey using your strengths and experiences. Tell yourself you are good enough and most of all be kind to yourself, some changes that seem daunting are for the better and there is life after menopause!”

Top Tip

Terese’s top tip for anyone lacking confidence who may be thinking about starting a business is:

“Just believe in yourself, even though some days you might not feel like it, you can do it if you want it badly enough.”

Terese who is based in Havant, can be found on Facebook and Instagram