Facebook to give SMEs online tools
Facebook partners with a Kiwi organisation to educate SMEs about social media.
Facebook is teaming up with a New Zealand organisation to launch an online learning platform designed to help small business owners get savvy with digital marketing.
The social media giant is working with About Us, a free service to help Kiwi businesses get online. It provides short online learning modules that teach business owners tips and best practice to make the most out of Facebook and Instagram.
About Us works with small businesses and local councils across the country, and advised Facebook on what Kiwi small business owners needed the most help with.
Facebook director of policy for Australia and New Zealand Mia Garlick, says Facebook is an attractive tool for small businesses because it is cheaper and easier than building a website.
The reach is also unbeatable: there are almost three million Kiwi Facebook users and more than one billion users around the world.
Small businesses struggle with finding time and communicating with their audience..
‘‘Small business owners, they’re so busy. They’re the accountant, the cleaner, the manager, the salesperson. So the challenge for us and About Us is how do you find a way to reach a small business owner in a really useful way, in a time they can do it in,’’ Garlick says.
That’s why the modules are simple and only very short (15 minutes).
Garlick says Facebook already offers the learning platform in other countries like the United States, United Kingdom and India and 175,000 people have taken more than half a million courses in just a few months.
Taranaki panelbeater Ben Thomas has run a Facebook business page for less than two years and has recently started paying for Facebook advertising.
The social network has been a powerful tool for Thomas to keep people aware of his business.
‘‘I guess our business is a funny one. The fact you read our name today doesn’t mean you need us tomorrow, but for the absolute top of the mind awareness, [Facebook is] excellent.’’
Posts have been hit and miss, but it’s a learning process and the new tools by Facebook would be a huge help for small business owners, Thomas says.
Thomas and his wife Deb have run their own website for a few years and Thomas says it is crucial for businesses to be online.
‘‘When you look at businesses of a higher calibre or a good, well-run business, you’d be able to find them online.’’
Steve Adams is the chief executive of digital agency Socialize, which started About Us, and says the partnership with Facebook is a ‘‘huge endorsement’’ of the work done by About Us.
Having an online presence is particularly beneficial for regional businesses and can help a business be more profitable as it gets easier to run a business with the digital tools now available.
‘‘When you have 100 businesses in a town using digital tools, that creates a halo effect that promotes the whole region,’’ Adams says.
‘‘New Zealand is a small business economy and we need small businesses to be working at an optimal level. Even single digit turnover across small businesses is an absolute gamechanger.’’