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How to use others' feedback to learn and grow

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How to use others' feedback to learn and grow

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How to use others' feedback to learn and grow | Sheila Heen | TEDxAmoskeagMillyardWomen

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Why do you need to register your business?

To comply with the law, your business may need specific registrations, licences or permits. The types you need will depend on:

your business structure (for example sole trader, company, partnership)

your business location

the industry and sector you operate in

whether your business employs staff

the type of business you're operating.

If your business doesn't have the right registrations it can affect your tax rate or result in penalties or fines.

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Registrations your business needs | business.gov.au

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Why do you need to register your business? To comply with the law, your business may need specific registrations, licences or permits. The types you need will depend on: your business structure (for example sole trader, company, partnership) your business location the industry and sector you operate in whether your business employs staff the type of business you're operating.

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Transitioning to practice: a qualitative investigation of Australian graduate naturopath’s experiences of being in practice - BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies

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Background The transition from student to practitioner can be challenging, resulting in stress, burnout and attrition. While there has been ample research examining graduate medical and allied health practitioner experiences of transitioning to practice, there is a paucity of research exploring such…

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5 EASY Steps to Create Your Personal Brand | by Amanda Rose

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Carefree Counsel with Michelle Whitehead

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My mission is to support you - from a heartspace of love and connection - to create firm business foundations. I mentor you in wise management & best practice, so that you can build a legacy as the leader you were destined to be.

I work with businesses that don't fit in boxes: the change-makers, the rebels, the healers, the visionaries.
The ones who colour outside the lines. The ones who want to tame dragons & ride unicorns into the sunset.

You deserve to stand strong as the confident, empowered, compassionate business owner you are destined to be,
and your clients deserve the clarity, certainty and consistency they get when you caringly communicate your bold boundaries.

Are you building a business that supports the lifestyle you love,
without sacrificing yourself, your integrity, or your relationship with your clients?

I am here for YOU!

Want to work with me?

I am a romantic who wants the "Happy Ever After", not the mess that's left behind when a relationship breaks down. That's why - even though I am a real lawyer - I don't go to court, I don't write threatening letters, and I don't get involved in conflict unless you are trying to make amends and seek win-win solutions.

My practice focuses on supporting you and your business to be the best you can be - to communicate clearly, set bold boundaries, work in alignment with integrity, and prioritise care, connection and informed consent.
When we do this well, not only is your business set up thrive far into the future, you are more likely to be protected against the kinds of problems that can harm you & your clients.
Legal advice and contract drafting is, therefore, only a tiny part of what I offer.
I provide mentoring and coaching in best practice (combining ethics & integrity with boundaries & practical principles), risk management (transforming threats into opportunities to grow & evolve), handling conflict with compassion and setting your business up to leave a legacy that lasts beyond your lifetime.
You can find all of my services and products in the navigation menu at the top of the page,

or learn more about my favourite offerings below.

Please book a free 30 minute Initial Consultation.

I would love to meet you and discuss how I can help.

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Carefree Counsel ⋆ Carefree Counsel with Michelle Whitehead

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I am the lawyer who works in fairyland, supporting businesses that don't fit in boxes to create and enjoy their happy-ever-after.

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An Association Town Hall Panel Discussion on Registration facilitated by Rachel Arthur with Leah Hechtman, Anne-Louise Carlton and Daniel Clare.

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Business Model Canvas Explained (STARTUP & Entrepreneurship Tips)

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Watch This To Find What You're Truly Worth | Vishen Lakhiani

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The surprising habits of original thinkers | Adam Grant | TED

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With over 2.35 billion monthly active users, Instagram can offer your business a huge potential audience to promote your products or services. However, competition is ruthless, so it's essential to use effective strategies to get your audience to take action. Here's how to set up an effective call to action on your Instagram account!

In this article, we'll explore some best practices for creating the best Instagram CTAs and give you 30 examples for different purposes, which you can use on your profile!

What is a call to action on Instagram?

📌 Best practices for creating an Instagram CTA

Instagram has become an ocean of endless content, and making your business known to potential clients can seem like a really difficult job. That's why calls to action are so important!

First, to grab your users' attention, your calls to action for Instagram should be creative. Craft them around your target audience's needs and interests.

Then, you can follow these best practices below to further improve their effectiveness:

Use action-oriented language: use language that prompts users to take action, such as "Shop Now," "Learn More," "Sign Up," or "Swipe Up." Tell your users directly what you want them to do.

Keep it simple: keep your CTA short and to the point, and make it easy for users to understand what action you want them to take. Remember not to add too many CTAs in a single post or story: just one is enough.

Create a sense of urgency: using language that creates a sense of urgency - such as "Limited Time Offer," "Act Now," or "Don't Miss Out" - encourages people to take action faster.

Use hashtags: use relevant hashtags to help your call to action reach a wider audience on Instagram and increase engagement.

Use emojis: emojis can add personality to your CTA and make it stand out more.

Use eye-catching visuals: to support your CTAs, use high-quality images or videos that grab users' attention and convey the value of your offering.

Be consistent: use the same CTAs consistently across all of your Instagram posts and stories to build brand recognition and create a sense of familiarity.

Test and iterate: test different CTAs to see what works best for your audience, and iterate based on your results.

30 Instagram Call to Actions Examples

Your creativity will surely pay off here, but it's always useful to look at examples to take inspiration. Here we've gathered 30 calls to action for Instagram and grouped them based on the desired action you may want to achieve.

Call to action Instagram: 🚀 To boost engagement

When we talk about engagement, we refer to likes, comments, shares, etc. Basically, everything that can make your profile reach more people.

Here are a few ideas 👇

1. Double tap if you agree!

2. Leave a comment and tell us your thoughts!

3. Vote your favorite in the comments!

4. Tag a friend who would love this!

5. Share this post with someone who needs to see it!

6. Follow us for more updates

7. Swipe to learn more (for carousels)

8. Save this for later

9. DM us for exclusive [product/service/tips/link]!

10. Vote in our poll!

Call to action Instagram: 💰 To increase sales

Many businesses, especially small businesses, use Instagram as a platform to sell. In fact, Instagram provides a shopping section where you can buy directly on the platform. You can also use your account to promote special offers.

Here are some Instagram CTAs to increase your sales 👇

1. Shop now!

2. Shop now and receive [discount amount or gift]!

3. Add to cart now!

4. Don't miss out, limited time offer!

5. Get free shipping on orders over [$/€ amount]

6. Buy one, get one free

7. Limited edition - get it now before it's gone

8. Upgrade to premium for exclusive discounts and early access

9. Get [product] now and enjoy free returns

10. Get [product/service] today!

Call to action Instagram: 🎯 To drive conversions

A conversion is any desired action you want your users to take: for example, liking a post, buying something from you, or subscribing to your newsletter.

In this section, we've included some Instagram CTAs that refer to different possible desired actions.

Here are a few examples 👇

1. Check out our latest blog post: the link is in bio!

2. Want to learn more? Check the link in bio!

3. Subscribe to our newsletter for exclusive [offers/content]!

4. Get early access by signing up now!

5. Claim your discount code

6. Register now for our event

7. Head to our stories to learn more

8. Be ready to take a screenshot (this one works especially for Instagram Reels)

9. Book now!

10. Download our app now!

Instagram is a great way to reach new customers!

Here's how you can use Instagram for lead generation

Read also

About us

Attorney-level solutions to make your websites and apps compliant with the law across multiple countries and legislations.
www.iubenda.com

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Mastering the Call to Action on Instagram: Best Practices and Examples

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We'll explore some best practices for creating the best call to action on Instagram and give you 30 examples that you can use on your profile

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BioPharma Scientific

SuperFood Supplements with Better Absorption, Purity and Taste. Read More...

Sunpab

Sunpab Health offers quality natural health solutions. Read More...

The Full Range

From Orthoplex White Lable, Nutrition Care & BioMedica to Mediherb, Eagle and everything you could want in between. Read More...

Welcome to Ariya Health Services

Ariya Health is a National Wholesale Distributor specialising in high quality Practitioner Only Products. We are and always have been a family owned and operated business which supports health practitioners in clinic.

Far North Queensland Nutritionals had been operating in North Queensland for over 20 years, however, as our business expanded nationally, it became evident that we had outgrown our previous business name.

We decided to go with a name that is very special to us "ARIYA". Ariya comes from the Buddhist word meaning, "noble, excellent." which we felt would, in a word, describe our endeavour to bring this to our daily practice within the industry.

We are bringing a face back to our industry by offering good old fashioned service, reliability and a mutual respect between our clients and ourselves, built on a foundation of support, understanding, honesty and integrity.

We look forward to growing the health industry with you!

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BioPharma Scientific SuperFood Supplements with Better Absorption, Purity and Taste. Read More... Sunpab Sunpab Health offers quality natural health solutions. Read More... The Full Range From Orthoplex White Lable, Nutrition Care & BioMedica to Mediherb, Eagle and everything you could want in between. Read More...

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How you can use impostor syndrome to your benefit | Mike Cannon-Brookes

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Free all-in-one practice management system for Australian natural healthcare practitioners. In-built payment processing, video calls, online intake forms & more.

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How to Write a Value Proposition (+ 6 Modern Examples) - Help Scout

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We’ve demystified how to write a value proposition so you can ensure that your hard work manifests in value for your customers.

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Tip: If you’re affected by market changes, we recommend planning weekly rather than monthly or quarterly until markets stabilise. Keyword Planner’s forecasts are r

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To be successful in business you must be able to attract and retain customers. Learning about your customers and offering products and services which meet their needs is an essential aspect of marketing.

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To be successful in business you must be able to attract and retain customers. Learning about your customers and offering products and services which meet their needs is an essential aspect of marketing.

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Start with why -- how great leaders inspire action | Simon Sinek | TEDxPugetSound

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https://www.tammyguest.com/

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National Code of Conduct for Healthcare Workers

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National Code of Conduct for Healthcare Workers

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The purpose of the National Code of Conduct, also referred to as the National Code or code-regulation regime, is to protect the public by setting minimum standards of conduct and practice for all unregistered health care workers who provide a health service. It will set national standards against which disciplinary action can be taken and if necessary a prohibition order issued, in circumstances where a health care worker's continued practice presents a serious risk to public health and safety.

The vast majority of health care workers practice in a safe, competent and ethical manner. However there is a small proportion who present a serious risk to the public because they are incompetent or impaired, or engage in exploitative, predatory or illegal conduct such that if they were a registered health practitioner, their registration would be cancelled and their right to practice withdrawn.
Contact Information
It will be up to each state and territory to examine how the National Code of Conduct for health care workers is implemented and progressed. For further information, please email your jurisdiction:

Victoria: workforceregulation@dhhs.vic.gov.au

South Australia: HealthPolicyLegislation@sa.gov.au

Western Australia: mail@hadsco.wa.gov.au

Northern Territory: ocmo.doh@nt.gov.au

Queensland: national_workforce@health.qld.gov.au

New South Wales: hccc@hccc.nsw.gov.au

Australian Capital Territory: healthworkforceregulation@act.gov.au

Tasmania: grasp@dhhs.tas.gov.au
Documents

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National Code of Conduct for health care workers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The purpose of the National Code of Conduct, also referred to as the National Code or code-regulation regime, is to protect the public by setting minimum standards of conduct and practice for all unregistered health care workers who provide a health service.

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See also 'Workshop-Business Model Canvas'

What's the Business Model Canvas?

If you're already familiar, you can skip to the next section, ' How do I get started?'.

The Business Model Canvas (BMC) gives you the structure of a business plan without the overhead and the improvisation of a 'back of the napkin' sketch without the fuzziness (and coffee rings).

The Canvas has nine elements:

Together these elements provide a pretty coherent view of a business' key drivers-

1. Customer Segments: Who are the customers? What do they think? See? Feel? Do?

2. Value Propositions: What's compelling about the proposition? Why do customers buy, use?

3. Channels: How are these propositions promoted, sold and delivered? Why? Is it working?

4. Customer Relationships: How do you interact with the customer through their 'journey'?

5. Revenue Streams: How does the business earn revenue from the value propositions?

6. Key Activities: What uniquely strategic things does the business do to deliver its proposition?

7. Key Resources: What unique strategic assets must the business have to compete?

8. Key Partnerships: What can the company not do so it can focus on its Key Activities?

9. Cost Structure: What are the business' major cost drivers? How are they linked to revenue?

The Canvas is popular with entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs for business model innovation. Fundamentally, I find it delivers three things:

1. Focus: Stripping away the 40+ pages of 'stuff' in a traditional business plan, I've seen users of the BMC improve their clarify and focus on what's driving the business (and what's non-core and getting in the way).

2. Flexibility: It's alot easier to tweak the model and try things (from a planning perspective) with something that's sitting on a single page.

3. Transparency: Your team will have a much easier time understanding your business model and be much more likely to buy in to your vision when it's laid out on a single page.

How do I get started?

The first time you engage with the canvas, I recommend printing it out or projecting it on a whiteboard and going to town (see below for a PDF). Fill out the elements for your business and then ask yourself 'Does this make sense?' 'What are the most important linkages and components of the model?'

If you're ready to put together something a little more formal (for distribution, presentation, etc.) here's a Google App's template you can copy or download as MSFT PowerPoint:

LINK TO THE DOWNLOADABLE TEMPLATE

If the canvas is working for you, you'll probably end up editing it a lot and presenting it, so there are a few options below for documenting your canvas in an editable format:

Good for...
Brainstorming alone or in a small group

Documenting the Canvas in Google Doc's or MS Office (PowerPoint)

Documenting a canvas (if you have a Mac & Omnigraffle)

This is a nice tool and very robust.

By the way......
You can take any of these and project them on to a whiteboard for group sessions

This uses the presentation app in Google Doc's, which does a pretty good job of exporting to PowerPoint.LINK TO INSTRUCTIONS

This one uses layering to manage the canvas LINK TO INSTRUCTIONS

This one needs a little more set up but has lots of features

*Omnigraffle a popular diagramming program for the Mac. It has a fairly easy to use layering environment which you may find handy as you want to tinker with and produce different views of the canvas. You can try Omnigraffle for free (the basic paid version is $99).

What if I want more structure to work through this?

If you'd like a little more structure, the link below will take you to a related curriculum item that has workshop slides, prep. items, and agenda.
LINK TO WORKSHOP PAGE
Otherwise, the next sections (10 steps) offer a tutorial on how to use the template. The closing sections describe how to use the Google Doc's/PowerPoint and Omnigraffle templates.

Step 1 (of 10): Customer Segments

For purposes of using the canvas you should make sure you can answer these questions:
1. Segment Dimensions
Do you have a single or multi-sided market? If you have a multi-sided market you'll have at least as many segments as you have sides. An example of such a market is a media property like CNN.com: they have readers on the one side and advertisers on the other.
2. Segment Composition
If the segment dimensions are the 'macro' analysis of your customer base, then looking within each segment at individual customer types as 'Personas' is the 'micro'. As with economics, this is where most of action happens. You should be able to visualize these Personas- what kind of shoes do they wear? And you should understand what they think, see, feel, and do in your product area. Be sure to list both buyers and users of your product (many Personas will be both). For coaching on this, check out: Tutorial- Personas.
3. Problems, Needs, Habits & Current Alternatives
What job are you doing for the customer? What need are you fulfilling? There are no new behaviors- make sure that you can identify an existing need/problem and identify specific alternatives that your customer uses today. If you're not sure, go out and observe, talk to some representative people. You'll want to be able to clearly link your Value Propositions back to these in the next section.

Output: a list of Personas, organized by Customer Segment if you have more than one segment. I recommend trying to prioritize them- Who would you pitch first if you could only pitch one? Who next? And so forth...

Notes: If you're spending a lot of time on this first item, that's OK (and it's probably good). The Canvas is a tool, not a strategy and not all the nine blocks are equal. The pairing of Customer Segments and Value Propositions is really the 'independent variable' that should be driving everything else in your business model. When I use the Canvas in my Venture Design classes, we usually spend all of the first session (plus time for field research) on Customer Segments and Value Propositions.

Step 2 (of 10): Value Propositions

Which of the Problems or Needs that you identified in your Personas are you fulfilling? What is unique about your Value Propositions and why does your customer prefer them to their Current Alternatives? You may have a whole lot of these- and that's fine. When you're getting going with this, jot them all done on a whiteboard, index card, Post-It, etc. But then rank them and you'll probably want to winnow out all but the most critical. What things do you do that actually cause a customer to pick you over a competitor or alternative?

For example, at Leonid, an enterprise software company I founded, we thought our largest customers worked with us because of the cost savings we offered and our knowledge about best practices. It turned out that was mostly wrong- reducing their time and risk to get new services to market was the most important. It's not that the other things weren't important, but they weren't the top Value Proposition. That made a difference on how we sold the product and how we focused on operationalizing it for customers.

Once you've isolated these, try mapping them to the Customer Segments; it will look something like this:

LINK TO THE DOWNLOADABLE TEMPLATE

This mapping says 'We have 3 personas. Persona 1 cares about VP 1 & 2. Persona 2 cares about VP 2; Persona 3 cares about VP3. (One segment only so segments not noted)'.

Output: a prioritized list of Value Propositions and linkages from each Personas to the VP's relevant to them.

Notes: Again, this pairing is the key driver for most business models and if you want more on how to describe and discovery what to put in this part of the canvas, I recommend this: Tutorial- Personas.

Maybe you feel like you're in good shape on understanding the customer's world but you don't have any validation on whether the Value Propositions are clicking because this is a new venture? If you're not sure, that's OK and good for you for acknowledging the uncertainty! It's the responsible thing to do. The key is to write down those assumptions, prioritize them, and figure out the quickest and cheapest way to prove or disprove them. That's what Lean/Startup is about and there are resources here to help you with that, if you'd like- Tutorial: Lean Startup.

Step 3 (of 10): Channels

Channels includes entities you use to communicate your proposition to your segments, as well as entities through which you sell product and later service customers (see AIDAOR journey below). For example, if you sell bulbs for light houses and there's a website all light house attendants purchase equipment, that site is a sales Channel. If you use Google AdWords, that's a Channel, too (for getting attention). If you use a third party company to service the bulbs when they break, that's also a Channel.

Output: a list of important Channels, linked to Personas or Segments if they differ substantially. Make notes on what steps are relevant for each- promotion, sales, service, etc. See Note this section for more structure on this.

Notes: Channels and the next item, Customer Relationships, define your interface with the Customer. It's important to think all the way through the customer 'journey' in specific terms. For most businesses, the way they get a customer's attention is different than the way they onboard them or support them over the long term. For this, I recommend the AIDA.OR framework (attention-interest-desire-action-onboarding-retention) and storyboarding your way through it. Here's a post explaining all that- Storyboarding AIDA(OR). If you don't want to do the storyboards, I recommend at least making notes about your customer journey through the AIDA(OR) steps.

Another consideration is whether your channels will give you enough visibility into the user, including, for example, a way to follow up with users. Not sure? Document your assumptions Lean Startup style and figure out how you'll quickly prove or disprove them.

Step 4 (of 10): Customer Relationships

How does the customer interact with you through the sales and product lifecycle? Do they have a dedicated personal contact they see? Call? Is all the interaction over the web? Do they never see you at all but instead talk to a Channel? A few litmus test questions you may want to ask yourself at this point:
- Can the Value Proposition be delivered to the Customer this way? All the way through from promotion, to sale, to post-sale service? (See AIDAOR above on this.)
- Can you make the numbers work?
- Is there a premium support product you need to create/test? Many companies, like Apple, have rejected the false choice of 'Do we provide phone support or not?' instead offering personal support for a reasonable charge.

Output: a description of Customer Relationships, with notes if they differ across Customers (between Segments or among Personas within a Segment) or across the customer journey.

Notes: If you're a startup, be sure to document and review critical assumptions here. Also, the focal items are in a kind of specific order- you should validate your Segments and their relationship to the Propositions above all else. If this means you provide personal support in the early days (a 'concierge test' in Lean Startup terms) to do discovery and validation of Segments and Propositions, that's OK. You can subsequently test the Customer Relationship models. (Here's a post on using consulting as a concierge vehicle in B2B if you want more detail: Consulting as B2B Concierge Vehicle).

Step 5 (of 10): Revenue Streams

I won't bore you with proclamations about the importance of revenue- you get it. If you have an existing business, this will be self-evident.

At this point, you should map Segments to Propositions to Revenue Streams. The example below says 'Revenue stream 1 is driven by Persona 1′s involvement with Propositions 1 & 2; Revenue Stream 2 is driven by Persona 2′s involvement with Proposition 2; and Revenue Stream 3 with Persona 3′s involvement with Proposition 3.' That's relatively diverse- yours may be much simpler and that's fine.

Output: a list of Revenue Streams, linked (mutually) to Personas (or Segments if the mappings are the same within a set of Personas) and Value Propositions

Notes: If you have a startup or are re-engineering the business, this is a time to look at where you're driving revenue and whether it aligns with the rest of your focal points. Are you charging on value? Perceived value? They say everyone loves their banker; hates their lawyer. Why is that? Is there an actionable analog in your business?

Congratulations on making it halfway! At this point, you may want to step back and look at the picture you've created about your Offering and Customers. The next four steps deal with your 'Infrastructure', the plumbing you need to execute:

Step 6 (of 10): Key Activities

These are the crucial things the business needs to do to deliver on its propositions and make the rest of the business work- for example, if selling through 3 rd parties is part of the model, then activity around channel management is probably pretty important.

For a product-driven business, this probably includes ongoing learning about users and new techniques to build better product. If you're focused on doing a bunch of things for a particular set of customers (ex: comprehensive IT for law offices), this probably includes maintaining superior expertise on the segment(s) and creating or acquiring products and services that are a good fit, whatever that entails. For an infrastructure business (ex: electric utility), it probably includes keeping the infrastructure working reliably and making it more efficient.

You'll then want to consider how the Key Activities (and/or Key Resources) drive your Value Propositions:

Outputs: a list of Key Activities linked to your business' Value Propositions.

Notes: One question this analysis should raise for you is whether or not certain Activities and Resources are actually core, actually focal to your business, something you'll want to think through .

Step 7 (of 10): Key Resources

Key resources are the strategic assets you need in place, and you need in place to a greater or more targeted degree than your competitors. The Business Model Canvas proposes that there are three core business types: product, scope, and infrastructure. These tend to have similar types of Key Resources.

The following diagram describes how Key Activities drive the accrual of Key Resources:

Outputs: a list of Key Resources linked to your business' Key Activities.

Notes: Product-driven businesses have a differentiated product of some sort. Rovio, the company that makes the popular app Angry Birds, is such a company. Key Resources in product-driven businesses are typically key talent in critical areas of expertise and accumulated intellectual property related to their offering.

Scope-driven businesses create some synergy around a particular Customer Segment. For example, if you started a business that would take care of all the IT needs for law firms, that would be a scope-driven business. These businesses typically have key knowledge about their segment, a repeatable set of processes, and sometimes infrastructure, like service centers.

Infrastructure-driven businesses achieve economies of scale in a specific, highly repeatable area. Telecommunications is traditionally an infrastructure business. Retailers focused on retail, like Walgreens or Costco, are primarily infrastructure-driven businesses. The Key Resources for this type of business are, you guessed it, various types of physical or virtual infrastructure.

Let's take a single product category: diapers. The Honest Company or another innovating around compostable or otherwise more environmentally friendly diapers would be a product-driven take on the category. Procter & Gamble which has a cradle-to-grave strategy for providing consumer products is a scope-based take; so are various baby-focused retailers. Kimberly-Clark (wood pulp) or DuPont (chemicals and polymers) are both infrastructure-based takes: diapers is just another way to sell something they produce at scale with relatively little differentiation.

Step 8 (of 10): Key Partnerships

At this point, hopefully the Canvas has helped you sharpen and articulate your business' focal points. What Activities and Resources are important but not aligned with what's uniquely strategy for you? What's outside of your business type? Could partners do some of those? Why? Which?

I recommend mapping Key Partners to Key Activities. If an activity is key, it's still part of your business model. This is a way to denote which specific Partners are handling various Key Activities for you.

Output: a list of Key Partnerships with notes on their relationship to Key Activities.

Step 9 (of 10): Cost Structure

You've worked to understand how your Key Activities drive your propositions and hence your revenue. How do they drive costs? Are those costs well aligned with the key Value Propositions? Are the costs more fixed or variable as you test different business models? Are they more linear with your scaling or more fixed? You'll want to have these in mind as you tweak your model.

For purposes of linking things together, I'd look at how your Key Activities drive your Cost Structure:

If there are major cost components that don't map to a Key Activity, I'd take a closer look at those costs.

Output: a list of Cost Structure elements with notes on their relationship to Key Activities.
Congratulations- you have a working canvas! The section below offers a few analytical ideas and suggestions for next steps.
Step 10 (of 10): Applications, Analysis & Next Steps

Core Applications
The most core and obvious applications of the Canvas are to ask:
- Does it make sense?
- Could it be better?
- Does the rest of my team understand and agree? Have additional ideas?
- (rinse and repeat at least quarterly)

Competitiveness
The canvas does a good job of helping you figure out your business, which is a good place to start. You also want to look at the competitive environment and think about if and how you have/maintain a long term competitive advantage.

For this, I like Michael Porter's Five Forces framework ( Wikipedia Page; see also Chapter 2 of ' Starting a Tech Business '). Try walking through the Five Forces for your company and then bounce back to your canvas. How does it all hang together?

Next Steps
Every business is a work in progress (sorry, I try to avoid saying things like that but it seemed to fit here). As you go through the canvas, you may encounter areas that give you trouble. The table below summarizes a few of the most common that I see in my work as a mentor and coach:

You're having trouble crystallizing your Customer Segments and Value Propositions

I recommend the material here on Personas. See also Chapters 1-3 of ' Starting a Tech Business '. This will help you create a deep, actionable understanding of your customers.

You're looking for a more end-to-end view of how to design the venture- customer discovery, Lean-style experimentation, product design, product development.

The Venture Design materials provide a more comprehensive view of how to approach a new product or venture.

You're looking for a systematic way to organize your work on the venture over a period of weeks.

Startup Sprints is a popular program for stepping through a new product and/or venture. It's organized around agile-style iterations which you can size according to your pace.

You're not sure how much product to build (vs. license, leverage, etc.) or how to put it together.

See Chapter 4 of 'Starting a Tech Business'. This will help you think about what you need to build from a functional perspective so you can look at the available technology objectively and make strategic design decisions.

You're not sure where and how to partner.

See Chapter 8 of 'Starting a Tech Business'. This will give you a framework to use in partnership evaluations and a supplemental example.

Want to make innovation an everyday thing?

Using the Google Doc's/PowerPoint Template

If you're not familiar with it, Google Doc's is a web-based office suite, similar to MS Office. If you have a gmail account, you can access it (no guarantees- that was the case last time I checked).

First, you'll want to link to the template file: BUSINESS MODEL CANVAS TEMPLATE IN GOOGLE DOC'S.

Once you're accessed the file, you can make make it your own by going to the File menu and either 'Make a copy...', creating a copy in your own Google App's domain or you can use the 'Download as...' option to download it as PowerPoint (and a few other formats).

Probably the most key thing here is that I set it up so you edit the list of Canvas items (Segments, Relationships, etc.) in the Slide Master. I know what you're thinking- I hate those Master things and I never use them. Generally, neither do I. But in this case it's a good way to achieve some rudimentary layering, allowing you to do show things on top of the Canvas without having to recopy all the elements. You'll see what I mean on the file. The key thing is that to edit the list of Canvas items: Go to the 'View' menu, then go to 'Master' and edit the first slide you see under the Layout label over on the left:

Last note: The lines with multiple bends that you see are called a 'Polyline' in Google Doc's. If you click the downward arrow on the line item in the menu bar, you'll see it.

What's your experience with the Canvas? How have you used it? What worked? What didn't? Please consider posting a comment!

Want to make innovation an everyday thing?

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The 20 Minute Business Plan: Business Model Canvas Made Easy

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See also 'Workshop-Business Model Canvas' If you're already familiar, you can skip to the next section, ' How do I get started?'. The Business Model Canvas (BMC) gives you the structure of a business plan without the overhead and the improvisation of a 'back of the napkin' sketch without the fuzziness (and coffee rings).

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About the HR policies and procedures manual

A human resources (HR) manual is a document that outlines your rules, responsibilities and standard processes for anything related to your workforce.

Give all existing and new employees access to your manual to promote consistency and to ensure all are aware of your rules, as well as their obligations and entitlements as your employee.

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hr; human resources; policies; procedures; processes; manual; template; resource; document; tool; rules; restrictions; responsibilities; guide

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HR policies and procedures manual template

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A human resources (HR) manual is a document that outlines your rules, responsibilities and standard processes for anything related to your workforce. Give all existing and new employees access to your manual to promote consistency and to ensure all are aware of your rules, as well as their obligations and entitlements as your employee.

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You don't need to be a fortune teller to guess which social media trends are poised to take off in 2023. All you need is data.

Combining performance and consumer preference data can create a vivid picture of the year ahead. We're not talking about which TikTok audios will blow up in a few months. We're talking about what's driving audience behavioral patterns and where your brand fits in the mix.

If you're a part of the 76% of organizations that rely on social data to inform other departments, you're already halfway there. In this article, we'll cover the need-to-know stats driving new social media trends forward in 2023.

1. "Edutainment" content will rule

Edutainment isn't just for kids anymore. A few select industries have tapped into the value of creating entertaining, informative content. In 2023, everyone will get in on the fun.

Last year, brands in the fintech space found massive success in creating thoughtful, save-worthy content. To find out what we mean, turn to Chime's TikTok account. Their content strikes a balance between jokes about relatable financial woes and seriously helpful tips on money management.

Short-form video's rise in popularity fosters the perfect conditions for fun facts, tutorials and explainers to thrive on social. No wonder educational content is on most marketers' minds when partnering with creators.

Brand Takeaway: This is your opportunity to demystify a common industry misconception or provide the perfect life hack featuring your product. Comb through your FAQs and inbound social messages to find questions or discussion topics. Brainstorm how you might address those using a TikTok or Instagram Reel.

2. Businesses will put more money behind video production

At this point, it's safe to say that video isn't going anywhere.

When TikTok was still an emerging platform, it made sense for businesses to task video creation duties as an additional responsibility to their social media team. Now that the average American is watching 80 minutes of TikTok every day, business leaders realize that it's no longer "emerging". It's here.

To ensure their brand can stand out in this new social media landscape, forward-thinking companies will invest more in video production equipment and staff. So you'll probably be getting a few extra hands to help with video editing, direction and brand storytelling.

Brand Takeaway: If the discussion isn't already in motion, it's time to start petitioning for a new team member now. Help your management team understand the risks that come with failing to expand your social media team at the right time. Then, paint a specific vision for what will be possible with additional video production resources.

3. BeReal will be a turning point for brands

BeReal was one of the hottest social media trends of 2022. The new kid on the block delighted users and mystified marketers. After all, what are we supposed to do with an app that doesn't incentivize its constant use?

I bloody love BeReal, it's so nice posting on a app to genuinely connect with people and see what everyone's doing and not worry about engagement 🥹

- Talia Mar (@TaliaMar) September 1, 2022

While many will attempt to figure out how to market their brand on the network, you should use this as an opportunity to zoom out. Understanding why vertical networks, closed communities and apps like BeReal are thriving while consumer social media fatigue rises will be crucial to shaping your strategy.

A lot could happen in the coming months. For all we know, BeReal could introduce advertising features for brands. What really matters is figuring out what authenticity looks like for your brand and leaning in.

Brand Takeaway: In 2023, brand authenticity will make or break your business on social. Shift your focus away from fleeting viral trends and dig into what matters to your audience and business.

4. Businesses will experiment with emerging (and re-emerging) networks

Speaking of emerging platforms, keep tabs on some of the new social networks. Chances are, you'll be creating a new brand account on at least one of them sometime in 2023.

In 2022, shake-ups at core networks left consumers feeling deprioritized in favor of profits and business dealings. Now, many are on the hunt for their next favorite corner of the internet.

Networks like Mastodon, Tumblr, Hive and Discord have become notable rising stars in a shifting social media landscape. As audiences continue experimenting with these new playgrounds, brands will be able to identify what's a passing trend and what's sticking around.

Brand Takeaway: There are a few ways to figure out whether or not your audience is adding a new network to their social media mix.

First, try running a poll on your most active social media account to gauge interest in a specific network. Then, use a social listening tool to see the full conversation surrounding the network. Dig into sentiment and demographic data to determine if it positively aligns with your audience preferences.

5. The creator economy will continue to blossom

According to video analytics firm Tubular Labs, creator and influencer viewership will hit 10 trillion views per month across all platforms in 2023. In 2022, influencer content was watched 13.2 times more than media and brand content.

If you don't leverage creator marketing over the next 12 months, you're missing out on a major opportunity.

Marketers across industries collaborate with creators to generate more engagement, strengthen social communities and reach new audiences. As the playing field becomes more diverse and focused, more brands will be able to find and connect with creators that operate within their target market.

Brand Takeaway: If you need help finding your next great creator partnership, start within your community. Search through your followers, superfans, customers and partners. Chances are you'll find a crop of individuals with growing audiences that will be thrilled to work with your brand.

6. Employee advocacy will be the social media trend to talk about

In 2023, brands will tap their workforce to become creators.

Employee advocacy has been a hidden social media marketing gem for quite some time. This year, thanks to a costly paid ad environment and declining organic reach, it will step into the spotlight.

Companies that have already implemented advocacy programs are seeing an increase in brand awareness and qualified job applicants, on top of gaining more control over brand messaging and thought leadership.

As more success stories come to light, advocacy will become the go-to method of building a brand presence within an industry.

Brand Takeaway: Use this program launch checklist to brainstorm on what advocacy might look like at your company. Narrow in on what goals you'd like to achieve and how you'll measure your success as you execute on your strategy.

7. How brands talk about sustainability will change

For the past few years, brands have proudly disclosed their environmental sustainability goals to meet the interests of conscious consumers. Now, many are opting for a quieter approach.

This practice- known as "green-hushing" -comes as a response to fears of being called out for greenwashing. Numerous nonprofit watchdog organizations are dedicated to calling out faux-sustainability claims. Overstating your brand's practices can land an entire business in hot water.

4% of global CO2 emissions come from the clothing industry + 93% of fashion companies don't pay livable wages. This industry profits off the backs of 70 million underpaid mostly-women, garment workers as billionaire fashion execs get richer. Donate today: https://t.co/fu6UeCboWr pic.twitter.com/cVguUqXAE0

- Remake (@remakeourworld) November 29, 2022

Brand Takeaway: Treat every post that discusses your business's corporate social responsibility practices as a PR announcement. Vet the copy and claims with a PR and CSR rep to make sure what you're saying is accurate and to identify any potential risks that post presents.

8. Social customer care will become a vehicle for surprise and delight marketing

When people reach out to a brand on social media, the best-case scenario is typically a timely response. Now, savvy brands are raising those expectations.

I love that you remembered me whining about this over two years ago 😁

- Thomas Frank (@TomFrankly) December 22, 2022

According to all known laws
of aviation, there is no way a bee
should be able to fly.
Its wings are too small to get
its fat little body off the ground.
The bee, of course, flies anyway because bees don't care what humans think is impossible.
Yellow, black. Yellow, black.

- tumblr dot com the website and app (@tumblr) December 28, 2022

Brands like Notion, Tumblr and more are going above and beyond in inbound message responses to gain organic social marketing traction. Whether they make you laugh or simply feel heard, it creates a delightful experience for the customer and for everyone else that sees the brand response in their feed.

These proactive marketing strategies drive more personal connections, creating new fans in the process.

Brand Takeaway: To create these personalized customer care experiences, you'll need an integrated social media marketing solution. For example, Sprout's partnership with Salesforce provides social customer care agents with a 360-degree view of a customer's history with your business from within the Sprout platform.

This visibility allows teams to quickly reference a customer profile to deliver a more personal, thoughtful response online.
Start your free Sprout trial
9. Social and legal will be the strategic duo no one saw coming

Relationships between social media and legal teams have had their pain points in the past. But, if brands want to hop on the latest social media trends in 2023, they'll need an excellent working relationship between the two.

As content formats and social media memes continue to pull from existing intellectual property, your legal team is the only thing that stands between your brand account and the risk of copyright infringement.

It may not be the most exciting trend in social, but it will have major implications on how your brand shows up online.

Brand Takeaway: Meet with your legal team to review and update your social media governance policy. Remember: Their goal will be to mitigate any potential risk, so they may try to tack on some cumbersome preventative measures. However, you understand the channel more than anyone else. Push back where you need to and make this a learning opportunity for both teams.

10. Social commerce will get up and dust itself off

Social commerce was the social media trend on everyone's mind late 2020 and in early 2021. Then, mounting recession fears promptly pushed it into a backseat. Networks rolled back features, brands made strategic pivots and we all braced ourselves for whatever lies ahead.

And then people kept shopping.

The end of 2022 saw a record-breaking Black Friday/Cyber Monday, a surge in spending on luxury goods, and the return of "haul" posts on TikTok and Instagram Reels. Despite a gloomy economic outlook, people are still spending on their favorite must-haves and doing their purchasing research on social.

Brand Takeaway: Get up to speed on social commerce features by network. You can complete tons of quick optimizations on your profiles to ensure a speedy checkout experience for when a follower finally becomes a customer.

The 2022 holiday season spurred some outstanding metaverse activations from brands like PacSun, American Eagle and Klarna.

These campaigns have given brands a taste of what's possible with metaverse technology. More than half of marketers anticipate investing at least a quarter of their budgets into a metaverse/AR/VR social strategy, and 2023 is when we'll see the fruits of that labor.

These activations will provide learnings for brands that have yet to experiment with the latest frontier in social.

Brand Takeaway: Now's the time to get up to speed on how to join the Metaverse. There's a bit of a learning curve here, so give yourself time and take inspiration from brands you admire.

What social media trends are you most excited for?

Trends are the spice of social media. They ensure no work week, month or year is the same. Isn't that the best part of working in social?

If you want to learn more about how you can embed these trends into a rock-solid annual plan, check out this article on developing a social media marketing strategy. Use it to help define the goals and tactics that will bring you success this year and beyond.

Ronnie Gomez

Ronnie Gomez is a Content Strategist at Sprout Social where she writes to help social professionals learn and grow at every stage of their careers. When she's not writing, she's reading or looking for Chicago's next best place to get a vanilla oat milk latte.

Read all articles by Ronnie Gomez

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11 social media trends you need to know in 2023

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Learn about the latest social media trends dominating in 2023 so you can stay ahead of competitors and showcase your brand where it counts.

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Search engine optimization takes time and money. If you're short on time but have the money, an agency or consultant is an option. If you're short on money, use these do-it-yourself tips to boost your site's organic rankings.

1. Improve Title Tags

Look at your highest-level category pages. My research shows that ecommerce category pages should drive up to 32-percent more organic search traffic than product pages.

Sometimes a small, common-sense tweak to a title tag can make a big difference, especially if your ecommerce platform generates default titles based on the labels in your taxonomy and the site's name. This can result in title tags such as "Women's - [Your Site]."

Do your title tags make sense? Can you make them more specific or relevant? For example, adding "shoes" to the title tag above could be a common-sense tweak: "Women's Shoes - [Your Site]."

2. Master Keyword Research

A sound SEO program relies on keyword research to:

Know the words and phrases of real searchers,

Determine which keywords to target,

Gauge demand for your products.

Marketers tend to use the jargon of their industry and brand. Don't assume that you know what consumers want and how they search - do the research.

The best keyword tools offer a demand score for each theme. Google Keyword Planner is the free, go-to keyword research tool, though you'll need an active Google Ads campaign to access the most useful data.

Most other quantitative keyword tools require a paid subscription. But some still suggest keywords, for free, without providing data on popularity.

3. Understand Your Competition

Identify your organic-search competitors - not necessarily the sites that sell exact products and services, but also informational sites and massive retailers that compete for the same phrases. Wikipedia, Vogue magazine, and Walmart are your competitors if they're taking up room on the search results page. Ask yourself:

What are they doing well in organic search?

What content themes do they include that you don't?

How do they structure their site to target valuable keywords?

How do they engage shoppers?

Also, study their reviews and social media activity to identify products or site info that could improve your own offerings and user experience.

4. Map Keywords

Knowing what consumers want and the search phrases they use, map keywords to each page on your site.

Create a spreadsheet of all critical pages in your site's navigation and map unique primary and secondary keywords to each. Create new pages for unassigned high-value keywords.

Use long-tail keyword themes that drive fewer searches and are typically more specific - such as "how to get red wine out of carpet" or "ex9116 exalt 18v battery charger" - in blog posts, FAQ pages, and product pages.

5. Optimize Your Site

With your keyword map in-hand, the next step is implementing on-page SEO, including:

Updating the content on the pages to include the keywords;

Creating new pages (for unassigned keywords) with text and, potentially, graphics, audio, and video;

Launching a new, keyword-rich section, such a blog or education portal.

Focus on the relevance of the textual elements of each page - the title tags, meta descriptions, headings, body content - to the keyword themes that searchers use.

6. Produce Regular Content

Create ongoing content tailored to your audience. You don't have to kick out a new blog post or other content every day. That's unrealistic for many ecommerce sites. Just publish unique content at least monthly, if not weekly. Consistency is key.

"Content" does not need to be only text. Use illustrations, product photos, how-to videos, or any other content that helps shoppers. Delivering value is vital. If the content doesn't fill a need or engage your customers and prospects, you've wasted your time and theirs.

7. Boost Link Equity

Link equity is the quantity of high-quality, topically-relevant sites that link to yours. Link equity and contextual relevance are the top two organic ranking factors. Combined, link acquisition and content marketing increase your link equity naturally.

Content marketing for SEO involves creating, say, articles, videos, and podcasts that people want to share and link to. As the number of people exposed to the content increases, so does the potential for links.

Link acquisition, on the other hand, involves:

Identifying high-value pages or sites that are topically relevant;

Figuring out how to make your content valuable to that site owner; and

Reaching out directly to request a link or an arrangement that would lead to a link, such as a guest post or interview.

Google advises site owners to build compelling websites that users want to tell their friends about. This content-engagement approach to SEO is Google's answer to, "How do I get more links ethically?"

The keyword research in step 2, above, comes in handy as it provides an idea of the most influential and best-ranking sites to approach.

8. Build Your Social Media Network

Social media enables you to connect with your audience. Nurturing those relationships increases the exposure of your content and, thus, the likelihood that some will blog about it or link to it.

Consumer-facing businesses will likely find the most value in Facebook and Twitter. B2B companies usually focus on Twitter and LinkedIn, with Facebook in the mix as well.

If you have attractive images, add Instagram or Pinterest to the list. If you're open to creating videos, definitely use YouTube.

9. Understand Analytics

You can't optimize what you don't measure. SEO requires a basic understanding of Google Analytics (or equivalent) to know which pages to optimize and which are performing strongly.

In Google Analytics, go to Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels. Click on "Organic Search" and then change the Primary Dimension to "Landing Page." You can then analyze your SEO performance.

Beware of the "Keyword" dimension, though. No analytics program can accurately track which keywords referred organic search traffic to your site. Only the analytics for each search engine, such as Google Search Console's Performance report, can do that.

10. Read SEO Posts

Study an SEO guide such as my " SEO How-to" series. Other helpful and free beginner SEO guides include Moz's " The Beginner's Guide to SEO," Search Engine Land's " Guide to SEO," and Google's " Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide."

For quick updates on SEO changes, try two YouTube channels: Moz's " Whiteboard Friday" and " Google Webmasters."

Also, read trusted SEO blogs.

11. Ask Questions

If you are stuck, ask questions in one of the many SEO communities. Google's Webmaster Forum is a helpful place to start. Participants include Google employees, SEO professionals, marketers, and developers. Other popular forums are WebmasterWorld Forum and Moz's Q&A Forum. Facebook and LinkedIn also have SEO communities.

Twitter is a popular vehicle to ask the SEO community for advice. Make sure to include a hashtag such as #seo, #seoquestion to increase your chances of being seen by someone who can help.

Never forget, however, that there's a lot of SEO misinformation. Try to vet the source.

-

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11 Do-it-yourself SEO Tips to Save Money | Practical Ecommerce

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Search engine optimization takes time and money. If you're short on time but have the money, an agency or consultant is an option. If you're short on money, use these do-it-yourself tips to boost your site's organic rankings. Look at your highest-level category pages.

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Worldz 2017 – Daniel Flynn and the Thankyou story

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This resource sheet is provided as a guide only, and is current at the date of publication.

Changes to mandatory reporting laws are currently being considered in various jurisdictions. Individuals are encouraged to contact the relevant department or organisation to clarify requirements in their jurisdiction, or in relation to legislation. For more information and contact details, see the CFCA Resource Sheet Reporting child abuse and neglect: Information for service providers.

Overview

This resource sheet provides members of the community with information on mandatory reporting laws, which require specified people to report suspected abuse and neglect to government child protection services in Australia. It provides answers to common questions asked about mandatory reporting, outlines the challenges and benefits of mandatory reporting and covers the various mandatory reporting legislation across all Australian jurisdictions.

Introduction

Mandatory reporting laws aim to identify cases of child abuse and neglect, and to assist the individual children in these cases (Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, [Royal Commission], 2017). They were first developed in response to the largely hidden nature of child physical abuse and neglect, with the purpose of bringing cases to the attention of child welfare agencies (Mathews, 2014a). They require selected groups of people to report suspected cases of child abuse and neglect to government authorities.

In Australia, the first laws were introduced in South Australia in 1969, and these laws have since been introduced in all Australian jurisdictions (Mathews, 2014b). However, the laws are not the same across all jurisdictions. Differences exist in who has to report, what types of abuse and neglect have to be reported, the 'state of mind' that activates the reporting duty (i.e. having a concern, suspicion or belief on reasonable grounds) and who the report is made to. These differences are described and discussed in this resource sheet.

Common questions

Who has to report?

Mandatory reporting legislation generally contains lists of particular occupations that are mandated to report cases of suspected child abuse and neglect. The groups of people mandated to report range from persons in a limited number of occupations (Qld) to a more extensive list (Vic. and WA), to a very extensive list (ACT, NSW, SA and Tas.), through to every adult (NT). The occupations most commonly named as mandated reporters are those who deal frequently with children in the course of their work: teachers, early childhood education and care practitioners, doctors, nurses and police.

What types of abuse and neglect have to be reported?

Differences exist in the types of abuse and neglect that must be reported. In some jurisdictions (e.g. NSW and NT) it is mandatory to report suspicions of all five recognised types of abuse and neglect (i.e. physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, and exposure to family violence). In other jurisdictions it is mandatory to report only some of the abuse types (e.g. WA, Qld, Vic. and ACT).

In most jurisdictions the legislation generally specifies that, except for sexual abuse, it is only cases of significant abuse and neglect that must be reported. As sexual abuse should always create a suspicion of significant harm, in practical terms all suspicions of sexual abuse must be reported. While not required by the legislation, suspicions of less severe child abuse and neglect may still be referred to child and family welfare agencies.

It is important to note that the duty to report applies to suspicions that significant abuse or neglect is likely in the future, not just suspected cases of significant abuse or neglect that have already happened.

What protections are given to mandatory reporters?

In all jurisdictions, the legislation protects the mandatory reporter's identity from disclosure. In addition, the legislation provides that as long as the report is made in good faith, the reporter cannot be liable in any civil, criminal or administrative proceedings.

How does mandatory reporting legislation define a child?

Legislation in all jurisdictions except New South Wales and Victoria requires mandatory reporting in relation to all young people up to the age of 18 years. In New South Wales, the duty only applies to situations involving children aged under 16 years. In Victoria, the duty only applies to situations involving children under 17 years of age.

How does this type of mandatory reporting co-exist with other types of reporting laws?

This form of mandatory reporting is one of several different legal domains that require designated people to report specified types of child abuse. The reporting duties discussed here are located in child protection legislation in each jurisdiction. They are the major form of reporting duty - being primarily directed towards situations of multiple types of abuse and neglect by parents and caregivers (although, operationally, situations of non-familial sexual abuse will be subsumed under the reporting duty).

Accordingly, other types of reporting laws co-exist with the child protection reporting laws. These other laws appear most prominently in criminal laws and most often require reports of child sexual abuse, although they sometimes extend to serious physical abuse. These criminal law reporting duties do not exist in every jurisdiction, and where they do exist (e.g. in NSW, Vic., the ACT and NT) they have slightly different scope and details, although all require reports to be made to police.

The criminal law reporting duties require all adults in the jurisdiction to report the specified type of abuse. Other types of reporting duty are aimed at identifying institutional sexual abuse. All these different duties are discussed in recent research (Mathews, 2019).

Which mandated reports can child protection services act on?

A common assumption is that mandatory reporting requirements, the legislative grounds for child protection services intervention, and research classifications of abusive and neglectful behaviour are the same. In fact, mandatory reporting laws define the types of situations that must be reported to statutory child protection services. Legislative grounds for government intervention define the circumstances and, importantly, the threshold at which the statutory child protection service is legally able to intervene to protect a child. Researchers typically focus on defining behaviours and circumstances that can be categorised as abuse and neglect. These differences arise because each description serves a different purpose; the lack of commonality does not mean that the system is failing to work as policy makers had intended.

As such, not all reports of child abuse and neglect lead to immediate action from child protection services. A single report may not meet the threshold for intervention; however, this report grouped with other information on file (or that is yet to be collected) may meet the threshold and result in action being taken. Reports are not looked at in isolation, instead they work to form a body of information that determine if and how child protection services are legally able to intervene.

Can voluntary reports be made about abuse and neglect, even if not required by the legislation?

Any person is lawfully entitled to make a report if they are concerned for a child's welfare, even if they are not required to do so as a mandatory reporter. Anyone making a voluntary (non-mandated) report is also protected with regard to confidentiality and immunity from legal liability as outlined above.

In addition to the mandatory reporting legislation, certain professional groups (such as psychologists) and government agencies (such as education departments) may have their own occupational reporting protocols outlining the moral, ethical, professional or organisational responsibility to report. These policy-based reporting duties may be narrower, broader or the same as those officially mandated under legislation. For example, in Queensland, teachers are required to report all forms of suspected significant abuse and neglect under school policy but are only mandated to report sexual abuse and physical abuse under the legislation.

Challenges with the introduction of mandatory reporting

The introduction of mandatory reporting increases awareness of child abuse and neglect, which can result in a substantial increase in the number of reports being made to child protection services, especially in the short term (Mathews, Lee & Norman, 2016). There need to be adequate resources available to respond to any increased demand for staffing and services. Reporting trends generally stabilise several years after the introduction of a mandatory reporting duty (Mathews, Bromfield, Walsh, & Vimpani, 2015).

It is important that mandated reporters receive multidisciplinary training and accurate information to ensure that they know what cases they have to report, how to make a report containing the details needed by the child welfare agency intake team, and what cases they should not report. This training should occur pre-service and in-service. Since non-mandated reporters make a large proportion of all reports, it is also important for the public to be made aware of the appropriate extent of their responsibility. It is also essential that child and family support services be adequately resourced to respond to children and families in need of protection and assistance.

Benefits of mandatory reporting requirements

As a public policy, mandatory reporting aims to protect children from child abuse and neglect. Mathews and Bross (2008) argue that a society without a mandatory reporting system will be far less able to protect children and assist families, as many cases of child abuse and neglect will remain hidden. Comparative studies between countries with and without a mandatory reporting system have found that substantially more cases of child sexual abuse are identified in countries with a mandatory reporting system (Royal Commission, 2017). Studies in Australia support this finding (Lamond, 1989; Mathews, 2014a; Mathews, Bromfield, Walsh, Cheng, & Norman, 2017; Mathews et al., 2016). Reports by mandated reporters identify large proportions of maltreated children and result in the provision of services to many more children and families (Drake & Jonson-Reid, 2007).

Mandatory reporting also aims to increase the awareness of child abuse and neglect in professionals who work with children and overcome any reluctance to report this abuse (Cashmore, 2002). Mandatory reporting laws set acceptable standards of behaviour for the community (Australian Law Reform Commission [ALRC], 2010), affect the policies and practices of child protection services (Tomison & Tucci, 1997), and make the protection of children from abuse and neglect a professional responsibility.

Mandatory reporting legislation

Commonwealth legislation

The Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) creates a mandatory reporting duty for personnel from the Family Court of Australia, the Federal Circuit Court of Australia, the Family Court of Western Australia and other designated practitioners. This includes registrars, deputy registrars, family consultants, family counsellors, family dispute resolution practitioners, arbitrators, and lawyers independently representing children's interests. Section 67ZA(1) and (2) require that when these persons have reasonable grounds for suspecting that a child has been abused, or is at risk of being abused, and this suspicion is developed in the course of performing their duties or functions, or exercising powers, they must, as soon as practicable, notify a prescribed child welfare authority of their suspicion and its basis.

Under section 4, 'abuse' is effectively defined as including: (a) assault, including a sexual assault; (b) sexual abuse; (c) serious psychological harm, including but not limited to harm caused by the child being subjected to, or exposed to, family violence; or (d) serious neglect.

State and territory legislation

The following part sets out the various mandatory requirements for all Australian jurisdictions.

Further details and information about mandatory reporting can be obtained from the relevant statutory child protection authority in each jurisdiction. Contact and other details for each state and territory office can be found in the CFCA Resource sheet: Reporting child abuse and neglect: Information for service providers.

Australian Capital Territory

The Australian Capital Territory's mandatory reporting laws cover an extensive list of professions, and the details of the reporting requirements are provided in the table below.

Legal provisions

Section 356 of the Children and Young People Act 2008 (ACT)

Who is mandated to report?

A person who is: a doctor; a dentist; a nurse; an enrolled nurse; a midwife; a psychologist; a teacher at a school; a person authorised to inspect education programs, materials or other records used for home education of a child or young person under the Education Act 2004; a police officer; a person employed to counsel children or young people at a school; a person caring for a child at a child care centre; a person coordinating or monitoring home-based care for a family day care scheme proprietor; a public servant who, in the course of employment as a public servant, works with, or provides services personally to children and young people or families; the public advocate; an official visitor; a minister of religion, religious leader or member of the clergy of a church or religious denomination; a person who, in the course of the person's employment, has contact with or provides services to children, young people and their families and is prescribed by regulation.

What must be reported?

A belief, on reasonable grounds, that a child or young person has experienced or is experiencing sexual abuse or non-accidental physical injury; and the reasons for the belief arise from information obtained by the person during the course of, or because of, the person's work (whether paid or unpaid)

Abuse and neglect types that must be reported

New South Wales

New South Wales' mandatory reporting laws cover an extensive list of professions, and the details of the reporting requirements are provided in the table below.

Legal provisions

Sections 23 and 27 of the Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Act 1998 (NSW)

Who is mandated to report?

A person who, in the course of his or her professional work, or other paid employment, delivers health care, welfare, education, children's services, residential services or law enforcement, wholly or partly, to children.

A person who holds a management position in an organisation, the duties of which include direct responsibility for, or direct supervision of, the provision of health care, welfare, education, children's services, residential services or law enforcement, wholly or partly, to children.

A person in religious ministry, or a person providing religion-based activities to children.

A registered psychologist providing a professional service as a psychologist.

Note: Children's services means either or both of the following (subject to the regulations): (a) an education and care service within the meaning of the Children (Education and Care Services) National Law (NSW); (b) a State regulated education and care service within the meaning of the Children (Education and Care Services) Supplementary Provisions Act 2011.

What must be reported?

Suspicion on reasonable grounds, obtained during the course of or from the person's work, that a child is at risk of significant harm because of the presence to a significant extent of circumstances of: neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, risk of harm through exposure to domestic violence, and failure to engage with services after a pre-natal report.

Abuse and neglect types that must be reported

Physical abuse

Sexual abuse

Emotional/psychological abuse

Neglect

Exposure to domestic violence

Northern Territory

The Northern Territory's mandatory reporting laws apply to any person, with additional provisions covering health practitioners. The details of these reporting requirements are provided in the table below.

Legal provisions

Sections 15, 16 and 26 of the Care and Protection of Children Act 2007 (NT)

Section 26(2) of the Care and Protection of Children Act 2007 (NT)

Who is mandated to report?

Any person

A health practitioner or someone who performs work of a kind that is prescribed by regulation

What must be reported?

A belief on reasonable grounds that a child has suffered or is likely to suffer harm or exploitation

Reasonable grounds to believe a child aged 14 or 15 years has been or is likely to be a victim of a sexual offence and the age difference between the child and offender is greater than 2 years

Abuse and neglect types that must be reported

Physical abuse

Sexual abuse or other exploitation of the child

Emotional/psychological abuse

Neglect

Exposure to physical violence (e.g. a child witnessing violence between parents at home)

Queensland

Queensland has three separate pieces of mandatory reporting legislation, each covering different occupational groups and having their own reporting requirements. The details of these pieces of legislation are provided in the table below.

Legal provisions

Part 1AA, section 13F of the Child Protection Act 1999 (Qld)

Part 1AA, section 13E of the Child Protection Act 1999 (Qld)

Sections 364, 365, 365A, 366, 366A of the Education (General Provisions) Act 2006 (Qld)

Who is mandated to report?

An authorised officer, a public service employee employed in the department, a person employed in a departmental care service or licensed care service

Doctors; registered nurses; teachers; a police officer who, under a direction given by the commissioner of the police service under the Police Service Administration Act 1990, is responsible for reporting under this section; a person engaged to perform a child advocate function under the Public Guardian Act 2014; early childhood education and care professionals.

School staff

What must be reported?

A reasonable suspicion that a child in care (a child placed in the care of an entity conducting a departmental care service or a licensee) has suffered, is suffering, or is at unacceptable risk of suffering, significant harm caused by physical or sexual abuse

A reasonable suspicion that a child has suffered, is suffering or is at an unacceptable risk of suffering, significant harm caused by physical or sexual abuse; and may not have a parent able and willing to protect the child from the harm

Awareness or reasonable suspicion that a child has been or is likely to be sexually abused; and the suspicion is formed in the course of the person's employment

South Australia

South Australia's mandatory reporting laws cover an extensive list of professions, and the details of the reporting requirements are provided in the table below.

Legal provisions

Sections 17, 18, 30 and 31 of the Children and Young People (Safety) Act 2017 (SA)

Who is mandated to report?

Medical practitioners; pharmacists; registered or enrolled nurses; dentists; psychologists; police officers; community corrections officers under the Correctional Services Act 1982; social workers; ministers of religion; employees of, or volunteers in, an organisation formed for religious or spiritual purposes; teachers employed as such in a school (within the meaning of the Education and Early Childhood Services (Registration and Standards) Act 2011) or a preschool or kindergarten; employees of, or volunteers in, an organisation that provides health, welfare, education, sporting or recreational, child care or residential services wholly or partly for children and young people, being a person who - (i) provides such services directly to children and young people; or (ii) holds a management position in the organisation, the duties of which include direct responsibility for, or direct supervision of, the provision of those services to children and young people

What must be reported?

Reasonable grounds to suspect a child or young person is, or may be, at risk; and the suspicion was formed in the course of the person's employment

Abuse and neglect types that must be reported

Physical abuse

Sexual abuse

Mental or emotional abuse

Neglect

Tasmania

Tasmania's mandatory reporting laws cover an extensive list of professions, and the details of the reporting requirements are provided in the table below.

Legal provisions

Sections 3, 4 and 14 of the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act 1997 (Tas.)

Who is mandated to report?

Medical practitioners; registered or enrolled nurses; persons registered under the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law (Tasmania) in the midwifery, dental (dentists, dental therapist, dental hygienist or oral health therapist) or psychology professions; police officers; probation officers; principals and teachers in any educational institution including kindergartens; persons who provide child care or a child care service for fee or reward; persons concerned in the management of an approved education and care service, within the meaning of the Education and Care Services National Law (Tasmania) or a child care service licensed under the Child Care Act 2001; a member of the clergy of any church or religious denomination; a member of the Parliament of this State; any other person who is employed or engaged as an employee for, of, or in, or who is a volunteer in, a government agency that provides health, welfare, education, child care or residential services wholly or partly for children, and an organisation that receives any funding from the Crown for the provision of such services; and any other person of a class determined by the Minister by notice in the Gazette to be prescribed persons.

What must be reported?

Knowledge, or a belief or suspicion on reasonable grounds that: a child has been or is being 'abused' or 'neglected' or is an affected child within the meaning of the Family Violence Act 2004 (a child whose safety, psychological wellbeing or interests are affected or likely to be affected by family violence); or there is a reasonable likelihood of a child being killed or abused or neglected by a person with whom the child resides; or while a woman is pregnant, that there is reasonable likelihood that after the birth of the child: the child will suffer abuse or neglect, or may be killed by a person with whom the child is likely to reside; or that the child will require medical treatment or other intervention as a result of the behaviour of the woman or another person with whom the woman resides or is likely to reside, before the birth of the child.

Note on extent of harm required to activate the duty (section 3(1) definition of 'abuse and neglect': for all forms except sexual abuse, reports must be made where: (i) the injured, abused or neglected person has suffered, or is likely to suffer, physical or psychological harm detrimental to the person's wellbeing; or (ii) the injured, abused or neglected person's physical or psychological development is in jeopardy. All instances of suspected sexual abuse must be reported.

Abuse and neglect types that must be reported

Sexual abuse (any)

Physical abuse

Emotional/psychological abuse

Neglect

Exposure to family violence

Victoria

Victoria's mandatory reporting laws cover an extensive list of professions, and the details of the reporting requirements are provided in the table below.

Legal provisions

Sections 182(1), 184 and 162(1)(c)-(d) of the Children, Youth and Families Act 2005 (Vic.)

Who is mandated to report?

Registered medical practitioners, nurses, midwives, a person registered as a teacher or an early childhood teacher under the Education and Training Reform Act 2006 or teachers granted permission to teach under that Act; principals of government or non-government schools within the meaning of the Education and Training Reform Act 2006; police officers, a person in religious ministry, out-of-home care workers (excluding voluntary foster and kinship carers), early childhood workers, youth justice workers and registered psychologists.

What must be reported?

Belief on reasonable grounds that a child is in need of protection on a ground referred to in section 162(1)(c) or 162(1)(d), formed in the course of practising his or her profession or carrying out the duties of his or her office, position or employment as soon as practicable after forming the belief and after each occasion on which he or she becomes aware of any further reasonable grounds for the belief

Abuse and neglect types that must be reported

Physical injury

Sexual abuse

Note that technically, under s. 162, the duty is limited to instances of physical injury and sexual abuse where 'the child's parents have not protected, or are unlikely to protect, the child from harm of that type'.

Western Australia

Western Australia has two separate pieces of mandatory reporting legislation, each covering different occupation groups and having their own reporting requirements. The details of these pieces of legislation are provided in the table below.

Legal provisions

Sections 124A and 124B of the Children and Community Services Act 2004 (WA)

Sections 5 and 160 of the Family Court Act 1997 (WA)

Who is mandated to report?

Doctors; nurses and midwives; teachers and boarding supervisors; and police officers

The Principal Registrar, a registrar or a deputy registrar; family counsellors; family consultants; family dispute resolution practitioners, arbitrators or legal practitioners independently representing the child's interests

What must be reported?

Belief on reasonable grounds that child sexual abuse has occurred or is occurring, where this belief is formed in the course of the person's work, whether paid or unpaid

Reasonable grounds for suspecting that a child has been: abused, or is at risk of being abused; ill-treated, or is at risk of being ill-treated; or exposed or subjected to behaviour that psychologically harms the child

Abuse and neglect types that must be reported

Physical abuse

Sexual abuse

Neglect

Psychological harm including (but not limited to) harm caused by being subjected or exposed to family violence

Further reading

Kohl, P., Jonson-Reid. M., & Drake, B. (2009). Time to leave substantiation behind: Findings from a national probability study. Child Maltreatment, 14(1), 17.

Mathews, B. (2012). Exploring the contested role of mandatory reporting laws in the identification of severe child abuse and neglect. In M. Freeman (Ed.), Current legal issues (Vol. 14: Law and Childhood Studies) (pp. 302-338). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mathews, B., & Kenny, M. (2008). Mandatory reporting legislation in the USA, Canada and Australia: A cross-jurisdictional review of key features, differences and issues. Child Maltreatment, 13, 50-63.

Mathews, B., & Walsh, K. (2014). Mandatory reporting laws. In A. Hayes & D. Higgins (Eds.), Families, policy and the law: Selected essays on contemporary issues for Australia (pp. 131-142). Melbourne: AIFS. Retrieved from www.aifs.gov.au/publications/families-policy-and-law/14-mandatory-reporting-laws

Melton, G. (2005). Mandated reporting: A policy without reason. Child Abuse & Neglect, 29, 9-18.

Tomison, A. (2002). Mandatory reporting: A question of theory versus practice. Developing Practice: The Child, Youth and Family Work Journal, 4, 13-17.

References

Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC). (2010). Family violence: A national legal response. Canberra: ALRC.

Cashmore, J. (2002). Mandatory reporting: Is it the culprit? Where is the evidence? Developing Practice: The Child, Youth and Family Work Journal, 4, 9-12.

Drake, B., & Jonson-Reid, M. (2007). A response to Melton based on the best available data. Child Abuse & Neglect, 31, 343-360.

Government of Western Australia. (2019). Mandatory reporting legislation to be extended to ministers of religion (Media release). Retrieved from www.mediastatements.wa.gov.au/Pages/McGowan/2019/05/Mandatory-reporting-legislation-to-be-extended-to-ministers-of-religion.aspx

Lamond, D. (1989). The impact of mandatory reporting legislation on reporting behaviour. Child Abuse & Neglect, 13, 471-480.

Mathews, B. (2014a). Mandatory reporting laws and identification of child abuse and neglect: Consideration of differential maltreatment types, and a cross-jurisdictional analysis of child sexual abuse reports. Social Sciences, 3(3), 460-482.

Mathews, B. (2014b). Mandatory reporting laws for child sexual abuse in Australia: A legislative history. Sydney: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Mathews, B. (2019). A taxonomy of duties to report child sexual abuse: Legal developments offer new ways to facilitate disclosure. Child Abuse & Neglect, 88, 337-347.

Mathews, B., Bromfield, L., Walsh, K., Cheng, Q., & Norman, R. (2017). Reports of child sexual abuse of boys and girls: Longitudinal trends over a 20-year period in Victoria, Australia. Child Abuse & Neglect, 66, 9-22.

Mathews, B., Bromfield, L., Walsh, K., & Vimpani, G. (2015). Child abuse and neglect: A socio-legal study of mandatory reporting in Australia (Vols 1-9). Melbourne: Government of Victoria.

Mathews, B. & Bross, D. (2008). Mandated reporting is still a policy with reason: Empirical evidence and philosophical grounds. Child Abuse and Neglect, 32(5), 511-516.

Mathews, B., Lee, X., & Norman, R. (2016). Impact of a new mandatory reporting law on reporting and identification of child sexual abuse: A seven year time trend analysis. Child Abuse & Neglect, 56, 62-79.

Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. (2017). Criminal justice report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (Vol. 7). Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia.

Tomison, A. M., & Tucci, J. (1997). Emotional abuse: The hidden form of maltreatment (National Child Protection Clearing House). Melbourne: Australian Institute of Family Studies.

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Mandatory reporting of child abuse and neglect

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This resource sheet is provided as a guide only, and is current at the date of publication. Changes to mandatory reporting laws are currently being considered in various jurisdictions. Individuals are encouraged to contact the relevant department or organisation to clarify requirements in their jurisdiction, or in relation to legislation.

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Lean Business Plan template from business.gov.au

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Lean Business Plan template from business.gov.au

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This Guide outlines how each group in an organisation can contribute to a good culture, the first step of which is to create an ethical framework that provides guidance on decisions and an appropriate 'tone from the top'.

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Social Media for Healthcare: Why No One Likes Your Posts | Digital Marketing in Healthcare

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At the end of last year, thousands of year 12 graduates received their final grades.

And while the emotional responses around the country likely ranged from devastation to euphoria...

Whichever side of the spectrum a graduate might fall on, it's still important to remember:
Grades AREN'T everything!
For those who did well, it's a great accomplishment that will serve as a head-start for their futures.

And for those who didn't, it's an opportunity to look at what they can learn from this experience.

But for both camps, accepting that marks are not the be all and end all of education is an important lesson going forward.

And the best thing parents can do for current students is to show them why...
Because grades aren't a reflection of intelligence or ability.
They are a reflection of hard work.

2017 VCE student Daniel Hu received an ATAR of 99.85...

Yet he insists this grade did not come easily.
'One important lesson I learnt through these 13 years of schooling is that success doesn't necessarily belong to those who are naturally talented, or those from wealthy family backgrounds. It belongs to those who work hard.' 'I took it upon myself to study as hard as possible for the HSC... I worked assiduously, trying to maximise my potential in every subject. I am not an intelligent kid. In terms of intelligence, I'm probably below average. Yet, that never fazed me.'
While the exact definition of 'hard work' will vary for every student - some may excel in particular areas and struggle with others - the rewards from effort and diligence are universal.

Aspiring for perfect grades is bad for our mental health.

A US study found that 80 per cent of surveyed students based their sense of self-worth on their grades.
The lower their grades, the lower their self esteem.
And when grading systems are dependent on so many variables, it's a very precarious and dangerous measure of value.
One of the largest studies into students' mental health in Australia revealed that 70 per cent of respondents rated their health as 'fair' or 'poor'.
79 per cent of students suffered from anxiety, 75.8 per cent suffered from low moods, and 59.2 per cent experienced feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness.

And even if school is the sole cause poor mental health for some students...

These challenges inevitably infiltrate other areas of young people's lives:

Including their social life, home life, physical health and future career or study prospects.

Furthermore...

Anxiety about grades and achievement can actually impede performance.

While some stress is normal, especially around exam time, and can help to motivate kids to study...
Excessive worry and perceived pressure has a negative effect on performance.
In the aforementioned study, 82.1 per cent of students had suffered from lack of energy and motivation...

55 per cent had trouble sleeping...

And 52.7 per cent had experienced panic.

Lack of sleep is detrimental to self-regulation, which is our ability to control emotions, cognitive functions and behaviour.

Therefore making sleepy folk more likely to experience anxiety, and less likely to be able to concentrate and study.

Anxiety itself affects working memory - what we need to retain information in exam situations....

It leads to avoidance, of school, homework and study...

And it makes thought processing less efficient.
So it's clear that by putting too much pressure on the future outcomes of study, we're getting in the way of the process of learning.
And on that note...

Grades aren't the point of school.

Learning is!

Research shows that prioritising good grades over anything else limits our ability to learn.
It discourages academic risk-taking, creativity and engagement...
Crucial elements of a productive, rewarding and ultimately successful school experience.

As a result, students can lose their desire to learn...

And instead, their motivation becomes solely to get through the next assignment or the next test.

This attitude leads to 'cramming' and unhealthy study and life habits...

Causing stress and anxiety, negatively impacting sleep, and reducing engagement and information retention with study materials.

And that's why...

Prioritising learning over grades is the key to success.

When students love to learn, they're inherently motivated to study and engage with what they're learning.
They work hard, and understand the value of diligence, persistence and commitment to what they're learning.
And in the face of failures or disappointments, they're resilient...

They take these setbacks as an opportunity for further learning and growth.

While chasing good grades is a finite endeavour (it ends when the results come in)...
A love of learning can - and usually does - last a lifetime.
And the benefits of a love of learning continue into adulthood, in university, work, social and home life.
That's why motivation - not innate ability - is the key to success.
So help your kids thrive in school by showing them that grades aren't everything.

That learning is a privilege, and one that we should value and enjoy.

That being challenged is one of the best ways to learn.

And that the benefits of loving learning will last far longer than any grade.

Parents can do this by:

Promoting a love of learning from a young age, and outside of the school setting.

Encouraging students to pursuing their interests and passions, rather than choosing subjects that they're naturally good at.

Taking the pressure off, but holding high expectations to support their motivation and self-esteem.

And by focussing on finding the value in the process, rather than the outcome, of all their children's endeavours.

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Melbourne Child Psychology & School Psychology Services, Port Melbourne

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Remembering Why Perfect Grades Aren't Everything

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At the end of last year, thousands of year 12 graduates received their final grades. And while the emotional responses around the country likely ranged from devastation to euphoria... Whichever side of the spectrum a graduate might fall on, it's still important to remember: Grades AREN'T everything!

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Cliniko: Allied Health Practice Management Software

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Cliniko cloud-based practice management software app for healthcare clinics and allied health professionals helps you manage your schedule, treatment records, invoices, payments, take online bookings, and much more. Trial Cliniko practice management software free for 30 days - no commitment, no credit card required.

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Edible Selfies, Extreme Beer Pong and More!

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Want to send highly targeted (and better performing) marketing campaigns? Start by mapping your customer journey.

The customer journey is broadly defined as the steps a potential buyer could take toward becoming your customer. For most brands, this will be comprised of Awareness, Consideration, Conversion, Loyalty, and Advocacy:

Taking the time to map your customer journey is a great way to help you better target your marketing, support the sales funnel, align sales and marketing to the same conversion plan, improve customer experiences, and identify problem areas in your funnel. Getting a map together can take time and effort, but the payoff is a stronger, data-driven marketing and sales strategy that everyone can agree on.

Download our step-by-step guide to building your customer journey with Microsoft Dynamics >>

Mapping Your Customer Journey with Microsoft Dynamics

Microsoft Dynamics is perfect for this exercise, given that Microsoft Dynamics is already designed to map data points along a sales funnel. Take a look at how each of the above steps might look with Microsoft Dynamics and your marketing automation platform (which serves as the data house for the Awareness stage):

Now that you're thinking about Microsoft Dynamics as a guide for your customer journey, let's talk about how to actually map and optimize your touchpoints.

Step #1: What's Your Journey?

For the first step, document all the potential ways a person could be engaged with your brand, from marketing to sales, to customer success. This could be:

Email (through marketing or through sales/direct)

Social media (paid, organic, or both?)

Events (webinar, trade show, networking, etc.)

Customer support (automated and personal)

Online content (your website, promoted profiles, partner sites)

Phone calls

Face-to-face, word of mouth, referral

Make note of where each of these touchpoints might happen in the document above so that it's easy to reference what stage these touchpoints fall into later on.

Step #2: What's in Dynamics?

For the second step, ask yourself if Dynamics is capturing marketing, sales, and support data. Basic marketing data you will need in Dynamics should include:

Campaigns Entity: Leverage both Lead Source and Source Campaign

Competitor Entity: Capture who you're losing (and winning) to at the Lead and Opportunity stages

Marketing Spend and Potential ROI

Having these tracking options in place will help you build a stronger, data-driven marketing budget that looks at marketing spend, the number of leads a campaign drives in, which types of marketing activities are most successful for your brand, and the potential and actual revenue of the campaigns you're invested in. You'll need these data points later-so even if you don't have them in place now, be sure to ask for them.

Step #3: State Your Goals

These goals could be general or you might want to create a unique goal for each line of service you offer. Using previous Dynamics data, determine:

How many opportunities did it take to get to your sales goals?

What was your average deal size?

How many leads did you need to meet those sales goals? Look for outliers and use average deal size.

How many MQLs do you expect and at what rate do you turn them into SQLs?

Step #4: Start with the Best Lead Source

Now that you have data to support which of your lead sources drives the highest quality leads and biggest sales dollars (this is easy to do if you're tracking Lead Source and Source Campaign for every single Lead), you can determine which source is your best source. Is it tradeshows? Paid search? Memberships? SEO?

Keep track of why you picked this Lead Source so that your sales and customer success teams understand why you're starting with it.

Step #5: Get Your Team Involved

The short version of this is that you'll want to invite every person who engages with any part of the funnel. For most organizations, this will include Marketing, Sales, Support, and Customer Success. The goal is to invite these people to a meeting where you can have a collaborative discussion about what's actually happening at each stage-not just what the data says, but what the actual conversations are like.

Preparing for Your Customer Journey Mapping Session

As you prepare yourself and your team for your first customer journey mapping session, be sure to let everyone on the team know their role. You'll have your most profitable lead source as your starting point, so be sure everyone who touches that lead source will be in attendance.

Next, drill down on a handful of good examples, and ask your sales team to do the same. Have them each bring examples of emails passed back and forth, notes from sales meetings, or remarks made in conversation that could be relevant to understanding what's happening (versus what you think is happening). Sometimes it helps to pick a handful of opportunities you have won, lost, and have open in Microsoft Dynamics to frame the conversation on concrete examples.

Your meeting goals are to answer:

What's missing at each stage?

Are we over/under communicating?

Where is sales getting stuck? Can marketing help?

Is there more opportunity in the pipeline?

Are there broader goals marketing can support on the client side?

Are we working hard enough to turn existing clients into advocates?

What Happens Next?

You should walk away from the customer journey mapping session with a clear understanding of what campaigns you need to create, where marketing needs to fill holes in the funnel, and how you can better support each team with marketing initiatives. Now you'll want to build a campaign map to help you identify what data points you need in Dynamics to make these campaigns happen, like so:

Once you have mapped your best lead source, you will want to work your way down to your worst lead source. Keep in mind that most marketing strategies have many campaigns but fewer than a dozen tactics-stay focused on the big buckets (like conferences, digital ads, webinars, SEO) so that you don't get lost in the weeds.

Want to learn more about using Microsoft Dynamics and your marketing automation platform to improve your customer journey? Get inspiration on the best campaigns to align your teams here. Or let's talk about your strategy one-on-one!

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Natalie Jackson, emfluence Marketing Platform

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How to Build a Customer Journey Map with Microsoft Dynamics - CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

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Want to send highly targeted (and better performing) marketing campaigns? Start by mapping your customer journey. The customer journey is broadly defined as the steps a potential buyer could take toward becoming your customer.

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The impact of marketing strategies in healthcare systems

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The impact of marketing strategies in healthcare systems

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From this article https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6685306/

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In today's busy, complicated, information-overload, short-attention-span environment, there are hundreds of ways to market a healthcare practice but there are really 8 most important marketing strategies for most healthcare practices to consider.

Each of these 8 strategies includes a host of possible communication tactics. To simplify and organize these strategies and tactics, I have created the infographic featured at the top of this article.

Here is a brief summary of each of the strategies illustrated.

Unique Brand

People have so many options today for healthcare services and providers that the only way healthcare practices can truly stand out from the pack of lookalikes is to establish a well-differentiated, memorable and unique value proposition.

The same issue applies to choices available to referring physicians (where applicable).

In evaluating your existing value proposition or in developing a new unique value proposition for a new practice or as part of a rebranding strategy, you need to identify the one thing (above all else) that you want patients to think of and remember about you if they can only remember one thing. (You are lucky if they remember anything about you, much less multiple advantages you offer.)

That "one thing" needs to really matter to your patient in deciding whether to choose you or a competitor. You can be unique but unless your uniqueness is a highly relevant value to your patient, you won't have a meaningful brand.

A successful value proposition needs to have these characteristics:

True/Accurate

Different/Better Value compared to competitors

Meaningful to Your Target Audience

Memorable/Easy to remember

Difficult for your competitors to match or "clone"

Some well-known brand examples:
Starbucks - Coffee as an Experience
Apple - Coolness
Southwest Airlines - The Airline with a Heart
Target - Expect More, Pay Less
Walmart - Save Money. Live Better
Thumbtack - Consider It Done
Dollar Shave Club - A Great Shave for a Few Bucks a Month
Kaiser Permanente - Healthy Care ("THRIVE")

Your brand is a reflection of your desired reputation and your reputation is, ultimately, your brand. A brand should under-promise and over-deliver.

You and everyone else in your organization is a living, breathing representative and reflection of your brand. The value of your brand is only as good as your commitment and ability to walk your talk - every day in every way.

A healthcare practice brand encompasses the entire patient experience. It is far more than a logo or a website or an ad or any of the elements that may be tools for communication of the value of the brand.

Relevant Branding Statistics

Only 1 in 4 corporate brands appear to their target audiences as differentiated from competitors. CEB Global

According to the Harvard Business Review, 64% of consumers site "authentic shared values" as the primary influence for their relationship with a brand. Harvard Business Review

Yet "personal benefits" - focusing on how the brand helps a stakeholder achieve their goals or present themselves as the person they want to be - is shown to be 3 times more effective at increasing brand outcomes compared to the "authentic shared values" approach. CEB Global

Americans say that they tell an average of 16 people about poor brand experiences compared to an average of 9 people with whom they share positive brand experiences American Express Survey

How to Develop (or Redevelop) Your Healthcare Brand

1. Define Your Target Audience(s)

Who do you want, and just as important, who don't you want? Be specific.
Examples:

Women, age 35-64, who are experiencing pelvic pain

Men and Women, age 40-60, acting as caregivers for their aging parents

Baby Boomers experiencing hearing loss

Men and Women age 30 - 64 with Anthem Blue Cross insurance

2. Clarify Your Brand Mission Statement
What is your reason to exist and how do you provide value to your customers in a way that is different than your competitors?
Examples:

Amazon

"To be Earth's most customer-centric company where people can find and discover anything they want to buy online."

Facebook

"To give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together."

Google

"To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

Kaiser Permanente

"To provide high-quality, affordable health care services and to improve the health of our members and the communities we serve.

Mayo Clinic

"To inspire hope and contribute to health and well-being by providing the best care to every patient through integrated clinical practice, education and research."

MD Anderson Cancer Center

"To eliminate cancer in Texas, the nation and the world through exceptional programs that integrate patient care, research and prevention."

Starbucks

"To inspire and nurture the human spirit - one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time."
3. Research Your Competitors' Brands
Focus on your primary and most direct competition. Identify their brand strengths as well as weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

Learn everything you can about how they define and communicate their brand value so that you can compare, contrast and differentiate your brand in the manner most likely to be perceived as more valuable to your target audience(s).
4. Identify Your Brand Benefits and Primary Characteristics
What recognizable and marketable benefits do your patients and other constituencies (including referring physicians) gain from their relationship with your brand?

What are your brand's tangible, unbiased and measurable characteristics?

What psychological rewards or emotional benefits do your patients, referral sources and employees get as a result of their interactions with your brand?

How do you define value for your typical recurring patient and for your referring physicians (if applicable)?
5. Determine Your Unique, Differentiated Value Proposition
Why should your desired patient come to you rather than anyone else?
What do you do better than your competitors?
What other characteristics, products, services, patient experiences or other value make you different (and better)?
What are the common characteristics of strong value propositions?

Easy to understand and to remember

Effectively communicates tangible results your patients will get

Makes clear how you are different and better than your competitors

Doesn't overpromise with obvious hype

6. Chart Your Ideal Patient Experience
Healthcare practices are service businesses. Your brand reputation will ultimately be based on the perceptions of your patients and referrers regarding the quality and outcomes of the patient experience.

If you don't have a clear vision of what the ideal patient experience in your practice should be, there is no way for you to achieve it.

A good place to start is to "map" your patient journey for the typical and for the atypical patient.

For each step on the patient journey, you then define the optimal patient experience. Once you have determined that for each step in the patient journey, you can see the overarching value of the patient's total experience with you.

This process allows you to craft the ideal patient experience along every step of their journey.
7. Establish Your Brand Standards and Guidelines
This is the set of rules that defines how your brand works and how your brand value is communicated. Think of this as the owner's manual for your brand.

The form that this takes in most businesses is encapsulated into what is referred to as the "brand book" or "brand identity guide" or "brand style guide" or even "brand bible."

The brand book should include visual style guidelines (logo, typography, imagery) as well as content guidelines and brand "talking points."

All brand communications must then be based on and conform to the brand standards and guidelines to provide consistency across all communications platforms and environments.

Here's a great example from the Boy Scouts of America: Boy Scouts of America Brand Identity Guide
8. Live Your Brand (Every Day in Every Way)
A brand is not your logo or your style guide. Ultimately, a brand is the total of all experiences your customers have with you.

Successful brands also require consistency. With Starbucks or Southwest Airlines, to name two examples, you know what to expect and what you will get in your experience with these brands regardless of where and when you engage with them.

You and everyone else in your organization must understand and buy in to the brand so they "walk your talk" every day in every way. This starts with the phone experience and continues with the appointment/encounter and also includes communication after the encounter and between encounters.

Everyone in your organization must be a positive brand ambassador. If you don't have that commitment, your brand reputation will inevitably suffer.
9. Create Brand Advocates
In addition to everyone within the organization, strong brands develop customer advocates who feel compelled to share with others their positive experiences with your brand. You might think of your advocates as "raving fans" or "missionaries" or "ambassadors" who are emotionally invested in your value and, correspondingly, your success.

You can't expect to create these kinds of advocates without providing superior patient experiences on a consistent basis. You have to earn your advocates. In fact, you have to earn the right to even encourage their advocacy.

Every customer ambassador is worth many times more than their weight in gold and those relationships must be protected and nurtured carefully and never taken for granted.
10. Never Stop Evolving and Communicating Your Brand Value
Brands are not static. They are living, "breathing" organisms. Just as your practice must evolve to continue to be competitive and valuable, so must your brand. Branding is never "done."

Your core brand promise may not change, but characteristics and benefits will and should evolve.

Here's a good example of brand evolution: The Evolution of Starbucks

Strategic Marketing Plan

You've no doubt heard the saying that originated with French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery: "A goal without a plan is just a wish." Truer words were never spoken and they apply as much to success in marketing as in any other endeavor.

Marketing is a business strategy and must be planned as such. Otherwise, you are just shooting blindly in the dark at a target you can't even see, much less aim at with any accuracy.

Elements of a Strategic Marketing Plan

Measurable (quantifiable) goals

SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats)

Target Audience analysis and priorities

Competition analysis

Prioritized services, procedures and products

Pricing and packaging strategy

Unique Value Proposition

Patient Journey analysis

Branding strategy and tactics

Internet marketing strategy and tactics

Website(s) analysis

Online advertising strategy and tactics

SEO strategy and tactics

Social media strategy and tactics

Online reputation strategy and tactics (patient reviews)

Physician Referral marketing strategy and tactics (if applicable)

Internal marketing/Patient experience strategy and tactics (to patients and to practice employees)

Traditional media advertising strategy and tactics (if applicable)

Community marketing/networking strategy and tactics

Publicity strategy and tactics

Employer marketing strategy and tactics (if applicable)

Marketing Budget analysis and recommendations

Tracking system and methodology

Measurable Goals
All strategic marketing plans require specific, quantifiable goals over a predetermined period of time (usually one year).

Numbers don't lie and marketing is designed (or should be) to produce profitable, measurable growth.

The first thing you want to do in the process of setting measurable goals is review your baseline of recent year-over-year growth (or decline) for the past two years. Changes in healthcare are happening so fast that there is almost no value in comparing data from more than two years ago.

Healthcare practices can establish quantifiable goals in the following categories. Your practice may choose to set multiple targets from the list below.

Total new revenue tracked to the positive performance of the plan

Number of new patients

Patient retention percentage

Additional number of procedures above trend line

Additional products sold above trend line

Revenue from newly introduced services or products

Increase of X number of positive online patient reviews

Decrease of X number of negative online patient reviews

Number of referrals from each referring physician

Number of new referring physicians

Number of specific case types

Number of procedures (by type)

Number of products sold (by product)

Number of visitors to website(s)

Number of visitors to specific landing pages

Number of additional social media followers

First page organic ranking for specific keywords

Number of calls and/or landing page visits in response to advertising (by advertising source)

Be careful about defining too many quantifiable goals but set goals based on what type of growth you want to measure.

Here's a detailed marketing case study about one of the most aggressive marketing organizations in healthcare: Cancer Treatment Centers of America
SWOT Analysis
Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats pertaining to any company will continually evolve over time. For that reason, it's important for you to do an updated SWOT analysis of your practice every year as part of the marketing planning process.

Here is an example of a SWOT analysis for a healthcare practice.

Target Audience Analysis and Priorities

People want to believe that they are making the best choice for them when it comes to accessing healthcare. If they can "see" themselves in your targeting and messaging, they are more likely to respond to your marketing.

The more specific you can be in identifying and prioritizing your desired target audiences, the greater chance you will of connecting with and attracting that audience.

The two examples below are from pharmaceutical companies. Healthcare practices could learn a lot from studying these examples. If these companies can generate business while being legally required to devote a lot of time in each commercial to listing all of the possible negative side effects and other risks associated with their drug, a healthcare practice can certainly find a way to connect with specific target audiences.
Examples:
Men age 40+ who have or think they may have low testosterone

TV Spot: Axiron TV Commercial

Women with Irritable Bowel Syndrome: TV Spot: Xifaxan TV Spot

There are many ways to target specific audiences:

Google AdWords for specific condition keywords

Facebook "sponsored posts" (newsfeed ads) targeting specific demographic and geographic user profiles

Optimized articles and blog posts

Target audience-focused landing pages on your website

Patient testimonials (video preferred, otherwise written)

TV ads

Radio ads

Print ads

Billboards

Community talks

Marketing to referring physicians (literature, case studies, etc.)

Employer marketing

Publicity opportunities (featured story in print, radio or TV)

Patient advocates (raving fans) who fit the audience profile you want

Competition Analysis

If you want to win more of your preferred patients, you need to understand what your competitors are doing in order to positively differentiate your value as a more desirable choice for your target audience.

How can you find competitive information?

Competitor's website

Google search for competitor's name

Online patient review sites, plus Google user reviews

Competitor's ads (if they advertise)

Focus groups of consumers in the market who fit your target audience profile

Surveying your employees for what they may know about competitors

Interviewing former employees of competitors when they are job hunting (LinkedIn is a great tool for this)

Secret shopping the competitor's practice (phone and/or in-person)

Talk to sales reps who visit your practice as well as practices of your competitors (some won't talk, others will)

Prioritize services, procedures, products
Begin with the end in mind, as the late, great Stephen Covey wrote about in his best-selling The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Step 1: Evaluate your current volume and mix of your services, procedures and products to establish your baseline. Then prioritize your desired mix and compare to your baseline.

Sometimes, it's difficult to decide on priorities because you may have many areas of opportunity. But it's better to do a few things well than many things poorly because you are trying to do too much. Deeper and narrower focus is more productive and profitable than shallower and wider.

This doesn't mean you can only pick one thing. Just don't pick 20 of equal, competing priority.

Step 2: Once you have identified and ranked your highest priorities and mix of services, procedures and products, develop a specific marketing campaign for each, utilizing the communications channels listed in the previous "Target Audience" section.
Pricing and Packaging
Pricing is an increasingly important strategy for healthcare practices, even for insurance-based practices. The increase in the number of Americans with high-deductible health plans continues to grow rapidly.

As a result, more patients are asking pricing questions and making decisions based on a variety of cost factors as well as medical considerations.

Here are steps in the process of creating an effective pricing strategy.

Price-shop your competition.

If it is an insurance-based competitor, ask questions about out-of-pocket cost as a prospective patient with a high-deductible plan.

If it is a cash-based practice, ask about costs for what are likely to be their most expensive and least expensive services. "What are my options?"

1. Decide if you need to adjust your pricing within your legal discretion, based on pricing competitively.

2. Make sure your staff knows what visits, procedures, services and products cost in your practice for people who have to pay out-of-pocket

3. Decide whether you can and will offer cash discounts for patients and what those discounts Make sure your staff is well-versed on this.

4. Create a script that staff must memorize on how to best address pricing and out-of-pocket cost questions from patients, both for phone conversations and in-person.

Packaging is the way you price and present multiple related services at an affordable price point. In many healthcare practices, you can see packaging presented as branded "programs."

Many people will opt for a higher-priced package because they see a greater value in receiving all of the services in the package for an attractive price.
Example: Plastic Surgery
"Mommy Makeover" Package
Medical Weight Loss Program

Screening and management of obesity and metabolic syndrome

Medical nutrition therapy/counseling for a healthy diet

Behavioral counseling

Fitness recommendations

Cholesterol screening

Screening for Type 2 diabetes

Screening for high blood pressure

Unique Value Proposition
Do you have one? If you do, how relevant is it to your desired target audiences? How different or similar is your value proposition to that of your competitors?

If you have never defined your unique value proposition, use your SWOT Analysis as a guide. Focus on your strengths - what you do best and better than your competitors.

What is the one attribute of your practice that you would emphasize if you could only get your preferred patients to remember one thing about you? If your practice success depended on your audience buying in to one high value you provide, what would you choose?

You should have one over-arching value proposition if possible, but you can also have unique value propositions for specific target audiences that may or may not exactly match or may get more specific compared to your broader practice value proposition.

5 Key Elements of a Unique Value Proposition for a Specific Audience

Identify a high priority customer/patient segment

Identify a customer/patient need in that segment

Identify the pain associated with pursuing or not fulfilling that need

Identify the benefit(s) to the patient or fulfilling that need

Identify what or how you are the best choice to help the patient avoid or stop the pain and fulfill the need

Examples of healthcare value propositions include:
Doctor on Demand See a doctor now - without leaving home CVS Minute Clinics Quick, convenient healthcare on your budget One Medical Combining Quality Care and Modern Conveniences
Patient Journey Analysis

The patient journey in your practice reveals a lot about how patients experience your care and how they think and talk about you to others.

It's important to chart or map your patient journey as well as to evaluate how a patient journey might differ based on condition.

The patient journey map will guide you regarding where and how to continually improve the patient experience in your practice.
Stay Tuned
This is the first article in a series on The 8 Most Important Marketing Strategies for a Healthcare Practice. Next installment coming soon.

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The 8 Most Important Marketing Strategies for a Healthcare Practice - Part 1

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The 8 Most Important Marketing Strategies for a Healthcare Practice - Part 1 In today's busy, complicated, information-overload, short-attention-span environment, there are hundreds of ways to market a healthcare practice but there are really 8 most important marketing strategies for most healthcare practices to consider. Each of

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B2B Marketing | Customer Feedback | Net Promoter Score | Genroe

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No business can afford to ignore social media as part of its marketing mix. But, unless you are a global multinational, it is also impossible to effectively manage all of the social media networks that are on offer.

To be most effective, companies and their marketing agencies, and customer experience consultants should be active in two or, at most, three networks and communicate with customers in a focused way. This allows you to become proficient in the nuances of the those platforms and maximise results.

The difficulty for Australian organisations is understanding the nuances of which social media channels are most effective and active locally. Typically the published social media statistics focus on a United States or global centric view of the data.

This post collates Australian social media statistics from across a wide variety of sources. We have then analysed those statistics to provide recommendations for businesses on which platform are most effective in different use cases.

Australians are reasonably avid consumers of social media. At least as avid as the US market, but not as active as some Asian countries.

Australian Social Media Usage Statistical Highlights

In February 2023, 80.4% of the Australian population have active social media accounts. That's a 2.3% decrease on 12 months before. (Source, Source Analysis: Genroe)

19.1% of Australian internet users (16-64) say a main reason for using social media is to follow influencers or other experts on-line (Source)

13.0% of Australian internet users (16-64) say a main reason for using social media is for work related activities (Source)

52% of Australian's use Social Media as a source of news. This is just below the worldwide average of 55% (Source, Analysis: Genroe)

25.1% of Australian's say a main reason for using Social Media is as a source of news. This is far below worldwide average of 34.6% (Source, Analysis: Genroe)

96.4% of Australian internet users between 16 and 64 accessed a social media network or messaging service in December 2020. (Source).

YouTube (78.2%) and Facebook (77.7%) are tied for the most popular social media platform in Australia. (Source)

In February 2023, 38.3% Australians state they use Social Media when looking for information about a brand. This is down from up from 30.3% in February 2022 (Source, Source, Source Analysis: Genroe)

98% of Australian users access social media via a mobile device. (Source)

Australians spend an average of 2 hours 0 minutes or 34.3% of total internet time per day on social media, this is flat over the past 36 months of 1Q2020->1Q2023. (Source, Analysis Genroe)

Australian's have one of the lowest number of social media accounts per person in the world (and average of just 6.1 per person. This should be compared to Japan (lowest - 3.6) and India (highest - 9.2) (Source, Source, Source)

Social Media News

30% more Australians trust their social media news sources than those in the USA but only 73% as many Australians trust their social media news sources than those in The Netherlands. (Source, Analysis: Genroe)

Australians are concerned about real or fake online news at about the same rate as those in the United States. (Source, Analysis: Genroe)

It's not surprising that social media sites are some of the most commonly accessed in Australia. Below is an analysis of traffic rank Vs the average daily site visit time.

The Top Australian Social Media Sites By Web Traffic:

Australian's Most Favourite Social Media Platforms

In Australia in December 2021 the daily average time on site for the top 6 social media networks was

Social Media Network

Daily Time On Site

Youtube

19 minutes 33 seconds per day (abut stable in last 180 days)

Facebook

18 minutes 40 seconds per day (down 56 seconds in the last 180 days)

Reddit

5 minutes 56 seconds per day (up 2seconds in the last 180 days)

Instagram

9 minutes 3 seconds per day (up 12 seconds in the last 180 days)

Pinterest

4 minutes 48 seconds per day

LinkedIn

11 minutes 11 seconds per day (up 4 seconds in the last 180 days)

There are several items of particular note in this analysis:

Youtube has a long dwell time (19:33mins) and offers good opportunities for B2B marketers (Source).

In January 2023, Reddit, had risen from 12th most trafficked site in Australia to 4th most trafficked site. Dwell time had also fallen to just 5:46 minutes. If may no longer present good opportunities for marketers.(Source, Source, Source)

LinkedIn, while not being the highest traffic site, has a respectable dwell time of high value B2B users.

Australian Social Media Usage by Age

However, when overall population dynamics are included the over representation of younger users in social media usage is much more muted. It's really only at age 65+ that usage drops off dramatically as a proportion of overall population.

Australian digital advertising grew by an enormous 25.8% to the end of first quarter 2021. This is around 2.5 times the expected global spend growth, which is expected to be 10.6%. (Source, Source, Analysis: Genroe).

Australia is estimated to be the 5th largest Social Media Advertising market in the world. (Source)

Australia's total Social Media Advertising market size is forecast to grow to USD 2,718m by 2024.(Source)

Social media platforms ebb and flow over time - when was the last time you logged into your myspace account?

Investing in a platform it is important to identify which platforms your potential customers use, which are growing and which shrinking. This allows you to invest your time wisely for the longer term.

Below are the eligible audience reaches as a percentage of the total Australian population, (13+) for each of the major networks

Key Statistics for The Top Australian Social Media Sites By Advertising Reach:

Unfortunately there are no locally available data on social media advertising fees for Australia but the following global statistics provide an effective ready reckoner on what to expect on a relative basis.

What is clear here is the predominately B2B network ( LinkedIn) has much higher cost per click rates AND much lower click through rates. This generally equates with the value per sale being higher in B2B marketing and the cost per lead being acceptably higher.

Australian Internet access

There are ~1.26 mobile connections for every man, woman and child in Australia . (Source, Analysis by Genroe)

Australia has the worlds 74th fastest average fixed line internet speed (52mbps). Slower than Singapore (225Mbps), Latvia (73Mbps) and Colombia(90Mbps). (Source, Analysis by Genroe)

Australia has the worlds 16th fastest average mobile internet speed (83mbps). This is down 3 places a couple of years ago. This is faster than than Singapore (79Mbps) and United States (78Mbps) but slower than Denmark at 119 Mbps. (Source, Analysis by Genroe)

33.7% of Australian internet users (16-64) use tools to block ads online in October 2022, up from 32.5% in October 2021 (Source, Source)

37.0% of Australian internet users (16-64) are concerned about mis-use of their personal data (Source)

40.5% of of Australian internet users (16-64) decline cookies at least some of the time. (Source)

27.4% of Australian internet users (16-64) use a VPN service for at least some of their on-line activities. This is 13th highest rate in the world(Source, Analysis by Genroe)

Australians spend , on average, 5hours 50 minutes per day using the internet. Despite this seemingly high number it is only the 33rd highest usage rate in the world. This time is split exactly 50/50 between access via mobile and computer devices. (Source, Analysis by Genroe)

86.1% of Australians aged 16-64 use their mobile phone to access the internet while only 77.1% use a computer to access the internet. (Source)

Australian Internet Media Consumption

Australians internet media consumption is substantial. In October 2021 ( Source) it looked like this:

Here are the numbers as of January 2023:

Internet Media Type

Australians Using

Australian internet users (16-54) listening to podcasts

23.3 % up from 19.5% Oct 2021

Australian internet users (16-54) watching VLOGs

17.9% up from 16.1% Oct 2021

Australian internet users (16-54) using phone for video call

32.6%, up from 29.3% Oct 2021

Australians (16-64) streaming TV content via the internet

92.4%

Australians (16-64) playing video games (on any device)

74.5% up from 75% Oct 2021

Australians (16-64) owning a smart home device
(10th highest rate in the world)

16.,9%, up from 14.4% Oct 2021

Key Australian Facebook Facts

Facebook is Australia's most popular social network (16-64 years olds) with 66%, or 16 million, Australians using Facebook on a monthly basis. This is steady on the previous period (Source, Analysis by Genroe)

Facebook is Australia's 3rd highest trafficked site after Google and YouTube. (Source)

Australia Facebook users are the fourth most active "Likers" in the world an average of 15 likes per month vs the global average of 12. ( Source, Analysis: Genroe)

Australia Facebook users are equal 6th most active "commenters" in the world an average of 8 comments per month vs the global average of just 5. This has declined in the last 12 months by 1 comment per month (Source, Analysis: Genroe)

Visitors spend an average of 18 min 49 secs and view 8.29 pages per day on Facebook (Apr-Jun 2020, (Source)

Australian Facebook Demographics

While users skew to the 25-34 age group, there are more than 1.9 million Facebook users over 65 in Australia ( Facebook data analysis by Genroe)

Australia's Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger) Demographic Profile:

Australian Facebook Advertising Statistics

Total audience (aged 13+): 18 million (Facebook data analysis by Genroe)

Australia Facebook users are some of the most active advert clickers in the world an average of 22 adverts clicked per month vs the global average of 12. This is in the top 8% of countries globally. (Source, Source Analysis: Genroe)

Facebook has an estimated 80% market share of the Australian Social Media Advertising market. (Source)

Facebook Australian Advertising Audience By Education

University Graduate: 5.1 million (Source)

Facebook Advertising Costs and Conversion Rates Q3 2020 (Global)

Average Cost per Click: USD0.39 (Source)

Lead gen cost per complete:USD0.67 (Source)

LinkedIn is Australia's premier B2B Social Media platform.

Visitors spend an average of 10 min 42 secs and view 8.52 pages per day on LinkedIn (December 2020, Source)

59% of LinkedIn Users return fewer than 3 times a week. (Source)

LinkedIn has an estimated 5% market share of the Australian Social Media Advertising market. (Source)

63.3% of Australian's 13+ have a LinkedIn account. It has the third highest penetration rate of all social media platforms after Facebook and YouTube, (Source Analysis by Genroe)

The implication for B2B business using LinkedIn is that they need to post new content several times a week to ensure that it gets in front of the majority of uses in the infrequent number of times they visit the site.

Australian LinkedIn Advertising Statistics

Total audience: 64.9% of Australian's 13+ in July 2022 (Source)

LinkedIn is one of only three only global social networks (Tiktok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Pinterest) where Australia ranks in the top 20 countries for advertising reach.(Source, Analysis: Genroe)

Australia is the 16 highest percentage of population LinkedIn advertising reach market in the world and the equal 13th largest total market. (So u rce, Analysis: Genroe)

LinkedIn Australian Advertising Audience By Seniority

High level individuals (Partner, Owner, Director, CXO, VP)

1.4 million

Middle Management (Managers, Senior staff)

3 million

Junior (Unpaid, training, entry level)

2.8 million

Note that numbers will not add to 11 million as data not available on all users.

LinkedIn Australian Advertising Audience By Company Size

Micro-Companies (up to 10 employees)

600,000 individuals

SMEs (11 to 200 employees)

1,300,000 individuals

Corporate (201-1000 employees)

770,000 individuals

Enterprise (1001+ employees)

2,300,000 individuals

Note that numbers will not add to 11 million as data not available on all users.

LinkedIn Advertising Costs and Conversion Rates Q2 2021 (Global)

Average Cost per Click: USD5.58

Senior decision-makers: $6.40

Junior employees: $4.40

Average Cost per Thousand impressions (CPM): USD33.80

Global Cost per Lead ranges from $15 to $350

Linkedin Lead gen form completion rate benchmark: 10%

Average Click Through Rate for APAC: 0.8%

Key Australian Instagram Advertising Statistics

Total Australian Instagram audience reach is 54.5% of the population aged 13+, up from 51.6% in 2021 (Source, Source, Analysis: Genroe)

56.5% of Instagram users are Female and 43.5% are male. (Source)

Key Australian Snapchat Advertising Statistics

Total Australian Snapchat advertising audience reach is 33.7% of the Australian population aged 13+ or 7.45m people.(Source)

Australia has the 14th largest Snapchat advertising audience reach market in the world. Down three spots in the last 12 months. (Source, Source, Analysis: Genroe)

Snapchat is one of only three only global social networks (Tiktok, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Twitter) where Australia ranks in the top 20 countries for advertising reach.(Source, Analysis: Genroe)

Snapchat has an estimated 5% market share of the Australian Social Media Advertising market. (Source)

Key Australian Twitter Advertising Statistics

Australia is not in the top 20 Twitter advertising audience reach markets in the world for either percentage or population or total population. (Source, Analysis: Genroe)

Total Australian Twitter advertising audience reach is 21.3% of Australians aged 13+. Up from , up 18.5% (Source, Source )

From January 2020 to July 2020 Twitter fell out of the top 50 most trafficked sites in Australia. Twitter does not have the same influence in Australia as it does in other geographies.

Twitter has an estimated 5% market share of the Australian Social Media Advertising market. (Source)

Key Australian Pinterest Advertising Statistics

Total Australian Pinterest advertising audience reach has risen ~60k (1.3%) to 4.65m in 18 months to October 2021. This is 21.5% of the Australians aged 13+ (Source, Source, Source, Source Analysis: Genroe)

Australia has the 13th largest Pinterest advertising audience reach market in the world. This has fallen four places place in the last 24 months. (Source, Source, Source, Analysis: Genroe)

Pinterest is one of only three only global social networks (Tiktok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Pinterest) where Australia ranks in the top 20 countries for advertising reach.(Source, Analysis: Genroe)

Key Australian TIKTOK Advertising Statistics

Total Australian snapchat advertising audience reach is: 41.1% in October 2022 ( Source)

Source List

Source 1: The Global State of Digital 2021

Source 2: Digital 2021- Australia

Source 3: The Global State of Digital 2020

Source 4: Digital 2020: October Global Snapshot

Source 5: Social media marketing trends in 2021

Source 6: Speedtest Global Index

Source 7: Alexa - Top Sites In Australia

Source 8: Understanding Facebook Ads Cost: 2019 & 2020 Benchmarks

Source 9: Share of LinkedIn users in Australia as as of April 2018, by frequency of use

Source 10: Regional population by age and sex

Source 11: Hootsuite Global Report

Last Updated 13 July 2022

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Social Media Statistics for Australia (Updated January 2023) Genroe

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No business can afford to ignore social media as part of its marketing mix. But, unless you are a global multinational, it is also impossible to effectively manage all of the social media networks that are on offer.

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Natural Script is a natural medicines dispensary created for practitioners by practitioners. Prescribe from the widest range of practitioner-only supplements including herbal mixtures and compounded nutritional. Sign up today for your free account.

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IBISWorld Alternative Health Therapies in Australia Industry Report

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IBISWorld Alternative Health Therapies in Australia Industry Report

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Business Model Canvas: Customer Segments

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5 Marketing Tips To Supercharge Your Healthcare Business

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For best value, get an All Access Passfor access to everythingOR scroll down to choose a course or three! Looking for our latest courses or a business course? Choose that as a Category below. Any course that you start will appear first in the list of courses.

12 hours

Somatic Therapies for Clinicians

Somatic approaches to resolving psychological trauma in your patients

Dr Paris Williams and Dr Debra Fraser

1.5 hours

Peri/Menopause Masterclass

Empower women to manage perimenopause and menopause as a natural stage of life.

Lara Briden, Felice Gersh, Bonnie Nedrow, Anna Cabeca, Margie Bissinger

1.5 hours

Sports Nutrition Gems

In this webinar Kira gives you many practical tips to enhance athletic performance through nutrition.

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For best value, get an All Access Passfor access to everythingOR scroll down to choose a course or three! Looking for our latest courses or a business course? Choose that as a Category below. Any course that you start will appear first in the list of courses.

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ANTA Guide to starting a Natural Therapy Practice

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ANTA Guide to starting a Natural Therapy Practice

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4. Select a location for your new business

When you've completed your qualifications and finished celebrating, it's time to set up your new business!

The first step is selecting a location for your practice, and it's an important one. If you set up your practice in a location where people are likely to use your services, you'll be on your way to success. You should consider the following when selecting a location for your practice:

Can people living in the area afford your services?

What are the demographics of people living in the area? Do they match your target demographic?

Is there a demand for your services in the area? What is the competition like?

Is the area considered to have good economic growth?

You can contact the local council for this kind of information, or research online.

This is a critical step, so take this slowly.

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A Guide To Starting A Natural Therapy Practice | ANTA

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When you've completed your qualifications and finished celebrating, it's time to set up your new business! The first step is selecting a location for your practice, and it's an important one. If you set up your practice in a location where people are likely to use your services, you'll be on your way to success.

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Manufacturers and importers of products need to know whether the products are regulated as therapeutic goods or as food because different regulatory requirements apply.

Consumers may also want to check if the products they are using are classified and regulated suitably.

Before using this tool, you are encouraged to familiarise yourself with the basics of food and medicine and regulation.

Underneath each question is more information to help you make your decision. For a full explanation of each question, including real-world examples where applicable, see the FMIGT questions - explanation and information.

Is the product a 'therapeutic good'?

This is an interactive interface that cannot be accessed with a keyboard. A keyboard-accessible version is also available.

1. 2

Is there a (post 2010) s.7 declaration in relation to the product that it is a therapeutic good?

A product will be a therapeutic good if it is declared to be so under section 7 of the Therapeutic Goods Act.

Under section 7 of the Act the Secretary of the Australian Government Department of Health (through the TGA) can declare that a product is a therapeutic good where satisfied that it is a therapeutic good. For this purpose, the fact that the product may come within paragraph (e) or paragraph (f) of the definition of therapeutic goods (see definition in subsection 3(1) of the Act) can be disregarded.

Thus if the TGA is of the view that a product which would otherwise come within either of those paragraphs is a therapeutic good (for instance, representations are made that the product has a therapeutic use) and believes it would be more appropriate for the product to be regulated as a therapeutic good, a declaration can be made. Declarations made under section 7 that products are therapeutic goods are on the website.

If a declaration has been made in relation to the product, it will be a therapeutic good and cannot be a food (even if it is goods for which there is a standard or it has a tradition of use as a food in Australia or New Zealand).

Issue of the food interface does not arise (may be a therapeutic good)

2. 3

Is the product covered by a s.7AA declaration?

A product will not be a therapeutic good if it is covered by a declaration made under section 7AA of the Act (see paragraphs (g) and (h) of the definition of therapeutic goods in subsection 3(1) of the Act).

A declaration is a legislative instrument. There are currently no section 7AA declarations.

Section 7AA allows the Minister to exclude goods from the definition of 'therapeutic goods' having regard to the matters set out in subsection 7AA(3) which are

whether it is likely that the goods might harm the health of members of the public if not regulated under the Act

whether it is appropriate in all the circumstances to apply the national system of controls relating to the quality, safety, efficacy and performance of therapeutic goods established by this Act to regulate the goods

whether the kinds of risks from the goods to which members of the public might be exposed could be more appropriately dealt with under another regulatory scheme, and

any other matter the Minister considers relevant.

The product is not a 'therapeutic good'. It may be 'food' within state/territory food regulation legislation and/or regulated under other state/territory legislation

3. 4

Is the product 'goods for which there is a standard' in the Food Standards Code?

If the product falls into a category for which there is a food standard within the Food Standards Code (the Code), then the product is not a therapeutic good. It may be regulated under state or territory food legislation.

A number of matters are relevant in determining whether a product is 'goods for which there is a standard':

1. the food standard relates to the product rather than its ingredients

2. a food standard of the kind referred to in paragraph (e) of the definition of therapeutic goods is likely to be located in Chapter 2 of the Code (Food Product Standards) rather than Chapter 1 of the Code (General Food Standards)

3. if the product is goods for which there is a standard, the fact it does not comply with the standard does not mean the standard does not apply

4. the fact that goods for which there is a standard may contain an undisclosed scheduled substance does not mean the standard does not apply

5. the fact that claims of therapeutic use are made in relation to a product or that it is presented as if it is a therapeutic good does not make it a therapeutic good if it is a good for which there is a standard

Full explanation of this question.

The product is not a 'therapeutic good'. It is likely to be 'food' within state/territory food regulation legislation and/or regulated under other state/territory legislation

4. 5

Is the product goods which, in Australia or NZ, have a tradition of use as foods for humans in the form in which the thing is presented?

In determining whether a product is a good for which, in Australia or New Zealand, there is a tradition of use as food for humans in the form in which it is presented, consideration should be given to:

what kind of good is the product (eg coffee or tea, a herb)?

what is the form in which the product is presented (eg coffee in the form of granules, tea in a teabag, a herb in a fresh or dried form or encapsulated)?

is there a use of the good as 'food for humans' in Australia or New Zealand in that form (ie granulated coffee as a food, tea in a teabag, herb in a dried form or encapsulated)?

is there a 'tradition of use' of the product, by humans, in Australia or New Zealand, in that form?

'Tradition of use' is taken to be widespread and significant consumption of the product for use as a food over time. As a consequence of that use, there is presumed to be knowledge of the operation and effect of the particular product, and a sense of community acceptance of the product by later generations.

Full explanation of this question.

The product is not a 'therapeutic good'. It is likely to be 'food' within state/territory food regulation legislation and/or regulated under other state/territory legislation

5. 6

Is the product any of the following:

1. represented in any way to be for therapeutic use?

2. likely to be taken [by someone] to be for therapeutic use because of the way in which it is presented?

3. likely to be taken [by someone] to be for therapeutic use for any other reason?

Question 6 relates to the apparent intended use of the product. Consideration now focuses on whether the product is represented/ presented as having a therapeutic use or appears to be for a therapeutic use.

The question is best considered in 2 parts:

1. what use does the product appear to be for?

2. is that use a 'therapeutic use'?

Full explanation of this question.

6. 7

Is the product in a class of goods the sole or principal use of which is, or ordinarily is, a therapeutic use?

This question relates to the actual use of the class of products to which the product belongs. The question is whether the sole or principal use of that class of products is, or ordinarily is, a therapeutic use in humans, for example, in:

1. preventing, diagnosing, curing or alleviating a disease, defect, ailment or injury; or

2. influencing or modifying a physiological process in humans.

In coming to a view on whether a product is in such a class of products, consideration will be given to:

identifying the disease, defect, ailment or injury, and

determining whether the product is in a class of products that is used in the prevention, diagnosis, cure or alleviation of that disease, ailment, defect or injury.

In coming to a view on whether a product is in a class of products the use of which is in influencing, inhibiting or modifying a physiological process, consideration will be given to:

identifying what the physiological process is, and

determining whether the product is one in a class of products is that in fact influences, inhibits or modifies that process.

Full explanation of this question.

If it is not a biological or medical device, the product is not a 'therapeutic good'. It may be 'food' within state/territory food regulation legislation

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Food-Medicine Interface Guidance Tool (FMIGT)

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Manufacturers and importers of products need to know whether the products are regulated as therapeutic goods or as food because different regulatory requirements apply. Consumers may also want to check if the products they are using are classified and regulated suitably.

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How to Target Older Demographics With Social Media Marketing

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How to Target Older Demographics With Social Media Marketing

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Today's marketers often place a great deal of focus on reaching Gen Z and millennials through organic and paid content on social media. But what about Gen Xers and baby boomers? If you're trying to reach an older demographic, it might be difficult to pinpoint which social platform is best for engaging with your audience - but don't make the mistake of thinking they're not on there at all.

The Pew Research Center has been researching and recording social media usage for more than a decade. Business News Daily studied Pew's research to learn more about older demographics' use of social platforms and reached out to marketing professionals to see the kind of success they've had in engaging with older audiences on social media.

Facebook

Many of the marketers we spoke with reported that Facebook was the most useful platform for reaching an older demographic. According to Senior Living, roughly half of the 47 million seniors living in the U.S. are active Facebook users.

Jake Tully, head of the creative department at Trucking Unlimited, pointed out that many of these users prefer to share media from another source instead of posting something themselves.

"Rather than taking selfies or giving out information regarded as personal, these older users enjoy filling up their timelines sharing articles, photos, and videos relating to their interests, and do so quite frequently," he said. "With this in mind, we try to cultivate an online presence with news stories that may bring the opinionated people out of the shadows."

The trend towards seniors using Facebook is only likely to continue. According to The Senior List, seniors are the fastest growing user group on the social media platform today.

Andrew D'Amours, co-founder of Flytrippers, said Facebook is the best platform because it gives businesses more credibility with older audiences as they see their younger friends and relatives interacting with posts.

LinkedIn

Kevin Huhn, growth strategist and consultant at Hopes, Wishes and Dreams, said it's not enough to know where your audience is; you should also consider the type of product you're promoting when you choose which social channel to use. While Facebook is a good platform for promoting personal products, LinkedIn is more successful for advertising business offers.

According to Pew, LinkedIn is more popular with 30- to 49-year-olds than with the 50-and-older demographic: 33% of internet users ages 30 to 49 use LinkedIn, compared with 24% of 50- to 64-year-olds and 20% of those 65 and older.

Twitter

Some companies find success in reaching older audiences on Twitter. Deborah Sweeney, CEO of MyCorporation, said her company connects with Gen Xers and baby boomers frequently, especially through relevant Twitter chats.

According to Pew, fewer internet users are on Twitter than on some other social platforms, so you might not find as much success here as you would on Facebook, depending on your audience.

Pinterest

Pinterest might be a good social media platform to focus on if women are part of your core buying demographic, said Laura Simis, an inbound specialist at Coalmarch Productions. Pinterest also helps connect you with communities that share interests, Simis said. This platform is entirely visual, so think about what types of photos or videos your business could post if you decide to look into Pinterest.

An important part of any marketing campaign is knowing your audience. If you're looking to market to baby boomers or Gen X, Facebook is your best bet. However, depending on your audience, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest might be viable options as well.

6 tips for marketing to seniors

If you're looking to market specifically to seniors and other older demographics, here are a few tips to keep in mind:

1. Use appropriate language. Besides avoiding crude or suggestive language, make sure to use words and phrasing that a large audience will understand. When specifically targeting older demographics, avoid using jargon or slang that would be understood only by millennials or Gen Z. Rather, use simple descriptions of your products and services, and clearly outline their benefits.

2. Stay away from fear-based tactics. It's a common trope to "scare" seniors into buying a product or service, particularly if it comes to their health and safety. However, Pew research shows that seniors use digital tools and social media to remain independent and connected to loved ones. The isolation once used to prey upon older demographics is rapidly becoming less relevant, so as you develop your marketing messaging, try to steer your language away from fear.

3. Market on multiple channels. Do not limit your marketing to one platform; use all possible channels to reach as many people as you can. In many situations, older demographics use different channels. Some use only one, and some might use all of them. In either situation, it is important to tailor your message to each channel. For example, use eye-catching images on all channels but write different marketing copy for each channel.

4. Be clear about what you want. Do you want your target audience to sign up for a newsletter, register for a free trial, or call your business for more information? Know precisely what you want your older demographic audience to do. Referred to as a "call to action", this is a key part of your marketing strategy and will be essential to the success of your campaign.

5. Don't sleep on video. YouTube is the second-largest website in the world. Videos demonstrating your product, showcasing testimonials, or giving clear how-to tips will be beneficial to the older demographic searching for solutions like the ones you offer.

6. Don't underestimate your audience. Some marketers make the incorrect assumption that other people make the buying decisions for seniors. While this is certainly true in some cases, it's also true in every demographic. Older demographics are independent and want to conduct their research. Adjust your marketing accordingly by speaking directly to them in your copy.

Source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article.

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How to Market to Senior Citizens on Social Media - businessnewsdaily.com

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Don't underestimate social media's ability to reach older demographics. Here's what you need to know.

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IBISWorld Hairdressing and Beauty Services in Australia

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IBISWorld Hairdressing and Beauty Services in Australia

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Metagenics Institute Best Practice Webinar Series

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Metagenics Institute Best Practice Webinar Series

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Your Learning Hub | Metagenics Institute

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BEC Australia is a not-for-profit organisation whose primary role is to support and grow the national network of Business Enterprise Centres and provide representation on behalf of its members to key stakeholders.

We have a nationwide network of Business Enterprise Centres that are recognised as the first and best point of contact for small business operators seeking quality business information, advice and guidance.

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Business Enterprise Centre (BEC) Australia

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BEC Australia is a not-for-profit organisation whose primary role is to support and grow the national network of Business Enterprise Centres and provide representation on behalf of its members to key stakeholders. We have a nationwide network of Business Enterprise Centres that are recognised as the first and best point of contact for small business operators seeking quality business information, advice and guidance.

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Manage Your Social Strategies. Expand your online audience and establish your social brand in five courses.

Skills you will gain

Business Planning Digital Marketing Social Media Marketing Influencer Marketing Analytics Social Marketing Social Network Social Media Marketing Strategy Writing A/B Testing Budget

About this Specialization

In a 2018 survey of businesses, Buffer found that only 29% had effective social media marketing programs. A recent survey of consumers by Tomoson found 92% of consumers trust recommendations from other people over brand content, 70% found consumer reviews to be their second most trusted source, 47% read blogs developed by influencers and experts to discover new trends and new ideas and 35% used blogs to discover new products and services. Also, 20% of women who used social considered products promoted by bloggers they knew. Today, businesses and consumers use social media to make their purchase decisions. Created in 2014, this Specialization is updated every quarter to ensure you are receiving the most up-to-date training. The Social Media Marketing Specialization is designed to achieve two objectives. It gives you the social analytics tools, and training to help you become an influencer on social media. The course also gives you the knowledge and resources to build a complete social media marketing strategy - from consumer insights to final justification metrics. In each course, you will also receive special toolkits with timely information & when you pay for the Capstone, you receive a market planning toolkit. Each of the individual courses can be audited for free. To see more, visit each course: 1-What is Social?, 2-The Importance of Listening, 3-Engagement & Nurture Marketing Strategies, 4-Content, Advertising & Social IMC, 5-The Business of Social.

100% online courses

Start instantly and learn at your own schedule.

Flexible Schedule

Set and maintain flexible deadlines.

Beginner Level

No prior experience required.

Approx. 5 months to complete

English

Subtitles: English, Japanese, Arabic

Started a new career after completing this specialization.

Got a pay increase or promotion.

100% online courses

Start instantly and learn at your own schedule.

Flexible Schedule

Set and maintain flexible deadlines.

Beginner Level

No prior experience required.

Approx. 5 months to complete

English

Subtitles: English, Japanese, Arabic

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How the Specialization Works

Take Courses

A Coursera Specialization is a series of courses that helps you master a skill. To begin, enroll in the Specialization directly, or review its courses and choose the one you'd like to start with. When you subscribe to a course that is part of a Specialization, you're automatically subscribed to the full Specialization. It's okay to complete just one course - you can pause your learning or end your subscription at any time. Visit your learner dashboard to track your course enrollments and your progress.

Hands-on Project

Every Specialization includes a hands-on project. You'll need to successfully finish the project(s) to complete the Specialization and earn your certificate. If the Specialization includes a separate course for the hands-on project, you'll need to finish each of the other courses before you can start it.

Earn a Certificate

When you finish every course and complete the hands-on project, you'll earn a Certificate that you can share with prospective employers and your professional network.

There are 6 Courses in this Specialization

Offered by

Northwestern University

Northwestern University is a private research and teaching university with campuses in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, and Doha, Qatar. Northwestern combines innovative teaching and pioneering research in a highly collaborative environment that transcends traditional academic boundaries.

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Manage Your Social Strategies. Expand your online audience and establish your social brand in five courses.

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Business Connect advisers provide practical support to small business owners, to help them make the right decisions for their business.

The advisers are accredited professionals with first-hand experience running their own small business. Their advice is independent and completely confidential.

Business advice covers business-related topics including:

managing cash flow and accessing finance

marketing to reach new customers

implementing digital tools such as ecommerce

developing a business or recovery plan

managing change

innovating

building business capability to supply goods or services to government

connecting to other support including government programs and professional services.

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Business Connect advisers provide practical support to small business owners, to help them make the right decisions for their business. The advisers are accredited professionals with first-hand experience running their own small business. Their advice is independent and completely confidential.