Strawberry Communications: Writing & PR

A Decade in Business: Reflection and Refocus

September 28, 2016 By Johanna Baker-Dowdell Leave a Comment

A photo by Christopher Sardegna. unsplash.com/photos/CMOa3H1SXG0

This month Strawberry Communications turns 10. I had been freelancing on and off for six years before I started working for myself full time, but once my eldest son was born I knew I didn’t want to be working for someone else five days a week. My work experience and entrepreneurial spirit drove me to go it alone and I registered the business in October 2006.

My business has gone through many iterations in that 10 years: from being a purely freelance writing business initially, to combining my own clients with freelancing for other PR businesses. From there Strawberry Communications was predominantly operating as a PR consultancy with two additional consultants supporting me and it’s now back to mostly writing, with just me at the helm.

A fluid business

There have been many reasons for these changes: responding to industry demand, working around my family and my own desire for change. During the past 10 years I’ve worked around one, and then two, small children, after which I ran the business full time while my partner become a stay-at-home dad. Next I combined running Strawberry Communications with baking business, Stanley & Nelson, and then with studying part-time. For the past two years I’ve been studying full time and working in the business part time. I expect to be finished my PhD within the next six months and so now I’m starting to think about what I’ll do post study.

7 Tips for Starting Your Own Business While Being Fully Employed

September 28, 2016 By Johanna Baker-Dowdell Leave a Comment

Image attribution:
https://pixabay.com/en/student-typing-keyboard-text-woman-849825/

Guest post by Jill Phillips

Creating a business from the ground up might be incredibly challenging, but it could also provide you with complete financial freedom. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs must continue to hold down a full-time job while they are getting their new business started.

Here are seven tips you can use to make the most out of every minute of the day while juggling your current career, your company, and your personal life.

1. Plan everything for a great start

Even small business owners who have no other careers must be as methodical as possible when it comes to the growth of their company, let alone aspiring entrepreneurs who have full-time jobs. The first thing you should do is create a filing system for all the information on your business and the industry you are in. Once you have everything stored and categorised methodically, you can go ahead and create a business plan that will help you do everything step by step. Your business plan should include your short-term and long-term goals, the state of the industry, legal information, and a financial structure.

2. Manage your time

It is all too easy to waste a few minutes or hours every day, and that will have a negative impact on your new business as well as your personal life. You will most likely need to sit down with your family and come up with a firm schedule every week. No matter how well you manage your time, you must also be ready to make sacrifices. Many entrepreneurs work at least six days a week and have to cut back on their hobbies and leisure time. You can also speak with your current boss to see if you could work remotely a few days a week. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Business Tips Tagged With: business partnership, business planning, education, Jill Phillips, Networking, personal development, small business tips, starting a business, startup, time management

Let’s Talk About Your Health Ladies

September 6, 2016 By Johanna Baker-Dowdell Leave a Comment

This time a year ago I training for one of the most physical and mental challenges I’ve ever undertaken: trekking to Machu Picchu in Peru. It is Jean Hailes Health Week Women’s Health Week (September 5-9) and as I think about my own health, I also think about the other women around me.

The Vibrancy Project has organised the Happy Healthy You event for Thursday (September 8) this week in Launceston.

Following the theme of the National Jean Hailes Women’s Health Week campaign, ‘Am I normal?’, the event promotes messages on women being champions of workplace health and wellbeing.

“We believe this year’s event will be the first of many that bring our female community together to support and encourage better health for women at any age,” says event organiser Sarah Yates.

“We are very passionate about delivering inspiring messages to guests on mental and emotional health on the night and feel that our speakers will help us achieve this,” says Sarah.

A range of women from the Tasmanian community, leaders, professionals and business owners will speak about the event about personal health stories and offer advice for working mums, young women and women leading demanding working and life roles.

“We are grateful to kick off this year’s event with such an amazing mix of female speakers, willing to put their hand up and support women’s health week,” says MC Ari Powell.

Purchase tickets at Eventbrite.

Filed Under: Latest News Tagged With: Ari Powell, Happy Healthy You, Jean Hailes Women's Health Week, Sarah Yates, Vibrancy Project

Guest post: 5 Email Campaign Ideas To Help Increase Conversion Rates

August 24, 2016 By Johanna Baker-Dowdell Leave a Comment

Image credit: unsplash.com

By Rachael Everly

Reaching out to your potential customers via the right marketing and sales channel is the first step in an effective digital marketing strategy.

Not everyone you are targeting may necessarily be in the right frame of mind to buy your product, but that certainly does not mean you cannot convert that lead into a sales opportunity. The most important thing is to establish an effective communication channel – and the least expensive channel, as well as the one that requires minimum effort, is email funnels.

Your target market may be an amalgamation of different consumers, hence you should be careful when implementing your email campaign to narrow down your emails to personalised messages, not one email sent to all.

What happened to Twitter?

August 17, 2016 By Johanna Baker-Dowdell Leave a Comment

Image from Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/epw/4341554771

When I discovered Twitter in 2008 I was a freelance writer and fledgling business owner working from the third bedroom of our home. I was also a new-ish mum looking for different ways to connect with others in the same situation.

I had been blogging for two years already and was an active member of a few online communities for women in business and mums in business. It was one of these online friends who suggested I look at Twitter in 2008, and once I did I saw a whole world open up.

Physically, more than socially, isolated, I set up an account and dived into a few conversations with people I vaguely knew with the aim of building a bigger social network. For the next few years I was a huge fan of everything Twitter because I could have amazing, funny and inspirational conversations with so many people. I followed all my IRL friends, everyone I met at networking events and anyone who wrote or presented anything I was interested in. My #followfriday (or #ff if there were lots of names) list grew week by week until I became overwhelmed by it. The point is, Twitter was the place to be for someone like me.

Storytelling Tools for Your Business

July 27, 2016 By Johanna Baker-Dowdell Leave a Comment

Image credit: unsplash.com

Human beings are social creatures. We love connecting with others and one of the simplest ways to facilitate this connection is through storytelling. Business owners can use that instinctive attraction to stories in marketing, by inviting customers to connect through a form of communication we’re all comfortable with.

I’ve written about the power of storytelling through data, creative writing and advertising already, but in this post I want to share some of my favourite storytelling tools with you.

Social media

Social media has enabled businesses to tell stories in more fun, simple and effective ways than ever before, building on those innate connections I mentioned above. Whether you want to live blog an event you’re hosting via Twitter, share your fundraising efforts for a local charity through boosted posts on Facebook or showcase your online store’s unique style through Instagram or Pinterest, social media is the place to do it. Almost everyone has – and uses – their phones to stay connected all day, every day. We all access various social media platforms multiple times throughout the day, meaning you can be connecting with customers via storytelling on their favourite platform at any time.

Tassie’s success with the golden spirit recognised at Whisky Live Hobart

July 25, 2016 By Johanna Baker-Dowdell Leave a Comment

Pure air, clean water and a mild climate are just three of the ingredients needed to produce some of the world’s best whisky. Tasmania has an abundance of these, making it the place to be when Whisky Live hits Hobart this weekend.

This is the first Whisky Live event for Hobart, and will be held at the Grand Chancellor Hotel on Saturday, 30 July, wrapping up the inaugural Tasmanian Whisky Week (22-31 July).

Many Tasmanian whisky brands will be sharing their whisky know-how and offering tastings at Whisky Live, including Lark & Overeem Distillery, Sullivans Cove Single Malt Whisky, Hellyers Road Distillery and Redlands Whisky.

Guest post: 5 Ways Cloud Technology Can Help Optimise Your Business

July 24, 2016 By Johanna Baker-Dowdell Leave a Comment

Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/business-client-cloud-communication-17686/

While not exactly a new technology, the speed with which cloud computing is transforming business models and efficiency seems to have accelerated over the past few years. As the world of data and information continues to expand, the cloud grows with it.

Cloud computing has many benefits and holds the potential to dramatically change the businesses that adopt it.

Improved Operations

Cloud computing enables businesses large and small to move some of their operation to third-party servers, which allows for variable data packages, rapid expansion, and mobility without the fear of downtime, crashes, or permanently lost data. This allows a small business to access resources that would have been cost prohibitive for them in the past. These operations can also compete against corporations with far more funding, causing small and medium-size businesses to go from being constrained to certain geographies because of budget limitations to having the ability to scale globally with significantly reduced overhead costs. All of this can happen without building a physical data centre at a new location. Instead of deploying on-site infrastructure to run their operations, companies can access infrastructure as a service, via managed service providers. Cloud technologies enable larger companies to create a modular organisation. Cloud technology permits better participation in small teams, which allows organisations to be more modular and less hierarchical, lessening the risk of the collapse of any department or its unit.

Launceston Dentist Donates to Help Homeless Residents

July 5, 2016 By Johanna Baker-Dowdell Leave a Comment

Shekinah House co-founder Louise Cowan accepts a $500 donation from Prospect Family Dental owner Dr Bing Lee.

After opening its doors late last year, Prospect Family Dental is acknowledging the overwhelming support from the Launceston community by making a donation to a local homeless charity.

Over the past two months dental surgery owner Dr Bing Lee has been contributing a percentage of the business’s fees to a donation fund until it reached $500. He then used the power of the Launceston community to help him decide which charity to choose.

“Our Facebook page hit 1,000 likes in April and we wanted to thank our valued patients for their support so we decided to make a donation to our community’s favourite charity,” Dr Lee said.

What do a girls’ weekend away and writing have in common?

June 30, 2016 By Johanna Baker-Dowdell 2 Comments

As a writer I thrive on the opportunity to spend extended periods of time with others who love words as much as I do. It’s a real treat to occasionally be able to immerse myself in all things writing and be surrounded by others who feel the same.

My recent trip to Melbourne for the National Writers’ Conference was a chance to do just that – and spend some time with two fellow members of my writers’ group, Penny and Leonie. This was a typical girls’ weekend where we talked about the raft of topics women share when together (partners, families, friends, travel, food, pets etc), but we also dissected the sessions we’d attended and shared how they had inspired us to write more, or differently, or explore new genres.

Between us, Penny, Leonie and I have attended many writers’ festivals and enjoyed them, but felt they were lacking in the stuff we really needed to know – insights to the craft of writing itself. Instead of being for avid readers (which we are too), this wasn’t about authors discussing what inspired them to write their latest work and then share their favourite passage. The National Writer’s Conference didn’t skirt around the how-tos and whys of writing, the program asked authors to jump straight in to the nitty gritty and lay their writing process bare.