Category: Key things to help you everyday

With the average Australian spending 88 hours per month online, it should be no surprise to find that one of the biggest cohorts using social media is the baby boomer.

Research shows, the baby boomer is primarily infatuated with Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest.

Recent data from IAB Australia indicates that during COVID lockdowns, digital news consumption increased over 38%.  While digital consumption of real estate related content, increased by 44% in the last 12 months.

These facts should leave you with no doubt, that a village social media presence must be part of your village marketing strategies moving forward.

Don’t sell. Educate first

Whilst there is a temptation to sell, sell, sell that no matter the platform used, when it comes to marketing, the professionals warn of this strategy on social media.

Judi Carr, Director, Content Republic, shared with DCM Institute members at this month’s webinar the golden rule of social media marketing is to EDUCATE first & SELL second.

She explained the role of social media should be primarily to increase brand awareness and develop trust in your brand.  It is only then, you have the opportunity for the audience to engage with your brand and then, you have the opportunity to sell to your audience.

Around the country this month, we heard the biggest road block to successful social media strategies, is the need for the ongoing development of content.

How to create social media content 

Judi had a great recommendation when starting to build content and to follow a create, curate and syndicate approach. This is best explained as:

• Create – create original posts
   
• Curate – add some commentary to others posts, relevant to your audience
   
• Syndicate – simply share others posts that add value to your audiences’ interests

Creating content doesn’t need to be difficult.  Some easy methods in helping contribute to your marketing teams content plan is to adopt the following: 

• Always be on hand with a camera to capture those great resident moments around your village. Don’t forget to share these with the person managing your social media
   
• More stories of engagement in your community shows it’s a happy place to be
   
• Develop a social media resident sub-committee and have the residents share their ideas and capture content
   
• Add it to your team meeting agendas to share anecdotes and ideas
   
• Consider having the team repurpose existing content (from websites, brochures, newsletters & videos)

A couple of other golden rules when you are starting out on the social media journey:

• Be authentic,
   
• Be consistent; and
   
• Ensure that all interactions are in line with your communities positioning and values.

You may even want to suggest if resource is a factor, to consider outsourcing to a professional like Content Republic to build your strategy and content

If your keen to know more, this month’s webinar is now available in our Knowledge Centre.

Last month when I was in New Zealand, the news of the day was how three public hospitals had their digital systems and patient information hacked, staff were effectively locked out of their digital systems and the Government were potentially being held to ransom.

This got me to thinking about the various digital solutions I have seen around the country in villages and what would the impact be to a village if suddenly their digital system was hacked, they were locked out, the resident information shared publicly or even worse held to ransom.

​Only two laptops safe

It also reminded me of an experience I had at the LEADERS SUMMIT in Adelaide in March where the ComwireIT General Manager, Nathan showed us on his laptop that there were about 140 devices in the conference room but only TWO of them were secure, the rest leaving themselves open to a potential cyber threat.  

Cyber attacks can:

• Cause significant downtime for your business
• Expose your intellectual property to the public or your competitors

• Expose your client’s private information to the public
• Require submission of a Notifiable Data Breach to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner

All these things can have a dramatic impact on your day-to-day operations, your brand and depending upon your internal support systems can cost serious money to rectify.

Simple questions

Nathan also asked us a few questions:

• Where is your data stored? If on a local server, do you complete regular backups?
• Do you have a Disaster Recovery plan?
• If it’s stored in the cloud, is it based in Australia or offshore?
• Who has access to your data?
• What type of authentication do you have to access your systems?
• Does your IT roadmap address all these variables?

Nathan clearly saw the shock on our faces and shared with me a few weeks later the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) Essential Eight mitigation strategies to reduce exposure to a cyber-attack:

• 3rd Party Application Patches need to be managed to reduce the risk of security vulnerabilities
• Operating System Patches need to be managed
• Daily backups are a must
• Application Whitelisting/Anti-Virus management
• Configuration of Microsoft Office macro settings
• Review user application hardening
• Restriction of administrative privileges
• Implementation of Multi-factor authentication (MFA)

Now if you are like me and would like to know some simple solutions for your workplace, click here to download ComwireIT Cyber Security ‘Keep your workplace safe’ checklist. 

Alternatively, if you would like to take it a step further to obtain an audit of your digital environment or add to your IT Roadmap, contact ComwireIT.