By Ashley M. Casey
Associate Editor
When is the best time to post about your store’s upcoming sale? How do you choose whether Instagram, Twitter or Snapchat is the right platform to promote your business? And how exactly does one stay out of “Facebook jail”?
Business consultants Shelley Hoffman and Amanda Funk will help entrepreneurs answer these questions and more at their “Leveraging Your Social Media in 2019” workshop, which will be held Jan. 10 at the Primerica office in Lysander Town Hall.
Hoffman and Funk are the owners of Passion into Profits, which assists small business owners with marketing their services, creating business plans and overcoming obstacles to success. The workshop, Hoffman said, will help entrepreneurs use social media to “build their brand and profit margin.”
While most social media platforms are free to use, knowing what to post and where is highly valuable, Hoffman said.
“It will teach you the appropriate time to post, the algorithms that go with posting, type of content to post and the do’s and don’ts,” she said of the workshop.
The workshop is geared toward small business owners and those who work in direct sales.
Hoffman, who works in real estate, said she has learned how to navigate social media by taking classes, networking and trading tips with other entrepreneurs, following her business heroes on social media and trial and error.
“Always proofread your posts,” she said of one lesson she has learned. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to go back and edit.”
Funk and Hoffman first met at an email marketing workshop hosted by Funk. The two launched Passion into Profits in the fall of 2018 because of a shared passion for helping small businesses get off the ground.
Hoffman said the Passion into Profits logo incorporates the yin-yang symbol to reflect her and Funk’s different but complementary approaches. Funk develops much of the curriculum for Passion into Profits workshops, and Hoffman, a former eighth-grade teacher, is the instructor.
“She tells them, ‘These are the tools you need,’ and I teach them how to use the tools,” Hoffman said.
Hoffman said she hopes attendees of the Jan. 10 workshop can “take away three or four ‘aha’ moments that they can implement right away.”
Next week’s workshop won’t be the last for the fledgling consulting business.
“We plan on doing one workshop a month or more as requested,” Hoffman said.
