The Many Hats of A Small Business Owner
The Many Hats of A Small Business Owner | Outfit Details
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The Many Hats of A Small Business Owner | Owning/Running A Small Business
I have seen and heard a lot of people give influencers a hard time about how easy their job is. That they get paid to post pretty pictures and it's so easy. That they have nothing to complain about and need to get a real job. Someone once said that anyone with an audience is an influencer. If other people are willing to look at and engage with your content, you are an influencer. You may not like the label, I don't, but it's true. But for those that have turned influencing into a full time job, it's more than just being paid to post pretty pictures. They are running a small business. And there is a market for what they do. Advertisers have figured out that consumers spend most of their time on social media and want input from a real person before they buy something. Influencers are able to reach those consumers and consumers trust them. There are a lot of aspects to running a small business, including the pretty pictures and getting paid. I do know what it takes to run a small business.
I want to talk about how much work and time goes into running a successful small business. I will include what influencers do in regards to small business but this applies to any small business owner: direct sales, designer, manufacturer, consultant, creative. My hope is that you can maybe understand what goes into running a small business and think twice before you criticize someone else's job.
The Many Hats of A Small Business Owner | Creative
I have talked before about how every small business needs to be on social media. In order to be on social media, you need to create content. This requires a lot of creativity. Some people hire this out to consultants because it's not something they are comfortable doing. But even if the content creation is do by someone outside of the business, the small business owner needs to be involved to some extent.
Even without the social media content creation, small businesses need to create marketing materials, logos, slide decks, proposal outlines, newsletters, products for clients, etc.. There is always an aspect of creativity for a small business owner.
Many small businesses require creativity. The business owner is an artist, clothing designer, photographer, influencer. Any of these require creativity to design and create new things to keep their customers and followers engaged.
The Many Hats of A Small Business Owner | Marketing & Sales
Any small business owner knows that you need to do marketing and sales to get clients, no matter what you do. Let's use the example of an influencer here. There have been examples of "influencers" asking for free trips and products from hotels and brands without showing what the benefit to the brand/hotel will be, saying only that their followers will love to see where they travel and what products they use.
This is not how professional influencers interact with brands. When pitching to a brand, I ALWAYS tell them exactly what I am looking for, what they will get, how much exposure they will get and examples of my work with other brands in the past. I always include the number of followers I have on every platform I have a presence on and where those followers are located. This gives brands an idea about how well we will work together.
However, influencers are often offered trades for free products. This is becoming less and less common but still happens. This means that the time that goes into styling, photographing, editing, creating and posting the content isn't paid for. Let's use the example of a skincare product. If an influencer is given one product worth $50 and asked to do a blog post and coordinating Facebook, Instagram and Twitter posts. Doing a shot, editing the pictures and creating a blog post can take 2-3 hours. Which comes out to about $17 an hour for this specific example. That does not include the creation of the social media posts, posting them, responding to comments and creating additional stories. It also does not include the time to get the content approved by the company that sent the project. So it's much less than $17 an hour. And it's not actually money in the bank, it's free product.
Think about it this way, if you worked at Wendy's, would you be okay with being compensated in food instead of money? Probably not. You have bills to pay. The same goes for influencers and any small business owner.
The Many Hats of A Small Business Owner | Admin
Admin is a huge part of every business, big or small. Admin usually entails HR, accounting, billing, and contracts. A small business that has more than one employee usually has a dedicated admin person because it can take so much time and energy. When it is just one person in the small business, they have to balance doing all of these things as well as being the creative and doing the other things I talk about in this post. Some small businesses will outsource this kind of work. There are lots of people that can help with these tasks. But if you don’t outsource, you have to schedule out the time to make sure each of these things get taken care of.
Having an admin person on staff is really helpful for when a contract is violated or you need an invoice chased down to be paid. It allows small business owners to be the good guy and have someone else be the bad guy. But many influencers don’t have that luxury. When a brand backs out on a deal or doesn’t pay an invoice, the influencer has to be the one to chase that down. Which takes time that could be used doing something else.
The Many Hats of A Small Business Owner | Customer Service
Customer service is usually associated with a business that sells a product. But every business needs to deal with customer service. Let’s talk about customer service from the perspective from an Influencer. What kind of customer service do they have to do? Have you ever read the comments on an Influencer’s social media account? Responding to those comments is customer service. Consumers are customers in the sense that they buy products through affiliate links. So keeping consumers happy and answering their questions is a huge part of an Influencer’s job. Influencers also have to deal with brands that have hired them for a campaign. They have to get their posts approved and if they aren’t approved, they need to be redone. Keeping the brands happy is a big job and important for Influencers.
There is a balancing act for keeping customers happy and not being taken advantage of. And each small business has to decide what that balance is. For an Influencer, this usually means making sure brands are happy while also making sure they are promoting brands they fully support.
The Many Hats of A Small Business Owner | Crisis Management
There will always be a crisis. A crisis can be different for every small business. For an influencer it usually means their site has gone down or there has been a misunderstanding or maybe a post has gone viral (a crisis can be good or bad). But for another small business, these aren’t a big deal and something else would be a problem.
When I was organizing conferences in the Middle East, a website going down wasn’t a big deal. But the first conference in the UAE had a major crisis on the second day. Someone from the conference had lost their backpack and called the police, thinking it had been stolen. This happened on the first day of the conference but the police didn’t show up until the next day, just minutes before the morning break. Three hundred people were about to come out into the hallway for snacks and the police were taping off this hallway. Luckily the hotel security stepped in and brought down the tape and removed the police from the space. But I had to stall for time. Which meant changing the speaker schedule and letting the speaker, MC and AV techs know.
No matter what the business, there will be a crisis that needs to be managed. Every business is different so the crisis will be different. But someone has to deal with it.
The Many Hats of A Small Business Owner | IT
All businesses have some kind of IT. Phones, computers, cameras. Depending on the business, it can be more or less. But for an Influencer, this includes staying on top of new technology and making sure all of the equipment is up to date and working just the way it should be. Most influencers get the newest phones and make sure they have computers and cameras that can handle pictures and videos. In addition to cameras, most influencers have equipment for their camera. I have lights, a ring light, a backdrop and a tripod. This gives me flexibility for filming and taking pictures.
The Many Hats of A Small Business Owner | Wrapping It Up
If you made it to the end of this post, you should get an award! I really hope you learned something about how much time and effort goes into running any small business, but especially that of an influencer. As always, feel free to reach out if you have any questions!