SMBs entrepreneurs attend workshop on social media

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Nina Sharil (seated front row, centre) and Wu (seated second row, right) in a photo-call with the participants.

KUCHING: Sarawak Multimedia Authority (SMA) and iCube Innovation Sdn Bhd recently collaborated in organising a series of workshops to boost awareness of how social media and smartphones could boost up small and medium businesses (SMBs).

The workshops, held at the Sarikei Innovation Centre (SiC), comprised topics such as ‘How Google Calendar and Maps Can Help Small Medium Businesses and ‘Using Social Media To Boost Your Business’.

iCube Innovation strategic manager Malcolm Wu said everyone nowadays own smartphones but not many realise how they can maximise from this gadget and the social media.

Aside from social media, he said there are free tools for proprietors of SMBs to manage efficiency and productivity such as apps from Google Technologies, namely Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Hangout, Google My Business and so on.

“With easy accessibility to social media, SMBs can leverage on that to boost their business. Social media has become a very important piece of the Internet Marketing Puzzle. Yet, it can be intimidating to get started.

“Through this workshop, the trainer walked everyone through some critical and basic components needed to create a successful social media campaign for their business via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and others.  In addition, they learned tips and tricks on how to create attractive marketing artwork and graphics using free tools,” he said.

Wu, himself also Google Business Group (GBG) Sarawak manager, was one of the trainers for the workshop. The other trainer was Nina Sharil Khan, Chief Unicorn officer for PopCon which is a collaborative community for online creators.

He explained that such apps could help SMBs manage efficiency and productivity as this allows entrepreneurs to easily keep track of their appointments and events, and share the calendar with co-workers, department heads or even their clients.

Through apps such as Google Maps, he said customers could see a nice display of the SMBs with location, address, hours of operation, phone numbers and even reviews.

Meanwhile, Nina Sharil said she was inspired by the crowd that attended the trainings as some of them told her that they drove as far as one and half hours from elsewhere just to get to SiC.

This is because the participants came not just from Sarikei, but some drove from as far as Sibu and Meradong.

“They demonstrated commitment and dedication in wanting to learn and be better versions of themselves for their families and community.”

One of the attendees was a Kek Lapis seller Siti Rokiah Horton, who said she now has a better understanding of how to leverage on free tools to market her products after the attending the workshop.

A retiree from Sarikei, Thomas Chan said the workshops were indeed very useful to business owners and other professionals on how to maximise on free tools for productivity.

“It was indeed an eye-opener for many of us on how social media could really bring us closer to customers and enable us to interact with them. Both presenters are very knowledgeable and experienced in the subject matter presented and the workshop was conducted in a nice pace and interactive as well towards the attendees,” he said,

On another matter, Wu said the next workshop at SiC would be on the topic of ‘Design Thinking’, this Sept 22.

Admission is free, but seats are limited. Those who want to participate can register online via http://bit.ly/sic-dt.