Have you thought about trying something new and were unsure, or maybe even too scared to try it? I know how you feel; I felt the same when Peter asked me to boost our beekeeping business.

As described in Marketing a Bee Business – Part 1, Peter asked for further suggestions on areas of our operation, and my advice kept working. Then the crunch came when he asked me to revamp our website and social media and work the magic for our sales. Well, the sales were okay. It was the whole website and social media that blew my hair back!

Detail is not my scene; as a visionary, I prefer highlights, so website backend ops and detail are not my strengths. As for social media, I am not keen on that either, yet I am realistic enough to know both marketing platforms are essential requirements for any business to succeed, given online presence is king – I needed to expand my mental energy to a new level.  

What do I do?

Run for the hills screaming, no. Overthink the situation to the point of being paralysed, no. I realised my resistance to doing our business’s website and social media was based on FEAR – False Evidence Appearing Real. These two areas were new, and I was out of my depth. Change is all around us, and this was a change I needed to embrace to support our business in the next phase of growth. 

It is fair to say a website is not going to eat me. If I blew a page away, Peter had organised web support, who had our backs. Social media didn’t appear that scary once I dug around and saw what was required. I realised my fear was based on the unknown, and knowledge would remove the fear. Does this resonate with you? 

I launched into a crash course of website and social media activities, read, watched and learnt as much as possible, finding that once I understood the basics, the IT platforms were reasonably common sense. Peter is more detailed than I am, and he dug through the links, talked with web support and fixed the pages that I broke! For the record, Peter broke a couple of pages too.

Why are we doing all the work when we could pay someone else to do it in no time?

Our decisions are based on context and self-reliance. We have been around long enough to know people and businesses come and go, and what is a priority for your business may not be a priority for the service provider, particularly when the service provider has several clients with priorities, too. Scale is important in business, yet so is stability.

Stability provides our customers with genuine products and services. As a stable family-owned and operated business, we are positioned to manage our products, services and tools to flex to the changes the industry presents or needs.

I have found my creative side can shine, Peter can continue to dabble in IT, and our budding IT boffin family is learning valuable creative production and operational aspects of the business alongside the down-to-earth benefits and lessons of the natural world. 

While we are the first to say we are no specialist in the website and social media worlds, I think we have done a great job in taking the website to a new level of engagement for you, our customer. We thank you for your ongoing support.