Lesson 1. Digital Entrepreneurship
- DIGITAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Entrepreneurship is the activity of setting up a business, taking on financial risk and using initiative to make a profit. Social entrepreneurship involves creating a business that develops, funds, and implements solutions to social, cultural, or environmental causes. Digital entrepreneurship involves using digital tools in this process, essential in today’s business world where the online business marketplace is key.
The benefits of digital entrepreneurship are clear. To stay aligned with today’s consumers: to reach, attract, engage, and procure their business on-going, it is essential to build and maintain an online presence using a variety of digital tools. Examples of relevant digital tools are as follows:
- E-MENTORING – COMMUNICATION TOOLS
- Skype, Zoom, Google Hangouts: Video conferencing tools that allow real-time digital ‘face-to-face’ communication for the e-mentoring process between senior mentor and senior mentee, as well as being a useful tool for general business communication, meetings, etc. Basic technical skills are required to set up and use these platforms. Each platform offers the user step-by-step guidance in how to set up and use the technology.
- Google Workspace: A tool which offers all the benefits of Gmail (email, drive, forms, etc) but allows the creation of a personalised business email address, rather than using ‘@gmail.com’ in the address
- MailChimp: A tool which can help extend a company’s mailing list and help carry out coordinated marketing campaigns.
- BRANDING STRATEGY
- Frontify: A brand management platform that covers every aspect of the branding strategy, allowing anyone, even those without design skills, to create brand visuals. Useful for ensuring a company’s branding remains consistent.
- Looka: A platform that helps companies design their logo, brand, and digital marketing.
- Pikochart: A tool for designing infographics.
- Quordoba: A content audit platform that will continually review all created blog posts, articles, social media posts, etc. to check a company’s style guide is being adhered to by employees.
- Adobe Illustrator: A tool for logo design.
- Google Workspace: A tool which offers all the benefits of Gmail (email, drive, forms, etc) but allows the creation of a branded business email address (rather than using ‘@gmail.com’ in the address).
- E-MARKETING
- Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn: Digital tools useful for promoting a brand, reaching a wide audience, and engaging with customers. Social media sites are free of charge to use and provide step-by-step guidance in how to set them up and manage them.
- Hootsuite: A digital tool which allows the user to manage all branded digital content for social media sites from one platform.
- SEMrush: A tool that provides keyword research, competitive analysis and content guidance, and which also tailors results according to location and device, thus allowing businesses to design their SEO marketing strategy around their specific target audience.
- Instagram’s branded content tools – Tools which enable brands to tag other business partners in their posts.
- Wistia: A tool for creating professional video content.
- Google and Facebook tools: Both platforms provide tools for marketplace analysis. Google: Your Digital Marketing Toolbox; Facebook: Facebook IQ. Google Trends allows users to gauge consumer search behaviour with real-time search trends. Google Analytics provides free and paid-for services, which provide insights into website traffic, including competitor benchmarking. Facebook IQ Audience Insights provides information on Facebook users in terms of their gender, age, interests, and job titles, as well as information on top page likes.
- Mailchimp: A tool which can help extend a company’s mailing list and help carry out coordinated marketing campaigns.
- E-COMMERCE
- Shopify: A tool to help build an e-commerce website.
- Stripe and Paypal: Tools for taking payment from customers to a website.
- Kissmetrics: A tool for tracking and analysing sales information to better understand the buying habits of customers.
- ShippingEasy: A tool for managing shipping for an e-commerce website.
- Zendesk: A tool for creating and tracking the best customer website experience.