In recent months, I’ve added a lot of new people to my audience and it’s got me thinking: do they actually know what I really do? In other words, does my business pass the ‘Chandler Bing Test’? (If you don’t know what I mean, this YouTube clip explains it all.) So, as my first blog of the New Year, I’m taking the opportunity to reintroduce myself.
“Karen Cureton – come on down, this is your (professional) life!”
Wind back a few years and you’d have found me neck-deep in a corporate career in the property world. I absolutely loved it and, after 20 years in the sector, I was living the dream as Sales Director for a national house builder. However, I then decided to start a family – and swiftly realised that the two didn’t go together!
It was time for a change, so I decided to combine my two big passions in my first self-employed business venture: sales training. Unfortunately, the global economy had other plans, and the resulting recession led to many businesses reducing their training budgets, or cutting out training altogether. Back to the drawing board I went.
Around this time – the late 2000s – a new phenomenon was just starting to gather momentum: social media. As an early adopter, I was quick to see the potential for companies of all types and sizes to use social media to raise their profiles and reach out to new prospects, all without breaking the bank. So, I started using social media to give my sales training business a boost – and it worked!
Before long, people were asking me I did it, so I diversified my offering to include social media training. Over time, things have continued to evolve and I now have four main ‘arms’ within the Cureton Consulting business:
- Sales training. I still do it, although I don’t talk about it much these days. My group workshops and 1:2:1 sessions are personalised to tackle individual sales challenges and meet specific goals.
- Social media training. I now offer two online courses, plus group workshops and 1:2:1 training, to meet different needs, budgets and learning preferences.
- Social media mentoring. My six month mentoring programme is designed for companies that want to keep social media management in-house, but need personalised support and upskilling to achieve the results they want.
- Social media management. There’ll always be business owners who lack the time, skill or inclination to manage their own accounts, so I’ll happily do this for them.
With all these irons in the fire, you might be wondering what’s my overriding vision for my business? Well, for 2021 at least, it has to be “I’m on a one-woman mission to demystify social media!” I’ve always strived to talk about social media in real terms – facts not fluff – and avoid jargon and technical terms that simply aren’t necessary. After all, social media isn’t rocket science (although some agencies might tell you otherwise) and with proper planning and a step by step approach, you’ll give yourself a powerful chance of getting the results you want.
On the other hand, if you over-egg the omelette and make things unnecessarily complicated, social media can be the quickest route to disengaging and alienating your audience. So it pays to invest some time and effort in getting it right!
Book a FREE social media strategy call
If you’d like to discuss your individual social media challenges, why not book a free strategy call with me in January? I have limited slots available, so book now to make sure you don’t miss out. Or, if you’d like to know more about me and my services, take a look at my website, www.curetonconsulting.co.uk.
I’ll look forward to chatting with you in 2021!
