Social Media for Home-Based Business - Case Study

Background

Social media provides home-based business with a low-cost or free platform through which to promote products and services.  Our program, Social Media for Home-Based Business, provided the skills required to think creatively about promotional opportunities and develop a social media strategy to promote products and services.  At the end of the program learners gained two units of competency towards a Certificate III in Micro-Business Operations:

• BSBCRT301A - Develop and extend critical and creative thinking skills
• ICAWEB201A Use social media tools for collaboration and engagement

The program was delivered through a partnership between Sydney Community College (SCC) and Canterbury City Community Centre (4C’s) to support migrant women who wished to create a social media presence for their home-based businesses.  

4C’s regularly partner with agencies such as TAFE, Outreach and Work Ventures and have in the past delivered an information session on ‘Starting a Home Based Business’ in which participants identified a range of home-based business’ they would like to start.  This was followed by a ‘How to Develop a Business Plan’ program in September.  Both programs were over subscribed and the 4C’s reported being unable to meet the demand.  Informal discussions indicated that marketing was an area of interest and the partnership between SCC and the 4C’s was formed to deliver the social media program.

Additional research was undertaken to inform the design of the program.  Local women were surveyed and reported social isolation as a major barrier to gaining employment or engaging in the community and the program was designed to provide an opportunity for participants to form an ongoing network beyond the life of the program.

We also discovered some interesting statistics to support our position that the provision of training to develop e-literacy skills and vocational skills was justified:

• Women own and run approximately one third of New South Wales’s 650,000 small businesses. (NSW Trade & Investment 2011)
• According to the ABS survey of business use of information technology many Australian businesses are still not online in, and those that aren’t are missing out. 
• Statistics show that small business’ receive recommendations, traffic to their website and sales leads through social media as follows:

 Source:  Crowdspring

Eleven participants took part in the program and all were women from migrant or refugee backgrounds living in the Lakemba area of NSW and were unemployed or under-employed.

 

The project team

The project team consisted of:

• Kate McLean, Community Development Worker, 4C’s.  
• Ann Brady, Project Manager.
• Lance Scoular, Social Media Trainer and Assessor
• Joanna Maxwell, Creative Thinking Trainer and Assessor
• Anna Francis , ELLN Trainer and Assessor
• Ramana Waseem, Student Support Worker.

(Links to our profiles are available here).

 

The strategy connection    

This case study was developed by Sydney Community College with funding and support from the national training system’s e-learning strategy, the National VET E-learning Strategy (Strategy).

The Strategy provides the VET system with the essential e-learning infrastructure and expertise needed to respond to the challenges of a modern economy and the training needs of Australian communities.

Sydney Community College have successfully completed a range of projects funded by the Australian Flexible Learning Framework.  Examples are Mentor Me, a program which trained mentors to assist newly arrived skilled migrants and a OHS & RPL, a project which provided a recognition pathway to the Certificate IV in Occupational Health and Safety.

 

What was done

The project plan had four phases:

• planning and set up
• design and development
• delivery
• evaluation and finalization

Planning and set up

The project team was established and the role of each team member was agreed upon.  Expressions of interest to participate in the program were circulated and potential participants were asked questions about their current level of IT skills, engagement with social media, and their availability to attend the program.  They were also asked to describe their home-based business and briefly explain what they hoped to do in their business in the future.  The EOI included a written English language assessment to ensure that all participants had sufficient English language to successfully complete the program.

The 4C’s have 2 venues which are suitable for delivering training and the Cottage in Lakemba was selected for this program.   An information session was delivered after which an oral English language assessment was provided.  Participants were then offered a place in the program and eleven women accepted.

Design and development

Both trainers are owners of a small business and successfully use social media marketing strategies. They decided to take an action learning approach to delivery.  Learners would develop their social media tools as part of the learning and assessment process and use them to connect and communicate with each other throughout and beyond the life of the program.

During this phase the trainers worked on the structure and individual sessions for the program.  It was agreed that the social media trainer would deliver seven of the ten 3-hour sessions and the creative thinking trainer would deliver the remaining three sessions.  The session plans and associated resources were sourced and/or developed and the assessment methods and tools were created during this phase.

Bloomfire was selected as the e-learning platform for communication between face to face training.

English language and technical support was available during the training sessions and by email/phone outside the training sessions.

Delivery

The program was delivered in a blended learning format.  Bloomfire was used to enable communication between face to face training sessions.  Bloomfire enabled learners to have asynchronous discussions and watch a range of instructional videos e.g. how to create a Facebook page.  Webinars were also provided as an additional support and were particularly well attended around assessment due dates.

The following ten sessions were delivered:

Overview of social media –tools and strategies

• Introduction to creative thinking
• Blogging
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Youtube
• More on creative thinking
• Facebook
• Assessment support and preparation for the presentation
• Final presentation.

The sessions were constructed as opportunities to demonstrate the tools and explain the strategies.  Some time in each class was allowed for students to create accounts for their businesses in the social media tool being taught on that day.  The expectation was that learners would complete this work independently before the next session.

In most sessions there was the trainer, a technical support person and an ELLN support person, who also assisted with the technology.

Assessment was undertaken in three ways:

• practical tasks – the development of at least 3 social media accounts.  Criteria for each social media account was stated e.g. for a Blog the requirement to create a profile including a photo or avatar, a description of the business/purpose of the blog and at least 3 posts.
• short answer questions
• a presentation to the group describing the social media tools selected, any key achievements so far, planned future activities.

Some participants agreed to be videoed delivering their presentations and a  sample of the videos are below.

Colleen Moustos - Jurnii  -Jewelry Designer
(about x mins)

Sarah Ameer - Fashion Clothes and Home Accessories

(about 9 minutes)

Natalia Tedjalaksana - Florist

(about 16 minutes)

 

Tabassum Ahsan - Pamper me!  Hampers and gifts for all

(about 6 minutes)

Pei-Shan Wu - Ash and Juls - Sustainable Homeware

(about 6 minutes)

Antonietta Natoli - Living Calm

(about 8 minutes)

Kim Ngan Duong - Skin Care
(about 5 minutes)

Benefits experienced by...

Sydney Community College

It is a strategic goal of Sydney Community College to further embed e-learning within its training and assessment practices.  This project has developed a blended learning model which can be applied to other programs and qualifications in the future – particularly for community groups.  In particular the use of Bloomfire as an educational tool has been trialled in this project.  (More about this in the ‘Lessons Learned’ section below).

SCC offers short ‘How to..’ programs in social media as part of its public program.  This successful project provides concrete examples of how local people – i.e. people we know personally - have overcome barriers to implementing social media within their small businesses. 

The project has enabled access to a wider market and is another example of innovative and quality education for the college to showcase.

Canterbury City Community Centre

A key benefit for the 4C’s was the creation of their Facebook page – Kate McLean, the Community Development Worker wrote about it here .  Like them on Facebook! .  The Facebook page has quickly become a hub for sharing information about upcoming events.

The 4C’s are connected to the participants from this program on Facebook.  This provides  an ongoing opportunity to connect and collaborate with these women and to enable them to remain connected beyond the life of the program. 

The Centre provides services to the general community and particularly to those who are disadvantaged and may have limited access to other support so the ability to offer training in e-literacy and other vocational skills free of charge has strengthened community relationships and further enhanced their capacity building opportunities in the local community.

The program has further demonstrated the need for support and training for small business owners in the Lakemba area and is likely to assist the 4C’s in gaining funding to offer further training in this area.

More information on the experience of the learners and trainers is provided in the Lessons learnt and Results section of this report.

Lessons learned

Delivery strategy

In spite of the initial expressions of interest where we ascertained current IT skill levels and English language proficiency we made assumptions about the ability of some of the group to complete the tasks independently.  We thought that three hours each week, a trainer and two support people was more than adequate to provide instruction and coaching for the learners.  As the weeks progressed it became clear that some students were not able to complete the assigned tasks independently due to very low level technical skills and for some this became quite stressful.

To address this issue Lance (the social media trainer) provided webinars between classes to assist those who needed additional support.  In later classes we also allowed more time for independent work where the necessary support was easily accessible.

Changing technology

Another issue we faced was the ever-changing nature of technology.  During the program Facebook completely changed the way that business pages are presented and Youtube reorganised some aspects of the site.  The trainer changed the order in which he planned to deliver the sessions to accommodate the well-publicised changes to Facebook. 

Unfortunately he was unlucky with Youtube because the changes happened between his preparation and delivery.  This impacted on the delivery of the content.  It was confusing for the trainer, the support people and consequently the learners.

This issue was overcome by a series of ‘How to..’ videos which Lance prepared for each of the social media sites and loaded into Bloomfire for the group. 

Collaborative online learning

Bloomfire was our private social media hub for the project.  Our hope was that the women would connect in this space and practice Twittering, posting their status, uploading videos and generally connect online.  This space was under utilised.  Most of the group created a profile in the space, some asked questions and only one or two practiced uploading videos.  There was very little communication between the learners – just a comment or two on the videos or in response to the questions.

The group primarily used email to contact Lance between sessions in spite of his regular reminders about Bloomfire.  Learners did go in and watch the videos Lance produced.  This was the highest level of activity.  This links directly to simple adult learning principles about ensuring that all activities are relevant and of value to the learner.  Through informal discussions we gleaned that the weekly meetings and the webinars were sufficient and that Bloomfire was ‘one more thing to learn’. Structured online activities with concrete outcomes for the learners are required to ensure participation in social e-learning.   Linking those activities to assessment is another possible solution.

ELLN support

Our ELLN expert, Anna Francis, was onsite every week for the duration of the course.   We had allowed an additional 2 hours each week after the session for people to make individual appointments with her to gain assistance in writing their blog posts or status updates, etc.  Only one student availed of her expertise and so she decided to attend the sessions each week and assisted learners with the development of their sites making informal comments and suggestions in the process. 

A solution might be to embed the ELLN support into the learning and assessment tasks whereby learners from non-English speaking backgrounds would be required to send their work to Anna for approval BEFORE uploading to the online environment.  There are advantages and disadvantages to this idea.  The main advantage is that learners would receive feedback and assistance with their writing before posting in public.  Conversely it might undermine their confidence to post online when the program is over.

The results

Eleven learners have attained two units of competency from the Certificate III in Micro Business Operations:

• BSBCRT301A - Develop and extend critical and creative thinking skills
• ICAWEB201A Use social media tools for collaboration and engagement

More importantly, eleven women have established a social media presence which they are using to promote the home-based business.  See the short video interviews (1-2 minutes each) below from learners and other team members in this project.

 

Lance Scoular - Social Media Trainer

 

Anna Francis - ELLN trainer and assessor

Ann Brady - Project Manager

Colleen Moustos - Jurnii  -Jewelry Designer

 

Natalia Tedjalaksana - Florist

 

Natalia Tedjalaksana - Florist

Pei-Shan Wu - Ash and Juls

  

Sarah Ameer - Fashion Clothes and Home Accessories

Tabassum Ahsan - Pamper me! 

Acknowledgement

This is a NSW Partnerships for Participation project output, developed by Sydney Community College and Canberbury City Community Centre, with seed funding from the Strategy.

For more information about the project contact:

Ann Brady   
Project Manager/E-learning Consultant
Learning Lines
Phone: (02) 9590 7979
Email: ann.brady@learninglines.com.au

Kate McLean

Canterbury City Community Centre
Community Development Workers
Canterbury City Community Centre
9750 9344
Email: lakembaneighbourhoodcentre@4cs.org.au


For more information on the National VET E-learning Strategy go to the National VET e-learning strategy website.