Hey everybody. Hi, Dee Hutchinson here saying Hola from Marbella in the South of Spain.

Thank you for

joining me, I'm the CEO of Dee is for Digital, and I'm here today to talk to you about my three favorite
tech tools for supporting customers.
Now before I start, I wanted to shout out to Digicel who've invited me to do a series of mini master
classes every day this week talking about themes that relate to digital and online. Now as many of you
are impacted by the COVID virus, just like me, I'm on day 10 of quarantine here in Spain, still fighting the
good fight. And I'm getting a lot of questions from people who are considering should they be going
online? People who may possibly be worried about their jobs, so their long-term security of their jobs
and people who are running businesses and need to consider what's the best strategy to get online.
So we have a sequence of masterclasses that we're going to cover this week. Today we're going to talk
about the techie part. So three of my favorite technical tools. And the reason that I've decided to cover
technology is because really it's a big showstopper for a lot of people getting online. I know when I
started out, I wouldn't consider myself a techie or a nerd in the whole technology space, but I love
technology, I'm curious about it and I like to know what's the latest thing. And thankfully what I have
found is that there is a huge amount of technology available to us that is super easy to use. You don't
need to have an engineering degree to be able to use it. Thank God, because I wouldn't have the
business I have today if it was complicated. But often with things that we are not familiar with and we
don't know, we presume that they're harder than they actually are, and I'm here to tell you today that is
not the case.
So I'm going to cover my three favorite tools. We're going to start with social media, the most obvious
one and the most important one. We're going to look at how you remain in communication with your
customers with a platform that I use called Zoom, and then I'm going to save the best for last, the
platform that I use for my customer management, my community management, and hosting online
courses called Mighty Networks. Now, if you have any questions at any time while I'm talking today,
these masterclasses last about 20 minutes ish, give or take on how many questions I get. Please feel free
to ask for questions, ask for feedback while I'm online. I can see the comments. I can see Jack and
Daniella are on. Hi guys, if you have any questions at all, just post them right down below and I will
happily answer them for you.
So number one, social media. Now, one thing that makes me really laugh when I'm approached by
people who are nervous about getting online and they tell me I don't do technology, I'm a technophobe.
The first thing I ask them is, do you have a social media account? The answer is always yes and I go, well
then you're already digital. As far as I'm concerned. We forget that we have all been online for a really
long time already. If you have a Facebook account, an Instagram account, a LinkedIn account, a YouTube
account any of them, Tic Toc, the latest one, you are already a techno, let's not say expert, but you're a
technophile. You're already used to using digital technology and using it every single day, and social
media is the most important and impactful platform you have at your fingertips really to support your
customers if you're a business right now and worried about how do I keep in touch with my customers,
how do I keep talking to them?
But also if you're an individual and you're considering setting up a little digital side hustle or maybe
setting up a digital business, social media is where you go first. It's the easiest place for you to reach out
to the world, not even just to your country, which you can, but it gives you instant access to everyone
around the globe, which I think even though I've been doing this a long time, I think it's phenomenal
that even now doing this Facebook live, sitting from Spain, I'm reaching the West Indies all the way
across the globe. I think that's amazing. Like it's really outstanding what our technology can give us. And
of course it's also free. You don't have to pay to access most of your social media accounts.
So if you're a business right now and you're wondering how to maintain contact, particularly if you're a
bricks and mortar business where you've had to shut down the offices or shut down your retail space, I
mean social media is where you're going to go to support your customers. And it's such a great tool. So
whether it's posting a meaningful content, whether it's a text post or a picture post, an even more
powerful doing using Facebook live, or you can do it on YouTube as well. But using video to interact and
connect with your customers is the one of the most powerful ways of engaging with customers. And
we'll talk about tomorrow, for those of you that are commerce shy and might not feel that you're brave
enough to do video, we'll be talking about that tomorrow. So don't worry, we've got you covered on
that.
But yet you can communicate via text, communicate via image, communicate via video, and also
remember you have the messaging tools available. So whether you're using big, the fabulous [inaudible
00:05:38] that Digicel has or the more standard tools with Facebook messenger, with your WhatsApp
messaging, there is no excuse for you not to be able to reach out to your customers and for your
customers to be able to contact you as well. If you'd normally have a landline in the office or in your
store, make sure that your social media profile is up to date for your business or for you as an individual
if you're operating as an individual, as the first place I am starting with all of my customers right now is
doing an audit of their social media profiles.
So is your contact information up to date? Are your operating hours up to date because everybody's
operating hours will have changed, right? Possibly you've changed location from where you're working.
So making sure that your customers know how to get in contact with you, at least for the foreseeable
future whilst though the world is changing and our work hours are changing and where we're working
from is changing, your customers have enough to worry about already. We don't want to have to stress
them out with how they get in contact with you.
So I would say immediately for any of you, go and check out your business page, check out your
individual page, are your contact details all up to date and reach out and do post to your customers to
let them know that you're still alive, you're still operating. And I think it's important to give our
customers a sense of calm because this might be our new normal for a little while. And whilst we all
have a lot of reason to be stressed and worried and fearful, I think through your social media you can
send a message of calm, that we've got you, that it's going to be okay, that we're here to support you.
Even if your business' operating hours have been impacted, you can still be available online. And I think
that's what most of our customers need right now is to be able to reach out to us and get support when
they need it.
So use your social media for supporting your customers. Now you can also be using it to sell right now. I
had a conversation this morning with a business owner who said, I can't sell. I can't reach out to my
customers because he was using his traditional channels and also if you have a sales force who are used
to going out and meeting customers, that's just not possible right now with social distancing. But you
can still use your social media right now to be developing your sales pipeline and you can do that by
posting, but I would even get a bit more proactive because one of the mistakes I see people make most
likely businesses, on their social media, they put beautiful posts out there and they post it out and it's a
little bit, they stand back to wait to see what happens.
Whereas, and because we're busy, that's the approach a lot of us take. But if you really want to
supercharge using your social media to support and to sell, it's important to reach out to your customers
as well as post. So are you commenting on what your customers are commenting on? Are you giving
advice and feedback where you see your customers and maybe another Facebook group? Because your
customers will be all over social media, in multiple groups following more than just your business page.
So are you out there checking what's going on? Checking the temperature of what your customers are
worried about and seeing how you as a business or individual could impact them. I use social media
entirely for my sales strategy and I call it, it's bordering on, it's not passive for sure, it's not aggressive,
but it's somewhere in the middle. So it involves posting and commenting, going, looking to find where
my potential customers and my customers are and adding value to them by commenting on what
they're talking about. It gives you another level of engagement and interaction. It draws your customers
to your profile checkout, which is now fabulous cause you've updated it and to be posting every day,
even a couple of times a day so that they know you're there, they know they can rely on you right now,
which is super important and show up consistently.
So I think we've covered everything on social media. Any questions on social media? Just post them
below and Hey Nikima, I can see Nikki's on. So we're going to move on from social media.
The second one is keeping in contact with your customers in say off social media but more one to one,
although it can be one to many as well. Now we're all used to connecting with customers via WhatsApp
calls or using even Facebook to make calls, BIP to make calls. We are used to making calls over wifi and
that can be quite good for more informal connection. But if you have an organization where maybe you
do a lot of one-to-one, so possibly you're a doctor or a vet or a lawyer, a healthcare professional,
sometimes you require a more, I suppose a next level communication platform and Zoom is the one that
I use, and for all of the platforms that I mentioned, as soon as this call is over I'll drop links in the
comments so that you can go there.
But it's zoom.us, zoom.us is the website and it is basically a video conferencing tool. Now it does have a
free option because I'm all for, I was saying yesterday I like value for money in technology. It doesn't
have to be expensive. Zoom does have a free option. The only limited has on its free option is your calls
can't go over 40 minutes so they have to be 40 minutes or less. If you require it for longer than that, you
would need to upgrade to a paid version. But zoom is great for connecting one-on-one. It's a little bit like
this, but when you connect to Zoom they'll give you a link which is like your private office, your private
virtual office and you can send this URL to a customer to connect with you and they'll connect via video.
Now obviously if they don't want to be on video, they can turn off their video and it becomes an audio
call. The many reasons I like Zoom is one, it's a professional platform, it's very reliable. I can record calls
as well. So any of you that are coaching right now or possibly, if you are in the fitness industry and
you've started to do classes online, you can use Zoom to record those classes but have a recording of
them afterwards because now then you're creating content that can be reusable and evergreen. But I
have a couple of notes here. It can also be used for marketing events, so back to the sales, so we can use
it to support customers but if your marketing has stopped and you need to be able to reach out to
customers. You can do product unboxing via Zoom, you can hold aa promotion event. I think anything
that you can do face-to-face can be done via video like this and zoom allows for hundreds and
thousands depending on the package you buy to come and join you on a call.
Also fabulous for those that are running businesses with employees and you want to stay connected
with your employees too. You could use Zoom for a town hall event, for training, for onboarding new
staff. I think a lot of people just presume this video conferencing is just for meetings when actually you
can get creative with this and use it for a whole lot of interaction. So whether it's training internally,
whether it's internal comms, where if you're the CEO of the company and you now have your teams
working remotely everywhere, you can get everybody on a call, you can be with them and it's just like
you're in the meeting room, but from the comfort of your home or wherever you are.
So I think you can be as creative as you want with the technology that's available to you. That goes for
social media. And I think there's some real creative things happening. And I think Digicell are a great
example of this right now using their social media very creatively but with a purpose to help their
customers. So whether it's like the learning hub, which is helping all the kids who are missing school and
probably devastated that they're missing school, that they can still continue their lessons on, I've written
it here and learninghub.online, so just with their data connection, you can get on, keep up with your
homework and maybe give some of the parents that are missing a little bit of head space where the kids
can get on with their school.
I mean that's a fantastic use of technology. It's creative and meaningful for what is happening right now.
It's a brilliant way to help Digicel customers, parents and kids. So, and that's what I mean by looking at
the technology that's around you that you may already have access to and using it in a really different
way.
Again, Zoom, you have a free option so it doesn't have to cost you anything. The same with your social
media. It doesn't have to cost you anything. And I think at times where businesses are under pressure
right now, if your sales have gone down, things start to get tight, we need to look at costs then the
digital way forward, I believe, is just the only way because you get scale immediately at low cost and I
don't know what else in the world offers this to you. And the same, if you're an individual right now and
you want to jump on the online train or get your own digital course or book or whatever it is, it is the
lowest cost way and the quickest way to make an an immediate difference to you, to your family, to
your customers, to your employees. It goes on.
I mean, I've been doing my digital business for over three years now, so I'm used to quarantine. Where
you see right now is where I usually work from. So this is not new to me, but one of the things that it has
changed for me personally is being able to do something like this, reach people all over the world to be
able to help and make a difference and do that in a way with partners like Digicel, which are fabulous,
but doing it in a way that is just easy and simple and straightforward. And like I said, I'm not a techie, so
if I can do this, you absolutely can too.
So we've done social media, we've done Zoom for keeping you connected to your customers and so
much more. And the last one I want to talk to you about is Mighty Networks. This is a less known
platform, but it's becoming a big brand name. My business, I specialize in helping individuals and
businesses create online products and services, mostly courses that they then sell onto their customers.
So what's important to me is community and having all of my customers together, being able to
communicate with them and have them communicate to me, but also be able to see all of my products
all in one place, and that essentially is what Mighty Networks gives you. Before I used Mighty Networks,
and what happens when you're starting out in the digital world is you end up picking lots of different
little systems. So you have your Facebook, your Instagram, your LinkedIn, that maybe MailChimp you're
using for email, you're using Thinkific, which was what I was using for a learning management systems.
And you have to sew all these little systems together in order to make your business work.
Which is fine to start, and one of the good things about that is you get to know the systems that you like
and the ones that you don't. But there is now, thank God, a much easier way to do this. So what Mighty
Networks platform is really about building communities and now like never before, I think managing our
customers, creating meaningful communities around the services that we offer and around what our
customers need is super important.
So if you imagine, Mighty Networks is kind of like a social media feed. You have your activity feed, you
can do your posts, you can do videos, but it's private for those of your customers who may not be, so
not everybody wants to be on social media all the time, right? And depending on what kind of service
you offer, there may be elements of confidentiality and trust that you need to keep in consideration.
But it lets you have all that community, have everyone together. You can talk to them, they can talk to
you and you can also host any mini courses. So this for you internally could be little videos on the
products that you sell or the services that you sell. It could be your unboxing videos, it can be any
content that you have that relates to your products and services and people can then purchase from
within the Mighty Network your products there. What I love about it is it's central so I don't have to go
everywhere anymore. It keeps everything in one place. It is a website and you also get an app version of
it so your customers can download and access it directly from their phones as well as from from a
website URL.
I can go on and on, but I don't want to confuse it, that's basically it in a nutshell, but you can also, it has
a built in loyalty program. It helps you track your members. You can see how often they're coming on,
you can see how many times they're actually bringing in new members to the community for you so that
you can reward those customers who are bringing in new customers. So it does loads of fantastic things.
And it has a free option, so save the best for last. There's also a free option. Obviously you don't get all
the bells and whistles, but you can download a free option and check it out because it would be great
for any business that wants to keep all your customers together. You can still do your social media and
have a Mighty Network there behind it, gather all your products together, your services together, offer
really creative support and it state of the art. I couldn't recommend it highly enough.
So those are my three favorite online technology tools. So we have using your social media, your Zoom
to keep you connected and your Mighty Network to build community and host your digital products and
services. But just start with social media. You don't need all of these in one go. Even just starting there is
enough. One step at a time. Don't get overwhelmed. I could talk about technology really all day long
because I'm a big fan and I will post some additional links because there's a system I use for my calendar
that's really cool and where I do a lot of my marketing and social media where I do my design. All really
cool both with free options. So check out the comments below. As soon as the call is over, I'll post those
links and if you have any questions, if you're watching a recording of this call, please feel free to post
questions in the comments. I will be checking them if you have anything else and let me say hi Shavonne
and Kamisha and Sean. Great stuff.
Is it free to use with Digicel? Well at the moment, that's a really good question, Sean. So let me check
that out for you. Your social media obviously, and if anyone is, we have Digicel people on the call and
we'll get that answered for you. Now, next week, Jack, thank you for the prompt and high Mel and hi
Charisse. Tomorrow we're doing a master class called camera shy. So if you know that you might need to
do video and you're camera shy and you want to feel confident and be engaged, we're going to be doing
that tomorrow. And then we're going to be covering other things during the week. Like how to maintain
customer loyalty. What's the one thing you need to do right now to keep your customers loyal to you?
At the weekend we're going to be doing how to keep your mojo going and remain positive and focused
when you're worried about your business and your job. On Sunday we have one about how do you
create a digital business as a family, because maybe it's not you that will have the best idea. Maybe it's
one of your kids that has the multimillion dollar idea. So how do you make this a family affair? And then
next week, oh we have a surprise on Friday, I tell you, but I'd have to kill you. So you're going to have to
tune in on Friday for a really nice surprise. And then next week we have a whole host of guest speakers,
industry experts in their field that we know you would really benefit from getting access to and hearing
their wisdom and knowledge and experience.
So loads to look forward to. And I think that is it. Yameal, hi. And Mel, hi. So thank you to everybody for
tuning in. I hope you found this useful. I'll be back here again, 11:00 AM St. Lucia time tomorrow, and I
hope you have a wonderful day. Stay safe, stay healthy, and we'll see you online. Bye.