How to prevent hunger working from home during Zimbabwe’s Coronavirus lockdown?

According to experts the coronavirus is spreading fast primarily because little is known about it. A problem identified is half solved you see. So the only thing that can be done for now is social distancing and Zimbabwe together with other hapless nations declared a lockdown which meant everybody except those employed in essential services will not go to work. As the country’s workers majority of whom are self-employed stay away from work a new problem not coronavirus will emerge and its called hunger. Obviously when you stay away from work for long your income will begin to stay away from the pocket! However, in this article we will discuss solutions focusing on how to prevent hunger by working from home.

1.Know how to sell.

To avert hunger the first thing you need know is selling because selling enables you to earn money and money enables you to buy food. But many people are laymen with regards to the right way of selling. The right way of selling must involve two things; 1) prospecting for leads, 2) converting leads to customers. These two make up what is popularly known as the selling process.

2. Know how to sell on social media.

After knowing the selling process the next step is implementing it on social media. For years sales people have applied the selling process in the physical space through tactics like cold calling but with the emergency of coronavirus restrictions prohibiting physical movement isn’t the right time for you  to begin selling online through social media.

Here is an interesting comparison - social media vs traditional marketing.

… my story of the struggle

At this point let me share with you my story about how I discovered that social media works. Well it all started in 2012 as a new comer estate agent when I realized that relying only on physical methods wasn’t doing me any good because competition was moving to the digital space. A generous friend helped me set up my first blog called Property Matters News which over the years I integrated with other tools and perfected into an effective online marketing system I have today. 

The turning point

In the year 2014 I reached a turning point because I earned  Usd 1 000.00 from online methods only. It all started when I wrote a blog article titled, “ Financial consequences of purchasingproperty from a seriously-ill seller and other purchases to avoid ”. Its message was that if you buy immovable property from a seriously-ill seller, upon healing an unscrupulous person armed with medical documents can approach the courts and say when the sale happened he wasn’t in the right frame of mind. Before long the blog post found resonance in the heart of a Harare lady who after reading it decided to sell a stand in Madokero estate in order to pay off an outstanding balance of a house bought from a seriously-ill seller. The lady awarded me the sole mandate for selling the piece of land.

In 2016 I duplicated the winning formula when I created this entrepreneurship focused blog – Sunrise Talk.  Sunrise Talk has its own success story ready for me to tell but space will not allow me to do this here because I must give you details about the winning formula for successful selling online so that you can get started working from home.  Here it is ;

2.1 Selling on social media – The Strategy

2.2 Selling on social media – The Tools

       2.3 Selling on social media – The Implementation

2.1 Selling on social media – The Strategy

A strategy is a plan about how you will achieve your goals. In order to sell on social media you need a strategy like in any business and the one I have used is called the bait and hook. Through this strategy customers are attracted by free information which you share on a blog (the bait) and sell them related products or services (the hook).  For example a producer of honey can set up a blog called Golden Syrup upon which he or she shares tips on how to get started with bee farming (bait) and this information will attract people with a diversity of interests with regards to bee farming to whom he will sell also a diversity of products ranging from honey to consultancy services (hook).

2.2 Selling on social media – The Tools

A tool is an enabler that makes achieving goals possible. In our case the best digital tools for working from home specifically are as follows - 1) a traffic source 2) a landing page and 3) an opt-in page.

1) Traffic source. This are social platforms e.g Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Whatsapp .

2) Landing page. This is the central place where all traffic from various sources are channelled to. A blog does a great job in this regard.

3) Opt-in page. This is the part of the website where conversion takes place. 

2.3 Selling on social media – The Implementation

1. But what is a blog ?

2. So how do you set it up ?

Setting up a blog on Blogger.

On the blogger platform

The four things that you must do are typing the title of the blog, the URL you would like the blog to based at , choosing a starter template and clicking create blog to get started.

3. Creating content on a blog

4. Distributing content on Facebook and LinkedIn – Best practices

i. On Facebook

ii. On LinkedIn

In majority of cases on LinkedIn people start by visiting your profile. So any attempts to increase visibility there must start with LinkedIn profile optimization.

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