January 2024 – Take Root Creative

5 Ways to Keep your Business Facebook and Instagram Safe

Keeping-your-Business-Facebook-and-Instagram-Safe

Have you ever tried to contact Facebook for any reason? It can be incredibly frustrating because you rarely ever get to speak to a real person. Imagine trying to do this in a time-sensitive situation such as when your account gets hacked. In order to limit the need to reach out to Facebook support, we have compiled a list of 5 things you can do to keep your account safe.

Activate a 2FA

Facebook has forced the use of 2FAs (2 Factor Authentication) for all accounts that have a credit card connected to run Boosts or ads. If you haven’t run any ads yet, it is up to you to set up a 2FA to protect your account.

(Note: This is the number one reason we have seen account deactivated. Facebook has sent an email to notify that your account will be shut down if 2FA is not activated, but this gets missed and the account is closed)

In order to set up 2FA, follow these steps:

On a desktop or laptop (ie: do not use your phone or tablet), login to Facebook.
Click on your photo in the top right corner and click “Settings & Privacy” from the dropdown.
Click the small blue text that says “See More in Accounts Centre” on the left side.
Click “Password and Security” on the next screen
Click “Two Factor Authentication” and follow the steps to activate SMS (text message) authentication.

Always have 2 administrators on your Facebook page

If your personal account is compromised in any way, you’ll be able to have your second admin remove your access to the page and re-add your new account. This will keep your page safe from whomever has hacked your personal account.

Login to your Facebook account and switch into your page either from a shortcut or by clicking your profile photo and clicking to switch into the page profile.
Once in your page’s profile, click “Settings” then on the next page click “New Pages Experience”
By default, you’ll be on the Page Access page and you can see who has account personally as well as what Business Account is connected to the page.
If you do not see anyone listed there (including yourself), you need to go into your Business Manager by visiting business.facebook.com
Click “Settings” in the bottom left corner then click “People” on the next page that loads.
Make sure there is more than just yourself listed there.
Click on the secondary person listed and make sure they have Full Control of your Facebook page in their list of assets they can access.

Change your Facebook and Instagram password every 6 months

Follow the appropriate steps to change your password every 6 months. Do not use the same password for your Instagram account and your Facebook account.

Login and review your page admins

It’s a good idea to regularly check who is an admin on your page. There could be past employees, people who helped set up the page initially or someone who has inadvertently gained access and shouldn’t be there.

Login to your Facebook account and switch into your page either from a shortcut or by clicking your profile photo and clicking to switch into the page profile.
Once in your page’s profile, click “Settings” then on the next page click “New Pages Experience”
By default, you’ll be on the Page Access page and you can see who has account personally as well as what Business Account is connected to the page.
Remove anyone who shouldn’t have access.
If you do not see anyone listed (including your regular page admins, you need to go into your Business Manager by visiting business.facebook.com then follow the steps from above to navigate to your “People” settings to review.

Read the emails that Facebook sends

Facebook sends a lot of emails and now that there are inboxes that sort out emails into categories (Social, Promotion, General), it can be hard to remember to read the ones from Facebook that may contain important information. Wondering what type of information might be sent via email? Account deactivations are a very important notice that you would receive via email. If for some reason your account has been flagged, you will receive an email explaining what you need to do to keep your account active.

Luckily there are a few things you can do to limit the amount of unnecessary emails from Facebook so it is easier to read the ones you do get.

On a desktop or laptop (ie: do not use your phone or tablet), login to Facebook.
Click on your photo in the top right corner and click “Settings & Privacy” from the dropdown.
On the page that loads, click “Notifications” from the left side menu.
In this section, you’ll see that you can toggle on and off notifications for Push, Email and SMS. Push means you’ll get a notice on your phone (depending on your app settings on the phone), SMS means a text.
If you scroll down to the section called “Where you Receive Notifications” you can toggle the “Email” section to be just “Required Notifications” which will heavily limit what emails you receive from Facebook.

How to Beat the January Blues as a Business Owner

More than ever, I’ve heard from local business owners that they are stressed and having a tough time staying optimistic about the future of their business. January is a tough month for positivity in general because it’s dark and cold and there is the post-holiday let down.

For business owners, there are extra downsides to January: tax season creeps up quickly, January is usually a slow sales month, and in retail there is holiday inventory to deal with.

This year there was also the January deadline of the CEBA loan for those who used the pandemic lifeline to keep afloat.

We’ll skip the obvious ways of how to boost your mood and jump right to the things that directly help business owners.

1. Combat the concern that your holiday season wasn’t as strong as usual. To do this, compare your year-over-year sales. Since the last couple years were unique, look back to 2019 as well. If your sales are actually down, what percentage are you down? If so, what was the ramp-up in the autumn season like? The data may not be as bad as you think. And we typically avoid looking at this type of information for fear that the numbers will confirm our worst fears. It’s more likely going to be better than you think.

2. Lean into your processes. What do you need to do bring in more business? Not new ideas – just your usual process you take to bring in clients or customers. Perhaps with the holidays, things became a bit lax and need to be revisited. Reach out to existing customers. It’s easier to sell to an existing customer than to acquire new ones, so make your life easier and tap into your database.

3. Post frequently on social media, but don’t spend time scrolling your newsfeed. If things are slow, they are likely going to pick up at some point and you won’t have time to think about social media. Use a scheduling program (like Plann) to create a calendar of content. Try to stay away from doom scrolling. People will only post the positive things happening in their lives and it won’t feel good to see this when you’re feeling not great about yourself.

4. In the evening (or whenever your non-working time is), shut yourself off from work. Read a book, watch TV, go out with friends, but don’t drown yourself in work. You won’t be more productive just because you work all the time. Your brain can only be effective for so much time before you’ll end up spinning your wheels with work that won’t be of good quality anyways.

5. Time block your days. When things are slow, it’s easy to see the time waste away each day. Use your calendar (digital or paper) to block each hour of your workday. Assign tasks to each block and do this for your whole week. At the end of the week, roll over any incomplete “blocks” into a slot for the following week and add in new blocks to fill it up. This is the best way to tackle a list of tasks you’ve been putting off.

In addition to these suggestions, I’ve included my list of ways I personally find it helpful to keep my mental health in check during challenging times:

1. Always have a good book on the go. Getting lost in a good book – fiction or non-fiction – is the best way to temporarily take your mind off other things.

2. Bake something simple, with ingredients you already have. Chocolate chip cookies, banana muffins, and lemon loaf are all good options. The act of baking is calming and having freshly baked food on hand is delightful.

3. Protect your time. This includes the classic “it’s okay to say ‘no’” but also make sure to not let your time run away from you in things that are unnecessary.

4. Meditate. I know this isn’t for everybody but a simple meditation every day (during tough or easy times) will help you be mentally strong and able to handle the difficult times more effectively.

— Caitlin

Despite all these suggestions, it is important to seek help from a medical professional when you or someone you care about is struggling with their mental health.

The Most Common Print Sizes for Posters and Postcards

When we quote for print projects, we often suggest certain sizes to our clients because these sizes are common and therefore have savings associated with them when it comes time to print. This applies to a wide range of projects, but especially posters and postcards.

Poster Sizes

True posters are very large – like movie poster size – but when clients reach out to us to get a poster designed a printed, they usually mean a smaller size that can be posted around town in store windows and on bulletin boards.

The most common size is 11″ wide by 17″ tall. This is the size of two pieces of Letter paper placed side-by-side. This size is great because it’s impactful but still not too big that it will overtake the space where it’s displayed.

The next most common size is Letter size which is 8.5″ wide by 11″ tall. Although half the size, the benefit to this one is that more stores may agree to tape it into their window since it takes up less space.

Postcard Sizes

When looking to produce a postcard, there are usually a few purposes for this:

To hand out to customers
To include as a bag stuffer/ accompany a receipt with a purchase
To be put into the mail (either with postage or unaddressed ad mail)

The most common sizes are:

6″ x 4″
7″ x 5″
9″ x 6″

The smallest size is your standard postcard size that is used for tourist postcards etc. The 7″ x 5″ size is nice because it’s slightly bigger, but still easy to hand out and for a customer to slide into a purse or bag.

When thinking about mailing, those two smaller sizes often get lost in the clutter of flyers and bills, so 9″ x 6″ still stays under the “oversized” limit, but has more impact.

A fourth common size that we particularly like for bag stuffers is 4″ wide x 3″ tall. This “mini postcard” is adorable and fun to hold because it’s bigger than a business card, but smaller than most other print advertising. It takes up less counter space when displayed in a stack at the cash and yet still attracts attention.

In Summary

We hope this mini education in poster and postcard sizes helps you make decisions about your print advertising going forward. As always, if you need help with design or print, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Go Beyond Changing your Passwords Regularly

By now most people are aware that you need to change your important passwords every so often, but here at Take Root Creative, we see many non-secure passwords or clients who don’t know how to access their password when needed.

Many devices come with built-in cloud-based password storage which is really helpful as long as you know where you can access your password and these passwords sync between all your devices. We suggest going above and beyond by using a safe password storage service. We’ll break down the reasons why this is a good idea and how you can get started creating your own password storage system.

Why a password storage system is a good idea:

You only need to remember one password – the password for the storage system – so you can create a really secure password backed with two-factor authentication and other protections in place.
You can have super complex (auto generated) passwords for all your accounts.
You’ll have a secure and easy way to access your passwords all the time that is synced across all your devices regardless of compatibility.
Share passwords with staff members in a secure way.
Receive notifications when a password you have for any account that has turned up in a data leak or hack.

Keeper Security

As Take Root Creative began to grow and we were managing several hundred digital accounts, we needed a better way to store and access passwords from our clients. It’s our responsibility to handle this data safely so we did our research and landed on Keeper.

Keeper is a subscription software that does all of the password storage things we discussed above and it starts at $2 per employee, per month. There is an enterprise dashboard that allows for employee management and forces each person to change their access password every 60 days. This is in addition to two-factor authentication.

The dashboard can be accessed via a browser window, a built-in browser extension, a phone app and a computer program/app. Our company set-up includes two main folders – one for our internal accounts and a second folder for client accounts. We can quickly set-up a new client folder and store everything in it securely but still allowing all applicable staff to access what they need for their tasks associated with that client.

The built-in Security Audit allows us to make suggestions to clients when their passwords are not strong enough as well as keep on top of our own passwords to make sure we are not at risk of data compromisation ourselves.

In Summary

Whether or not you choose to use Keeper, we highly recommend some form of password storage software and there are many options available including LastPass and 1Password so make it a priority to get secure in 2024. We’re always happy to answer any questions regarding password storage or any other digital business needs.

The Importance of Company Anniversaries

Our friends at Otter Greenhouses are celebrating 25 years, and reached out to us to be a part of this special occasion.

For their anniversary we created a variation of their existing logo, featuring their accomplishment of 25 years from 1999-2024. This logo will be used on shirts, print products, and their website to commemorate the accomplishment.

Why celebrate a company anniversary?

Celebrating these milestones is beneficial to your business both internally and externally. To your employees, the shift of focus from challenges to achievements can be a morale booster. To customers, celebrating these milestones recognizes your longevity. It shows your proven track record, and can make you stand out from less established competitors.

Have a company anniversary coming up? Send us an email to [email protected] and we can help you create the perfect curated campaign.

Boxing Day Campaigns with Thornbury & Colio

Last month we teamed up with our friends at Thornbury and Colio once again on their Boxing Day e-commerce campaigns

Both campaigns flourished with Colio hitting an 8.9% conversion rate, and Thornbury at 5.2%. Each also hit a great return on ad spend (ROAS)- Colio with 6.33x and Thornbury with 5.86x. Supported by the fact they provide great award winning canadian made ciders and VQA wines, both campaigns crushed it!

Now is the perfect time to exceed your business goals for 2024, Send us an email at [email protected] to learn how we can take your digital marketing to the next level.