5 Best FREE Social Media Mangement Tools to Keep your Social Profiles even when you're busy

One of the biggest challenges of small business owners as regards social media marketing is how to manage their social media networks and choosing the best social media management tool to handle this.

 

What If I told you that there are FREE yet powerful social media management tools to help you manage social media platforms, schedule and publish updates and also analyse how well your content resonates with your audience.

While there maybe a whole lot of them, I will take you through my 5 best FREE social media management tools for small businesses.

Challenges bring out the best in humans – UMoEFIK

Mr Mbetobong Umoefik

Mr Mbetobong Umoefik is the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Port Harcourt-based Pride Garments Company (PGC), an outfit that specialises in industrial work-clothes & Personal protective Equipment (PPE), skills training, bulk production and consultancy. In this chat with Financial Vanguard, the University of Port Harcourt Management student, speaks on why he got into his line of business, the challenges and says influx of foreign products does not really pose a challenge to him. Excerpts: Upon completing his secondary school education at the School of Arts & Science, Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Umoefik attended training courses in textile and fashion design in Europe and Asia. 

Going into business:

5 ways to Achieve a Healthy Work/Life Balance

For many professionals, finding a balance between work and personal priorities can seem impossible to achieve.

 

With all of the unexpected tasks, last-minute fire drills and daily distractions that can arise during the work day, your to-do list only seems to grow.

With this comes high levels of stress and often late nights in the office, all in all resulting in a poor work/life balance.

Moreover, while your workload may not lessen, you still have obligations to yourself and your loved ones outside the office.

So how do you achieve this sought-after equilibrium?

Below, check out five tips to master a healthy work/life balance.

Acquisition: No redundancy, we’ll build skills, capability – Letshego GMD

The Group Managing Director of Letshego Microfinance Bank, Mr. Chris Low, has assured that there would be no job losses. He said this in an interview following the official announcement of Letshego’s acquisition of FBN Microfinance Bank (FBN MfB) in Lagos, just as he hinted that the company would be investing in building skills and capability among its management team.

Mr. Chris Low

What informed your decision to come to Nigeria to buy over FBN Microfinance Bank?

Primarily, our mission is to be Africa’s leading financial services group and if you are going to come to West Africa, Nigeria is mainly the place to start.

We have been looking at this market for a number of years and we look to the opportunities, before FBN MfB was shown to us, which is a business fully in line with broad based financial inclusion agenda in terms of services and client base and so we decided to go ahead with the transaction.

South African in Recession, says South African Consumers, according to survey

SA is in recession and will not come out of it anytime soon, a majority of consumers who participated in a consumer confidence survey by global performance management company Nielsen Holdings said.

 
The company released its global survey of consumer confidence and spending intentions for the fourth quarter of 2015 on Monday. More than 30,000 online consumers in 60 countries were surveyed.

10 Management Tips for Great Leaders.

Having seen lots of words put together for

Rolls-Royce revamp ousts Two Top Managers

Tony Wood, the head of aerospace, will depart, and Lawrie Haynes, who runs the land and sea division, will step down next year.

The change in structure is part of a plan to save up to £200m a year from 2017, it said.

Removing the top layer of management is a bid to simplify decision-making.

Rolls-Royce has issued a series of profit warnings that have battered its share price, leaving it down 38% this year.

Volkswagen sales fall 20% in the UK

In November, 12,958 new VWs were registered, down from 16,196 in November 2014, SMMT figures show.

 

Other VW Group marques were also hit, with Seat down 24%, Skoda down 11% and Audi down 4%. Only Bentley managed an increase, with sales up from 73 vehicles to 88.

Joburg’s mass recycling project crucial as landfills run out of time

JOHANNESBURG’s residents and businesses can no longer continue putting all their rubbish in one bin and expect Pikitup to collect it, take it to a landfill and dump it.
At present, the city generates 1.8-million tonnes of rubbish a year, which is sent to four landfill sites: Marie Louise, Ennerdale, Robinson Deep and Goudkoppies. But at current trends and with 90% of mixed waste going to landfill sites, the city will run out of space in seven years.
Pikitup MD Amanda Nair says it would cost more than R1bn to build a new landfill site, taking into account engineering, lining, drainage and road networks.

 

UK Power Electricity Supplies enough for winter

Gas supplies are expected to be "comfortable", while electricity margins, at 5.1%, are "manageable", the grid said in its Winter Outlook.

This means supply is expected to exceed peak demand by 5.1%.

Parental, Managing household and its financial needs

It is normal for financial experts to talk about money as if it is merely a matter of naira and kobo. While this may be true, when you are preparing a profit and loss statement for a business, it is definitely not the case when you are dealing with families, especially families with a baby on the way. Emotions come into play. This is why figuring out household finances can sometimes be such a knotty affair; there are so many issues to deal with than just money alone.

 

When you have a baby, your own childhood and the way you were raised will greatly influence how you act as a parent. Perhaps you were an only child. Because of this, you may want to have only one child yourself. Of course, the reverse may also be true and you may want to have a big family, so your children will have siblings you never had.

Naira on watch ward to stableon CBN’s Dollar sales to BDCs

The naira is expected to remain relatively stable in the parallel market this week due to the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) regular dollar sales to the BDC segment and the interbank markets, according to analysts at Afrinvest Securities Limited and Cowry Asset Management Limited.

Last week, the naira traded flat at the interbank market (N199.10/$1), while the CBN maintained its intervention rate at N197/$1. In the parallel market, the naira improved to N211/$1 on Wednesday, from N211/$1.

Prudential Business Profit Boosted by Asia and US by 17%

The insurer said profit in the six months to June was £1.88bn, a 17% rise from £1.6bn last year after currency movements are stripped out.

 

It also said its life and asset management products in the UK had done particularly well during the period.

Stallion to produce 1.5m tons of rice

Stallion Group, one of the companies with investment in the Nigerian rice industry said it had intensified efforts in expanding its operations in the country’s fully integrated rice value chain.

 

The company in a press statement stated that it was leveraging on the policy impetus provided by the federal government’s agricultural transformation agenda, and had already increased the local production to 430,000 metric tonnes per annum.

Meet The manager who helped Tinie Tempah's rise to stardom

Tinie, today a multi award-winning singer, with two best-selling albums and two UK number one singles under his belt, was back in 2003 an unknown 14-year-old Londoner just beginning to try to make it as a performer.

Dumi, the son of a family friend, and then 20, was at the time starting out in music management.

Why you must start early to expose your children to money

One of the reasons many of us have financial challenges is because we don’t have an understanding of money. Our parents never taught us about it, and the schools totally overlooked this field of study. Our children therefore deserve better so we must commit to providing financial training for them.

 

Various experts differ regarding when to start training

Olam set to start milling 200,000MT of paddy rice

In line with the country’s target at achieving self-sufficiency in rice production, Olam Nigeria Limited has unveiled plans to kick-start the milling of 200,000 metric tons of paddy rice in Doma Council, Nassarawa, by June 1, 2015.

This move is part of the efforts targeted at sustaining the backward integration policy in the industry and complementing job creation efforts of the Federal Government.

Our Quarterly Earnings Beat Forecasts-BMW

Underlying earnings rose more than 20% to €2.52bn ($2.84bn; £1.85bn), beating analysts' forecasts.

Revenues in the January-to-March period rose 14.7% to €20.9bn.

Sainsbury's First Annual Loss for 10 years reports

Sainsbury's has reported its first full-year loss for 10 years as the fierce competition within the UK grocery market continues.

The UK's third-largest supermarket chain reported a £72m loss in the year to 14 March.

The results were hit by a number of one-off costs, including a writedown in the value of some of its stores.

How Emotionally Intelligent Are You?

But how do you know your level of emotional intelligence?

First of all, you should understand that, unlike IQ, no one can summarize your EQ in a single number. Know someone with great self-confidence, but zero empathy, for example?

 

I think of emotional intelligence in terms of a profile of specific competencies that range across four different areas of personal ability: