Read the ground

Choose three real businesses near you that you have never worked with. A restaurant, a salon, a school, a clothing shop, a bakery, a computer shop or similar. Look at each one's social media without reading any of their marketing material first.

For each, record what it sells, who appears to follow it, what it publishes, and one thing it could improve. Then record something harder: for the three most recent posts on each account, name which of the four jobs each post is doing, or record that it is doing none. Expect a significant proportion to be doing none.

Produce one table of nine rows. Timebox: ninety minutes. It fails if the improvement column contains generic advice that would apply to any account, such as post more often or use better photographs. An improvement that could be written without looking at the account is not an observation.

Using the real subject you named, produce a one page platform plan. Choose two platforms. For each, state why the business should be there, which people it should reach, what content should be published, and what action the audience should take. Then name one platform you are rejecting and the condition under which you would revisit it.

Speak to someone connected to the business before you write it. One question is enough: where do your customers usually reach you now? An answer of WhatsApp when your plan says Instagram is the most useful thing you will learn this week.

Produce the plan and a short job description in your own words covering what the manager does, who they serve, and what success looks like. Timebox: two hours. It fails if the rejected platform is one the business was never going to use, which makes the rejection free and teaches nothing.