Community: Help it and it’ll Help Your Business

The community that surrounds you is a rich source of marketing potential for all businesses. Being good at marketing isn’t about following the norm. It’s about thinking outside the box or literally outside your front door.

Our client, Powers Martial Arts Centre, Stannington, helped a small group of mums get Big Lottery Funding from the National Lottery. Image: @MummyPowerKick

Alternative Marketing

Here are two questions all business owners should have on their lips:

 

• What can I do for my community?
• What can my community do for me?

As a resource for your business, the community around you whether that be within the local vicinity or city-wide, is full of quirky, inspiring and media-hot stories that are just waiting to receive your backing. We are not talking about donating £10 to your local children’s hospice, which is always admirable; but doing something that grabs the attention and reaches the hearts of your customers.

Taking your business marketing activities away from the norm to do something great such as an event for charity, a sponsored challenge or a campaign to raise awareness of local issues or problems could be the difference between, “Oh, there’s an IT company there,” and, “oh look! There’s that IT company that did that amazing challenge.”

We are not talking about donating £10 to your local children’s hospice, which is always admirable, but doing something that grabs the attention and reaches the hearts of your customers.

Benefits of Community Involvement

Implementing the community-focused strategies into your marketing plan can have many benefits for your business but also for the initiative, charity or scheme that you’ve involved yourself with.

Here are some of the main benefits for your business with community involvement:

• Your business gets noticed more effectively than standard advertising.
• It promotes your company as socially conscious, to which there are huge customer loyalties. Examples of successful, well-known ethical companies include Innocent Smoothies, People Tree Clothing, The Green People, and the list goes on.
• It gets you press attention. The media will charge you for an editorial (a salesy-type article), but if you’re smart and have something to say that is in the public interest, you’ll get a mention for free.
• If you raise your profile through community involvement, your chances of being thought of first by customers above other companies in your sector are much higher. Familiarity and subconscious linking are two ideas behind this.

Any business can find an angle to raise their profile through effective PR and positive community involvement. You want your customers to know you’re approachable. You want them to know you care.

For more advice, information or an example of how community involvement works for local businesses, see our Portfolio or Contact Us for more help.

“Be part of your community, not a separate entity. Get involved in order to achieve greatness in 2017” ~ Steel City Hub Ltd (2017).

Business Trends You Can’t Ignore in 2017

If, like many other business owners, you’re planning your business strategy for 2017, there are some new and expected business trends that you’d be foolish to ignore. These trends bring with them fresh opportunities to grow your business and develop your brand beyond anything you’d imagined.

 

To save you scouring the internet for business trends in 2017, we’ve compiled a list and some resources for you to consider whilst planning a strategy to suit your business:

1. E-Commerce is Growing and Changing

We all know someone who is selling stuff online. For some, it’s a hobby to make a bit of extra cash. For others, it’s a living and makes up most of their business model. Traditionally, e-commerce involved platforms like eBay. Over the last year, e-commerce has evolved and surrounded us. Targeted ads on Facebook, YouTube and Google are part of our everyday lives. Much of what the ads are showing us is available on the giant that is Amazon. Not only does Amazon dominate the e-commerce world with a huge proportion of sales via its global site, (see Statistica), but it also offers businesses the freedom to concentrate on marketing, sales and its own brand with its FBA programme. Many of the statistics for Amazon are US-based, however, the UK is quickly waking up to the opportunities for businesses and the convenience for consumers, are you part of the e-commerce boom?

2. YouTube vs Traditional Advertising

The younger generation – typically those between the ages of 18-30, are increasingly preferring YouTube over traditional TV, this brings positives and negatives for businesses. YouTube videos are cheaper and easier to create and upload. Traditional TV advertising however is much more expensive but can reach a huge audience straight away. With YouTube, the content has to be interesting and current for this younger audience so it can be shared across social media platforms. For example, the Christmas 2016 race for best TV advert in the UK was hotter than ever. The adverts created by John Lewis, M&S, Waitrose & Aldi, the leaders in the race, made their adverts available on YouTube. Why? Because there it could be shared across social media and debated by its audience. No more panels for feedback.

3. Outsourcing and Freelancing

Over the last few years, there’s been a huge rise in businesses using outsourcing websites such as Upwork. Freelancers can be hired at a relatively low-cost for businesses to produce content (written and video), hire programmers, graphic designers, customer service support and much more. They offer a cheaper and quicker alternative to traditional employment routes. Outsourcing marketing, social media management and administration tasks have become particularly popular and have meant that business owners can free up time spent doing tasks that are not either within their skill range or distracts from their potential sales. The old saying springs to mind, “Time is Money” ~ Benjamin Franklin.

4. That Personal Connection

Some business models still involve keeping the customers at arms-length to a certain extent. The larger your business, the harder it may seem to create a personal connection with customers and potential customers. However, recent studies have shown that consumers and your customers, even B2B customers, no longer want or have time for the ‘hard sell.’ If your business can make a personal connection with your customers on social media, through good-quality content and through using targeted advertising and marketing methods, you’ll find that people have more time for you. LinkedIn is a great platform, particularly if you’re in B2B. Getting people to know you and your brand personally before making a choice. Sometimes, being a successful personal brand can boost your business brand. Customers like to know that business owners are accessible and willing to interact.

Accepting change is the first step for your business. 2017 will probably open up more unexpected doors for businesses, as well as close some in terms of marketing and revenue streams, however, it’s vital that trends are acknowledged, built into strategy and steps are taken to develop your business into the future.

If you’d like more information or want to discuss your business strategy and marketing, get in touch:

 

Name(required)

Email(required)

Website

Comment(required)

Submit

Δ

How to Write a CV and Get That Job

If there’s one place where your writing matters most, it’s your CV (or Resume). Before the days of social media and the rise in employers having a sneak peek at how you present yourself online, the traditional CV was the only route into ‘that’ job. Now, it’s 2016 and the job market has changed dramatically. It’s still as important to present yourself in writing professionally but this article looks at presenting the ‘whole package’ to get that job you want. 

1. Read the Job Description – Let’s start with the basics; it may sound simple but ensuring that you apply for positions that you feel are relevant to your skills and experience is vital. Even if you are applying for a new position as part of a change in career, there is always something you can tell a potential employer to relate your CV to their needs.
2. Only Include Relevant Work Experience – One of the worst things you can do on your CV is look like a ‘Jack of All Trades.’ All it tells employers is that you’re not focused, you’re all over the place and you could be unreliable. Transferable skills such as customer service are great but writing that you’ve volunteered at a gym, worked as a social worker, done a spot of babysitting and are currently involved in training for aromatherapy is not going to excite an employer into giving you a job as a PA. However, if you tell them that you organised paperwork at the gym, worked with the public at delivering effective programmes of care and assisted parents in scheduling their work/life balance, it might stand you in better stead.
3. Include a Covering Letter – whether the job specification asks for it or not, always include a covering letter (or e-mail) explaining why you’ve applied for the job, what qualifies you to do the job and why you feel that this is the company for you. Don’t write an essay, just briefly summarise your CV and tell them potential employer why you’ve chosen to apply to his/her company.
4. Say Why You Want The Job – We’ve covered this a little above and no ones asking you to write a letter begging for the job, including all of your sob stories in a manipulation attempt. It’s not going to work. Working with the points on the job specification, include a summary at the top of your CV to say how you fit the role and why you want to work with this company. Flattery in small doses is not a bad idea i.e. “I feel that my positive attitude would compliment this role in a thriving and developing company like…”
5. Don’t Just List Previous Jobs, Explain – Highlight what you’ve done in your previous positions and how it relates to this job you’re applying for. Include dates of when you were in current/previous job roles (month, year), and ensure that you write brief information about what you did, how you did it and how that helped you develop.
6. Add Current Contact Details – It’s a bug bare of many employers that when someone sends in their CV, contact details are not up to date and even if your CV has passed the first stage, they can’t contact you on that old number. Again, simple but vital.
7. Proof-Read Your CV – You can stare at your own CV a thousand times but never see those little errors that might make a big impact on your employ-ability. Get someone who is good at reading and writing, or a proof-reader (like us), to read your CV and highlight spelling and grammatical errors. One of the worst things you can do is have all the experience necessary but not have the thought to proof-read – it’s a half attempt.
8. SOCIAL MEDIA – 10 years ago, this would never have been mentioned. It’s so important. When you send your full name, contact details and information about yourself to potential employers on your CV, it’s not hard for them to find you online. Either make your Facebook profile private or take off all those drunken, weird or downright “I couldn’t be arsed with work today,” posts. We all know someone who has been caught out by their employers for taking a ‘sick day,’ only to rock up at a festival and tag themselves in an album…It’s really bad. It’s just as bad if your profiles make you look unclean, like a political activist of some kind or a downright stoner. Think who can view it and prevent it.

Good Luck! We hope this guide has helped you understand a little more about what makes some of us successful at job interviews and what doesn’t.

 

We also found this little CV helper from Barclay’s, we think it’s a great tool: https://www.barclayslifeskills.com/i-want-help-applying-for-jobs/school/cv-builder/

 

Disclaimer: This is by no means a full, inclusive guide of how to write and distribute a CV but is meant simply as a guide for job-seekers to gain extra knowledge and insight into what makes one employer select certain applicants for interview. This article (above) represents an unbiased, informative representation of what employers seem to be looking for. Based on our own knowledge and that of the businesses we work with.

How can we help?

We’ve recently launched a CV review service from £12.99. We can also proof-read and write your CV, enabling you to feel like you’re presenting yourself at your best for those jobs. If you’d like to know more about our CV service, get in touch.

Getting the Press to Notice You

PR, Press Relations, Public Relations, Media Coverage; whatever you call it, for organisations like charities and some businesses, PR is a vital way of promoting services or fundraising efforts and gaining more revenue streams.

I have been the voluntary press officer/marketing manager/social media manager for a small charity called the Myotonic Dystrophy Support Group (MDSG) based in Nottingham for some time now. Partly because I like to always make sure that I’m offering as much to charity as possible in anyway that I can and partly because my father and twin sister were diagnosed with the condition, Myotonic Dystrophy (MD), a few years ago.

But what does MD have to do with PR?

This article was written by the Mirror, a national newspaper in the UK because of a press release I sent to them on behalf of the MDSG charity. See link below:

Source: The Mirror, 28th October 2016. (http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/teens-hands-lock-anything-touches-9142495)

MDSG is a really small charity that raises a small amount of funds each year to enable it to support the families of those suffering from MD. So how did I manage to get national press coverage for such a small charity?

Luckily, the popular UK TV show Coronation Street decided to run a story-line on this very rare form of Muscular Dystrophy where one of their main characters, Steve McDonald is thought to suffer from the genetic muscle and multi-organ affecting condition. The mention of the story-line appeared in the national media and smaller, local media outlets.

Opportunities

Such opportunities present an excellent promotional footstool for small charities to get massive amounts of coverage and raise vital awareness for extra fundraising efforts and to improve the general public’s knowledge of the condition – potentially helping to save more lives and allow for better diagnosis rates.

Case Studies

Through asking for volunteers on social media channels and collecting case studies of MD sufferers and their experiences with the condition, I was able to build a strong press release to send out to local media, which is effectively an in-depth article giving a newsworthy angle that promotes what news the charity is wanting to share. The press release was sent out to some of my contacts in the national and local media in time to fit in with the Coronation Street story-line.

The media channels who accepted the press release from me were all nationals and with some additional research and contact with a couple of the case studies that I’d collected for them, they were able to produce some carefully-written, considerate articles with links back to the charity’s website, meaning huge coverage for this charity.

You can find all of the published articles here:  

The Daily Express (November 2016)

Daily Mail  (October 2016)

The Mirror (October 2016)

“Good PR is all about timing. Imagine you run a business that provides specialist antiques. One day, some lucky person finds a wonderful antique and the social media coverage and press coverage goes mad. Say that antique comes into your field of expertise, there’s your opportunity to shine in the media. It’s all about timing, who you know and how you can get your story and services across in the best possible way. Writing your story is what I do. Timing is everything.”

~ Kate Hill, 2016. Copyright.

Words are not the enemy: The importance of writing – right

Imagine standing with strangers discussing the weather. These strangers are of average to above-average intelligence. You want to make a good impression because they appear to be strangers who may soon become your colleagues. Instead of talking confidently and in a clear structure; relating relevant information about the weather, you stand there and suddenly scream:

“This green face weather all about. The long rain comes among inside around here. What the wrong sunshine. Hot cloud. Let’s sunbathe!”

Put yourself in their position. I think you’d walk away. I know I would! Imagine that’s your business making its first impression either online or in print (for example, your business plan).

It doesn’t matter how much we love the concept of a business or a product, a service or an idea, if we present it to others in a way that lacks written structure and professionalism, the likelihood is that any response will reflect that impression – automatically, we are lowering the tone of our business. Words and the structure of them are letting us down. They appear to be our enemy.

Words are not your enemy. They can make or break you so believe in yourself and get them right first time. Invest some time in learning these techniques to really sell yourself and your business, service or product; do yourself the justice you deserve.

• Write what you want to say down – obvious but get it all written briefly. Whether that be the pages of your website or just your ideas. Make bullet points if it’s easier.
• Read it back to yourself – aloud. Does it sound right? Is it how you would speak normally. Does it connect with your audience properly? No? Make changes appropriately.
• Get a dictionary or if you’re writing on a computer/smart phone, do a spell check if it’s not automatic. Check the automatic spell checking.
• Restructure. Ok, so it seems like a bad time to restructure but in fact, this is the perfect time. Put the most important points first – the first sentence should sum up what the page/plan/idea is about. Your audience will very rarely read more than the first paragraph or two.
• Add/remove any unnecessary paragraphs or sentences. If they are obvious and you don’t need to say them, don’t, you’re wasting valuable time and waffling.
• Read aloud again. When you feel yourself pause for a breath, there’s probably a comma needed there or a full stop. Read up on correct grammar and always get your apostrophises in the right place.
• Get someone else to read it. Always helpful. You can spend days looking at the same text but your brain will become board so won’t be as critical. Others will notice errors more easily.
• Get more people to read it – family, friends, colleagues etc. or get a professional copywriter to help (charges may apply).

These points, I hope, will help you build your business and say what you need to say in a way that is effective, efficient and delivers the impact needed.

We can’t always afford professional help. I’ve had to say no to a lot of people who’ve wanted free copywriting and editing services because it’s time-consuming and as much as I want to help, I can’t help everyone.

These points are a very basic way to structure any writing you’ve got to do. Don’t be afraid of words. Get it right first time and make an impact. I’ve seen too many website pages that are full of spelling and grammatical errors – there’s no excuse for it.

Don’t rush. Concentrate. Proof-read what you’ve written and stay calm. Ask others for help.

Feature Image: By Petar Milošević – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0,