Values is a term that we are seeing really moving in conversation at the moment. Not just with movements and governments, but in friends circles and family conversation. But how do brands add value to their customers, and why do we care?
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We are being asked a lot how Covid-19 is affecting our business. What all of this means for our little Company of One, what we are doing with all our “extra time” and are we worried about what the future holds?
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The end of the year is a time rife with clashing commitments. Kids school plays, conflicting Christmas parties, deadlines that all fall on the same date and simply cannot be met in the time allocated. It’s tough and rough and we are all burnt out and absolutely READY for a break – but the year just keeps on coming. Working parents have it particularly tough as they try to balance their own needs and the needs of their tiny humans together. As a business that works mostly with small businesses, we see a lot of these conflicts up close and personal, when working parents have to make tough decisions and tough calls about what time they can dedicate to their life and their partner and their kids, and what time has to go to the business. And sometimes those decisions aren’t nice and aren’t the best thing for anyone involved, but they’re still the call that needs to be made.
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Over the past few months in Australia we have had a huge change in the way that social media operates, particularly for brands and influencers. The removing of likes by both Instagram and now Facebook has caused outrage in some corners of the social media world and rejoicing in others. The question now is what this means for business, and I am the first person to say who the heck cares if they’ve hidden the likes – that’s not the point. Outrageous, I know.
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It can be challenging being a small business owner. Sometimes you feel like an expert in one really niche area of the world, and wonder how the hell the person who needs your services will ever find you. Or else, you feel like a jack of all trades but a master of none – and it tends to swing from one extreme to the other.
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For one reason or another, there has been plenty of talk online lately about brand guidelines – what you should include, why they’re important and what they offer your business. I’m not going to rehash that here, it doesn’t add any value to a conversation that is already happening. What I have observed though is the tendancy for brand guidelines to be a beautiful document that sits in a drawer and doesn’t get applied to all parts of your business, the way it should be. And that’s something worth tackling.
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Each of us in small business came into what we are doing with a Vision or a skill or maybe even a dream. It could have manifested itself as a product or a service, a doodad or widget or even just selling the idea – but there was obviously a time where we were doing it all. The making, the thinking, the website, the writing, the selling, the chasing and – if you were lucky – the invoicing.
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We spoke recently about why email marketing is important and why it should be a key part of your amplification strategy. But there’s no sense in sending out a carefully crafted message that doesn’t add value to the people you are trying to target – but who are they anyway? Who are you designing your EDMs for and what are you trying to get them to do?
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A new year is a time when most of us review the year that has been and take the opportunity to adjust our habits moving into the new year. Call it new years resolutions or intentions or your focus for the year, now is the time to be considering how you want your year to look, especially within your work or business.
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I spoke last week about how important it is to be blogging for your brand, but it’s important to note that no one wants to be putting in all the effort of blogging without sharing it with the intended audience. While content being live on your website is a good thing for increasing your search results or giving you kudos in the eyes of Google, ultimately what we should be trying to do with any blog post is to deliver value for your customers – so we have to get the content to the people! What are you doing to amplify your blog posts? Firstly, you need to consider the lifecycle of your blog post when writing it. Is it a piece of evergreen or cornerstone content – a blog post on a topic that will continue to be relevant for an extended period of time? Or is it really topical and will only be relevant for a little while? If your content is evergreen, share it a little bit now, but anticipate that you will be able to share and promote that content for as much as years afterwards. If your content is only going to be relevant for a short period, share and amplify it quickly and regularly over a shorter space of time to get maximum mileage out of your posts. Then consider your amplification platforms. Where does your blog go once it’s live on your website? Pick and mix from the list, depending on what your marketing strategy looks like right now: Email newsletter | Affiliate or partner websites | Social media | As an article on LinkedIn | as part of a campaign promoting another piece of content | via direct email to customers (usually in an email signature) | As a printed fact sheet | Now consider the piece of content itself – what are the ways that we can get maximum mileage out of this one idea? Some of these I touched on earlier in the article. You can share a blog post with your suppliers or partners in the hope that they will share it with their audience. You can turn a brief (350 words or so for best results) blog post into a longer report or fact sheet. Turn quotes from the blog post into images to go onto your social media. Create an explainer video that…
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