Businesses that successfully work with freelancers are reaping the benefits of having expertise in one or more areas on tap, without committing to a full time or even part time salary. But for every success story you hear, you’ll hear how another company has been let down by a freelancer who didn’t deliver. So how do you make sure you build a relationship that works?
Top tip no 1: Find the right fit
The first step to building a long-lasting relationship with a freelance copywriter is finding one that fits with your business. What to look for depends on what is important to you. For example, is it more important that you find the right personality type to work with you, or do you want more experience in the field.
A good copywriter should be able to work with all sorts of teams and personality types and be able to learn new industries or products, but if these things are important to you, it’s worth taking the time up front to find what works for you. It’s not fair on you or the freelancer if you have decided the relationship isn’t going to work before it has even begun.
Top tip no. 2: Bring them into your team
I can’t really stress how important this point is without using lots of capital letters, and I don’t want to start shouting at you, so please hear me when I say, this is one of the most important ways to make a relationship with a freelancer work!
A freelance copywriter can’t do their job without any input from the company they work for. If you want their expertise on tap for the long term, you need to treat them like part of your team. Give them access to the information they need, respond to their queries to help them stay on track, and employ a consultative approach to the work you have hired them to do so that you get the most from their expertise and they get the most from your insider knowledge.
Top tip no.3: Communication
This is a follow-on point from top tip no.2 because a freelance copywriter isn’t going to feel like part of your team if there is no communication between you. This doesn’t have to be time intensive, in fact after a detailed initial briefing, a good copywriter should be able to drive their project through independently. But there will always be questions that pop up, or feedback needed and so it’s important to keep the lines of communication open.
Some things to consider to ensure you achieve good communication are agreeing up front the best way for you to contact each other and clarifying who the main contact within the company will be. It’s bad enough when you work as an employee and internal business politics come into play but working as a freelancer with no day-to-day context, it becomes very difficult when different people are telling you to do different things and you’re not sure who to listen to.
Top tip no.4: Build a long-term relationship
Of course, not all copywriting projects require a freelance copywriter to be on your books for the long term. However, it might be worth making a list of all your copywriting needs to see how much you could delegate on a regular basis to free up more of your time to run the business or manage your busy marketing department, while at the same time building a worthwhile relationship with a copywriter.
If you have a business blog for example, that often gets forgotten when other deadlines hit, this could be handed over to a copywriter to manage, research and write. This would be a great way for an external copywriter to learn your business too.
Or, perhaps you would love to have more feature length articles in relevant trade magazines but you’re never quite sure how to get what you want to say onto the page, or you simply can’t dedicate the time to writing it yourself. If you are looking for a high impact campaign you could pay a copywriter to produce one article a month for you, or if that sounds like too much for you up front, you could commission 6 pieces a year and either pay on a bi-monthly basis or spread the cost in monthly installments. There are lots of options available if you open a dialogue with the right copywriter.
Working with a freelance copywriter
For some businesses working with freelancers is a no-brainer and something they have always done for maximum flexibility and to benefit from a broad range of expertise. For others it’s daunting because it’s the unknown, or they have suffered a bad experience. Hopefully this article will reassure businesses looking to invest in a vast freelance community, whether for copywriting, design, accountancy, or anything else, that there are steps you can take to make sure you get the most out of your freelance support.
South West-based brand and communications specialist AgencyUK has announced record growth as evolutions in the company’s culture continue to drive unprecedented levels of performance, despite an economically turbulent period for many.
AgencyUK (AUK) achieved record numbers in their 2023 financial results, following two years of cultural alignment and investment in their new Senior Management Team led by founding members Sammy Mansourpour and Amy Stobie. The business has delivered 220% annual growth in revenue for each financial period since January 2020, putting them on track to becoming one of the UK’s largest independently owned agencies.
“Celebrating 16 years is a seminal moment for the whole agency. It really feels like a transition into adulthood. As an established agency business with a team rich in experience, it is in no small part down to our team embracing creativity and new technology. AI and data analytics have made a meaningful difference to our work, by fuelling our creativity and building in new features around advertising campaign performance. This has been instrumental for our clients, particularly those in the B2B space, where we have a particular foothold in the healthcare sector. And we’ve seen the agency grow exponentially because of it,” says Sammy Mansourpour, Managing Director.
In 2021, the Senior Management Team focused on expanding the agency’s client portfolio in the health, life science and pharmaceutical sectors, leading to a record signing of three top-tier new drug development organisations, as well as launching Our Future Health, a nationwide health research programme in partnership with the NHS, which now has over 1.2 million participants across the UK.
The agency now boasts a stronger B2B portfolio making up 50% of its revenue. The remaining 50% houses well-known food, drink, health and wellbeing brands, including beloved sweet brand Chewits, currently enjoying a renaissance since our amplified brand campaigns and award-winning work across social media.
In response, the agency has expanded its in-house teams by growing its creative department and assembling a new senior management team, recruited from its in-house fast track careers programme. Overall staff numbers have increased by 50% with a further 30% expected to be in place by January 2025.
“We are of course delighted with the performance of the business over the past five years, and we have no doubt that our long-term investment in developing the agency’s culture and staff careers plays a significant part in our success on the bottom line. We welcome turning 16 with open arms,” says Amy Stobie, Director.
The AUK leadership team has embarked on a comprehensive programme of cultural development, sustainability and community outreach. Framed around people, planet and community, these initiatives also form the bedrock of the agency’s commitment to being a certified B Corp since their accreditation in 2021, as well as an award-winning staff development and well-being programme.
One of the big benefits of Bristol Creative Industries membership is the ability to self-publish content on our website. We’ve seen lots of great content published in 2023 including some brilliant business advice.
Here are the 20 most popular advice posts of the year. The list includes some posts from 2022 that have continued to attract views thanks to their great tips.
Want to publish business advice on our website and make it into the top 20 in 2024? Become a member of Bristol Creative Industries.
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Written by Varn
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Written by Janusz Stabik – Digital Agency Mentor
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Written by Gravitywell
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Startup funding: What is the difference between pre-seed and seed investment?
Written by JX Branding / Joanna Xenofontos
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The role of brand architecture in Facebook’s rebrand to Meta
Written by saintnicks
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Written by Adapt
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Written by Fanatic
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Written by Carnsight Communications
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Written by Varn
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Written by studio floc
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Written by Carnsight Communications
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Written by Halo
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Written by Trusty Social
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Written by AMBITIOUS PR
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Written by Blog Write Ltd
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Written by Varn
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Written by Proctor + Stevenson
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“Millennials don’t like being told what to do” – Time to rethink your strategy?
Written by saintnicks
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Written by Carnsight Communications
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Written by Flourish
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One size doesn’t fit all – usable HTML across different email clients
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As another year draws to a close we look back on some of the fantastic web design and web development projects we have worked on during 2023. Over the course of the past year we have worked with some amazing clients and delivered high quality, bespoke websites built on either WordPress or OpenCart content management systems.
To celebrate another great year of designing and developing websites in Bristol we have decided this year to put together a video showreel showing off our recent work.
This year we have worked with Dream Bites creating an ecommerce sweet treat website, brochure website for civil engineering company Lynwood Civil, ecommerce and informational website for Cardiff Nail & Beauty Training School, brochure website for mortgage broker Mortgage Gold, brochure website for The Natural Pool Company and many more.
Not only do we provide amazing web design and development we have also provided responsive and transparent website maintenance and support to a range of our clients this year to ensure their websites are up to date, new features are added or given technical assistance through our client portal and maintenance packages.
Grab the popcorn, sit back, relax and discover some of the exciting web design projects that we have been busy with!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PieOBe99qFo&ab_channel=eckhoMedia
Short-form social media video content is short, snappy, informative, or humorous videos that are posted on social media by brands and businesses to gain the attention of their target audience. The ideal sweet spot is somewhere between 30 – 60 seconds.
So why is it important to utilise this type of video content as a business on social media?
It’s a proven way to reach new audiences by incorporating it into a multi-media social media strategy. Plus, it’s a cheaper way to reach new audiences if you are currently operating on a limited budget and can’t yet afford to outsource to an agency or hire a marketing team. Whilst it may not promise the same reach and consistent results as running correctly optimised ads, these ads rely on a solid foundation of organic social media content to be successful- and this content will benefit from short-form video content!
But as great as that all sounds, what if you are a time-short business owner, or just have limited experience when it comes to social media content creation?
We’ve compiled our top 3 favourite video and reel / TikTok editing apps to help you create post-worthy content whilst saving time. They are all affordable and easy to use, with plenty of features and video templates to use.
Pros:
Cons:
Pros:
Cons:
Pros:
Cons:
If you are just starting out and need an app for some basic video editing, it probably won’t make a difference which one you use. They are all fairly cheap, and CapCut is completely free. Once you become more confident and decide to replicate specific social media trends or look for specific video editing features, transitions, or filters, it’s likely you will find one of the above suits your business better.
Thankfully, they all at least offer a free version or free trial to test out the app before investing in a monthly subscription.
Trusty Social is a social media marketing and management agency. We work with busy businesses to improve their online presence through social media, while positively impacting the world and donating 3% of our profits to social justice initiatives each year. Find out more by visiting here and get in touch with us here!
In less than 12 months, AI has taken the world by storm, marking what is arguably the most significant technological development since the birth of the internet.
ChatGPT has become the poster child of this technological eruption, with a userbase increase of 9,990% in the first 60 days of launch. At the time of writing, it has more than 180.5 million users.
Of course, this meteoric rise has been far from subtle. In what seems like the blink of an eye, AI technology has transitioned from a point of post-pint speculation to workplace reality, embedding itself across industries. From initial research and conceptualisation to data analysis, time management and content creation, marketers worldwide are unveiling innovative uses for these powerful tools.
The danger with such a rapid adoption of new technology is that unstable dependencies are formed. SEO professionals everywhere are jumping head-first into the world of AI, for fear of falling behind.
The question, therefore, is not ‘will AI change SEO forever’, but to what extent has it already?
If you were to ask a room full of marketing professionals what they thought of AI, it’s likely their answers would vary significantly. On one side of the fence are the utopians, with their boundless optimism for the technology’s endless capabilities. On the other, are the doomsayers, to whom AI tools mark the first step towards a dystopian Terminator-esque future. End of days stuff.
At Superb Digital, we’re somewhere between the two.
As far as research, data collection, analysis and reporting are concerned, AI tools are brimming with potential. They can streamline processes, smash through monotonous tasks and massively improve overall efficiency. But, don’t believe the hype; AI can’t do everything and the quality of its output is wholly dictated by the information it is provided.
Working with, and getting the most from, AI requires a clear understanding of objectives and best practices. With this in mind, let’s take a look at some of the ways in which AI tools are actually being implemented by marketers at ground level.
The role of AI technology within a digital marketing and SEO context is, of course, nuanced. Where its usefulness ends and its limitations begin is frequently debated among professionals. That said, its capabilities with regards to research, data collection and analysis are undisputable.
As far as research and analysis is concerned, AI is more than capable of scouring live sites and retrieving key information such as page structures, meta data, content styles. Where necessary, this research and data can be stored and presented, for use in later stages of a campaign.
The above methodology is useful, but basic. The full potential of AI can only be realised with the correct combination of input and instruction. If, for example, AI tools are fed specific documentation and reference points, such as Google’s Helpful Content guidelines, they are able to learn from the information provided and proceed from a point of task-specific understanding. As is the case with most AI technology, well-engineered human-led prompting is essential.
You don’t have to spend long working with AI to understand its planning capabilities. After all, heavy lifting and monotonous task management is where tools like ChatGPT really come into their own.
AI can be of great use when generating content plans, brief outlines and structures, but this technology is limited by the efficacy of its instructor (there’s a theme developing here…). Generic, poorly structured prompts will lead to equally useless content.
From our own experience, working with AI requires a clear understanding of two things:
Simply instructing ChatGPT to ‘create a plan’ based upon a topic or title is sure to lead to bang-average results. Whereas, feeding the programme clear examples of high-quality work will provide insight as to the results you want to achieve. Whether this is a website quality report or long-form article outline, it is crucial that such examples are well-crafted and reflective of the results you wish to attain. This type of activity has already garnered a name: “prompt engineering”.
Now, this is where opinions begin to differ. While some AI evangelists will claim that its content creating abilities are on par with those of a human, this is simply not true. AI is capable of many things, but crafting and writing high-quality, insightful content is not one of them. If you’re looking for content that meets Google’s Helpful Content guidelines and actually reflects your brand, ethos and personality, you need a person.
But, this is not to say that AI has no place in the content creation process. As discussed above, this technology can prove endlessly useful during the ideation, research and planning phases. Here at Superb Digital, we often use AI tools for transcription and summation purposes. This allows us to extract key points from client interviews and collate research much faster. As far as the writing is concerned though, that’s all us.
As powerful as AI tools may appear, it doesn’t take a top-tier developer to understand their current limitations. Yes, this technology is cutting edge, and getting better by the day, but it is not infallible. As is the case with any software, AI language is capable of making mistakes.
Take ChatGPT, for example. The language model’s achilles heel is the pool from which it draws information. As of this point in time, ChatGPT is only trained on information up to January 2022. This means that, without the use of plugins and beta tools, it cannot retrieve up to date information from search engines.
Moreover, one of the most obvious flaws that arises when working with AI is the way in which it receives information. There is, understandably, a dissonance between the language model’s method of processing and our own human cognition. In other words, it cannot always recognise actions as we do.
It goes without saying that over reliance on this technology can be dangerous. Rather than becoming overly-confident in the abilities of AI, it is important to adopt a cohesive approach. By all means, use these tools to assist, streamline, cut down and create, but beware of leaning too heavily on their independent capabilities.
The million dollar question: what next? AI technology has already transformed the digital marketing industry, impacting the ways in which user data is gathered, analysis is carried out and optimised content is created. If this continues, what will be left of human jobs?
The reality is that SEO is, and always has been, evolving. This industry is built on the ever-changing foundations of internet algorithms and technological advancements. Keeping up is just as important as getting ahead.
As AI technologies develop and cement themselves in our personal and professional lives, emphasis will be placed on certain skills. In particular, prompt engineering. As capable as these tools may be, they require precise and focussed instruction to achieve above-average results.
Additionally, it is worth noting the impact that AI has, and will continue to have on the ways in which individuals search for products and services. If AI assisted search tools, such as Google’s Bard, are transforming the means through which consumers browse the internet, so will the ways in which businesses and marketing experts target them. It is difficult to say exactly what this change will look like, but an increased focus on the ways in which AI platforms search for information will become a necessity.
Here at Superb Digital, AI tools are swiftly becoming an integral part of our arsenal. That said, certain processes simply cannot be replicated by computers; we place great emphasis on the value of real human input.
Yes, these tools will continue to evolve and improve. But our focus must remain on the knowledge and experience of human experts. Prompt engineering, quality control, copywriting and strategy are among the many areas of SEO that cannot, and should not, be replaced by Artificial Intelligence technologies.
There are many pros to using social media to promote your business, with few cons. If you are just starting out, establishing a presence on the platforms can be completely free if you are doing it yourself. Once your business grows, investing more in your social media presence is a good idea. This could be by outsourcing this aspect of your business to a social media agency, or by having a marketing team take them over.
Businesses with better customer service tend to see better customer loyalty. Responding to direct messages on social media or comments on posts is a way to speedily and efficiently provide customer service.
Email marketing is currently one of the most successful ways to convert leads into customers. If you have the budget to run social media ads and promote lead magnets, this is a great way to grow your mailing list.
Facebook is one of the oldest and most established social media platforms, therefore it is important to ensure you have a business presence on this platform. It also has the most social media users at just over 3 billion, out of those on this list. Depending on your business industry and your budget, it will depend on the success you see on this platform and how is best to use it.
Organic reach on Facebook is difficult and most businesses utilise social paid advertising or post boosting on Facebook. (This is then shown on both Facebook and Instagram as the platforms are connected and both owned by Meta).
But if your budget is limited, one way to still make the most of Facebook is to set up a group instead of a page and drive people to join this group. This will act as a concentrated space to nurture the group members.
Firstly, ensure your profile is set to ‘professional’ status rather than just ‘personal’. This feature gives you access to support, analytics, and tools that a personal account doesn’t.
Instagram is all about optimisation. It has a wide range of features, which is great! But it’s especially important on this platform they haven’t been half-hearted, and they have been optimised.
This includes optimising your bio and profile, the links in your bio, your Instagram shop, and any direct messages or automated messages page visitors might receive.
If you already have an established presence on Twitter – great! If not, now might not be the best time to start a new account. With the change in ownership when it comes to Twitter, it has undergone a lot of changes. Furthermore, with the new verified paid structure the platform is prioritising the content of accounts that pay to use the platform rather than those that don’t.
If you want to set up a new Twitter account, why not consider Threads…
If you also use Instagram and are looking for a Twitter alternative, Threads could be the answer. The latest Threads stats show the platform now has 130 million users (that’s a lot). Despite being a fairly new platform, it’s showing no sign of slowing down or users changing their minds and closing their accounts.
Compared to Twitter, Threads also has a more generous 500-character count, compared to the smaller 280 offered by Twitter. Plus you can post videos up to 5 minutes long.
YouTube is often referred to as the second largest search engine after Google. It has the second most users after Facebook. Therefore given its high user rate, it’s an excellent place to promote your business. Short-form video content you post on your social media can be turned into long-form video content for your YouTube channels, providing customers with a more in-depth, exclusive insight into your business.
There are lots of SEO features and opportunities on YouTube your business can utilise which can assist in driving more traffic to your website.
Most users use Pinterest as a vision board or a source for ideas and inspiration. There’s nothing stopping you from using Pinterest if you have the means and resources to create content for this platform; but it is ideal for businesses to ‘showcase’ e.g. interior design businesses, fashion designers, virtual assistant tips and advice, home improvement businesses or planning a vacation and hiring a travel agent, just to name a few.
Anything related to showcasing, ideas creation, products, or just mood boarding, is ideal on Pinterest.
Last but by no means least – TikTok. The good thing with this platform is you can repost your Instagram reels onto TikTok, and vice versa, meaning you can appear on both platforms without having to create brand-new content for each!
This platform is an excellent place to partner with influencers (as well as on Instagram), showcase your products or services through catchy and fun short-form video content, and make the most of user-generated content (this is content created by your customers on their experience with your service or product).
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Trusty Social is a social media marketing and management agency. We aim to improve the online presence of busy businesses through social media while positively impacting the world and donating 3% of our profits to social justice initiatives. Find out more by visiting here and get in touch with us here!
[This article originally appeared on LinkedIn here].
9 years ago this week I accepted a role to join Dan Fallon and team at a small independent PPC Agency in Bath called SearchStar. The best career decision I’ve made (so far!).
4 and ½ years later we signed the paperwork to sell the Agency to a much larger corporate.
At the time of writing, that was 4 and ½ years ago (quick maths).
Recently, noticing this symmetry and feeling a little nostalgic, I’ve been telling stories about our time there to anyone who’ll listen. Especially the things I think made SearchStar a success*. I thought I’d write them all down (so I don’t forget) and share them (just in case they’re of use to someone else).
To keep the symmetry, there are 9 lessons learned.
See if you can spot the theme that connects them all.
It’s important to stress here, these are the things I think made SearchStar a success. Others may think differently, however, still being good friends with the old leadership team, I’ve shared this with them and they all broadly agree.
It’s also important to stress that the Agency was already doing well and had an excellent reputation when I joined. This is my take on what we put in place to build on those foundations.
I think these lessons largely apply to anyone running a small to mid-sized service or consultancy organisation.
SearchStar team, do you agree? Agency owners, does this resonate? Clients, is this what you’d expect in your Agency?
1) Build a senior team to challenge you: Founders can’t do it on their own. You need to be confident investing in capable senior people who will challenge your thinking. Dan very smartly put together a Leadership team comprised of talented people like Donna Moore, stephanie iles, Edward Arnall-Culliford and Emma Chun, who I was very lucky to work alongside. We not only had different skills, but we had different characters, views and experience. Luckily we all got on well too. Ultimately Dan had the final say but he allowed the team to challenge his thinking; I was a part of many discussions which resulted in more balanced decisions as a collective.
2) Promote from within: If you’re growing a business you need great people in that business to do a great job. Once you’ve found that talent you need to hold onto it. We’d occasionally recruit externally (the rate of growth demanded it) but, whenever we could, we’d find ways to promote people internally. Hesitate at this and the talent will leave. Do it quickly and the talent will repay the investment. Loyal stars like Laura Pinney, Jo Phillips, Hannah Miller, Jack Sladek, Vicky Cridland and Ian Batten are testament to that.
3) Share responsibility: Once you’ve got talented, capable people working for you, leave them to get on with their jobs. Don’t micromanage them. Don’t force them to follow rigorous processes. Don’t treat them like robots. But do provide them with an idea of how you think “great work” is achieved and let them find their own way of delivering to the same standard. That way, every single member of the team can find a way of adding value, in a way that works for them.
4) Share the reward: If you’re sharing the responsibility, you should share the reward. Not just by paying a salary, but by rewarding the success of being a profitable, growing business. Dan made the more senior people in the business shareholders, a few others had share “options” and everyone shared the profit (either through dividends or a 6-monthly performance related bonus). The impact of this on-going collective reward was a huge factor in us achieving our goals.
5) Have a clear business development system: We had great Sales & Marketing people (I’m looking at you Donna, Staph and Nick Livermore) and they put some great tactics in place (anyone old prospects remember Steph randomly dropping in to see them to deliver mince pies?!). But more importantly we had a great pipeline strategy. I won’t detail it here (ask me in person) but it was essentially:
Content > Target Prospects > Quality Events > Free Health Check > New client
6) Offer high quality “supplementary” services: You need to be clear on your core service offering – in our case it was performance media – and you shouldn’t dilute this (personally I’m not a fan of “full service agencies”). However, that doesn’t mean you can’t offer supplementary services that
For us those services were Conversion Optimisation, Analytics and Programmatic Display delivered by incredible specialists like Jarrah Hemmant, Jamie Willmott, Jon Boon and Rob Langan.
7) Demonstrate value to clients: Don’t get sucked into charging for time, or outputs, or dashboards, or, worse still, performance related fees. Instead, focus on understanding what challenges your client has and demonstrate that you’re finding solutions and providing insights. Clients’ businesses will be more successful if you’re providing them with this sort of value. And if it’s impactful enough, they won’t care how long it took you or how well it was presented in the report. (This is even more critical now, as Automation and AI increase the need for the “person” to add meaningful value).
8) Keep communication balanced: It’s important to be open with what’s happening in the business and what’s steering decisions. But that doesn’t mean you have to share everything. We’d share everything amongst the Senior Leadership Team, share most things with the Managers and Team Heads and regularly give business status updates to the entire team provided there was something interesting or relevant to share. I’m not sure it’s possible to get this exactly right, but I’m pretty confident that sharing everything with everyone is unnecessary and hiding important things breaks trust.
9) Don’t dictate the Culture and Values: If you asked 10 employees what the SearchStar culture was, I think you’d get 10 slightly different answers. If you asked them what the SearchStar values were I think they’d probably struggle to give an answer at all! However, I think the vast majority of people who worked at SearchStar would say that it was a fun place to work where people supported each other and built genuine friendships (in fact, 4 different SearchStar couples are now married!).
Ultimately I think we fostered an environment where people truly cared.
The sense of shared responsibility and reward meant we let people be grown-ups, so the culture developed organically. The annual Christmas trip abroad was the closest thing to tangibly represent our “culture” (memorable times in Berlin, Reykjavik and Dublin!).
We were pretty relaxed about the leaving it to develop naturally then, but I think it’s probably much more important now – with a significant share of people working remotely – for the leadership team to steer the culture and be very clear on values, in order to achieve collective goals.
That sums up what I think were the key ingredients.
Did you spot the theme?
There isn’t a specific decision or strategy that was responsible for our growth, but I think there’s a clear link between the things I’ve outlined above:
The People.
There are lots of other things I could mention and I’ve probably forgotten some others, but these are the elements that I feel played the most significant part in our success. We had some support from amazing clients and suppliers too, but I’ve focused on the internal aspects for which we had most control.
It’s testament to what a great bunch of people we had at SearchStar that alumni include the likes of:
I’m delighted and proud to watch them flourish knowing that the successful time we had together provided them with a brilliant launchpad to what they’re doing now.
If I haven’t mentioned you in this post, sorry. It’s not because I don’t think you played your part, it’s just that I can’t mention everyone!
*What do I mean by “success”? SearchStar was founded in 2005 in Bath (UK) by Dan Fallon as a pure play PPC Agency. It grew to become a 60 person Digital Agency specialising in Paid Search, Paid Social, Programmatic, Conversion Optimisation and Analytics. Through the 5 year period mentioned above: Revenue grew 25-35% YoY, we smashed through the much sought after “£1mn” profit mark, the team grew from 18 to 60, we won & retained multiple DRUM awards, worked for organisations like Danone, Mars, National Trust and Intrepid Travel and sold for a healthy valuation that many would be envious of. In my opinion, this qualifies as “success”. 😊
How do potential customers decide if a business is a friend that shares the same beliefs as them, or if they are a foe that shouldn’t be trusted? A business blog could be the answer.
If you think about your own buying experience, you might start your journey by researching a product online. You might browse a website to view the products or services on offer and you’ll come away with a flavour of what that company is about. The tone of voice will have impressed you or put you off, as will the colour scheme or what they have covered in the body of the website. Then it’s likely you’ll look at a few more websites to compare different companies, but what would make you take that leap to go from prospect to customer?
A business that truly expresses its personality by talking openly about its ethos, its brand journey, the people behind the brand, and some of the relevant issues surrounding the organisation is more likely to build trust among prospects than one that doesn’t. And one of the best ways to get this much information across is by publishing a business blog.
One of the best things you can do as a business is empathise with the problems of your prospective customers. Think about customers you have helped in the past and put yourself in their shoes. How were they feeling at the start of their journey, and how did you make their lives better? Then talk about these problems in your blog. Perhaps you can help customers with a service because they don’t have enough time to do a certain task themselves, or perhaps you have a product that will save them money. Talk about the issues affecting them so they can see you understand where they’re coming from. If they feel understood, they are more likely to trust you.
It can be so tempting to sell, sell, sell on your website, but it would probably be more helpful for your customers to be able to read a pros and cons list of a particular product. It takes a certain confidence for a brand to offer an objective view of the products they sell, but the likelihood is, the more honest you are about the fact your product or service will suit some people but not others, the more likely your prospects are to trust you and want to buy from you.
Build a strong relationship with your existing customers and engage with them throughout their customer journey too. By better understanding their experience of working with you, you will have more of an idea what new customers want to hear. By addressing issues as and when they arise, you can adjust your offering and then tell prospective customers how you are always evolving to give your customers what they need.
Business blogs might feel like a lot of work – to produce content consistently isn’t easy. But the benefits of having a regular dialogue with your customers and prospects is a great way to build a relationship and demonstrate your personality. If people feel like they know you, they are more likely to trust you and what your business stands for.
If you would like a business blog on your website that accurately reflects your voice and values, but simply don’t have the time to dedicate to it, drop me a line and I would love to help.
Watch the recording of this webinar now
As part of Bristol Technology Festival 2023, our founder Harry explores the ins and outs of UX design, and why a user-centric approach is absolutely crucial.
In this webinar he explains why UX design is so much more than just wireframing, and how it should be seen as a process rather than a solution. Harry also uncovers how a clear UX-led strategy can lead to a long term competitive advantage.