Too bogged to blog?

What are your barriers to blogging?

Blogging is the new cool thing. That’s the message we keep hearing. It’s great for SEO, it’s fantastic for keeping your web content fresh and new, it helps create a ‘personality’ for your business, encourages interaction with customers and it can really reinforce your key messages and brand image in a subtle way that is much less ‘in your face’ than sales copy.

BUT DO YOU HAVE TIME TO DO IT?

That’s the biggest excuse given for either not having a blog at all or having one but just not keeping it up to date and it’s a valid point. It can seem much lower down the list of priorities than fee earning work or more direct marketing activities.

DO YOU HAVE THE SKILLS TO DO IT?

Writing great copy is a skill (some would say an ‘art’ but I wouldn’t deign to be so pretentious!) and even something as informal as a blog can be a challenge. You need to find a voice, the right tone and style and of course have interesting, engaging and relevant content.

DO YOU HAVE THE CONFIDENCE TO DO IT?

Your blog is for public consumption so it needs to be every bit as thought out, accurate and appropriate as your web or literature copy. This standard can be hard to maintain when you’re looking at something as high in turnover as a blog (you need to be updating it a minimum of once a week, ideally more).

ARE YOU SET UP TO PROMOTE IT?

Are you active on other social media platforms, are you signed up to blog syndication sites, are you posting your blogs to relevant sites? You could have the most amazing blog ever but if nobody ever reads it what’s the point?

HAVE I REALLY PUT YOU OFF HAVING A BLOG AT ALL?!

Soz! If all the above applies to you but you do recognise that having a blog is a great thing then maybe you need to consider outsourcing your blog? There are some fantastic professional bloggers who will blog on your behalf. They will work with you to devise your voice, style and tone. They use your knowledge and experience to get up to speed on your industry and use that to develop interesting, audience-specific content and then run with it and they have the time and the skills to create blog posts that not only read well and engage your customers in conversation but that also add value in terms of your SEO and brand dissemination.

SO WHAT’S STOPPING YOU HAVING A BLOG NOW?

Hopefully nothing!

BTW have I mentioned that I’m a right little blogger myself?…

Client + Marketer + Designer = 3’s a crowd?

Most businesses need design to be able to market their products and services. Literature, websites, adverts, stationery etc all require the services of a design professional and for most who don’t have the luxury of employing an in-house designer, this is often outsourced.

Professional design agencies or freelance designers do an amazing job of creating marketing materials for businesses. Many companies choose to work directly with designers providing their own brief and direction and often their own copy and this is fine but could they be failing to maximise the talent of their design team by not having the input of a marketing specialist?

‘Why have the extra expense?’ you might say, ‘we know our business inside out, what can a marketer tell us that we don’t know?’. Both valid points but I would like to argue that a professional marketer can add tremendous value to the design process and here is why:

1. A marketer acts as the CENTRAL POINT OF CONTACT between client and designer. They take your business knowledge, company information and objectives for the project and they transform this into a proper brief. It means you don’t have to come up with the ideas and the designer gets clear direction from someone who knows what makes an effective piece of marketing collateral.

2. A marketer is OBJECTIVE. You may be too close to your business and therefore too subjective. What may seem like a great selling point to you may not actually be perceived as a benefit at all by your customers. A marketer will recognise your strengths and create competitive advantage that can be communicated effectively through design.

3. A marketer SAVES YOU TIME. Their involvement means you don’t have to get bogged down with the nitty gritty of the project. They deal directly with the designer and this might mean that the first draft you see may have gone through several revisions before it even gets to you. The designer and marketer work as a team to fine tune things and get it as close to spot on as possible before you even get involved. They do the project management, the chasing, the proofing and the editing. They also drive it forward, ensuring that it gets done – so many projects drag on just because the client does not have sufficient time to give it their full attention.

4. A good marketer will also offer COPY WRITING – a specialist skill that many organisations do not have in house. They will take your ideas and company information and create engaging sales copy that is specifically designed to elicit a desired response from your target audience.

5. A marketer sees the BIGGER PICTURE. They can advise on strategy, on how the design piece should be used, how it fits into your overall marketing mix and how it adds value to your brand. They can also recommend the most appropriate design solution for what you want to achieve.

In short, a marketer will maximise the investment that you are making in the design element of the process. Don’t throw good money after bad by spending money on great design only to let the piece down with poor copy, unclear messages and failure to meet your objectives.

Plus, as if all this weren’t enough, marketing people are really cool (but perhaps I would say that!).

(BTW if you are looking for a great designer as well as a great marketer *ahem* I would really recommend ego)

Kids Toys for Geeky Design Types!

I also blog for other people including fabulous design agency ego (www.designbyego.co.uk). My latest post involved researching children’s toys especially appealing for all those geeky designer types out there. Since I fall loosely into that category myself it really was no hardship at all! Check it out http://www.designbyego.co.uk/latest/2010/08/toys-for-design-geeks/

The Perils and Perks of Working from Home

An irreverent look at the ups and downs of running a business from home

Part 2: The Perks

OK so we’ve discussed the perils of home working. We’ve shared, we’ve cried, we’ve had a group hug “My name is Sarah and I am a work at home mum”. But it’s not all bad, there are some fantastic things about working from home. We can rejoice, celebrate and embrace our non conformist lifestyle! Here are my top 5 perks to working from home:

1. No commute! No getting stuck in traffic for us home workers, no sitting next to the smelly man on the bus, no road rage (although I have been known to experience ‘stair rage’ when one of the little ones gets in my way en route to the office!). We are doing our bit for the environment, we are maximising time and we can stay in bed a bit longer than the rest of the rat race!

2. We can have a cooked lunch every day if we want. 11am is spud-in-the-oven o’clock chez Ainslie and we’re not talking wizened up microwave ‘ping potatoes’ where the bottom is rock hard, the centre still raw and you can vaguely taste your colleague’s super noodles that exploded in there the day before, I’m talking crispy skinned, fluffy in the middle baked potatoes. Yeah baby.

3. You can still do the school run. OK so to many that may not sound that great but you save tons of money on wraparound childcare and you get to meet other mums and eventually become accepted into the inner circle of the ‘mums club’ and get invited to boozy nights out, yay!

4. No office politics. You don’t have to be nice to colleagues you don’t get on with. You don’t have to worry that your outfits are bang on trend or that your lunch is too smelly or that your boss is a misogynist who has no intention of promoting you. It’s a tightrope. I have worked from home for three years now and me and the wall have never had a cross word (see Part 1: Perils, item 5). Although the computer does sulk when I swear at it.

5. You can work all day in your pants! Good for you, not so good for the window cleaner!

So there we are. I personally love working from home and couldn’t imagine going back to a ‘proper job’. There are perils but there are a lot of perks and while I make light of them, being able to juggle my roles as mummy to two beautiful girls and dynamic freelance marketer extraordinaire is really important to me.

Are you a work at home mum (WAHM) or thinking of becoming one? I’d love to hear your comments about YOUR perils and perks and what you love and hate about working from home. Please leave your comments here or join in the discussion on my Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=17605&uid=329414422875

The Perils and Perks of Working from Home

An irreverent look at the pros and cons of being a ‘home alone’ worker!

Part 1: The Perils!

As a freelance marketer I work from home, on my own. It’s a great arrangement – clients save lots of money because I don’t have any overheads to speak of and it gives me flexibility, not least of which with my young children (aged 1 and 4, both of the pink variety!).

Like any working arrangement there are ebbs and flows, peaks and troughs, pros and cons and this is my, slightly tongue in cheek yet all based in fact, guide to the perils and perks of working from home.

They say always leave your audience on a high so let’s start with Part 1: The Perils.
Part 2: The Perks to come on Monday!

OK so here’s my top 5 countdown of the Perils of Working from Home:

1. There is NO boundary between work and home: I often find myself balancing a child on my knee whilst trying to compose an e-mail or having to lock myself in the bathroom to take a call from a client (desperately attempting to maintain a cool, professional composure while drowning out “mummy I need a poo!” in the background. Note to self: must get the bathroom soundproofed)

2. It’s too easy to get sucked back into work after the children are safely tucked up in bed. Top tip – turn the computer off when you finish at teatime. Going back into the office for 5 minutes to ‘check e-mails and turn the computer off’ at 7pm often ends with you stumbling out, slightly disoriented, at 10pm. You haven’t been abducted by aliens and lost 3 hours of your life, you’ve just been seduced by the thought of ticking a few more items off the to do list. Trust me, if you have to crank the PC back into life again, the lure of Corrie Norrie and a glass of wine become much more appealing!

3. You begin to suffer from multiple personality disorder, that is when you have a ‘normal job’ and you go out to a place of work you tend to adopt a certain persona with your work colleagues which is different to how you are at home. You wear different clothes, you do different things, you may even put on a posher accent (or is that just me?). When you work from home you do have two identities but they start to merge into one and you forget which one you’re supposed to be sometimes. You don’t generally go out to work and decide on a whim to mop the floors at lunchtime (I actually did that today!), likewise when you’re at home you don’t tend to answer the phone “Good morning Sarah Ainslie” to your mum (actually if you DO do that can you stop, identity fraud is a serious crime and quite frankly I’m confused enough with just the one of me. And why is my mum calling you?)

4. You have to clean your own office, empty your own bin and make your own coffee. Worst of all – buy your own stationery! Sometimes the best perks of employment are the pens, paper clips and post it notes you can squirrel away (it does give me a sense of smug satisfaction that I am still making use of the box of staples I liberated from a previous ‘proper job’, back atcha corporate establishment!)

5. You turn into Shirley Valentine. Working on your own all day, bereft of social contact (despite your best efforts to engage the window cleaner in meaningful discussion) and sitting in the same room all day (which generally tends to be the box room converted into an office where you can access all equipment and supplies without having to leave your chair or a spare room where you have to work around the sofa bed and boxes of Christmas decorations) how many of us have started a conversation with “hello wall….”?!

I do of course jest. In reality I am a super slick business woman, operating from a bespoke working environment enabling me to offer high value solutions to my clients.

Honest I am.

“Hello wall…”

On Monday, the sequel – Part 2: The Perks of Working from Home!

Mouth AND Trousers?

Does your customer experience live up to its promise?

I recently went on holiday with my family and flew with a low cost airline. I obviously had in my head some pre-conceptions about the level of service we would receive from this airline. In my mind low cost = low expectation!

I commented to this effect to my husband on the way to the airport, even going so far as to say ‘what on earth makes people want a career as a flight check in person? Do you think the job attracts miserable people or is that just what happens to you after a while in the role?’. Looking back yes this was a little harsh (my husband pointed out what a misery I was being!) and part of me was probably anticipating problems due to the fact I was travelling with two small children and had tried to pack the entire contents of the house to take with us for a 10 day holiday and was slightly worried about the weight of our luggage and indeed the logistics of getting a walking child, a baby in a buggy and 3 pieces of luggage even into the airport in the first place!

These concerns, coloured by previous experiences with officious, inflexible, ‘jobsworth’ check in staff all contributed towards my negative perception as I approached the dreaded check in desk… and I couldn’t have been more wrong! The young woman who dealt with us at the desk was polite, friendly, helpful and, I would even go so far as to say, warm towards us. She gave us advice on things like whether we could take the children’s drinks through, she showed an interest in our holiday and she spoke directly to the children (let’s face it, that’s always a winner with us mums!). Don’t I feel like an idiot now!

But was it an anomaly? Did we just happen to meet the one and only genuinely nice person at Leeds Bradford Airport? Maybe she was new and just wasn’t all that jaded yet or maybe she was just having a rare good day and was inadvertently being nice against her better judgement?! But no, the person who checks the boarding passes at the gate was also lovely and the cabin crew were equally charming and helpful. Perhaps then I have to face the fact that it is ME who is just a jaded old misery, expecting the worst from people?

The airline, praise where praise is due after all, was Jet2 and I noticed as we boarded the plane that their slogan is “Friendly Low Fares” and doesn’t that just say it all?! The cynic in me is thinking that Jet2’s staff have had some kind of ‘friendly training’ and have been instructed to make more effort with their passengers in a bid to gain competitive advantage over their rivals. Either that or they have a deliberate strategy to recruit more genuinely warm, outgoing, personable staff. Maybe, as my husband kindly remarked, I am just a misery! At the end of the day though, who cares? I was extremely impressed by the service I received, my expectations were exceeded in every way and I’m sure that Jet2’s staff have had a positive reaction from their customers which has to make their job much easier (I do believe that if you are nice to people they are much more likely to return the favour!).

This is a prime example of ‘living’ your corporate message. As a marketing specialist I often create slogans and straplines for clients to communicate what they do and try to encapsulate their approach and personality. This is great as long as the experience the customer receives lives up to the promise offered by the marketing message. A recent study by Satmetrix (http://www.mynewsdesk.com/uk/view/pressrelease/satmetrix-poor-customer-experiences-trigger-switching-epidemic-420252) showed that over 10 million consumers switched suppliers last year due to products and services that did not live up to their expectations of those suppliers.

The moral of this story then is this, and it’s pretty simple – do what you say! That’s it, nothing complicated, seems pretty easy doesn’t it so why do so many companies fail to do this? Your key messages need to be clear and they need to create an attractive proposition but they also need to be backed up and justified by solid positive customer experience that does exactly what it says on the tin/strapline/advert/mailshot/website etc. Jet2 has certainly got to grips with this concept but you don’t need to be a multi million pound corporate, this basic rule applies to every business and should in theory be simple to implement. Do you in your business?

Join in the debate: When was the last time you dealt with a company that was ‘all mouth and no trousers’ and left you feeling a bit cheated? Alternatively have you had a really great experience that matched your expectation based on their messages or even exceeded them? Please leave your comments here or join in the discussion on my Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=17491&uid=329414422875).