How to be everywhere

When you’re running a business you need to be visible, so you meet potential customers and they find out how amazing you are!

When I say ‘meet’, I don’t necessarily mean physically meet people - that’s only part of the process; you also need to meet people digitally - and you can meet many more people digitally than it’s possible physically.  That means that whatever you publish or present is well-focused and helps people to understand the benefits of what you do.

Strategy first

Before you rush out and start posting and joining networking groups it’s important that you know where your tribe hang out.  For instance, if your target audience is stay-at-home Mums, you probably aren’t going to meet many of them on LinkedIn - but Pinterest might be a great place to get involved.

This means you need to have a clear vision of your ideal client, who they are, what they do, what they are worrying about, what they like to do best, their personal style and what they want - and anything else that will help you to get your message on target.  This will ensure that everything else you do is laser-focused on reaching people like this and delivering information that engages them.

Content is King!

The secret of gaining a good reputation is to share loads of value.  This ticks a number of boxes:

• It engages people who may become clients at some point
• It influences what people say about you (and may result in a recommendation or two)
• It sets you up as an authority or thought-leader in your industry
• It shows you know your stuff and positions you as an expert

So aim to deliver value in most of what you publish online - whether that’s posts on social media, articles and blog posts, your website content, newsletters, lead magnets and email communications.

The people who post thoughtlessly quickly tarnish their reputations as they post things on social media that may not put them - and their business - in the best light.  The concept of having a ‘personal’ account on a social media platform doesn’t work any longer - everyone sees everything.  If you choose to be on social media, you must be aware that everything you post or share says something about you - whether it’s a political news story or a cute kitty video.

Networking for business

During the recent period of being locked in our homes, networking has moved online.  In fact, networking has been online for a long time - that’s what social media platforms are for.  [Mini-rant: I’ve never understood people who don’t have a good headshot on their social media profiles - it’s the equivalent of walking into a networking group, making eye-contact and saying ‘Hello’.  You don’t go to a live networking event with a paper bag hiding your face!]

For some networking groups networking online, using Zoom or Remo or something similar, has been a temporary solution and as the rules relax many are going back into the room.  However, some have now got a hybrid Room & Zoom approach and some will never be ‘in the room’ as it’s not geographically feasible with people from all round the country - or, indeed, all over the globe - coming together digitally.

Regardless of whether you meet physically or digitally your reputation is built on what you say, not only in your one minute pitch or 10 minute presentation, but also in every conversation in breakout rooms or 1-2-1 situations.

It’s important to be authentic - it’s difficult to maintain a persona that isn’t natural, but you must also remember that, however friendly you get, you are always representing your business and may need to consider what you tell people - and what you don’t.

Every time you have the opportunity to speak to the group whether that’s for 30 seconds or 30 minutes, it’s an opportunity to educate them about your services and the problems you solve for clients - don’t waste it!

Polish up your prose

‘I can’t write’! This is a statement I hear people saying a lot.  In fact, it’s why we have a business - as that’s the service we offer, whether it’s a blog, copy for a website, social media posts, an email campaign or a regular newsletter.  However, if you’d like to write and want to polish up your prose here are my top 5 tips:

1: Use your blog as your practice ground

Writing improves with practice.  Before you embark on writing compelling marketing content, get comfortable putting your thoughts into sentences and paragraphs.  

There’s no rule that says you have to write 1000 words - if you’ve said what you want to 200 words is enough.

2: Know what your reader wants

Everything you write, certainly for business purposes, needs to give your reader something they want.  That means you need to know your target audience pretty well.

What kind of information do they want?

If you can deliver that it will give each item you write focus and clarity.

3: One thought per sentence; one idea per paragraph

People tell me I write like I speak - but I don’t!  When I speak, I ramble, backtrack and change course mid-sentence, but people can follow my tone of voice and the accompanying body-language to help them to understand what I’m saying.  My writing is much tidier - and this is because I learned this rule early in my writing career.

When your sentence starts running onto a third line, go back and find a place to break it into two (or even three).  Huge long paragraphs are hard to read too.  White space is a great aid to ease of reading.

4: Plan first, then write - and edit later

If you think you’re in danger of serious waffling, get out a piece of paper and a pen (so you’re using your creative right brain) and jot down your subject and the main points you want to make.  Numbered lists (like this one) help to keep things on track - or subheadings to gather facts and information around an aspect of your subject.

I like mind-maps for planning, but if writing a list does it for you - use whatever works.

If you’ve got ideas, but your concern is whether your English is correct, just get your thoughts down and go back and edit it when you’ve finished.  This way you’ll have a better idea of the item as a whole and will make better decisions about what needs to be added or taken out.

5: Read it aloud

Reading your written work aloud is an excellent way to find out how easy it is to process.  If you stumble in places - that’s where you need to edit.  

Reading aloud will also highlight places where you’ve become too pompous and are using stilted or over-complicated phrasing.

♦♦♦♦♦

The more you write, the better you’ll get.  Start practising now.

Put yourself in their shoes

Setting up and running a small business requires a whole bunch of skills - some of which you may not have learned - yet!

You’ll need to be able to:

• Strategise
• Plan
• Organise
• Manage the money
• Market
• Purchase the materials your business needs
• Sell
• Write copy
• Negotiate
• Deliver customer service
• Do research
• Understand statistics

… and that’s just for starters.

You have three choices - do everything yourself, hire staff with the necessary skills to do the work or outsource to specialists.

However, the responsibility for getting all of these right is still yours.  And, if you’re not doing it yourself, it means you have to communicate your vision and who you’re providing the services/products to clearly to those who will be doing the work.

This is tough - even for long-established businesses as you have to see your business through the eyes of your customer to really achieve success.  If you don’t know what they want, what their problems are, how your offering helps - removing pain and./or adding gain - how can you educate your staff or suppliers?

As a copywriter it’s the core of every piece of work I do for clients.  Who am I writing for?  Not the business owner - because the content I write isn’t for them, it’s for their potential customer.  If I don’t know who that is the message isn’t going to be on target.  And that applies to every aspect of your business.

Standing in your customer’s shoes

Everything you deliver gets better when you really understand your customer.  In relation to what you can help them with:

• What worries them about the issue?
• How important is this particular issue to them?
• What do they hate doing that your product or service could help with?
• What are the long-term outcomes for them if they carry on with things the way they are now?
• What would be different if they had your solution in place?

To understand your customer you need to get inside their heads and dig about!

The result for you is that everything you offer is highly targeted to their wants - and they get a service nobody else matches.

Do you need an editor?

If you’re writing a book at some point it will need editing.  If you successfully get a contract with a mainstream publisher they will have it edited by their in-house editors, if you’re self-publishing it’s down to you.

It can be tempting to skip this requirement, especially if you’ve been told you write well by readers of your blogs and articles.  However, editing is not about checking your grammar, spelling and punctuation.

There are three aspects of editing:

1: Concept

A good editor will look at the overall concept of the book and will identify how well the book ‘hangs’ on that concept.  They will assess how what you’ve written relates to that concept.  They will make suggestions about what is missing and what needs pruning.

2: Content

On a more detailed level your editor will look at how each part of your book works.  Sometimes they’ll suggest a subject needs further development or your opinion needs to be added or expanded (after all, it is your book and it’s you that makes it unique).  

Often this will be to explain something in more detail or to add examples, case studies, or the reasoning behind something.

They may cut some of the material - for a variety of reasons, either because it doesn’t contribute to the subject under discussion or it’s repeated elsewhere in the book.

An editor will spot ‘waffle’ and sharpen up your prose so it gets your message across in a way that makes it easy to read and understand.

3: Copyediting

Also known as proofreading.  This is the last thing that is done after all the other editing has been done, reviewed by you as the author and any additional work is done and you’re happy with the manuscript.

Checking for missing full stops, wayward apostrophes, typos and incorrect tenses is the final essential stage before your manuscript goes to print.

Typically, you’ll have a different person carrying out this stage to whoever has done the first two - as it needs a fresh pair of eyes that are ONLY looking for polishing the text, not changing it.  It’s a different, but very valuable, skill.

What would happen if you didn’t get your book edited?

It simply wouldn’t be as good.

As the author you’re much too close to your ‘baby’ to be objective.  A good editor can lift your book to a whole new level.  Some writers worry that their work will be altered out of all recognition and will no longer be theirs  but a good editor won’t take your voice away, they’ll simply enhance it.

The challenge for people who are publishing independently is that editing isn’t cheap - or perhaps I should say good editing isn’t cheap.  It does front-load your investment, whereas getting a contract with a mainstream publisher means they carry the costs of cover design, editing and page layout, self-publishing means you have to fund all those yourself.

But bear in mind that you will probably get around 7½% of net on each copy sold by your publisher, while if you self-publish that can be well in excess of 50%.

At the end of the day it’s down to how well you market your book - and you’ll need to do that regardless of how it is published.

Does your home page capture potential clients?

DISCLAIMER:  I’m not a graphic designer - and am in awe of their talent.  I dabbled a bit when I was younger and went to art school for a year, but I wasn’t very good.  So what qualifies me to pontificate about the design of website home pages (or any other page, come to that)?

I’ve spent years studying what stops people reading a perfectly crafted message - and it’s all to do with how the message is presented to them.

You can have an attractive website, with a powerful message and lots of traffic, but find it still isn’t working.  So what is the problem?

There can be many things that dislodge the visitor without them discovering what they need to know to make a decision and contact you.  After all, there was a reason they came to your website - why didn’t they follow through?

Above the fold

The fold is an old newspaper term to indicate what people see at first glance without having to unfold the newspaper.  Old broadsheet newspapers were always in racks folded in half, so only the top half of the page was visible - and when your visitor arrives at your website only the top of your home page is visible.  They have to scroll down to see any more.

What is visible at first glance needs to grab their attention and reassure them that this website is going to deliver the information they are looking for.  That means that the headline needs to be clear and engaging and the image needs to support that message.

Common problems:

• Candyfloss images that have little to do with the core subject or don’t make sense to the visitor (it doesn’t matter if you know what the picture is about, if the reader needs much more information to make sense of it).
• Headlines that don’t mean much as the first point of engagement.
• Moving images that move too quickly for the visitor to digest properly (they can be irritating at best, stressful at worst).
• Call to action buttons - it’s too soon to ask people to get in touch, they need to know a bit more first.
• No phone number visible.  Some people are just looking to get in touch - don’t make it hard for them to contact you.  Put your contact info into your banner, the right-hand end is where most people look for this.
• Menu tabs with obscure names.  Stick to the obvious - people don’t need to have to think about it, so ‘About’ not ‘Who we are’.  Is ‘Work with us’ your recruitment section or an invitation to clients to engage you?  

Below the fold

Another headline helps to keep people engaged - especially if it features a pain or gain that they’re looking for help with.

I always recommend that a home page features a short introduction before inviting people to move to specific pages.  This gives you an opportunity to reassure the reader that they’re in the right place.  It doesn’t have to be long; it can be just a paragraph or two.

This is usually the point where you offer the visitor clickable links to move them to specific pages related to their needs - in other words your products or services in particular categories.

Common problems:

• Dark backgrounds with lighter writing.  This is much harder for the brain to process and reduces comprehension quite a lot.  If you want people to get your message don’t make it difficult for people to read!
• Faint grey text on a white background.  Don’t make people squint to read your message.  90% black is optimum, but no less than 80% black.
• Headlines all in capitals.  Capitals aren’t read as easily as lower case, so big and bold, but sentence case works best.
• Very wide text columns.  If your content is 12 point, aim for a maximum of 100 characters per line.  Reading text with very long lines is uncomfortable on a bigger screen and makes it more likely that people will skip a line or reread the same line.  
• Hyperlinks embedded in text for key pages.  If people are using a smartphone, hitting a small piece of text accurately is harder than a nice big box or button!
• Too many options.  When you’re inviting people to move to another page, don’t give them too many to choose from.  Three or four is usually enough.

What else should be on your home page?

This is personal preference, but my advice would be:

Testimonials:  Make them big enough to read comfortably.  And, if you go for one of those scrolling marquees (where several testimonials flip or slide away) make sure that they stay still long enough for the visitor to read comfortably.

About:  It’s quite common to have the beginning of your About page somewhere below your core offerings.  Typically it will only be the first paragraph or two and usually has an image alongside.  If you’re a consultant or offer any kind of personal service this will be you, if you’re a bigger organisation it might be something relevant to your business - like a storefront or team shot.

Blogs: A blog is a great way to add fresh content and keep your website higher in the search engine’s attention, so it’s handy to remind people of it.  Typically, your last 3 posts with a thumbnail of the image and headline are enough.  Don’t let your web designer add part of the text, the headline should be good enough to draw people in and lots of text just starts to make the page look untidy.

Sign up form: If you have a lead magnet that you offer in exchange for a name and email address, this should feature well up your home page.  If it’s hidden at the foot of the page most people won’t see it.  These days an image of your lead magnet with a button is enough, so the form only appears when someone clicks the button, but it should either be immediately below the fold (usually to the right of the text) or even in the main image above the fold.

Check out your website and see if you can improve your home page to keep your visitor longer and give them what they want quickly and easily.